Yes, that's the reason to why we have the Friday Free-For-All thread which is open for any questions or discussions which fall out of our usual scope.

But it has such an amusing flair on the post!

We sometimes do "megathreads" around events which are a little more like that, like we did one for Nelson Mandela's death that went quite well. These are a little tricky to get going because they're not spontaneous - we make sure some flaired experts in the subject area will be around before we put one up, but it's not as formal as an AMA, so other people can answer.

I agree it would be fun, but what sort of rules would you suggest could keep it from turning into a /r/history - like candidate for inclusion in SRD?

From lurking here and on /r/askscience, I get the impression that the mods in /r/askscience sometimes have trouble staying ahead of the flood, even with 115 (!) or so moderators. (Okay, 3 million subs, but as I type this, fewer "users here now" than /r/askhistorians.)

Can you suggest how that type of thread could be controlled? I'm not familiar enough with Reddit to know if a model exists somewhere else.