Memory Alpha talk:Ask J.J. Abrams/Final

I'm sure there's a good reason that only 15 questions have been sent, instead of the 20 that have been promised throughout this whole contest thingamajig? And I'm also sure there's an equally good reason for specifically cutting two of three questions that are in any way "MA-specific", leaving only those that anyone could have asked? I'd like to hear those reasons... -- Cid Highwind 22:54, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * "I just received word from the folks at Paramount. They've sent the questions to JJ, but omitted 5 of those chosen. I wasn't very happy about this at all, but his publicist wouldn't pass them along to him without doing so. I've attached the questions that did make their way to JJ, but would still like to include all 20 question submitters in the drawing for the Star Trek Prize."
 * Here's the reason for the 15. &mdash; Morder 23:15, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The quote is from Karim, btw. The "prize" awarding was also 90% renigged on too, in case anyone missed it. --Alan 23:48, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, it looks like this part of Section 10 allows them to change the rules: WIKIA RESERVES THE RIGHT, IN ITS SOLE DISCRETION AND WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE, TO SUSPEND OR CANCEL THE PROMOTION OR ALTER THE RULES IF AT ANY TIME A COMPUTER VIRUS, TECHNICAL PROBLEM, OR OTHER UNFORESEEABLE OCCURRENCE, EVENT OR CONDITION ALTERS OR CORRUPTS THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE PROMOTION. --31dot 00:09, 24 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not too sure this was wikia's fault. Take a look at the questions that were cut, two of them contain other franchises (Star Wars, Batman, Bond). One deals with the Writer's Strike, something that Paramount might us not want to discuss. Finally, the ones about a second interview and providing us with names for the character, I guess that couldn't happen. Why provide us with additional information, when you can publish all in a Making-Of Book or on the official site in further dossiers? I am not so sure it's wikias fault, rather us not anticipating, that Paramount might have to single out some questions because of legal/copyright mumbo-jumbo. Unfortunately: Yes, those were the questions that were most interesting for us here at MA... --Jörg 04:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I wasn't blaming wikia per se- just stating that they have the right to do what they did. Clearly some things were changed on them, too.--31dot 18:56, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you have any sense of when we'll see Abrams' answers to the 15 questions? —Josiah Rowe 17:41, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * They will be announced very close to the release of the movie, just a few days before May 7th. --Jörg 08:45, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Jörg. —Josiah Rowe 17:48, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * So, er... what happened with this? Was Abrams just too busy, or did it fall through for some other reason? —Josiah Rowe 06:11, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm still waiting for a reply from wikia, who in terms are still awaiting a reply from J.J. Abrams, I guess. --Jörg 06:12, 9 May 2009 (UTC)


 * So the 20 became 15, and of the 15 only 10 were answered. Ah, well. :/ —Josiah Rowe 03:49, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

So, to summarize: After this had been initiated and pushed by some external guy, some of our contributors had much work to wade through a bazillion of strange question to pick those with some level of sanity, then more work to pick 20 goods ones from these. Of these, the 5 most interesting ones were cut immediately, leaving 15 questions of which a further 5 were simply ignored. The remaining 10 were superficially answered, and the answers delivered late... Good job! That should teach us to not even react to that sort of nonsense the next time. -- Cid Highwind 10:02, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Yep, total waste of time, imho. Like... why bother? -- Renegade54 16:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * As to the quality of the answers, I'm wondering what the expectation was. Were we supposed to tell Abrams that each response had to be a minimum length and include a certain level of detail?  If we had, I'm sure the answer page would be blank right now. --31dot 18:44, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

To clarify, this isn't meant to be ungrateful to Abrams. He took the time to answer some fan questions, obviously first and foremost to advertise his film, but that's still great. He probably didn't know he was "supposed" to answer 20 questions, or what exactly this fan page would have preferred as answers.

However, we were promised that, and it got lost somewhere along the way from us to Wikia-PR-guy to Abrams-PR-guy to Abrams himself and back. It doesn't change anything to make a fuss about it now, but it should definitely be remembered the next time we're being approached with something like this. -- Cid Highwind 19:05, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your clarification. I want you to know that I did not intend my response to belittle or criticize you.  You are quite correct that mistakes were made. I think part of the problem was that the whole process seems to have gone through a lot of hands who each changed it along the way.--31dot 19:13, 13 May 2009 (UTC)