I'm only posting this as a discussion point. Since I think it's healthy for a community to discuss things like this. Even if the idea in particular is perhaps a bad one.

This is an idea for fastest gun in the west.

What if there was a mechanism of some sorts that would allow a person with an X amount of rep to claim first answer to a question?

He would then have an arbitrary length of time to answer the question. If he does so within that time limit. His answer would be posted as the first answer.

If he does not, he would suffer a reputation penalty.

He could at any point within the limit cancel the claim and then anyone else could grab the claim.

This mechanism would only be active if there is no answer to the question. And only one claim can be done per question. And a user can only have one active claim in the system.

I would love to hear from you guys if you think in a system like SO if this could work. If so, what values would you place on the variables above. If not, why?