I think Manifold is filled with people who like answering polls. And new users are often hesitant to bet on things they aren't confident in. I think we could get new users to stick around more if every market also had a poll they could vote on, if they didn't want to bet.

Betting involves risk, and makes you want to think twice and maybe Google some things to see if your intuition is right.

But when you answer a poll, you can just throw out your opinion for fun based on that intuition.

Thus, polls often are able to easily get dozens of traders while similar markets struggle to get double digits.

My proposal is that the site could be instantly improved if every market was also simultaneously a simple poll.

Users could vote on how they think the market will resolve, and you could change your vote at any time. You could even vote anonymously if you don't want to go on the record yet. The vote count would then be displayed separately from the market probability.

Then later, you might decide to bet on the market after all. Voting would still subscribe you to the market so you'd see the comments and get updates when the situation changed.

And it would show the market creator that people are interested in the question, even if they aren't immediately confident enough to bet on it. Maybe they could even get some trader bonuses, but only 1 mana per voter instead of 5 per trader.

In general, do you think this would be an improvement to the site?