# Encouraging expertise **URL:** \ **Category:** Community Building\ **Created:** [February 16, 2021, 11:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-expertise/179961 "2021-02-16T23:29:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 12
**Author:** ![manuel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/manuel/32/468169_2.png) [@manuel](https://meta.discourse.org/u/manuel)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2021, 9:20am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-expertise/179961/12 "2021-02-17T09:20:45Z")
On our forum several women were complaining that there is no good place to discuss women’s experiences without some dude chiming in with his super important opinion. The issues brought forward sounded very similar to what you wrote: it’s mostly well-meaning, but still drags a topic aside and, above all, discourages other women to join the discussion. As moderators we opened a topic to discuss how we could support these conversations better. I think all participants agreed that we wouldn’t want to segment our community to achieve this. We settled with a plain staff notice, a bit similar to the messaging that @sam recommended. Users could ask staff to add that notice to their topic: ![staff-notice](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/3/4/340299883bdbc2372d3413ef32eefd3f52c5b19e.png) The notice has been picked up once and we haven’t seen the issue brought forward since. It’s a fairly small community though and this is probably more attributed to having discussed the issue and our intentions openly, rather than the notice solution itself. On another note, I’d also feel “expert opinion” coming across a bit arrogant if you generally want to be inviting to everyone. I’d probably favor: “This topic is aiming at an academic discussion”. --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-expertise/179961)._