I think this brings up some interesting issues about the difference between a forum and an expert question and answer service. In my experience there are some specific issues when working with experts.
They may not have a lot of time to give outside of a particular time slot and, especially when people have a high profile, may want to contain the level of discussion around the initial public area their answers may appear. This may mean that they'd be able to spend some time preparing answers to questions in a section dedicated to this but be less willing to enter ongoing discussions.
So the model I've seen work - based on forums as opposed to live chat based q&a's (which has lots of other issues) - would be a combination of a section for questions backed up by more detailed discussion in the forums.
So you'd have an area where perhaps a week in advance people could share questions for an expert. Other people could see these but not respond directly, it would mainly provide opportunities to see what other people have already asked and give an expert the chance to prepare answers.
We'd then ask the expert to respond to the questions so people could read the responses and then create a discussion where people could discuss the answers and provide different viewpoints. It'd allow for much longer discussion and also allow us to have experts who may be concerned about getting involved in discussions. Though of course we'd love anyone with an interest in autism to be involved in the Community.
But that's just a starting suggestion based of what I understand about he functionality we have, more than happy to consider any other viewpoints and please help us by suggesting other topics or experts you'd be interested in. :)
I think this brings up some interesting issues about the difference between a forum and an expert question and answer service. In my experience there are some specific issues when working with experts.
They may not have a lot of time to give outside of a particular time slot and, especially when people have a high profile, may want to contain the level of discussion around the initial public area their answers may appear. This may mean that they'd be able to spend some time preparing answers to questions in a section dedicated to this but be less willing to enter ongoing discussions.
So the model I've seen work - based on forums as opposed to live chat based q&a's (which has lots of other issues) - would be a combination of a section for questions backed up by more detailed discussion in the forums.
So you'd have an area where perhaps a week in advance people could share questions for an expert. Other people could see these but not respond directly, it would mainly provide opportunities to see what other people have already asked and give an expert the chance to prepare answers.
We'd then ask the expert to respond to the questions so people could read the responses and then create a discussion where people could discuss the answers and provide different viewpoints. It'd allow for much longer discussion and also allow us to have experts who may be concerned about getting involved in discussions. Though of course we'd love anyone with an interest in autism to be involved in the Community.
But that's just a starting suggestion based of what I understand about he functionality we have, more than happy to consider any other viewpoints and please help us by suggesting other topics or experts you'd be interested in. :)
