Hi Stephanie! Like Nate, I thought about how I’d look at the Doc Categories plugin for much of the sort of standard, validated information you might have.
Using pinned topics might work out just fine for you – but just a few thoughts to add to the mix…
Docs
If I suddenly had a diabetic cat diagnosis, I’d probably find a curated Documentation (or “References” or “FAQ”) section useful. It could answer lots of questions I didn’t even know I should have, or bring up new ones.
You could choose to allow questions & replies directly on Docs topics, like any other – or limit posting so these topics are just solid references, to be linked to from elsewhere.
The Documentation category here on Meta allows replies (example) where details can be clarified, while the topics themselves serve as answers to many questions posted under Support.
If instead of having separate docs, we just put the content in pinned topics, it would be easier for members to link to them, because when you click “add link” in discourse, you can start typing some keywords and topics show up.
…also note that Docs topics, like others, are available with the “add link” function. As long as they’re titled properly, they can be easy for helpers to find.
One challenge for support forums is keeping the current, best reference information consolidated and easy to find, rather than scattered in topics & answers across the forum. It seems helpful to have a master set of Docs that are kept current by the moderator/helper team, while a smaller number of other categories (as Nat suggested) field more individual topics and questions.
Tags
I’m wondering if I should take advantage of tags for certain things (I’m not 100% clear if anybody can create tags – are they “real” tags – or if they are predefined - aka “categories”).
I think you’d find tags useful in keeping track of things while minimizing your number of categories. For example a topic under “Care” might be tagged both #insulin and #selvengo.
With the setting Create tag allowed groups you could indeed choose to let anyone create new tags, but I’d suggest limiting that to moderators and advanced users. Otherwise you can end up doing a lot of tag cleanup (people will spell it slevengo or selvego…)
You have an interesting challenge, and I look forward to seeing how you proceed. 