Above the Fold: Controversy Galore
Categories, commenting, visual updates, and heated debate
Asking for a friend, but does anyone have advice on remembering all the changes made in a week at a start-up?
This week we will be discussing the implementation of categories, replying to comments, visual updates, and two ongoing controversies! 👀
Categories - categorically awesome!
This past week proves that everyone loves crypto, and that it can only go up! That is why we created categories, so you can filter to see only crypto-related markets! Jokes aside, our goal is to help users find markets that are relevant to them and increase engagement. We’re especially interested in increasing total betting volume and this is one step towards that. Over the next couple of weeks we will be continuing to refine how categories look and function, but we’re pleased with the results thus far!
Replying to comments
We have made significant improvements to commenting, namely the ability to reply directly to a comment, which creates a thread under it!
The graph above shows a spike in daily comments. This resulted partially from the intentional removal of a “comment button”, making it so that pressing enter immediately sent the message (similar to Discord and other apps). Several fragmented comments later, including ones from Manifold Market employees, the change was reverted. Shout out to a couple of dedicated users from this market who also helped contribute.
You can now also create a link to a comment by clicking on its timestamp!
Check out → this example!! ←
Visual updates
Free response answers are now filled with a green bar relative to their probability. This conveys more information visually for users who are not so keen on numbers.
Market cards now include the category, and a colourful bar indicating their probabilities. There is still ongoing discussion whether we should be drawing so much attention to the probability of the market as opposed to the question. Let us know what you think about this change in particular ~
The Mana symbol civil war
A war is brewing There is a raging war over the symbol for our currency, Mana.
M$ vs (sorry let me spend a couple of minutes finding it to copy and paste) ϻ.
Some are a big fan of ϻ thanks to its aesthetics and separation from USD. Others refute it, claiming it is unfriendly to type and unclear to new users that it represents a type of currency.
Other options have also been proposed, such as m123 and 123¢.
What do you think? Bet here what you think we will settle on a few weeks from now.
Controversy! How to resolve free markets??
https://manifold.markets/Duncan/among-current-heads-of-state-who-wi
This market raised heated debate on how free response markets should be resolved. President of the United Arab Emirates Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan was the first head of state to pass away after the creation of this market. But, no one predicted it. Alas, the market was open at the time of his death, so users rushed to create an answer and bet on him.
This raises the first set of questions - if no one predicts correctly, then should people who rush to answer be rewarded or should the market be marked N/A? Or perhaps there was the correct answer already present, but the majority of shares owned were bought reactively after the answer was known. Does this undermine the market?
What made things even more interesting was the existing answer that was technically correct: “Someone else, not mentioned in any answer at time of their death”.
This brings up the second question - what determines a valid answer? The description of this market doesn’t explicitly prohibit an answer that doesn’t specify an individual head of state.
Ultimately, the creator of the market decided that this was not a valid answer and resolved 100% of the market to the President of UAE. The market reached a volume of over 40,000 Mana being traded, and definitely shook the leaderboard standings.
Even more updates!
If there wasn’t enough stuff already, here’s a list of all the smaller changes we made:
Added bet history to profile page
INFINITE scrolling homepage muahaha 😈
Made the explore page the new home. Renamed the home feed to “Activity”
Small changes to landing page (bigger updates soon to come)
Very shiny purple “ask a question” button (prev. “create a market”)
Added more charities - Over $500 raised already!
Be sure to check out…
Lars’ market on whether Elon Musk backs out of the Twitter deal
Power user Tetraspace’s market on whether numerical range markets will be added to Manifold
❗Breaking News❗ Dr P has finally resolved his market that had been closed for several months! He immediately decided to make another Trump market 😂
You can also bet here on if you think he will actually resolve it on time.
There’s been some crazy volatility in this market: https://manifold.markets/Austin/will-carrick-flynn-win-the-general
Thanks for reading! If you read through this and have somehow not joined our Discord yet make sure to do so and join the war on Mana.
— David, Community manager