Cohorts

A cohort is a named group of members within one forecaster network. Network admins can use cohorts to limit question visibility, direct forecast requests, and compare results. A member can belong to more than one cohort.

Create a Cohort

As a network admin, open Staff > Cohorts and choose Add cohort. Enter a name and an optional admin note. The note is visible only to network admins. You can change these details later on the Details tab.

Add Members and Rules

On the Members tab, search for an active network member or paste email addresses separated by commas or new lines. Addresses must belong to active members of this network; adding them to a cohort does not invite them to join the network.

On the Overview tab, add rules for automatic membership. Matching any one rule is enough to join the cohort. The available rule types are:

• Profile answer: match a selected option or an exact answer value. The profile question must have Allow cohort rules enabled under Settings > Profile questions. For country fields, enter the stored country code, such as US.
• Email domain: match the domain after the @ in a member's email address, such as example.com.
• Topic expertise: match members who rate themselves at or above the selected level for a topic: Interested, Working knowledge, or Expert.

Rule membership updates in the background as rules or member details change. Manual additions remain even when no rule matches. Removing a manual addition leaves the member in the cohort if a rule still matches them. A member who qualifies both ways is counted once in the total membership.

Choose Who Sees a Question and Who Is Asked

When a network has active cohorts, its publication form offers two separate controls:

• Who can see this question: choose All network members or Only selected cohorts. With selected cohorts, membership in any one audience cohort grants access.
• Who receives forecast request notifications: choose Everyone who can see it or Only members of selected cohorts. This controls request notifications and the request queue. Other members who can see the question can still forecast voluntarily.

When visibility is limited to cohorts, every cohort selected for requests must also be selected as an audience cohort. Selecting a cohort for requests does not grant access on its own.

For example, a question can be visible to all network members while only an Energy specialists cohort receives forecast requests. To restrict the question to those specialists as well, select that cohort for the audience and request responses from everyone who can see it.

Members who join a requested cohort receive requests for its published questions while those questions remain open. When members leave all requested cohorts, outstanding cohort requests they have not answered are withdrawn. Members who already forecast a question through the network keep access to view and update it after leaving its audience, while their network membership remains active.

Publishing Questions to a Network

View Participation and Compare Forecasts

The cohort's Overview shows its active member count, members who forecast in the last 30 days, forecasts submitted in that period, and participation as a percentage of current active members.

The accuracy comparison shows the cohort's mean Brier score beside the combined forecast of all human forecasters. Both use only scored network questions for which both forecasts have a score. Lower Brier scores indicate greater accuracy.

Network admins can see a Cohort forecasts table on the Cohorts tab of question pages, filter the leaderboard by cohort, and filter network statistics by cohort. The question table shows current membership counts and the latest available cohort probabilities; the membership count is not the number of people who forecast that question. Cohort comparisons and filters are not shown to ordinary contributors.

Cohort forecasts combine forecasts from current active cohort members and update as members submit forecasts. Their history starts going forward and cannot be backfilled. Creating a cohort or changing its membership does not reconstruct earlier cohort forecasts.

Reports and Exports

Archive and Restore a Cohort

Choose Archive on the cohort page to stop using it for active audiences and requests. Its membership records and forecast history are retained, and it remains available in report filters. Open the archived list and choose Unarchive to restore it; rules are checked again before requests resume.

A cohort cannot be archived while it is the last active audience or request cohort for a published item. The message names the affected items. Change their audience or request settings before archiving.