Hey, that's a pretty cool idea!

The linear nature of threads is both a blessing and a curse, and as we all know, trying to catch up on a huge megathread can take more time than we can spare. Multiply that out by a bunch of megathreads and, well, we know how that goes.
Having a place for the thread-starter to post updates and/or summaries would be a nice touch, since the edit window (which is there for good reasons, trust me on that) limits updates of the OP itself to staff edits, and we can only be so many places at once. A tool offering a simple way for members to post updates that wouldn't get lost in the shuffle could be a pretty neat option indeed.
Add that to a nice suite of thread search tools (long on the wish list) and that could make big threads a lot easier to handle.
There are many, many issues that future software upgrades will need to address and it's hard to know in advance how things will shake out (Bill may implement a different set of features that may do the same thing through other means, for example), but suggestions like these can help dial in potential improvements in usability, and that's always a good thing.



jk