BetFair took the right decision:
Chris Hibbert contested my 6 Golden Rules:
Chris Masse has suggested that the intent and the wording of a claim should always coincide. But this isn’t possible in practice, as is well known to anyone who has managed or participated in the process from start to finish. Claims that seem clear when written (remember that it’s a goal to make the outcome hard to determine at the outset) often turn out to be unclear later. Over time, the meanings of terms mutate, and their application to specific questions is modified as events transpire.
My (Delayed, Sorry For That) Answer To Chris Hibbert:
Chris Hibbert hints at his non-paid work for the Foresight Exchange, where he is sometimes an expiry judge for some play-money prediction markets. The big difference with the BetFair-Senate or the TradeSports-NKM cases is that all eyes are on those real-money prediction exchanges (a.k.a. betting exchanges), whereas nobody gives the first fig about the public, play-money prediction exchanges (the exception being the Hollywood Stock Exchange).
Chris Hibbert could make all the wrong calls of the Earth on the Foresight Exchange, nobody would listen to the screwed-up prediction market traders (if any), because nobody cares.
Addendum: Chris Hibbert has posted a comment.
Follow-Up Blog Post:
Chris Masse’s 6 Golden Rules are complete crap. – Dixit Chris Hibbert.
The question I was addressing wasn’t whether mistakes get made in judging. It’s whether it’s possible to write completely correct and unambiguous claims up front as you advocate as a solution to the problem. Do you want to address that question?
I don’t believe it’s possible to get the claims correct up-front, so I don’t see your rule as a solution. My experience writing, advising, and judging at FX informs my belief. It’s all done in public on FX, so I’m not the only one with that experience. The other markets (IEM, TEN, BF, HSX, etc.) have closed processes, so the community can’t learn from their experience.
There is a lively community at FX and at each of the other markets, play money or not. The discussions can go on for quite a while. You may be right that there’s more outside attention for the real money markets, but that doesn’t help at the point that the claims are being written.
The question of party alignment of independents could easily have been addressed in an interpretation after the claim was written. Many people realized it was an important question over the last few weeks. On FX, players can ask the judge, and the judge can add his interpretation to the claim. I don’t know of other markets that have a facility for issuing clarifications that traders can see when they’re reviewing the claim.