Metaculus Community 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 Community Moderators.

Content that does not adhere to our Moderation Rules will be removed. Conduct that violates our rules and consistent norm-violating conduct will be appropriately sanctioned by the measures described below.

To ensure that your contributions and comments have the maximum impact, we encourage you to follow the etiquette guide below. We may remove content that does not follow our guidelines, to ensure that Metaculus remains a place where observers and users can find thoughtful discussions and valuable reasoning.

Etiquette

  1. Aim for high-quality, useful and informative content. It's greatly appreciated when participants contribute to the discussion at hand with new information or detailed explanations of their reasoning. Low-effort comments, derailing, or spam aren't welcome.
  2. Be respectful of all participants. Give others the benefit of the doubt if you have a misunderstanding. Moderators and Admins are trying their best to ensure that the platform runs smoothly, keep that in mind and engage respectfully.
  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 "Report" 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 FAQ. 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 “My score will benefit 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.
  12. Avoid pasting raw AI output. You can use AI tools to aid your forecasts, but focus on the insights that explain your reasoning, whether yours or an AI’s, and share them in a way that's useful to others. If some of your reasoning comes from an AI, a best practice is to call out what part and mention what model you used.

Moderation Rules

  1. Do not engage in abusive behaviour. Abusive behaviour includes personal attacks, making threats, and harassment.
  2. Do not post or link to any inappropriate, offensive or illegal material. Please refrain from posting content that is blatantly disruptive to the discussion.
  3. Do not be intolerant of others. Intolerance of a person’s race, culture, appearance, gender, sexual preference, religion or age is unacceptable.
  4. Skip advertisements and spam. Linking to relevant resources is fine, but promoting products and commercial offerings is not.
  5. Don't impersonate others. If a user claims to be someone they are not in comments or in their username, Moderators may ask the user to provide identifying information, and remove the misrepresentation if the user cannot verify their identity.
  6. If you’ve found something wrong, please don’t jeopardize platform functionality. We’re constantly working on the Metaculus platform. If you have found a bug or if something isn’t working right, we appreciate you letting us know via the Contact link in the footer.

For further details about our Acceptable Use Policy, check out our Terms of Use.

Sanctions

  1. Removal of Comments or Questions. Content that breaches the Moderation Rules will be removed.
  2. Temporary Suspension. Participants who flout the Moderation Rules will have access to their accounts suspended for a period of one week.
  3. Permanent Ban. Participants who repeatedly violate the Moderation Rules will have their access to their accounts permanently blocked.

About the Community Moderators

Metaculus Community Moderators try their best to help the platform run smoothly. In the past Moderators have been elected volunteers, though recently Moderators tend to be recruited by Metaculus and work part-time. If you have experience writing good forecasting questions or providing feedback on forecasting questions, communicate respectfully with others, and would be interested in becoming a Moderator you can fill out our expression of interest form.

The main responsibilities of Community Moderators include:

  1. Providing constructive feedback on user-submitted questions, including asking for revisions when necessary.
  2. Accepting community-suggested questions that are ready to go live for forecasting.
  3. Mediating discussions about question resolutions.
  4. Answering users' questions about how the platform works, when they arise.
  5. Helping write and review forecasting questions for Metaculus initiatives and tournaments.

Additionally, Moderators can help draw extra attention to bugs, feature requests, or other issues that affect the platform.