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?
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I'd like polls to have a bit more functionality before this could be really effective. I think the polls as they are now could be supportive in some cases (and I know the question is "in general is this an improvement") but this gets a lot more interesting with more poll formats and features imo (and could potentially in turn make markets more interesting or bring some new creative ideas/framing to life)
@shankypanky Yeah making polls better would be an important part of this. Approval voting, anonymous polls, polls where you can change your vote, and polls in comments would be at the top my list.
I also just made another poll suggesting they just go all-out and make a proper aggregated forecast for every question:
@Joshua oh thanks for linking this - the notification goes to a market so I've just been confused and intrigued 🙃
I know you and I have similar views on polls and a lot of suggestions in the box. I actually thought we were getting somewhere then the next day the experiment wasn't about functionality but rather raising the price lol
anyway I'm still hopeful and these polls are a perfect meta way to raise poll awareness so kudos ✊
@shankypanky lol I screwed up the title of the market because I was making both at once and quickly edited it.
I think the increased price could actually be a good step towards better polls, because it means they're treating them more seriously. Apart from my crazy ideas about putting them into every market, I think poll definitely deserve more love in general. Twitter polls go viral all the time! Definitely a way to grow the site.
@Joshua yeah tbc I'm not inherently against a price hike (I can guess the intention behind it but I'm not sure what the true impetus was). I do think some shifts to the price and functionalities of polls along with some concerted effort of mindful poll creators would lead a vibeshift on polling on Manifold overall.
it's really easy particularly in small communities to organically impact how things are used or communicated (ex some of Strutheo's market ideas have become common/popular since he came along) and the same is likely to happen with polls when people start seeing good and thoughtful use cases and outcomes more frequently?
@DanMan314 There's something to that, but look at the newest markets vs the newest polls
Polls definitely get more engagement on average.
I like the general idea of helping new users engage, but the details might need a little work.
One idea is to give out free mana for correctly guessing the outcome of a market (probably a fixed amount of mana to make it less complicated). To avoid everyone betting on the 1% or 99% markets and decision paralysis, maybe narrow it down to 1-10 markets each day, selected for being easy to understand, closing soon, around 50/50, and/or popular. Maybe these are "featured markets" that everyone sees - this might encourage a more social experience, where you ask your friends "what were your guesses on the free markets today"
p.s. I think a big driving factor in participating in a poll is getting to see what other people think (and finding out if they agreed with your choice). If there's a market alongside it, you basically already know what other people think, so there's less incentive to participate in the poll.
While polling is value neutral, I think most people still get a kick out of being "right". On the other hand, if you agree with the current market price, there's little incentive to bet (aside from limit orders I guess). I (try to) only bet on markets I think are "wrong" so I can profit from correcting them, which is basically the opposite (and I assume everyone else does the same!).
So, I think having a market in tandem with a poll devalues both simultaneously. The poll results bias the market (although maybe not much?), and the existence of the market makes the poll less compelling in its own right.
Hmm, I'm not sure. Is the idea that I should vote for an option if my probability is greater than 50%? If yes, then I think for most questions the poll results would be very one-sided. If not and I could give my probability on the poll, then we would need a good visualization and we would prob arrive at metaculus.
@koadma I also like the idea of every question also having a Metaculus like forecast built into it, but my goal here is to come up with a very simple way for new users to engage with the site.
Experienced users are happy to just bet on intuition, but I don't think that comes easily to many people.
@Joshua I'm a new user and fwiw I don't remember any reluctance to bet on my barely considered opinions (probably partly because it's just play money). For those who have reluctance your proposed change probably works, but I'm unsure if there are actually many people who are like that (ofc it might just be my typical mind fallacy)
@koadma I think the people I'm concerned about are are the ones who tend to just bounce off the site and never stick around enough to get comfortable betting.
You've been here a month or so which is new, but many users bounce off the site after just a day. I think we could get a lot more to stick around if they could interact with every market without having to bet.
I don’t really understand why people like polls so much. No offense to you all, but I don’t really come to this site for the opinion of a semi-random internet community? It’s just not what the site is interesting for.
@DanMan314 I don't think it'd be interesting for the vote count, I think it'd be useful as a way to get engagement and to let people dip their toes into the concept of forecasting.
I just bet a small amount of mana when I want to predict on intuition but for many users, especially brand new users, every bet feels like a big deal.
So I think they could be eased into market participation by letting them just record their guess for no cost.