Topics, Sponsors & Challenges

Three pieces of structure make a network navigable as it grows: topics organize questions by theme, sponsors say who is asking, and challenges give a body of related questions its own page. All three are configured on the network by an admin.

Topics

Topics are the themes questions are tagged with. They are used in four places:

  • Publishers tag each question with topics when publishing it to the network.
  • Forecasters filter the questions list by topic to find what interests them.
  • Forecasters declare their expertise per topic during onboarding, which is how the network learns where each person's judgement is strongest.
  • The leaderboard can be filtered by topic, so you can see who is strongest in each area rather than only overall.

Forecasters rate their expertise against whichever topics exist when they onboard, so topics added later are not covered by existing ratings until each forecaster revises them. Drag to reorder; that is the order forecasters see everywhere.

Removing a topic does not affect the questions tagged with it - they stay published, they just lose the tag.

Sponsors

A sponsor is the organization a question is asked on behalf of: a department, a program office, a client team. When a question is published with a sponsor, the sponsor's name and logo are what forecasters see as "who's asking".

A forecaster's home page also tells them how many sponsors are waiting on their input. Without a sponsor, the publishing analyst's handle is shown instead - never their email address.

Add sponsors under Sponsors, with a name and an optional square logo. If you remove a sponsor, questions asked on its behalf fall back to showing the publishing analyst.

Challenges

A challenge is a page on the network devoted to a set of related questions - a home for a program, an initiative, or a client engagement that is posing questions to the network. Forecasters browse challenges from the sidebar and can open one to read what it is about and see the questions it poses.

A challenge has:

  • A name and description - the short pitch shown on the challenge card and at the top of its page.
  • Long-form content - the body of the page, where you explain the program, why the questions matter, and how the answers will be used.
  • A logo and cover image - a square logo for the card and page, and an optional wide banner behind it. Without a cover image, a brand-color band is used.
  • A sponsor - the organization the challenge is run on behalf of. Its name and logo appear on the challenge's questions.
  • Questions - the questions the challenge poses, managed on the challenge's own Questions tab.

The name, description, images, and sponsor are on the Details tab. After you create a challenge, it opens on the Questions tab.

Challenges are drafts until you publish them; an unpublished challenge is invisible to forecasters. Removing a challenge only removes the page - its questions stay published on the network.

Adding and Ordering Questions

The Questions tab has two lists:

  • Add questions - the open questions published to this network that the challenge does not yet include. A question is open when it is active or starting soon. Filter the list by name, and use the plus button to add a question.
  • In this challenge - the challenge's open questions, in order. A newly added question goes to the end. Drag questions to reorder them, and use the trash button to remove one.

A question must be published to the network before it appears in the Add questions list. Voided and closed questions are never offered.

When a question in the challenge closes or is voided, it moves to a Closed questions list below the open ones. It stays in the challenge and keeps its place in the order. Closed questions cannot be reordered, but you can remove them from the challenge.

The Challenge Page

A challenge page lists its questions with the same filter sidebar as the main questions list: search, sort, status, whether the forecaster has forecast the question, and topic. The status filter starts on active questions.

The page sorts by Default unless the forecaster picks another sort. Default is the order set on the Questions tab. The Default sort appears only on challenge pages.

The question count on each challenge card counts the active questions the forecaster can see. Voided questions are not included in the count.

Forecasters only ever see the questions on a challenge that they are individually eligible for, so a challenge page never becomes a way around question visibility.