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Here's an idea I've been turning over for the past week or so.
One of ways in which I've found Hexus to be repeatedly surprising/impressive is the variety and depth of knowledge found here. Some random question or comment pops up and in floods the commentary/insight/advice and experience. Perhaps this shouldn't be so surprising since if this is the 'information age', those who build, manage, maintain and improve the digital world might naturally be considered the digital archivists of sorts, digital curators or librarians perhaps? Either way, I've never found another forum like it.
Anyway, what with summer coming up I've been thinking about a sort of event we could hold, if it's of interest. Hexus Mastermind. Less a competition and more a chance to challenge oneself and maybe dig a bit deeper into the hidden depths of knowledge shared among the Hexites.
Here's the idea:
Any and all interested members sign-up to a thread with both a primary and secondary chosen subject. It might be best to set a deadline for signing up.
Once the names and subjects are in, Hexus members can submit questions to me (or, if this proves popular, some help might be needed/appreciated) for vetting/organising the questions for each participant. I figure maybe a total of 20 questions per entrant with specifically 15 on the primary subject and 5 on the secondary subject. The questions should be directly related to the chosen subject, but since this is less about a straight-up competition, it might be interesting to permit a limited number of questions with a more subjective or personal slant - that is, something like the member's opinion on an aspect of the chosen subject. These sorts of questions could be restricted to 3 for the primary subject and 1 for the secondary.
Once all the questions are in and organised for a given user, I can only think of two ways of issuing them. 1 - Arrange a specific time for them to be online and then post the questions in a specific thread so they can be answered (either all at once or one by one - which would take more work). 2 - Set up some sort of live chat to do it real time (although I suspect that this might breach the personal online privacy preferences of some members).
Obviously, it would be easy to 'cheat' by using outside resources to answer the questions. The challenge would have to run on the 'honour system' - that the member will answer all questions using ONLY the knowledge they already have in their heads with no reference to outside sources of any kinds - the point of this being not so much to get all the questions right but to challenge oneself, and to explore the subject areas and the participants' approach to the subjects.
We could set a time-frame for answering them all - maybe a day? After that, people could chirp in on the threads or whatever. See how people do, maybe generate some talking points?
That's about it, I just thought it might be an interesting little activity we could do.
Interesting?
UPDATE - Best bet for the sign-up and question thread will be to make a new thread, which I will do. Just post your two choices. I'll write a short intro which a mod, if possible, can edit into each sign-up post. Each post in that thread will then represent a contestant. Members can review that thread and start submitting questions BY PM, to named person in the intro. This will be me at first, unless it gets to be too many - if so, help would be appreciated to volunteer to receive and vet questions.
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Originally Posted by Ferral
