[fc417fc802]

However, your bet against it being merged incentivizes contrarian behavior by the maintainer in order to claim your wager for himself.

Similarly, betting that a public figure will still be alive a month from now is functionally equivalent to putting out a hit on him.

[__MatrixMan__]

I assumed that the maintainer chose to associate PR-creation with a prediction market because they wanted a way to reward reviewers. I suppose there's nothing stopping them from using it to instead prey on reviewers... but that's not exactly a recipe for attracting motivated reviewers to your project.

As far as using prediction markets to put a hit out on people... How does that differ from how it's done now, except that the flow of money becomes part of public record where it's more likely to appear as evidence against you in court?

Anyhow, like most online media, moderation will be necessary. If we can't game-theory our way to a nice solution, we can just do the normal thing and ban the activity we don't like. I just think that where possible, designs that align incentives are likely to be more successful. Prohibition is generally ineffective, expensive to maintain, or both.