Interviews Section: Ground Rules and How-To

[Trunk]

As this is a new section, and these are new rules, they are subject to change as ideas for this section are fine-tuned.

The basic idea for the Interviews section, in BROAD OUTLINE, is:
1. Choose who you're going to interview, contact them, get their permission.
2. In the "Gathering Questions" section, post to gather questions from TheTaoBums community for questions to ask them, organize the questions, allow the interviewee to answer/not answer the questions of their choosing, include a catch-all "anything else you'd like to add?" Also, Feel free to use ?s from any prior interview. ... and submit the questions to the interviewee.
3. Receive the completed interview, print it out in pdf format and/or post it as a new thread in the "Completed Interviews" section. Include the interviewee's name in the subject-line (title) of the Completed Interview thread.

 

If you include a pdf file, send a copy to the current admin. It'll be stored permanently on TTBs' server and with a link to it in your post it won't count towards your upload limit.

 

The Interviews section is visible to the whole www (not only TTBs members) and settings are such that the public can also download any interview pdfs.

 

Members are encouraged to creatively innovate, if they'd like to. The "broad outline" is mostly a suggestion and other details / procedures (like, "how to approach the interviewee) can be navigated by the interviewers (and supporting membership community). The TTBs structures, in general and in this case specifically also, simply, "provide the space". It is up to membership to search and ponder their truths for themselves, create, communicate, "generate content". I'm sure we'll see variety beyond any one person could've imagined.

 

GATHERING QUESTIONS SECTION
This section can be used not only for "gathering questions", but is also open to general discussion directly related to Interviews. Ideas about how to proceed, etc, within the broad framework described above.

COMPLETED INTERVIEWS SECTION
This will exclusively hold Completed Interviews.

LIMITATIONS:
1. The interviewer has to be a TTBs member and you can't interview yourself.

2. There needs to be some sort of limit of "how many interviews per interviewee?". (No limit to the number of threads created by an interviewer.) I'm negotiable on how this is done. My thought right now is that it's not infinite, . Each interview is meant to be substantial. If an interviewee really needs lots and lots of threads, there are other places (both on TTBs and off-site) to have many threads. My current limit idea is by time, inspired by the seasons, "maximum of 1 interview / 3 months / interviewee" (at least 3 months apart for multiple interviews / interviewee). So we'll start there (and if you have other ideas we can community-dialog).

 

3. Completed Interview threads are not a place for debate. They are *only* to get the interviewee's own view, graciously. Contradicting ideas are not allowed in this section. Consider that in the Interviews section, we are a host for a guest and our whole purpose is just kindly invite them to express their view. Moderating team standards for this section follow along that basic line; consider that an off-color post might get moderated in this section that would be a non-issue in other sections of TTBs. If you'd like to discuss / dialog / debate further re: the views presented, then create another thread in another section. However, you can not link from the Completed Interview thread to a discussion / debate thread.

4. The interviewee can either be a TTBs member, or not - but no follow-up dialog with the interviewee is allowed within the Completed Interviews thread, no follow-up Q&A within that thread (though you could gather questions for dialog elsewhere on the site, or for a future separate interview). The Interviews section is not meant to contain on-going dialogs with the interviewee, just a single interview per Completed Interview thread.

- Trunk

 

p.s.

Thank you! to Apech for bringing "the Interviews idea" back to the fore. That prompted the creation of this Interviews section at this time. The basic premise is excellent and deserves special structural support.