I am not happy

The design of this question and the announced way of settlement lost me 26K Networth, an expected win of 22% and 4K direct loses in cash ins.

http://www.hubdub.com/m39043/Will_there_be_a_competition_to_2_million_Twitter_Followers

"Background: Ashton won round one, but will there even be a Round 2 or will Twitter remove the ability to see how many Followers the account has?

Category Editor's Note: This question refers to a competition between any twitterers, not just Ashton and CNN. If Twitter removes the ability to see how many followers an account has, it will settle as No.

Confirmed with question creator: This question will only settle as no if Twitter remove the ability to view the number followers.

Settlement details:As reported by a major mainstream news source.

Starting odds: 25% Yes

There was some discussion about settlemnt in the comments. After my wish for clarification I got ...

"Clarified Today 10:43am CEST by nigeleccles[Admin] [Level 14, Prophet (H$112,386)] : My presumption is that this question will settle as yes unless Twitter removes the ability to see how many followers a user has. I will verify with the question creator.
Clarified Today 6:14pm CEST by nigeleccles[Admin] [Level 14, Prophet (H$112,386)] : Confirmed with question creator: This question will only settle as no if Twitter remove the ability to view the number followers. "

... and cashed out very angry

If this would have been settled against me I would have considered leaving hubdub.

This is the worst question design and management I have had so far:

The creator should have asked "Can followers still be seen at 2 million?" or with an enddate. The competition for 1 Million was serious worldwide news. This question depends on your definition of competition. Jacobs, gtowns and my view was that it needs to be something serious to count. The two in competition have less than 6K followers whereas Kutcher passed the 1,7 Mio mark. For us competition has to be mayor news and not nobodies who try to get attention. I could have lived with a ruling that e.g. Perez Hilton, Coldplay, Ellen or Oprah anounced their intention to beat Kutcher and that settles as yes even if these celebrities have no realistic chance to pass Ashton.

This questions demanded clarification and each clarification made it worse.

The starting odds are way off with 25% Yes. I know two twitter accounts already who are unable to compete with Ashton. This should have been 90 or 95% if it only needed one of 10 million twitterers to make this a competition or to consider the chance of twitter disabling followers . The relation to the last race in the background and the question is misleading.

There won´t be any major news to settle this !

I quite agree that this one was handled improperly. It was created soon after all the new of the "competition" between Ashton and CNN so a similar type media circus was expected (in my mind) based on the title. The starting odds of 25% also solidified my thought, since I though that was a reasonable percentage for another competition.

With the new explanation, that means that the creator thought there was a 75% chance Twitter would stop showing Followers, the one thing that drove the crazy competition (and thus huge traffic) in the last month. Not bloody likely...

hfl13 - theres an "unoffical" rule if you bet on a question then later the admin adds a clarification you can ask for your bets to be voided. don't look like that will help if you already cashed them in. just something to keep in mind for future cases like this one. from past experience don't bet on whats said in the comments. the admin might not of read the comments and will settle the question without taking the comments into considersation. to be 100% sure always ask an admin to clarify if you have any doubts before you bet.

Thanks dieseldog. Good to know for future cases. I was pissed yesterday and this broke my winning rythm. Hubdub needs an appeals jury (maybe all edititors and only usable once a quarter/player ) There are few wrong and strange settlements but they really destroy the fun in hubdubbing.

I have to drop my job if I try to get clarification before I bet ;-)

There are two possible reasons why this question goes for a bizarre settlement.
A The question used isn´t the question to settle (twitter disabling followers before 2 Mio)
B The first clarification pushed everything in the wrong direction. "This question refers to a competition between any twitterers, not just Ashton and CNN"

Others and me understand "any twitterer, not just Ashton and CNN" as a logical explanation that we not only wait for a rematch but that there could be new contenders like Oprah who started very strong at that time. Ashton had a lead of about 100K on CNN but there were plenty possibilities (CNN, Oprah, Ellen, Britney or someone new like Michelle Obama or Madonna) 25% for that was ok and my first bets were actually on yes (believed in Oprah catching Ashton). But than Ashton pulled away from everyone else and Oprah "underperformed" to my expectations. IMO a "competition for 2 Mio followers" = question was no longer possible so I betted a lot against this (No peaked at 82% and I cashed in starting at 78%) After Jacobs comment and Krujis posted the link to a challenger that had zero chance of ever beating ashton/ever reaching a million. http://twitter.com/SplashNews has now 5.301 followers compared to Ashtons 1.725.777 I still see no competition for 2 million followers but a yes settlement is promised by editor and question creator.

Will this settlement happen because of Splash News or because Twitter hasn´t unabled the followers? The only settlement info will be a blog entry (major media indeed)

hfl13 - i agree HD needs an appeals board. there was some chatter about creating one, but it went no where. the admins do a fine job 99% of the time. one problem i see with an appeals board would be it might offend the admins. love them or hate them we need admins. their part-time employees and take alot of abuse. i couldn't be an admin..so i'm glad somebody steps up to do the job.