Question Writing Guide

Questions should focus on tangible, objective facts about the world which are well-defined and not a matter of opinion. “When will the United States collapse?” is a poor, ambiguous question; "What will be the US' score in the Freedom in the World Report for 2050?" is more clear and definite. They generally take the form Will (event X) happen before (date Y)? or When will (event X) occur? or What will the value or quantity of (X) be on (date Y)?

A good question will be unambiguously resolvable. A community reading the question resolution criteria should be able to agree, before and after the event has occurred, whether the outcome satisfies the question’s terms. Writing incisive questions for forecasting can be challenging, and requires a keen eye for detail, careful precision, creativity and imagination, and a host of other skills. Fortunately, many of these skills can be cultivated with practice.

Metaculus has developed its own style and norms for writing and submitting questions. Heeding these best-practices will be appreciated by Metaculus forecasters and Moderators alike. Questions which don't follow these best-practices may be rejected. For experienced question writers, we have a checklist to address common issues here. For a comprehensive guide to writing good questions, see our guidelines below.

General Considerations

Metaculus hosts questions on almost any topic — science, technology, politics, business, law, economics — you name it! That said, our primary focus areas are Technology, Effective Altruism, Artificial Intelligence, Health, (Geo)politics, and both Current Events and Far-Future Forecasting (10 years or more in the future). Currently, we will consider any question that satisfies our guidelines and rules for publication on the platform.

This section describes some guidelines for question writing in general, including content guidelines and formatting and details. More specific guidance for the individual elements of the question is provided after this section.

Question Content

• Questions should not contain inappropriate or offensive material. Please refrain from posting content that is predictably disruptive.
• Questions should be on topics that are notable. Questions should reasonably be expected to be of interest to at least some other users. If your question idea is only interesting to you or a small group of friends, you can make a private question, and share it with them.
• Public questions should not concern the personal lives of non-public figures. Questions about non-public figures are generally only appropriate as private questions.
• Questions should not concern the mortality of individuals. Questions should never aim to predict mortality of individual people or even small groups. In cases of public interest (such as court appointees and political figures), the question should be phrased in other more directly relevant terms such as "when will X no longer serve on the court". When the topic is death (or longevity) itself, questions should treat people in aggregate or hypothetically.
• Questions should typically not concern harmful acts. Questions should avoid being written in a way that incentivizes harmful or illicit acts — that is, if one were to imagine that the stakes of getting a question correct were high enough to motivate someone to interfere in real-world events to change a question's resolution, those actions should not be by their nature illegal or harmful. Exceptions may be made in cases where such predictions are clearly of wide public interest, which is to be decided by Metaculus staff and Curators.
• Questions should not contain information hazards or credibly pose a risk of causing harm. Information hazards are risks posed by the spread of factual information that could lead to harmful outcomes if they reach certain actors or audiences. These range from technical vulnerabilities that could compromise systems, to extreme cases such as information about how to build a bioweapon. Questions should also seek to avoid harmful self-fulfilling or self-negating effects, where the aggregate forecast could itself influence whether the event in question occurs, or where someone could be incentivized to cause an event to occur in order to receive a good score and an associated prize. Information hazards and circular effects are often difficult to assess and can vary substantially in the level of risk posed. Metaculus will weigh the potential benefits and risks of submitted questions and will avoid launching those that pose a significant risk.

Question content rules (with the exception of the notability requirement) apply equally to community questions as they do to the main feed ones.

Question Submission Details

1. Put effort into your question submissions. Don’t expect Moderators to develop your question from scratch. If you have early ideas for questions but have yet to work these out, you can add a comment in the question-suggestions discussion post. Questions which are not nearly ready to publish and which do not follow the guidelines on this page will be rejected. You can also share your questions with co-authors to develop them together.
2. Keep an eye out for feedback on your questions. After submitting your question, keep up with the feedback provided by Curators, including requests for revisions.
3. Double check. Proof-read your submission, double-check your resolution conditions and ranges, and make sure the formulation of your question is consistent throughout.
4. Use appropriate markdown formatting. When posting URLs, remember to embed these. When writing equations and formulas, try using MathJax.