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– BetFair has been editing Wikipedia 6 times.

– TradeSports-InTrade has been editing Wikipedia 33 times.

– Cantor (the owner of the HSX): 134 times.

– Google (of Bo Cowgill) and Yahoo! (of David Pennock and Daniel Reeves): hundreds of times.

– University of Iowa (the owner of the Iowa Electronic Markets), George Mason University (the working place of Robin Hanson): thousands of time.

– MicroSoft (of Henry Berg): DOZENS OF THOUSANDS OF TIMES.

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Wiki Scanner: Search the Wikipedia edits to spot the organizations that edited it. – [One interesting function is temporarily disabled. It would allow us to spot exactly what it is that the firms did edit on a particular Wikipedia page. When this functionality is re-instated, I will write a more detailed blog post.]

Wiki Scanner FAQ

1. Wholesale removal of entire paragraphs of critical information. (common for both political figures and corporations)
2. White-washing &#8212- replacing negative/neutral adjectives with positive adjectives that mean something similar. (common for political figures)
3. Adding negative information to a competitor&#8217-s page. (common for corporations)

[…] Overall&#8211-especially for non-controversial topics&#8211-Wikipedia seems to work. For controversial topics, Wikipedia can be made more reliable through techniques like this one. As for other approaches, I think colored text is a promising direction for combating disinformation in wikipedia. […]

List of salacious edits, by Wired

New York Times – Slate

The Wikipedia pages: prediction markets and betting exchanges.

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Hence the need for Midas Oracle as an independent and reliable source of information on prediction markets. Here, David Yu, John Delaney, Alex Costakis and company don&#8217-t control what you read.

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Previous: WIKIPEDIA CENSORS BETFAIR. &#8211-&gt- Now we can suspect why. See above.

BetFair&#8217-s P.R. release (BetFair PDF file):

London, 11th July 2007

There have been a number of recent media articles suggesting that terrorist offences concerning planned attacks in London in November 2005, for which Waseem Mughal and Younis Tsouli were convicted, involved money laundering through Betfair’s site. Indeed an individual was convicted for specific money laundering/fundraising offences, and the articles have suggested successful attempts to launder money through Betfair.

A number of attempts were made to use Betfair’s site fraudulently, but they were unsuccessful: they were identified- accounts were closed- and all relevant information was shared with the police. It is simply incorrect to say in respect of Betfair that “winnings were withdrawn and transferred to online bank accounts under their [the terrorists’] control”.

We worked with the police during this investigation, and continue to do so as necessary. We are pleased to have played our part in providing evidence to them.

We are prevented from disclosing anything further.

Notes to Editors:

1. Betfair has a money laundering team of four full time employees, headed by a former Detective Chief Inspector in the Serious &amp- Economic Crime Directorate of the Metropolitan Police.

2. Betfair is compliant with the Proceeds of Crime Act and the soon-to-be-implemented EU Directive on money laundering.

For further information, please contact Mark Davies, +44 20 8834 8208

Previous: BRITISH BETTING EXCHANGE BETFAIR USED FOR MONEY LAUNDERING BY RADICAL ISLAMIC CYBER-CRIMINALS WHO PREPARED THE GROUNDWORK FOR ANTI-WESTERN TERRORISTS. – I have updated that old blog post with today&#8217-s correction.

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

• If Midas Oracle were to meet, would we use Huddle, and why?
• WORLD’S SUCH A SMALL PLACE: Smarkets meet HubDub.
• 50% of our prediction market luminaries have a MacBook.
• STRAIGHT FROM OUR TRUISM DEPARTMENT: Money buys happiness.
• Ron Paul (R) and Barney Frank (D) ally together to attack “the practical hurdles of the federal law, known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, rather than its legitimacy”.
• Clicking on the “SPHERE: RELATED CONTENT” button, at the bottom of each Midas Oracle post, will bring you a list of external webspots.
• FRIGHTENING: Jed Christiansen’s prediction market blog was briefly overtaken by web spammers, who inserted invisible links to their commercial sites so as to game the Google PageRank system.

Eleanor Clift: A longtime confidant of the Bush and Cheney families describes the dangerous influence of the vice president.

Vic Gold&#8217-s book: Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP

Washington Post&#8217-s dossier on VP Dick Cheney

Part 1: Working in the Background
A master of bureaucracy and detail, Cheney exerts most of his influence out of public view.
Part 2: Wars and Interrogations
Convinced that the &#8220-war on terror&#8221- required &#8220-robust interrogations&#8221- of captured suspects, Dick Cheney pressed the Bush administration to carve out exceptions to the Geneva Conventions.
Sidebar: Cheney on Presidential Power
Part 3: Dominating Budget Decisions
Working behind the scenes, Dick Cheney has made himself the dominant voice on tax and spending policy, outmaneuvering rivals for the president&#8217-s ear.
Sidebar: Expanding Authority for No. 2 Spot
Sidebar: Taking on the Supreme Court Case
Part 4: Environmental Policy
Dick Cheney steered some of the Bush administration&#8217-s most important environmental decisions &#8212- easing air pollution controls, opening public parks to snowmobiles and diverting river water from threatened salmon.
Sidebar: Maintaining Connections

Vice President Cheney, standing behind the president&#8217-s desk during a July 2003 meeting, circumvented Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in 2001 on the military commissions order:

Credit: Washington Post

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JFK got killed, but Dick Cheney gets to live.

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Dick Cheney Resignation

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Dick Cheney will resign as VP before his 2nd term is up.

© NewsFutures

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Static charts (for the blog archives, since the dynamic ones above will disappear after their expiry):

Dick Cheney Resignation

Dick Cheney will resign as VP before his 2nd term is up.

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

• IIF’s SIG on Prediction Markets
• Science
• Why did prediction markets do well in the pre-polling era, professor Strumpf?
• Mozilla FireFox users, do you have trouble downloading academic papers (as PDF files) from SSRN?
• “Impact Matrix. Used to collect and gauge the likelihood and business impact of various events in the very long term.”
• Ends and Means of Prediction Markets — Tom W. Bell Edition
• How to run enterprise prediction markets… legally

BACKGROUND INFO: Kenneth Rogoff is a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution and professor of economics at Harvard University.

Felix Salmon (at Portfolio.com):

[…] In any case, you have to read Ken Rogoff&#8217-s spoof memo over at Foreign Policy. When someone of Rogoff&#8217-s stature can laugh in Wolfowitz&#8217-s face like this, you know it&#8217-s all over. […]

Previous: INSIDER TRADING: World Bank employees speculating on the Paul Wolfowitz event derivatives at InTrade-TradeSports?? – (blog post that links to and re-publishes the fake memo)

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#1. Funny.

#2. Free publicity for InTrade-TradeSports.

#3. On Midas Oracle, the policy is that if we publish fake material, we label it clearly as &#8220-humor&#8221- (among other, by selecting the&#8221-humor&#8221- post category&#8221-). See Niall O&#8217-Connor&#8217-s April 1st blog post on BoDog CEO being arrested in&#8230- Tora Bora, Afghanistan.

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TEN CEO John Delaney&#8217-s arrogance didn&#8217-t go unnoticed by the TradeSports-InTrade traders. How come his own betting exchange wasn&#8217-t included in the gambling industry prediction market??

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Todd73NJ:

How come TradeSports isn&#8217-t listed on there&#8230- since the contract will be on Intrade, which will be a separate company shortly, I don&#8217-t think listing TS would be a crazy idea. Would probably be the highest volume traded of all of them.

I&#8217-d trade the TS contract&#8230- And I only use one of those other books regularly which I know will be the last one to fall for sure&#8230- So I really only have interest in TS and World Sports Exchange

Abacus:

They used the term &#8220-sportsbook&#8221- so they could leave TS off by claiming it is an &#8220-exchange&#8221- and not a &#8220-sportsbook&#8221-.

Guys, I&#8217-m glad you put it up but it is meaningless unless you include your own company.

Do the right thing and change the contract.

Suggested modification:

Next major online entertainment company to withdraw from the US:

Betcris
B*d*g
Greek
Sportsbook.com
Tradesports
W*ex
None

&#8220-Brad&#8221- and &#8220-Caveat Bettor&#8221-, among others, are allowed to pitch their site or blog on the TradeSports-InTrade forum. When I did the same in October 2006, my posting was immediately deleted. Something I said???

Note: CFM (the vortal on event derivatives, prediction markets and prediction exchanges) and the two Midas Oracle blogs (Midas Oracle .ORG and Midas Oracle .NET) contains hundreds, if not thousands, of outbounds links to TradeSports-InTrade.

My Question To Mike Linskvayer: Mike, is there a Web-based tool somewhere that would scan all the webpages of my site and blogs, and count how many outbound links to TradeSports-InTrade there are?

Hello Mister James Chanos,

I&#8217-m Chris Masse, the Blog Administrator and Editor of Midas Oracle .ORG.

I see this message posted at Deal Breaker.com:

No one from &#8220-MidasOracle&#8221- or DealBreaker.com attempted to contact me before running this false and malicious story. Jim Chanos

Posted by: James Chanos | January 10, 2007 12:33 AM

This open letter is to tell you that Midas Oracle is a group blog where 28 post authors have published Op&#8217-Eds, and you&#8217-re more than welcome to have your rebuttal published here, or linked to, whatever you prefer.

For your information, bloggers seldom contact people they write about, contrary to Press journalists &#8212-Steve Roman (the blog author of Insight or Connection – How Kynikos Associates Profited from the Gaming Bill) thus fits the current convention/standard of the Blogosphere. Note that there is a difference between the print Press and the Web-based blogs: a blog is defined as a published conversation, and the person who is blogged about can enter the conversation and let the readers know his/her viewpoint(s). Contrary to the print Press, no editor will censor your &#8220-letter to the editor&#8221-.

Once this blog post is published on Midas Oracle, I will try to send its URL via e-mail.

Chris Masse

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External Link: James Chanos: Genius Short-Seller or Politically Well-Connected? Or Is There A Difference? – by John Carney – 2007-01-09

[..] Stephen Roman at MidasOracle.org suspects that there may have been something more at play here than good luck or good research—namely, James Chanos’ political connection. Some of the biggest supporters of anti-online gambling legislation have been the big casino operators, and, of course, the Senator from Vegas—err, Nevada—John Ensign. Now according to Roman, Ensign likely knew that the online gambling legislation was likely to be passed through his connections to Senate leader Bill Frist. What’s more, Roman thinks its very possible that Ensign could have passed this information on to Nevada Attorney General George Chanos, who just happens to be the cousin of Kynikos’ James Chanos. [&#8230-]

Is any of this true? We have no idea. It wouldn’t be the first time that this sort of “honest graft” has helped make someone rich or richer. And the question of the legality of trading on inside information about upcoming legislation has long been debated. Frankly, the whole chain of information Roman proposes seems unnecessary. Even if it didn’t happen exactly like that—Frist to Ensign to Chanos to Chanos—it wouldn’t be surprising if James Chanos connections to Nevada’s gambling community helped him anticipate the legislation.

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Addendum:

Read the previous blog posts by Chris. F. Masse:

• Think Tanks = $$$ + Research + Spin
• Crisis Management Flowchart Tool
• News Aggregation + Prediction Markets
• Our good doctor EJSS laughs at the “Web 2.0” concept on TechCrunch, but touts it as an essential part of the NewsFutures offerings on his website.
• NewsFutures do *NOT* favor event derivative management by traders.
• Who will win Super Bowl XLII? Patriots vs. Giants
• NewsFutures presidential widget