I'm coorganzing OPTIC, a intercollegiate forecasting tournament. We are currently planning to run 3-4ish tournaments in the fall, and to have about 20 questions per tournament. The following are some of the criteria for what makes a good question:
• Unambiguous resolution
• Participants are likely to make different forecasts
• Doing well on the question is a strong signal (so that people care who won the tournament)
• Resolves within a few months (so participants don't have to wait too long)
The tournaments will most likely be run on Metaculus, and so (for example) continuous questions are possible, but not anything that Metaculus cannot technically support.
I'll do my best to keep track of who inspired what questions, and when in doubt I'll lean strongly towards giving out bounties. I may give out additional bounties if I particularly like an idea.
Outcomes of very new projects (eg as of now, Worldcoin, Wikifunctions, etc) or scientific discoveries (eg as of now, LK-99, AOH1996, etc)
Local news in each venue?
Big sports games?
Whether various current topics will get more or less popular on Google Trends / English Wikipedia pageview data, and how much.
Here are some ideas and topics:
1. Stay Current: "Who will win the upcoming presidential election in country X?"
2. Scenarios: "What will be the unemployment rate in country Y by December 2023?"
3. Hypothetical Situations: "If company Z launches its new product in Q3, what will its market share be at the end of the quarter?"
4. Variations on a Theme: On climate change - "What will be the global average temperature in December 2023?" or "How much will sea levels rise by end of 2023?"
5. Sporting Events: "Who will win the upcoming Football World Cup?" or "Who will be the top scorer in the next NBA season?"
6. Cultural Events: "Which movie will win the Best Picture Oscar in 2023?"
7. Economic Indicators: "What will be the GDP growth rate of country X in Q4 2023?"
8. Technology Trends: "How many electric cars will Tesla sell in the last quarter of 2023?"
something i’ve been thinking about for a while but haven’t tried my hand at get mostly because of my own mana pool:
One main market, and many derivative markets that analyze particular parts of the main market.
One example that comes to mind atm is: Will any market in the "logan paul" category achieve 200 traders by the end of September?YES
this relates to the category more than a single market, but it’s the first thing i could think of. i think i’ve seen plasma ballin do a lot of interrelated markets, and if i had unlimited mana i would create a whole circus of markets
the main reason i think this is a potentially fun and interesting idea is that it enables people to go down a rabbit hole and get interested in more details about a market rather than placing a single bet and walking away from a market
vague suggestion but Information (financial or not) from future financial statements from public companies?
Will the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory exceed 425 parts per million in the next year?
Inversion - start with an interesting hypothesis and work your way back to the required building blocks. Ask to forecast about those building blocks.
I make a lot of questions involving treasury yields. You can specify specific amounts by date (10 year Treasury greater than X on this date) or have them predict the specific value on a given date.
I use closing value as reported by CNBC and include the link for zero ambuguity