How can a user with no medical knowledge participate?

Question

Now that we have changed from Health.SE to MedicalScience.SE, I have a question for moderator candidates, but anyone can charm in as well:

How can users with no medical knowledge participate on the site?

Answer 1

Everyone has medical questions they want to ask. A simple example would be: Why do flu vaccines have to change every year? The answer, of course, is easily found on google just by typing that question. But there might be aspects of the answer you don't understand. So you do a little more homework and you still don't quite get it. That's the time to ask. Present the effort you've made so far and ask about what you don't understand.

I think you'll find that any question that shows genuine effort by the person asking to do some basic research on their own will get a positive reception no matter how basic it might be.

And then there's the answering part. Well, are you willing to do research? If you see an unanswered question and it interests you, go read up on it. Once you feel confident you understand the answer, post it. Worst that can happen is you get a downvote with no comment explaining why. Best that can happen is you get comments that improve your answer and you get upvotes.

Answer 2

Q How can users with no medical knowledge participate on the site?

Those users can do nothing good here, but read along.

Well, maybe suggest edits based on spelling errors or formatting?

But if they do read along and then understand what they read, they should ideally no longer be without any medical knowledge. That may sound as useless semantics, but this site is intended as educational. We learn with and help each other.

Gaining medical knowledge is not hard. Being a medical professional is only hard because you need a lot of medical knowledge, present in your mind and ready to apply in practice.

For asking or answering here you have time on your side. You can research yourself and educate yourself before writing anything. You can take your time to really grasp what other write and cast your votes accordingly. This site is not the epitome of medical knowledge but one ressource among many, with hopefully increasing value.

You may ask yourself: "Am I allowed to answer questions if I'm not a medical professional?" And the answer to that is "of course!" The crucial bit is in plain sight: we are looking for quality content, not personal credentials. If you already have those they will surely help you in contributing here. But those credentials do not help us, as we will have to judge your posts simply by the evidence you provide in your posts, and maybe a bit by the quality of your presentation as well.

Dedicate some time to learn and research, focus on quality, and the rest should follow. Not even the very best doctor in the world will be able to answer every question thrown at her. But if you start small, you can still build a very solid foundation for your own knowledge and contribute something based on that here.

We look forward to it.