Currently, my policy is that claims must be written so that I expect the result will be readily observable on the settlement date.
Claims based on claim templates will probably be approved quickly (maybe instantly in the future). Other proposed claims will be listed for comments for at least 7 days after any change before being approved.
"Readily observable" means that the event must be of the kind that has normally been reported as fact (not opinion) in standard news sources. If the event is not of sufficient interest to the general public that CNN would be expected to report it, the claim must identify a publicly available web site or similar publication (which is widely available at little cost) which has normally reported events of this kind in the past.
Claim authors are strongly encouraged to design claims so that they could be judged by reading a number from a standard site, for example a claim about the unemployment rate would typically reference this unemployment statistics page from the St. Louis Fed. Without a specific reference such as this, it would be easy to overlook ambiguities such as seasonally adjusted versus raw data.
The Iowa Electronic Markets provide good examples of claims that are clear and easy to judge.
Claim authors should not consider the claims on The Foresight Exchange to be good examples of how claims should be worded. A majority of those claims contain ambiguities that would not be accepted here.
Currently, I plan to judge all claims, and I only accept claims which I am confident I will be able to judge with little effort. I am uncertain whether I will make use of other judges in the future.
If there is clear difference between the literal meaning of the claim and the reasonable expectations by most traders concerning the intent of the claim, the expectations of the traders will prevail. The intentions of the claim author are relevant only to the extent they could reasonably have been inferred before a disputes arise.