There are
IRC bots, trivial to run and install, specifically created for this purpose, that are free.
After the first hangout, I saw at least four different people suggest using a bot for the purposes of question collection and organization.
It's as easy as:
FL: Please submit all questions to sotabot with the format of:
/msg sotabot Q: Will this game have full loot? (for example)
Then sotabot timestamps all the /msg's and FL can query it to send her/all the devs the messages with Q in it since a given date/time (start of the hangout, or in the past 24 hours, whatever).
Once a message is answered, you can tell sotabot to remove that query from the database, or mark it as answered and move it to the bottom of the list, or append the response to it and store it for historical purposes, output it to HTML, to generate a living FAQ or Hangout History page that's searchable.
Similarly, on the hangout announcement web page, you just have a form submission with input validation, and it does exactly the same thing, and in fact, could simply be an interface that takes the web submissions and submits them to sotabot in exactly the same format as IRC.
But that would require 1 hour worth of scripting time from an experienced developer, which is apparently a bar too high for the past three years.
And the best part? It's all been done before.
In my opinion, give the reality of the above, and that they can't possibly be ignorant of these solutions after the past three years,
the reason it's not being done is because they don't want to do it.
Specifically, they don't want an accurate searchable historical record. They don't want to be required to answer the hard questions. They pick and choose the pointless easy questions to satisfy the illusion of transparency.
I mean, the spent more time giving away prizes at the last hangout than answering questions. It was ludicrous.
Do a search on the official forums for transcription or transcriptions. It's... well, it's frightening how much things have changed, with no accountability and no record. The whole "don't lawyer me, bro?", that means: Don't hold us accountable for our decisions. It's the worst form of unprofessional amateur behavior I've seen in a development company in recent memory, and the zealots lap it up like it's ambrosia. The videos? Who's going to watch three years of videos? That's why it's in video format instead of written Q&A. No-one will ever go back and transcribe or even watch it all. It's a very clever way of hiding in plain sight.
Lastly, a few years back, (started in January 2014, ran to Sep 2014) there was an effort by Mitch[MGT] / mitchellhamilton to gather community questions, which were voted on by likes, and then those 3, 5 or 7 questions ( I can't remember off the top of my head ) were submitted to the dev team, and the answers recorded. The threads were named: " Week of $month $day Dev Q&A Thread " if you want to search for them. The responses were in the thread: Founders SotA Developer Q&A
Sounds good, right? Except, here's the nasty lawyer fine print: They wouldn't answer the submitted questions. On several occasions, a question was voted to the top over several weeks, and then it wasn't responded to. When pressed, their response was: We don't have to answer all questions. We reserve the right to omit any question for any reason. We would not agree to the Q&A, at all, without the ability to opt-out of questions for any/no reason. Whisky Tango Foxtrot?
That's some FINE transparency you've got going on there, Portalarium. Clear as Onyx, yep.