The weekly Ask the Staff event is held in the Gaia Community Discussion (GCD) forum, in a Sticky named "Ask the Staff - [today's date]". It occurs on Tuesdays between 4 PM and 5 PM in the USA's Pacific Time Zone; this translates into Greenwich Mean Time as Midnight to 1 AM Wednesday, or 11 PM to Midnight during Daylight Savings Time in the USA (different countries start and end DST on different days! Check here if you aren't sure.)
Since not everyone can make it at this time, each week the staff set up a Sticky in the GCD where you can post questions that might get answered in the opening post of next week's AtS. This Sticky is titled "ATS [future date] - Pre Event Questions", and is created at the same time as the previous week's AtS thread so it's open for posting nearly 24/7. Very few questions from this Sticky actually get answered in that opening post, but it's worth a shot.
To help them answer questions quickly, Gaia Staff have asked that posts in AtS (and the pre-event Sticky) follow a certain format. You should only ask one question per post; if you have multiple questions, make multiple posts. Also, the first thing in your post - on its own line - should be one of the following question categories:
Art
Items
Features
Games
Shops
Events
Manga
This is just to help the people who work in Gaia's different departments find questions they're likely to know the answers to. Don't worry if you aren't sure which category your question goes in; Gaia Staff have never once complained about a mislabeling. (There used to be a Misc category, but they've removed it, which is a shame because there are some pretty miscellaneous things we ask questions about.)
Also, try to follow these rules and guidelines.
Updates to the rules:
made January 19th, 2015
made January 26th, 2015
made May 11th, 2015
[NPC] Gaia Staff
Ask the Staff Rules & Guidelines
Please keep your posts constructive.
Posts that are overly abusive towards management, staff or other members of the community will be deleted without warning. Gaian's who are overly negative in Ask the Staff may be permanently removed from participation in this and future events.
One question per post.
Please only ask one question in your post. Asking more than one question in your post may result in your post getting skipped for not following this.
Repeat posts will be deleted.
Please only post your question once. Repeated posting of the same question multiple times in the thread may result in the additional posts being deleted or impair your ability to post in the thread. This is to help keep the noise in the thread down and allow questions by others to be seen.
Do not post support issues.
Do not post issues regarding account bans, billing issues, warnings, and other support issues. Instead, please file a ticket about them at our Help Center. Questions about support issues may result in your post getting skipped.
Not all questions will be answered.
This may occur because at present- they do not have an answer, it was already answered, because it was missed, or because the proper format was not followed in posting the question.
There are a few reasons why a question might not be answered. Here are some of the most common reasons why that happens:
There are questions that are asked that have been asked and answered previously and the answer given there hasn't changed, therefore we don't answer that.
There are questions that we simply do not have an answer to at the moment.
There are questions asked in a format other than the one that we recommend you post in.
The thread may get locked periodically.
Should the thread posts grow faster than we can handle, we may temporarily lock the thread while we catch up. We will post if the lock is because of us catching up, or due to the event being over.
Item suggestions and requests.
Questions specifically asking for item requests will be tipped to let you know they've been seen! will not be answered in ATS. They may not be responded to individually in the interest of getting to other questions. You may also post your item request and suggestions in the Item Request Thread in Site Feedback!
