Welcome to Nonrival, the newsletter where readers make predictions about business, tech, and politics.

Season 2

Nonrival is back! After talking to many of you about your experience with the newsletter—and taking some vacation time—Nonrival is coming back new-and-improved for Season 2. Expect an email this Sunday with a new forecast, and in the meantime here’s a rundown of all the improvements I’ve been working on this summer.

What’s new:

• An even simpler way to make forecasts
• A new scoring and points system
• Shorter emails, with clearer subject lines
• A slightly adjusted email cadence (still Sunday, Wednesday)
• A new logo and design
• Bonus trivia questions!

Simpler forecasts: Starting on Sunday, just click a link in the email and your forecast is recorded. You'll have five choices:

• Very likely (~90% chance it happens)
• Likely (~70% chance)
• Uncertain (~50% chance)
• Unlikely (~30% chance)
• Very unlikely (~10% chance)

After you click, you have the option to provide a rationale if you want to—I recommend it!—but it’s not required. And to keep things as simple as possible, I’ve removed both the option to pick a different forecast value (to say 58% for example) and to guess what the crowd thinks.

A new scoring and points system:

• For every forecast you make, you’ll get up to 100 points depending on your accuracy. Someone who said 90% for an event that eventually happens gets more points than someone who said 50%. (Read more about the points system here.)​
• Each time you get a score, you’ll also see your Total Points for Season 2.
• You can never lose points, so it’s always a good idea to make a forecast.

Shorter emails, with clearer subject lines: I’m setting myself a word limit, so emails will be short enough that you can read them in two minutes. Subject lines will signal if it’s a “Forecast” where you are asked to make a prediction, “Results” showing what readers predicted, or “Scores” explaining how things turned out and providing scores for accuracy.

A slightly adjusted email cadence: You can still expect emails on Sundays and (most) Wednesdays. Sundays will alternate between new forecast questions and scores from forecasts that have been resolved. On new forecasts, you’ll have until Tuesday morning to make a prediction.

In weeks with new forecasts, the Wednesday email will still be “Results” showing what readers predict. On weeks where Sunday is a “Scores” email, Wednesday will be flexible: some weeks it might be a bonus post, some weeks it might be an additional “Scores” email if multiple questions have closed, and some Wednesdays I might skip.

A new logo and design: Bárbara Abbês, my former Quartz colleague and the head of Something Something studio designed the new logo and color scheme. I’m really excited about it.

Trivia! OK, so I simplified the forecasting flow a lot—but I did add one new thing in at the end. Each week there’s a trivia question that’s only available if you make a forecast. After you click to make a prediction, you’ll see the option to provide a rationale. But after that, you’ll see a trivia question related to the forecast. Take a guess and you’ll see how you did right away. It’s totally optional and not part of the scoring—enjoy!

The first scores for Season 2 will be resolution on the DeSantis and Bud Light questions from May. If you made forecasts on those questions, you'll start receiving points soon.

As always, send feedback to newsletter@nonrival.pub.