This seems just like a reddit AMA aka Ask Me Anything. I don't think it would be a bad idea, though I think it should be voluntary. It would be interesting if a nominated user could set a day where they have a few hours to answer questions 'live' from any user, or maybe even better just let users post their questions in advance maybe over a week and that person could answer the ones they want at some point when they have time.
Some things to consider:
- Criteria to nominate, choose guests for AMAs
- Who will be in charge of AMA to manage AMAs' operations
- The forum is not a real time messeger so there will be unnecessary and repeated questions from AMA participants (because they can not follow up AMA process)
- Posts in AMAs should not be counted because it will give spammers chances to more easily get acceptance and ignorance for their spam- and shit-posts
Theymos isn't that active in posting especially of late and it's often difficult to get an answer from him on certain things either in public or private (though I haven't tried in a while) so maybe this sort of AMA would be a good idea for forum users to get answers to certain questions they have. I'm sure there are many things users would want to know like what's the eta on the new forum, or will new ranks ever be added etc and there were plenty of suggestions that both I and other users made in the
Community generated suggestions thread and it would be interesting to know if he's thought any more about these or even changed his mind, but maybe theymos doesn't want to answer these questions as to not put a deadline on himself etc. Still, it would be nice to get updates or clarifications on some things.
From what theymos admitted at the end of the Art Contest, I don't think he has intention to spend much time on the forum to answer questions from community during AMAs. Not only if he is the chair of the AMA when he has to spend a few minutes, one hour or two hours to do so but also if he has to think of management solutions for such AMAs.
Compromises or FUDs can be born from AMAs as well as invisible pressure on him or any global moderators, ie. who will be in charge of chairs of AMAs.
I was really thrilled to see so much good art, but remind me never to do this again... It took me probably 20+ hours to sort through everything.
theymos has dedicated his time for the forum over years but not in a fixed period daily or under any kind of invisible pressure.
Nobody has to chair it, or the op of the thread could. A thread is created and anyone can ask a question in there. People can read the thread to see if there's any dupes. Whoever is nominated can either choose to answer as many as they want or all if necessary and they can answer them when they're ready. As with AMAs not all questions get answered but just ones they feel penitent and they certainly wouldn't be an obligation to do so. I think this would be better than an reddit AMA actually as questions likely won't get lost amongst the melee and instead of answering them on the fly the person in question can take some time to think about their answers or what questions they even want to answer at all.