Question Resolution

Instead of centralizing the power to resolve questions with Hypothesis moderators, we have devised a method by which the community should be able to reliably carry this responsibility without compromising the integrity or functionality of the platform. As described in Formulating Questions, a resolution can be defined as the outcome of a given question, which will always match one of its initial available choices of “Yes” or “No.” In order to resolve a question, its outcome should be publicly apparent in such a way that there can be no uncertainty about its truthfulness.

These requirements of truthfulness and transparency necessitate the implementation of two new user-selected resolution options as well as one new metric through which users are held accountable for selecting such options in good faith. The resolution options, called “This happened” and “This didn’t happen” will be present alongside a question’s “Yes” and “No” prediction options for users to choose depending on whether they believe the answer to a question has or has not occurred in reality. Out of these four available options, a user should be able to choose only one, meaning, if they believe the answer to a question has yet to be determined, they should predict either “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise, they should resolve by selecting either “This happened” or “This didn’t happen.”

The metric that incentivizes users to resolve truthfully and in a timely manner is called Faith. Faith records the consistency with which a given user resolves alongside the majority decision of whether “This happened” or “This didn’t happen” on a scale from “Good” to “Bad” Faith. There is no reward for being an early resolver, and users who choose to predict in the period of time when the outcome of a question has manifested in reality but is still pending resolution on Hypothesis will receive a negligible Foresight reward for their correct prediction. A user with Good Faith should consistently make an effort to thoroughly ascertain whether enough information is publicly available to accurately resolve a question.

A question has been resolved once the requisite threshold of Good Faith users have chosen either “This happened” or “This didn’t happen.” At that point, all users who resolved correctly will be assessed a bonus to their Faith metric. Those users who predicted on the resolved question will receive an increment or penalty to their Foresight metric depending on whether they predicted correctly or incorrectly. A user who resolves incorrectly will be assessed a penalty to their Faith metric, eventually labeling them as Bad faith resolvers and giving their resolution input less weight in determining the outcome of a question.

If the Good Faith threshold cannot be reached on a given question, it will be escalated to Hypothesis moderators for resolution.

Note: The resolution framework outlined above will not be implemented in early versions of Hypothesis. Instead, users will be able to exercise sole discretion in the time of resolution and direction of resolution for the questions that they author. This will allow time for Hypothesis to validate various underlying assumptions prior to introducing additional complexity to the system.