I think we tried to do this with the site set up by Steve Shapiro at Oregon:

http://orsa.uoregon.edu/grantsgov/forums/index.cfm

But use has been spotty.

At 02:08 PM 2/6/2006, you wrote:
>I have been thinking whether there is some centralized channel where the
>end-users (staff in the Research Services Office in various universities)
>can interact with each other. This would open up a big platform for all the
>end users to interact with each other where they can share ideas, questions
>or tips related to Grants.Gov, FDP, NIH etc. My thinking was more towards
>something like a Google Group or an open discussion forum. The advantages of
>something like a Google Group would be:
>- Several topics can be viewed at the same time and the topics are
>searchable by keywords (also the topics are neatly arranged)
>- If someone has a question and posts to the group, he or she can expect a
>response almost immediately and these responses would be viewable to other
>users too
>- Unlike a listserv e-mail, it won't clutter up a user's inbox. People can
>go to the group and check the messages rather then their inboxes getting
>filled with messages. Also I have noticed that when someone posts a message
>to the listserv, they get several vacation replies back. Sometimes it makes
>it difficult to go through all the e-mails. In a group, when several people
>respond to a particular question, the replies are tied up with the original
>question and neatly stacked which makes it easier to view and read.
>- All the topics are backed up by Google's powerful search so that people
>can search by keywords.
>
>If we do not want the Google Group to be open to general public, we can
>always make it a private group so that the end users have to subscribe to
>the group and only the subscribers can view the messages.
>
>I would like to know other people's thoughts on this. I already floated this
>idea to Steve (MIT) and David (NAS) and they agree with it. If several
>people agree with this then we can start a group. I take the responsibility
>of launching/moderating the group with the help of some people.
>
>Thanks in advance for your responses.
>
>--
>Mauneel D Desai
>Research Specialist, Information Systems
>Project Coordinator, RiSC
>Team Leader
>Office of Vice Chancellor for Research
>University of Illinois @ Chicago
>Ph: (312) 413 - 7713
>
>
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