Ask an Expert is a vital entry point for thousands of people to learn about OSU Extension. Kym Pokorny, Ask an Expert coordinator for Oregon, and Chrissy Lucas, an OSU Extension question wrangler, joined Vice Provost Scott Reed to reveal best practices for answering questions. More experts are needed. To join the ranks of Ask an Expert experts, please get in touch with Kym online, or at 541-737-3380.
Tell us the most unusual Ask an Expert question you’ve had to answer by posting a comment on the blog.
Most unusual question so far….
https://ask.extension.org/expert/questions/323825
You must have an Ask an Expert login to see Teresa’s question, linked above. Get a login now if you don’t have one. Then you can read the question Teresa refers to: “How to tell my former teacher that I have feelings for him?”
maybe confused you with Abby?…
I’m not an Expert but I help manage and route the questions that come in. That’s made me a prolific rejector of questions that are either spam, outside the realm of Extension’s expertise, or just downright ridiculous.
Of the latter category, my favorite rejected question was titled “Need Weed.”
A close second was this one:
“If Donald is rich and president is it too good for him to be true? And hes a big meanie too right?”
Nice to get a little behind-the-scenes peek at Ask an Expert. Thanks, Pete!
The most unusual question I have fielded on Ask an Expert was -“Is Led Zeppelin a heavy metal band ?”.
Another musical inquiry I answered was identifying a Bach composition based on a MP3 audio snippet the client uploaded.
I highly recommend Extension folks to sign up for AaE and share their expertise and knowledge. There are definitely more than just garden questions being asked. 🙂
This is eye-opening for me, Victor! Sandy and Kym picked the right musical expert!
As a 4-H person, I get very few questions assigned to me. A couple times I have had questions that were actually complaints or concerns about our county program or a club, and rather than just call me, the person submits a big long explanation on AaE, which gets assigned to … me! Ah the irony!
Just goes to prove that we need multiple channels for communications. Thank you, Wendy!
As a support staff member don’t often answer questions but get to see some fun ones come through. Here is one of my favorites answered by our graphic designer that I picked for one of our featured questions: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/question-of-the-week/will-i-be-hiking-bigfoot
Excellent response by Erik Simmons!
Someone was writing a lesson plan for children and wanted to know if rhubarb leaves were toxic or hardly toxic…
Thank goodness for Extension! I thought we might have an Extension publication on poisonous plants, but didn’t immediately see one. Might be a good gardening story, too.
Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire (or sarcasm with sarcasm).
https://ask.extension.org/expert/questions/385049
Ha. Funny. Here’s the public URL: https://ask.extension.org/questions/385049 (no sign-in required)