Brandon's spoiler stream questions.

[Frustration he/him]

So on the 17th Shard interview Brandon did recently he asked the community for feedback on where he could source spoiler stream questions from, so I would like to propose an answer.

 

Right here.

 

I mean, we're independently run, the staff is in direct contact with Brandon, and the Cosmere Q&A forum has an upvote/downvote feature to rank questions by already, it wouldn't require any real change to make this work. Additionally we can keep a question proposal board open at all times, allowing people to vote on which ones they want to see, so the questions asked during streams are the ones the community wants the answers to the most. Additionally we are Sanderson's official fansite already, it would be thematically appropriate for us to host the questions.

 

With that in mind I feel confident saying that the 17th shard is the best place for Brandon to pull future spoiler stream questions from.

[Scars of Hathsin he/him]

39 minutes ago, Frustration said:

So on the 17th Shard interview Brandon did recently he asked the community for feedback on where he could source spoiler stream questions from, so I would like to propose an answer.

 

Right here.

 

I mean, we're independently run, the staff is in direct contact with Brandon, and the Cosmere Q&A forum has an upvote/downvote feature to rank questions by already, it wouldn't require any real change to make this work. Additionally we can keep a question proposal board open at all times, allowing people to vote on which ones they want to see, so the questions asked during streams are the ones the community wants the answers to the most. Additionally we are Sanderson's official fansite already, it would be thematically appropriate for us to host the questions.

 

With that in mind I feel confident saying that the 17th shard is the best place for Brandon to pull future spoiler stream questions from.

I think I agree with you on this one, there is a lot to choose from.

[Firesong she/her]

That does actually make a lot of sense, yeah. It would be an effective platform for that, I guess. 

[NameIess]

I mean, yeah, that would be great. Brandon and his team might not want to get questions from here, but I'd love it if they decided to.

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

I really like that.

It would be great and would help point fans who watch the streams to the Shard so they can chat about the books if they want to. 

It would be really fun to do. Or, maybe, the staff here could select a list of the questions from the said forum and send it to Brandon's team, so that Brandon's team doesn't have to personally sort through all the different questions and conversations. Then again, that's still some more work to do... idk.

[Chaos he/him]

I feel like the Cosmere Q&A board is not quite as fit for purpose as you might expect. It would pretty dramatically change the tenor of that board, since many questions that are posted there can just be answered by community members (as that is its present purpose).

I also think there was value in the way Reddit did it where there can be questions tailored to, say, a specific book, which a forum would not easily be able to do. Reddit is a lot more elegant at least in that respect.

But even beside that fact, let's imagine there was a second board, dedicated for this purpose. I feel like it would exacerbate the problem Reddit had, where posts that existed longer inherently got more upvotes, and if you were "late" so to speak, it was hopeless. 

I feel like perhaps this isn't quite perfect, but maybe a system could be created to do that. The forums are pretty... constraining.

Also, I wouldn't put much stock into the "official" part. That doesn't really mean much in practice. And don't overestimate how much contact we have with Brandon, I'd say.

[Chiparoo she/her]

So I think the forums absolutely has fantastic tools for this, and the community here has the will and passion for it - however, I would push back on this idea due to just one aspect.

The 17th Shard is just a fraction of the Cosmere fan base. I know this feels like all of us sometimes, but really, most people find spaces to talk about the things they love on the platforms where they already spend their time.  And those fans who aren't so in-the-know, and don't have an account on a dedicated fan forum, still deserve to have their questions answered. With those things in mind, it's best for Dragonsteel to meet their audience where they already *are,* instead of asking the audience to come to them (or to us, in this context.)

I think it falls to something that Sanderson himself seems to value: Sanderson strives to reach a wider audience, and be as accessible and inclusive as he can. I think just having questions here doesn't meet with those values as much as we'd like it to be.

That being said, a happy medium might work, as I think someone else already suggested - having questions posted on other sites and compiled here, or having posts on larger platforms point in this direction - but I think having them exclusively here wouldn't be as accessible to the greater fan base as we would hope.

[Chaos he/him]

25 minutes ago, Chiparoo said:

The 17th Shard is just a fraction of the Cosmere fan base.

This is indeed extremely important to remember as well. Though in some respects, I don't know how accessible it is to say "Hey go to this completely new place" is, but I do agree it's important for Sharders to realize that there are a ton more people all over the place.

[alder24]

That's a good idea However. I disagree with "we can keep a question proposal board open at all times" because as Chaos said older posts would get updated more or even people would vote for questions already answered. But a thread created, when the announcement of a new spoiler stream is released, for people to post their questions and vote, would be certainly a great idea. Brandon's team can easily pick up a few questions from there. To add more, the rule should be that a single person can post only one question. so no single person can throw dozens of questions (which we all have) at Brandon and clog the thread.

[Frustration he/him]

26 minutes ago, alder24 said:

That's a good idea However. I disagree with "we can keep a question proposal board open at all times" because as Chaos said older posts would get updated more or even people would vote for questions already answered. But a thread created, when the announcement of a new spoiler stream is released, for people to post their questions and vote, would be certainly a great idea. Brandon's team can easily pick up a few questions from there. To add more, the rule should be that a single person can post only one question. so no single person can throw dozens of questions (which we all have) at Brandon and clog the thread.

Personally I view older questions getting more attention being a feature, now true that those threads would require more attention to remove already answered questions, I don't see that as too much of a downside.

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

3 hours ago, Frustration said:

Personally I view older questions getting more attention being a feature, now true that those threads would require more attention to remove already answered questions, I don't see that as too much of a downside.

True, but simply making a thread for the streams would be a better solution, locking it afterward. People can ask the question on the other forums, get an answer if one is there, and, if not, can save it for the next spoiler stream.

[Frustration he/him]

50 minutes ago, Thaidakar the Ghostblood said:

True, but simply making a thread for the streams would be a better solution, locking it afterward. People can ask the question on the other forums, get an answer if one is there, and, if not, can save it for the next spoiler stream.

If there is an answer it shouldn't be in the stream questions to begin with. Which is the one downside to this proposal, being that it would require higher levels of moderation to remove such questions.

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

5 minutes ago, Frustration said:

If there is an answer it shouldn't be in the stream questions to begin with. Which is the one downside to this proposal, being that it would require higher levels of moderation to remove such questions.

True, I suppose. But even already asked questions can glean more information.

[Lego Mistborn he/him]

I personally think Q&A should be pulled from multiple sources, not just here(though I want to pull from here because this is the only forum I want to participate on). I think reddit, facebook groups, etc. should also have representation (perhaps proportionally) as well.

[Frustration he/him]

2 hours ago, Lego Mistborn said:

I personally think Q&A should be pulled from multiple sources, not just here(though I want to pull from here because this is the only forum I want to participate on). I think reddit, facebook groups, etc. should also have representation (perhaps proportionally) as well.

Brandon specifically wanted to avoid using platforms he couldn't control after the Reddit drama.

[Firesong she/her]

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

Brandon specifically wanted to avoid using platforms he couldn't control after the Reddit drama.

Yeah, this is the reason he and his team are having so much trouble. They are not happy about Reddit's decisions with APIs, and want to have a platform that they have more control over. But at the same time want one that is open enough to the public to easily put up questions. It is a rather complicated situation and they aren't sure what to do.