A place to go to make your bold predictions. Be it the outcome of the Superbowl® or an upcoming election or anything at all. It might be short-term or long-term as long as it’s verifiable.
It would be different from other forums in that there would be no discussion allowed in the forum, only the posts containing predictions. If the prediction sparks interest the discussion would take place in the forum that’s approriate; Superbowl discussed in The Game Room, election in Elections. Boasting about a correct prediction or ridicule of a blown call would likewise take place where appropriate.
The moderation would be easy, but it would require deletion of any posts but the allowed predictions.
I’m having a really hard time seeing how you’d manage to fill an entire forum with this… Presumably, each prediction would be a separate thread, but really, how much discussion is justified until it’s proven either true or false?
A thread of these, though, yeah, that might work, though it might have a hard time getting established.
It might be interesting to endow all members with 1000 points and permit them to make wagers - with odds. But that would require some coding.
Cecil and his editors could really use a MacArthur Fellowship.
I think a better forum would be “Bald Predictions”. Who will lose their hair? Will it be a shaving for aesthetic reasons? Male pattern baldness? The dreaded chemotherapy? Actually, a forum for each would be perfect!
The only truly valuable commodity on-line is your ability to post–I wouldn’t read your predictions, but if you backed them (or wagered them with someone) with the challegne of forgoing your posting priviliges for a specified period of time, that would make it interesting.
Because then it’s just Great Debates or whatever. You have 50 pages of Post2Much and his nemesis RepeatsHimself going “No it won’t”, “Yes it will.” I’m not opposed to allowing discussion, just make sure the prediction is in the thread title.
The reason for a forum instead of a thread; the predictions will be the thread titles and easier to find. In a thread the predictions would be lost among the others not to mention all the other comments.
I didn’t say it was a good idea. There’s nothing stopping me from going to MPSIMS and starting a thread with a prediction. But I was hoping to encourage it in other posters. I thought it sounded fun.
Oh, I hadn’t noticed that in the OP. That just makes it even sillier: What’s the point of making a bold prediction if you’re not allowed to gloat when you’re proven right? Or others aren’t allowed to gloat if you’re proven wrong?
Not a problem: If the prediction is interesting, then someone will remember and find it, and post a link, anyway. And if it’s not interesting, then who cares?
Well it might be neat to have a robot cull SDMB threads for the string, “I predict” and repost subsequent sentences as a searchable feed and clickable link.
We could do the same if posters would copy their material into a MPSIMS thread, but it wouldn’t have as much inadvertent/intentional hilarity/inanity.
