Because most of their users are dumb, the Inkling Markets managers have decided to dumb down the creation of event derivatives.
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[...] For example, the most widely run market type on both our public marketplace and our client’s marketplaces is a simple yes/no question. “Will X happen?” In previous iterations, this market type was created the same way that a question with many answers was created, like: “Who will win the Super Bowl this year?” Thus most people’s natural inclination was to ask the question and create two stocks: one for “yes” and one representing “no.” The problem with this, however is the way trading works in Inkling, a trader would find themselves in a situation of being asked to go long or short on “no.” Having a short position in “no” is like saying “yes,” so this was kind of redundant and pretty confusing for traders.
Instead of simply adding a bunch more help text in the latest iteration of our publisher, when we ask our users as the very first step to publishing a market what kind of question they are asking, we explicitly name a “yes/no” type question. Then we automatically set up a single stock for them to trade in and don’t allow them to create any more stocks. Removing the flexibility that once existed will surely draw a few emails from folks wanting to do something slightly different for a yes/no question, but in this case we’d rather have people running this type of market correctly. And for the vast majority of people, it’s now much quicker and easier to set up this type of market. [...]
This stupid decision means that economics researchers like our Mike Giberson won’t be able to employ Inkling Markets at full throttle. Why don’t you create two types of accounts: the basic account (for dumb people) and the advanced accounts (for prediction market experts)?
UPDATE: Jed Christiansen disagrees…
UPDATE #2: Adam Siegel was begging for comments, and was expecting strong disapprobation (from bombastic bloggers 
).
[...] Removing the flexibility that once existed will surely draw a few emails from folks wanting to do something slightly different for a yes/no question, but in this case we’d rather have people running this type of market correctly. [...] Let us know what you think and we’ll try to successfully keep up the perpetual balance between more functionality and usability.
Is my suggestion to have two kinds of accounts, one for the normal people and one for the sophisticated people, a good idea or not?
It may be possible to offer a basic market maker tool and an advanced tool. I don’t think you need to have two types of accounts, just hide the advanced options somewhere.
But last time I started I market at Inkling I found the process easy to set up and fairly intuitive. As a user, I appreciate that most (or at least, many) markets set up by the amateur users at Inkling are fundamentally sound.
There are problems, of course, with poor contract definitions, disputes over market outcomes (usually associated with poor contract definitions), and occasional market abandonment. The first two issues sometimes trip up the professionals, so it isn’t surprising when hobbyists get it wrong.
Adam notes that Inkling has more than a year’s worth of experience with user-created markets — a few thousand user-created markets! That is a wealth of experience with prediction markets. I suspect if Inkling had sufficient resources they could learn even more from the markets that have already been run.
By the way, public DIY prediction markets couldn’t have been done with real money. Too many disputes, too many difficulties, too hard to do just right. Play money = cheap experimentation and a willingness of users to accept occasional snafus and move on. Public DIY also means that a premium is placed on user interface and simplicity. Few users will want to read a 300-page market makers handbook or even Robin Hanson’s latest 10-page paper before creating their market. This isn’t KISS, it is “user centered design.”
So to return to Chris’s question, I’m not sure that Inkling needs to offer an “advanced account” option. Probably a bad idea. But I suspect that Inkling will find ways to offer a more powerful range of tools over time, while keeping it “user centered.”
Although, if they would let me incorporate a bayes net for setting up multi-outcome markets for tournaments and other structured competitions, that would be nice.