do the gurus actually look at this forum?

I doubt one of the guru's main functions is to comb through the forums. I'm sure it's being watched though for trends, engagement, ideas, feedback ect. in some manner. We aren't the only forum here though there are forums in other languages and other ways to have community involvement like Twitter.
Probably when they do answer here it's downtime or even their own personal time. Of course we had the stuff pack project too I'm sure some time was allotted for that. Although knowning how businesses sometimes run probably not enough lol.
I'm pretty sure they need some just personal living away from the sims time too.