Midas Oracle .ORG

Chris F. Masse July 6th, 2008

Folks, I have received 3 messages thru that Midas Oracle Contact Form, lately. They were all empty, so I thought they were spams killed by the Contact Form. But, in fact, the Contact Form was not working properly. (I got rid of it.)

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If you have something important to tell me (since I’m such an important person myself ), please re-send it my way using e-mail.

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Contact Chris Masse

You can contact Chris F. Masse (the editor and publisher of Midas Oracle) via:

• cfm |-at-| midasoracle |.|-com-|
• chrisfmasse |-at-| gmail |.|-com-| — GMail Chat, Google Talk, and Shared Items in Google Reader
• chrisfmasse |-at-| yahoo |.|-com-|

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Contact Less “Important” Members Of Midas Oracle

Michael Giberson: | michael.giberson |-at-| gmail |.|-com-|

Jason Ruspini: | jruspini |-at-| yahoo |.|-com-|

Tom W. Bell: | tbell |-at-| chapman |.|-edu-|

etcetera…

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Tags: Chris F. Masse, Chris Masse, contact, e-mail, e-mail address, Midas Oracle

• Midas Oracle Administration
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Chris F. Masse July 1st, 2008

As you know, some people commenting here told me they went into trouble, even when they were logged in. I found out why. The anti-spam plugin “WP Spam Free” does not exempt registered blog users from its anti-spam checking. It only exempts the administrator (me). That’s absurd. (See the WP forum.) The registered users of Midas Oracle should be trusted a priori.

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I didn’t know that. When some commenters complained to me, I thought they were completely drunk. Sorry for that, folks.

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Which is why the plugin “WP Spam Free” is out (until its author comes back to his sense), and “Bad Behavior” is in.

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Commenters, let me know whether the problems you got while trying to comment on Midas Oracle have disappeared. Thanks. I promise I’ll trust you, this time.

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Our previous post on the topic of registration (which is recommended).

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Tags: anti-spam plugins, BadBehavior, comment, commenters, commenting, comments, spam, spamming, WordPress, WP Spam Free

• Information Technology , Midas Oracle Administration
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Chris F. Masse June 29th, 2008

I deactivated the WP-OpenID plugin because WP Spam Free says it is the source of incompatibilities. I notified the WP forum.

Commenters, let me know whether the problems you got while trying to comment on Midas Oracle have disappeared. Thanks.

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Our previous post on the same topic.

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UPDATE: I deactivated WP Spam Free and installed Bad Behavior.

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Tags: commenters, commenting, comments, plugins, WordPress, WP Spam Free, WP-OpenID

• Information Technology , Midas Oracle Administration
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Chris F. Masse June 29th, 2008

Sorry for that, Nigel.

Register yourself on Midas Oracle + Log in when you want to make a comment.

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That way, the anti-spam mechanism won’t apply to you. (I suppose that it prohibits the publishing of many external links in comments, because that’s the marking of spammers.)

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TECHNICAL TIP: Ask your browser to remember your login and password.

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Tags: commenting, comments, log in, logged in, Midas Oracle, registration, spam, spammers, WordPress, WP Spam Free

• Midas Oracle Administration
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Chris F. Masse June 6th, 2008

The WordPress registered subscribers should have access, internally, to the “comments” page —so that they could read comments, and reply to comments from there. (With a little help from the “Absolute Comments” plugin.) That would be useful to the heavy commenters. Indeed, that “comments” page loads quicker than anything else.

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Tags: comments, WordPress

• Information Technology , Midas Oracle Administration
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Chris F. Masse June 5th, 2008

Google Reader fetches our comment feed once an hour or so. Too long for some.

Scan this feed explainer, I have listed the PC-based feed readers. You can then decide exactly when to fetch our comment feed —every 10 minutes, every 20 minutes, etc.

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As for me, the blog administrator, I read comments and reply to them —from within the WordPress system, on the “comments” page.

I’ll log in as a simple subscriber, soon, and see whether one simple registered Midas Oracle reader could, from there, reply to other people’s comments. That would solve some of the problems of the guy linked to, above.

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Tags: coimments, discussions, feed fetching, feed readers, Midas Oracle, WordPress

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Chris F. Masse May 29th, 2008

Any Wikipedian out there willing to start off his page?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Wolfers

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Robin Hanson, Tyler Cowen, Steve Levitt, and even Don Luskin and Robert Scoble, have their own Wikipedia entry. Why not Wolfers???… I realized that when I updated my “acknowledgments” page:

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Acknowledgments

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- Friedrich August Von Hayek (an economist who introduced, among other things, the concept of the market as an information aggregation tool in The Use of Knowledge in Society, and the 1974 co-winner of the Nobel Prize in economics);

- Professor Vernon Smith (an experimental economics pioneer, and, as such, the 2002 co-winner of the Nobel Prize in economics);

- Professor Robin Hanson (one of the contemporary co-inventors of the prediction markets);

- Doctor James Surowiecki (author of The Wisdom Of Crowds);

- Professors Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz (meta analysts of the prediction markets);

- Professor Steve Levitt (co-author of Freakonomics);

- Professor Tyler Cowen (co-author of Marginal Revolution and author of Discover Your Inner Economist);

- Donald Luskin (author of The Conspiracy To Keep You Poor And Stupid);

- The GNU, Linux, WordPress, World Wide Web Consortium, Mozilla, Opera, Yahoo!, Google, Wikipedia, Creative Commons and Free Software Foundation people (among others) for freeing our information-based society.

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More Thanks

• The Midas Oracle Blog Authors
• Credits

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Tags: Acknowledgments, Justin Wolfers, Midas Oracle, Wikipedia

• Midas Oracle Administration , Resources & References
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Chris F. Masse May 29th, 2008

Tom W. Bell,

Please, watch this short video, and get yourself a gravatar. It’s easy and fun.

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The little difference between Midas Oracle and Chris Pirillo’s blog is that he set up things so that when somebody does not have a gravatar, a randomly-pixelized image appears, while on Midas Oracle, there’s a face pic of an anonymous person that appears.

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Tags: avatars, Blogs, face pics, gravatars, mugshots, WordPress

• Information Technology , Midas Oracle Administration
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Chris F. Masse May 16th, 2008

Here’s our list of links.

Here’s the WordPress plugin I’m testing: Cross-Linker by Jan Hvizdak

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Now, let’s test it. I’m writing a list of people and organizations, and the plugin will automatically embed a link into each text anchor:

• Robin Hanson
• InTrade
• InTrade Forum
• Inkling Markets
• Inkling Markets Blog
• Inkling Markets Forum
• Justin Wolfers
• Michael Giberson
• Slate
• Koleman Strumpf
• Prediction Market Industry Association
• Midas Oracle .ORG
• Marginal Revolution
• Cato Institute
• Chicago Mercantile Exchange
• CNN
• Google
• TradeSports
• TradeSports Forum
• NewsFutures
• NewsFutures Blog
• Freakonomics @ New York Times
• Odd Head
• Bo Cowgill
• BetFair
• Betting @ BetFair
• BetFair Forum
• Felix Salmon @ Portfolio

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OK, let’s see whether it works fine. The words and phrases in the list above should be underlined in blue, with links embedded in them.

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UPDATE: Works like a charm.

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Tags: blog, blogroll, Cross-Linker, external links, Jan Hvizdak, links, Midas Oracle, web links, WordPress

• Information Technology , Midas Oracle Administration
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Chris F. Masse May 16th, 2008

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1. the richer and most technically sophisticated form of prediction market journalism
2. a very popular form of prediction market journalism

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Sounds like a too lofty dual goal; your feeling is right. My idea is to find an adéquation between this (too) lofty dual goal and the class of organizations that could fund that. I have had a crazy idea, which I submitted to MG and some others, and it might not be that crazy after all. In the coming days, I’ll reach out to more Midas Oracle people.

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Besides informing you of my intention, the purpose of this post is to create the “Midas Oracle Project” category and tag. Stay tuned…

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Tags: Midas Oracle, Midas Oracle Project, prediction market journalism

• Journalism, Editing & Publishing , Midas Oracle Administration , Midas Oracle Project
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