Looks like vote splitting will be a problem here. The middle east conflict is probably a bigger topic than the US elections, but it's split into at least 3 answers with no obvious one being the "main" one.

@Fion after all, there will be a poll

but i see your point... should this consolidate somehow?

@itsTomekK I guess you could either consolidate things that you judge to be basically the same topic or you could use a voting system that is less prone to vote splitting. (Downside of that is you'd need to do it off platform)

I think topics that fall within other listed topics should be n/a to avoid FPTP vote splitting e.g. Israel-Palestine and Israel-Iran within Middle East conflict, Trump in jail within Trump etc

@TheAllMemeingEye I understand what you mean. Presidential election vs. Presidential hush money vs. Presidential post-election tantrums would be similar. However, the media also contributes; topics are more or less synonymous with journalistic stories, right? In the press, Israel-Iran is different from Israel-Hamas and Israel-Hezbollah. It's rarely covered holistically. Either way, last year's market showed that this is somewhat of a faux-market open to manipulation, as people vote for the mana payout, not for what they think is the "biggest." Concluding: maybe it's better to treat this market as a mana game Manifold users play rather than a prediction market designed to predict the year 2024.

Will you close randomly to avoid market manipulation?

@SavioMak what do you mean?

@itsTomekK the top 15 answers will be taken for the poll. so someone could buy "us elections" down to 0% at the last second, it wouldn't be in the poll, and despite being the most important thing it would resolve NO

@Bayesian true, good point. What else could avoid it?

@itsTomekK if you end the market at some random time in the week or day preceding the close date that should account for it. anyone trying schemes like that will give lots of free mana to anyone that corrects it

@SavioMak Thanks for raising this point

As a rule of thumb, governments collapse way more often than most Americans expect.

"Biggest" in what sense? Is this another "Musk Zuckerberg fight biggest flop is the real flop here"-market?

"Middle East regional conflict" and "Israel – Palestine" are both listed as options. Wouldn't the second one be included in the first one?

What defines "biggest"? Most news coverage? Then the question becomes which outlets? The election could well be the most written about topic, but will it the most read given the elections in India? WW3 would be the most significant happening but wouldn't have too much TV or newspaper coverage given there wouldn't be much TV and the paper would be needed for warmth and toilet paper...

@AnthonyPettit Basically you need to predict what people will vote on when asked "What was the biggest topic"

@itsTomekK Ah so not actually the biggest story but what people will pick as biggest story.

@AnthonyPettit that's what it will resolve to, hopefully people will poll on the biggest!

@itsTomekK i was thinknig how to define biggest - wikipedia pageviews? google trends?

@itsTomekK objectively it would be impossible to get a truly "correct" answer. Ignoring ww3 cause many of us will be focused on hunting and gathering etc. and the other ones that probably won't happen. Elections will no doubt take center stage but not exclusively the US pres election. EU parliament, UK general election, Indian election will all be topics receiving far more coverage in their local news (well maybe not the EU parliament). Wikipedia page views or Google trends wouldn't give a good level of comparison given the geographic differences.

@AnthonyPettit true, that's why i find it interesting to resolve to a poll

I'm also curious how to frame 'biggest yet unexpected event'?

@itsTomekK The market is framing that to some extent. “Collapse of Russia” and “Assassination of Donald Trump” for instance are not expected, but if one of those does happen, it will be really big.

@ClubmasterTransparent Yes, that's why i started this, thinkin of surprises. However, AI or Presidential elections in the USA rather wouldn't surprise anyone being the big topic....

I was thinking about doing derivation on some other market... ie. which events from market 'what happens in 2024' will trade on average below 10% for majority of time, etc....

@AnthonyPettit I think "biggest" is inherently subjective, so a poll would be fair if it was done with an unbiased, non-incentivized selection.