Mods have a means to check the number of Abuse Reports against an OP when another one comes in and starts looking familiar...
People do however also make mistakes and making "the label" navigable for the entire internet to keep statistics on might not be the appropriate solution IMO.
What would however be perfect is some sort of a "threash-hold has been exceeded" icon - like a dunce cap or a banana next to the OP's user ID name. It is a small % of repeat offenders who would earn it and send a clear message and warning to innocent community members, particularly new ones, who take the bait.
Cheers,
Julius
Mods have a means to check the number of Abuse Reports against an OP
Ive heard that before, but I always thought that was a scare tactic to warn repeat offenders 
What would however be perfect is some sort of a "threash-hold has been exceeded" icon
I guess you meant "threshold has been extended"
Or if you intended to say "trash-hold has been extended", that would make perfect sense too :-D
pk
> ... I always thought that was a scare tactic to warn repeat offenders
I have imaginary friends, but everything else including enemies are all real!
Enjoy the weekend,
Julius
Haha, I love that banana icon idea, like an anti-lemon, nothing to be proud of...I'm sure there will be voices against the "naming & shaming" effect, but it still is a funny thought, and would these folks deserve any better? 
Thomas
P.S. let's put down bets on who would be the first user to feature all four icons!
>
Julius Bussche wrote:
> What would however be perfect is some sort of a "threash-hold has been exceeded" icon - like a dunce cap or a banana next to the OP's user ID name.
I like this too. Since this will apply only to repeat offenders, I don't think "naming and shaming" will be an issue. Anyone can make a mistake, but when it keeps happening, it's not just a mistake anymore.
Another suggestion related to the abuse reports. In some forums, when notifying a moderator, there is a checkbox "Would you like to be informed of the result?" (unchecked by default). In some cases I actually would like to know what action (if any) was taken. It could be just an automated message, e.g. 'Moderator took action so-and-so' and moderators could add a note, if they chose to.
What would however be perfect is some sort of a "threash-hold has been exceeded" icon - like a dunce cap or a banana next to the OP's user ID name.
Though I must admit that I often fantasize about systems providing feedback via increasing electric shocks to misbehaving users , I'd rather avoid introducing [pillory|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillory]/[stocks|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocks] type punishments in the real world. I think it would be more helpful to focus on marking good/excellent content as I'm more interested in what I probably should read than what I shouldn't.
Also, given the fact that currently there's no prerequisites for posting messages (apart from registering, so no need to earn your right to post messages like on some other sites) I doubt that branded users would keep their shameful user ID for long.
I found it interesting though that punishment via public humiliation actually still exists in the Western world: In US they use the phrase creative sentencing for custom tailored sentences for the committed crime (e.g. see [here|http://crimeprevention.crimereports.com/2009/11/09/creative-sentencing-public-humiliation/]). Though I don't mind the creative part, I tend to think that it's better to [avoid the public humiliation|http://www.danmarkel.com/Humiliation_is_simply_wrong.pdf] part ([UDHR article 5|http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Language.aspx?LangID=eng]). An interesting topic with interesting [articles|http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/FlandersShameSSRNID967521.pdf] - but I digress...
Anyhow, [silly arguments|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y] aside, most of our feature requests seem incremental, whereas SAP also seems to think about a complete redesign (see Martin Lang's comments )?! I'd love to see some statement from SAP about their vision and future direction for the forums. But maybe it's all secret to create a craze like the first Apple iPhone release...
Okay, agreed that a banana would be humiliating and no matter how deserved it is not the intention. However what was my intention was a means to warn all the rest of the innocent community bystanders of the fact that the OP or person answering a question has been a repeat offender of the rules so often that there is intention involved.
That means guilty but still on the loose...
I am sure it would have helped us solve problems such as ricx.c and erdam sas much earlier and spared many folks unpleasant experiences.
Besides, if we add the word "banana" to the content filters to deter mocking then a banana icon is not further away from the real world than what the ponits system and related unspeakable words already are...
Cheers,
Julius
Harald Boeing wrote:
> I'd love to see some statement from SAP about their vision and future direction for the forums
Seconded.
Which brings us nicely back to the subject of this thread ...
Btw. I have been updating the ToC (and removed various buggy links) ... here:
If still interested, Marilyn - would you please be so kind as to replace the current version at the top of this thread? Thank you.
Edited by: Mylène Dorias on Jul 20, 2010 12:23 PM
After browsing through this rather lenghtly thread, I'm actually not sure whether my simple suggestions are at the right place here... anyhow:
I'd love to have an enhancement of the markup language used in the forum.
It's currently unnecessarily hard to put links to blogs, wikis and SAP notes into forum posts so that these links look nice.
Why don't provide a tag that automatically extends to a link with the notes title as the description?
The same should work for SDN blogs, Wiki articles and the SAP documentation.
Since many questions in the forums are actually answered by referring to either one of the mentioned resources, a better integration would be nice.
regards,
Lars
Hi,
another little one:
Flag messages previously reported as abuse
my memory is pretty good, but having a small child who sometimes seems to believe sleep is optional, I am sometimes a little forgetful with what exactly I have done. It would be really nice if there was some way that I could see if I had previously reported a message as abuse, so that I didn't accidentally double report it. A change to the report abuse icon so that it looked different if I had already reported that message perhaps?
>Why don't provide a tag that automatically extends to a link with the notes title as the description
That would be pretty cool! It could also check the currently logged on user and if they weren't a service marketplace user add a "Log on to SAP Service Marketplace required" text on the link.
To extend an idea that Otto and I played with earlier, perhaps if someone posted a URL for a note (they have a pretty easily recognised pattern) then the editor, on posting of the message, could automatically change the link into a tag and provide a suitable icon.
Ladies and gentlemen, check the slip about the APIs here: API Goodies
regards Otto
<b>Otto</b>, as a programmer you really got me excited with the API hint. However, I must admit I was pretty disappointed to see that this is just another RSS feed for top contributors (and I'm totally clueless why in the world anybody would be interested in such a feed).
<p/>
But that's just a side note, here's why I actually felt again compelled to post: The addition of the new icons for contributor status. I guess they were instituted by popular demand (a bit of an overkill to me, because total number of points is already present and I don't really care if the person recently had enough time for posting answers). In a way they are probably an example of a better usage of an icon. I.e. the icon is kind of self-explanatory and in case you wonder, just hover over it and you'll see an explanation.
<p/>
Now let's try that on other icons:<ul style="list-style:circle!important">
<li><em>Moderators</em>: Nothing</li>
<li><em>SAP Mentors</em>: Nothing (icon is not really intuitive to me, but hey, a link shows up indicating mentors)</li>
<li><em>Star for awarded points</em>: Nothing - weird, I thought at some point there was at least an explanation, but maybe that's gone due to the latest forum formatting hiccups?! It's also very interesting to see new forum users who just read answers - most of them have no clue that this star actually points out that the original poster attributed some value to the answer...</li>
</ul>
Now the part that actually left me pretty puzzled from the start, is why there's a <em>Reply</em> link text in addition to a reply icon - seems redundant to me. Similarly the blue up arrow in front of the <em>in response to</em> text doesn't seem to add any value (but maybe it's intended as an alternative access channel for those who wonder what happens when they click on the name or as a visual divider?).
<p/>
I also dislike those formatting adjustments due to overlong user content boxes (if you wonder what I'm talking about, look at postings by <a href="http://forums.sdn.sap.com/profile.jspa?userID=3693743" target="_blank">Rich Heilman</a>). Not to mention the fact that those icons in the user box definitely were not designed for a unified and appealing look and feel. And yes, I know this is all minor stuff, but maybe others feel similar and would prefer to see a real compelling design.
<p/>
My apologies for not posting on the idea place. As S-users are now allowed, I probably should have gone there, but I felt that this thread still seems to be the main focus point.
I find the new SCN infrastructure 2.0 blog relevant for the readers of this interesting thread: The specified item was not found.
cheers Otto
