Resolution notes: “Whatever values are reported that day will be used unconditionally.” or “If the values change within the following week, the updated values will be used instead.” or “The resolution method is a guideline only; ultimately the intent of the question, as interpreted by the question author, overrides.”
This will only solve a subset of ambiguous resolutions, but I think it would still be a big help to spell some of these things out more clearly.
Strongly agree about the existence of the problem. It’s something I’ve put a bit of thought into.
One thing I think could help, in some cases, would be to split the market definition into
the question definition, and
the resolution method
And then specify the relationship between them. For example:
Question: How many reported covid cases will there be in the US on [DATE]?
Resolution method: Look at https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/ a week after [DATE] for the reported values for [DATE].
Resolution notes: “Whatever values are reported that day will be used unconditionally.” or “If the values change within the following week, the updated values will be used instead.” or “The resolution method is a guideline only; ultimately the intent of the question, as interpreted by the question author, overrides.”
This will only solve a subset of ambiguous resolutions, but I think it would still be a big help to spell some of these things out more clearly.