I'm not sure if others would be interested in this or not, but it seems like it would nice to 'attach' a side band discussion to any thread. This alternate conversation stream would only be visible to, say, symantec employees and gurus. You might think of this as having similar functionality to the 'discussion' tab for Wikipedia topics.
I would expect that most threads would never have any data in this stream but for some threads it could be valuable to keep a seperate conversation along with main conversation. The extra stream might include direction from employees to gurus about the issue, comments for an original guru responder to potentially repeat to keep the number of contact people small, or solitations for assistance or clarity from gurus to support staff.