Inspired by this comment. Why be wed to the question-answer format if its just kabuki? Why not pre-written topics alongside questions, with corresponding flair? I bet it would generate a lot more view on a subject if users saw an already written subject ready for consumption, rather than some mini-thesis going unread in a question with 5 votes.
It isn't really something that we want to allow to start dominating the subreddit. We do occasionally help out users with niche fields by planting a question, but the hope is that the having flairs around with the esoteric focus will help lead to more questions about it - something we definitely have seen hold true in the past. So the occasional helpful nudge is one thing, but simply allowing people to post their long-form OC would be a fundamental shift in how the sub operates, and at the very least, a change which we fear might overshadow the questions being asked, which would be a decided negative, since the core point of the subreddit is to help people get answers to their questions!
If people more regularly want to share their longform content, check out Tuesday Trivia! It provides the perfect platform to just ... write....
ETA; Also, just are regards your opening, the format is hardly "kabuki". We end up doing this... a few times a month at most? 99+ percent of questions are organic inquiries!
Hi. I just happened to be skimming through old META posts, and ran into this. Don't know if you heard about this , but a new biweekly feature was started shortly after your post. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7wsysx/announcement_shaking_up_the_daily_features/
Here they are: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=saturday+spotlight&sort=new&restrict_sr=on
We have plenty of opportunities for expounding, not just through the rare question asked with the intention of drawing out a flair or potential flair. There the weekly features and AMAs, for instance. But a core element of AskHistorians is to educate. We are here to answer questions from curious people, not simply to give grad students a forum to preen. The various questions might give said grad students a chance to strut their stuff, but it is always in service of the greater goal of education. In addition the hive-mind may sometimes be repetitive in what it wants to know, but it does often come up with novel questions that can push even the most jaded ABD history grad student to explore a new avenue.
There's also a practical concern. What you're proposing would a huge and fundamental shift in the format, and workload, of this sub. It's tedious but manageable to screen inappropriate questions. It would be a whole other thing to have to basically provide peer review for submissions from random reddit users.