I take your point, and you’re probably right in that many “experts” that display their knowledge on the web are probably doing it for themselves; to inflate their ego as you put it.

As I said, I think people who do it for these reasons won’t be interested in Qunu.

In case you’re interested, a good friend of mine has established himself as an expert on Qunu and he’s already helped a few people. He loves it and has got good reviews as a result.

Damian

Helping people in a forum or mailinglist, some time people can’t choose the questions. It is always exciting when appear to be an expert infront of noob for first few exchanges. Then, the “expert” quickly get bored and want to impress other experts (instead of noobs), yet noob questions keep poping up. It is natural to get emotional over noobs.

Qunu sounds refreshing. With IM, the objective is to impress the one you talks to (through genuine helping). Without the distraction of impressing others (including peer experts), I expect this may work.

However a one to one impression is of less value than one to many impression. So it all depends are there enough nerds that can’t give a bigger impression elsewhere. (I think yes).