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Guidelines

Welcome to the Metaculus Community Guidelines page! This is a good place to get started for all those who are interested in engaging with the Metaculus platform.

We greatly value the contributions of our diverse community of forecasters, question authors, and forum participants, and we hope that these guidelines will promote, enhance, and safeguard a vibrant community forecasting space for many years to come.

Content on the platform is moderated by members of the Metaculus team, together with a group of volunteer Question Curators who approve user-submitted questions.

Content that does not adhere to our Moderation Rules will be flagged, and the posters will be notified. Conduct that violates our rules and consistent norm-violating conduct will be appropriately sanctioned.

To ensure that your contributions and comments have the maximum impact, we encourage you to follow the etiquette guide below.

Summary​

See the etiquette section below for the full set of community etiquette guidelines, but in summary:

  • Users are welcome to comment on any question.
  • Comments and questions can use markdown formatting
  • Metaculus aims at a high level of discourse. Comments should be on topic, relevant and interesting. Comments should not only state the author’s opinion (with the exception of quantified predictions). Comments which are spammy, aggressive, profane, offensive, derogatory, or harassing are not tolerated, as well as those that are explicitly commercial advertising or those that are in some way unlawful. See the Metaculus terms of use for more
  • You can ping other users using "@username", which will send that user a notification (if they set that option in their notification settings).
  • You are invited to upvote questions which contain relevant information to the question, and downvote questions which do not follow our etiquette guidelines. Downvotes should not be used for opinions you disagree with (instead, write a comment explaining why you disagree!)
  • If a comment is spam, inappropriate/offensive, or flagrantly breaks our rules, please send us a report (under the "..." menu).

Etiquette​

  1. Aim for high-quality, useful and informative content. It’s greatly appreciated when participants contribute to the discussion at hand. Disruptive comments, derailing, or spam aren’t welcome.
  2. Be respectful of all participants and Community Curators. Curators are volunteers whose job is to ensure that the question approval process runs smoothly – show them you appreciate their service by giving them the benefit of the doubt if you have a misunderstanding.
  3. Keep things civil. Offensive or insulting remarks aren’t welcome.
  4. Don’t fuel conflicts if they occur. Just disengage and report issues using the “Flag” feature on comments if you encounter content that violates these guidelines.
  5. Be constructive. It’s okay to disagree with others, just keep the dialogue positive and respectful.
  6. Avoid excessive editorializing. Metaculus is ultimately a place where forecasts and individual track records speak for themselves. As a general rule, we encourage comments that are on topic, and free from personal grievances or strong politics.
  7. Show your appreciation. If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it!
  8. Search first. If you have questions about how Metaculus works, check to see if you can find the answer in the documentation. There are lots of technical details for those interested.
  9. Aim for good grammar and spelling. While perfection is certainly not the goal, we appreciate linguistic propriety and enjoy the fact that you are more likely than not to encounter complete, legible sentences here. Please mind your language.
  10. Report potential conflicts of interest. At times, forecasters weigh in on question resolution discussions. If you do so, it’s considered good form to indicate when you have a potential conflict of interest. A simple “I will win X points if this question resolves as I suggest it should” will suffice.
  11. Plagiarism is not tolerated. Quoting or citing other sources is very welcome when you give attribution to the original source. Trying to claim their work as your own is not acceptable.