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Suggestions for forum improvements

Former Member
0 Kudos

Wishlist (in sequence of appearence):

<ol>

<li> [Distinction between answeredsolved closedunsolved functionality|]

<li> [Enhance SCN search|]

<li> [Friends-And-Foes functionality|;

<li> [Metrics for quality measure|]

<li> [and information on the direction of the forums|]

<li> [FAQ collection forum|]

<li> [An open, overall SDN suggestions site|]

<li> [More abuse categories|]

<li> [Personal status of the person posting|]

<li> [Improvement of formatting issues|]

<li> [Stricter moderation|]

<ul style="list-style:circle!important;">

<li> [Penalising whoever answers basic questions|]

<li> [Cutting points/guestifying responders|]

</ul>

<li> [Visibility of number of people following a thread|]

<li> [Invention of u2018honour badgesu2019|]

<li> [Substitution of the points-system by:|;

<ul style="list-style:circle!important;">

<li>[Introduction of a secondary point-system|http://forums.sdn.sap.com/post!]

<li>[Designing a u2018recognition and votingu2019 system|http://forums.sdn.sap.com/post!]

<li>[Considering the honeypot system|http://forums.sdn.sap.com/post!/community [original link is broken] 9111575#9111575]

<li>[Inventing an event driven honouring|http://forums.sdn.sap.com/post!/community [original link is broken]9135164#9135164]

</ul>

<li>[Bring transparency to the moderator-elevation and maintenance process|;

</ol>

Accepted Solutions (0)

Answers (33)

Answers (33)

bruce_hartley
Active Participant
0 Kudos

I recently had to look through SDN to find a solution for how to convert a flat XML file into an ABAP structure and internal table.

Many of the the solutions weren't really solutions - it was mostly "use this" - without any example whatsoever. If you want to see the point of this, do a search on SMUM_PARSE_XML and see how many things refernce it - and how few ( if any ) actually have sample code in there.

Before you all get all wound up and say "oh, do a CALL TRANSFORM" - keep in mind that I had 17+ files to convert and I didn't want to have to maintain 17 ST conversions - plus I wanted something generic. I Idgress, but I wanted to make the point that I actually did consider that as a solution.

So then I found this one special post where the person actually provided a small clear answer to how to call another related function that made all the difference in the world - my code now works.

So what I'm asking for is that I be allowed to allocate up to 100 points a year for "useful" posts. These points would NOT count towards the solution points due to the fact that the system would otherwise be misused.

Over time, the "good posts" that actually help would pile up points and you could rank them by "usability points". Yes it might stil be mis-used by people who want bragging rights, but in my mind - if you're doing that - you don't belong here. I'm upset enough about the people who post the same simple question for their buddies to answer so they get points - I hope that they have stopped giving out free passes to Tech-Ed because as Drew Carey once said - "The points don't matter".

Anyways, I'd like to award 30 of my points to the following post because I bet someone else is going to need it - and a further hint - the reply on 8/28/2007 by Lucy Ding is the magic answer - here's the link about how to use SDIXML_DOM_TO_DATA

So thank you Lucy for taking the time to provide a simple, clear, concise, and CORRECT answer.

Former Member
0 Kudos

Hi Bruce

The reason you'll find people are hesitant to provide this level of detail is because some people use this forum as a replacement for training. I regularly see people from consulting companies with requesting config guides on modules. Its become clear that SDN has now become a training source for consultants sold on projects who have no experience in the relevant area and its the customers that suffer, not the consultants. I am normally happy to help with questions where its clear the consultant in question has an understanding of the module and has hit a wall where there are some tricks you need to know to get past, but I refuse to help a consultant at a site where he has clearly been sold in to do something he's not qualified to do. It results in second rate solutions for the customer and SAP gets a bad name, not the consultant.

This is obviously different with coding but I have also seen posts from ABAPer's who clear don't know ABAP trying to provide support or enhancements to customers. Again, we should not be helping create an environment where consultants with no training or experience are allowed to thrive through bad practice.

regards,

Athol

Former Member
0 Kudos

Unfortunately, because of the individual focus of the SDN poopints system, you will also find that those who do provide answers all to often have even less training and experience than the person who asked the question.

This is typically made evident as linkfarms and copy&paste answers.

It would be great for the community to be able to rate whole threads and individual answers, as has been requested many times and will hopefully see implemented by year end 2011.

At least I am optimistic...

Cheers,

Julius

sukhbold_altanbat
Active Participant
0 Kudos

I have a suggestion for improving SDN forum.

As I know, currently forum member awards points by choosing the answer that he/she thinks it is correct. Sometimes there can be a case that it is difficult to choose which one is the right answer. What I am going to suggest is that there should be an option to put the question in voting. Voting allows other members to choose which answer is deserved get points.

Cheers

Former Member
0 Kudos

Hello,

I would like to put forth a request to create a new section for forum for SCM Extended Warehouse Management and i am not sure if this is the right place to request as i did not find any other way to contact the moderator.

Currently there are other requests from LE,MM modules of SAP that get bundled into the discussions. As the SCM EWM module picks up, we will see a significant increase in the discussions hence the request for a separate section/category.

Best Regards,

Syed Ismail

former_member46
Advisor
Advisor
0 Kudos

Syed requests for new forums should be opened either in a new thread here or via [SCN idea place|https://ideas.sap.com/community/community_and_services].

Then if there is enough community agreement (by comments and/or voting) the request will be reviewed.

At that time 2 people will need to offer to be that forum's moderators.

Regards, Gali

Former Member
0 Kudos

Great! Nice post!

Even i can't say "how to end a question that is not answered." However, i'll just wish that your question on "How to end a question that is not answered?" be answered.

<advert_removed_by_moderator>

Edited by: Julius Bussche on Jan 25, 2011 10:07 PM

Former Member
0 Kudos

@ Tobias, Julius : Aah Yes, the infamous "Done" or "Solved".... really defeats the purpose of having a forum doesn't it. I am afraid that is something that will happen in most forums to some extent. I think the only way this could be solved is......... tighter moderation perhaps..... (Sorry Mods..... You already have a lot to do and are doing a very good job i might add)

@ mho : Nice suggestions, A mention in the rules of engagement would be nice, now that users have an option to mark the thread as "not answered", they really needn't go for "done" or worse "asdsf".

Cheers,

Mz

Former Member
0 Kudos

Hi Julius, Good day.......

hmmmm actually, the feature which I liked the most was indeed the Red icon. Sometimes searching the forums can be a real pain (especially when working on uncommon technologies). It can be quite frustrating going into each thread and finding out that there is no solution for it. (Aaaargghhh!!)

I am not sure why moderation would be so difficult for this icon. Do moderators actually have to go through each thread to see if an unanswered question is actually answered. If so, all Moderators have my sympathy........

I might suggest : A new thread to discuss the level of moderation in SDN

(And the infinite loop has just begun)

Cheers,

Mz

Former Member
0 Kudos

Okay, you have a good point there.

Unfortunately "done" and "solved by self" and "asdf" are more common

Cheers,

Julius

hofmann
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

It can be quite frustrating going into each thread and finding out that there is no solution for it

Depends ... quite often there is a solution provided, but the OP isn't capable of understanding it or does want to have a complete code or step by step howto and isn't marking the thread as solved.

And as a moderator cannot know the answer to all questions ...

And we do have the 10 open question limit: people are going through some older posts and mark it as closed, giving the famous solved or done text.

br,

Tobias

Former Member
0 Kudos

giving the famous solved or done text.

This is kind of annoying especially when there is a couple of members taking the labor of a search and finding such a thread.

Example:

Should this behavior be abused, or should a remark be added in the rules of engagement?

Former Member
0 Kudos

Hi All,

Just a note of appreciation.

I haven't been posting to SDN Much nowadays. However, a few days back I did post a question.... and guess what-> I am now able to find more options for closing threads which have not been answered.

Thanks SAP for finally making this change in SDN..

Cheers,

A very happy SDNer.

Former Member
0 Kudos

I go to my questions and click on Your Questions and nothing pops up. Please advise what I"m missing.

lovinlife

Former Member
0 Kudos

You might have had a question if you had started a new thread to "report" this observation, but you didn't.

@ mazin: I find this "closed but unanswered" fiasco to be hot air and a pain in moderation. What do you like about it? The colour of the red X ?

Cheers,

Julius

marksmyth
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos

Hello

I just want to make a suggestion for forum improvements (not getting involved in Ideas place debate!).

Moderator to have option of awarding points to author of thread, if they have provided the solution to their own post.

If the author of a thread finds the solution to his/her own question and posts that solution for other forum users to view, the Moderator should have the option of awarding points for the answer.

This will encourage:

- the author to provide the solution to their own threads

- the author to close their thread (as they may get points awarded)

There are many examples where the author of a thread finds the answer to his own thread and then posts the answer to help other SCN users. Currently there is no recognition for the author of the thread for doing this.

Here is one recent example from the forum I moderate:

Regards

Mark

OttoGold
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Link to the relevant blog:

Otto

MaheshChandra
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Hi all,

one suggestion from my side, generally only the user who asked question is able to give the points to best reply. we can't know how he is giving 10 6 2 points. so instead of this, the Questioner have access to give only 2(few) points and the users who think the answer is good and working they can give some rating and based on rating total points will increase for that answer .

this helps in two ways.

1) if any one searches for an Problem and find a good solution then he can rate it.he fells like he also posted a thread and gave points to users with good answer.

2) the user who gave the correct answer is also benefited.

i noticed this rating system in Idea place(career center) but i am not active in idea place so not sure how the rating method is used in idea place

regards

Mahesh

Edited by: maheshchandra.lanco on Sep 21, 2010 11:55 AM( idea place line)

Former Member
0 Kudos

Interesting Blog by Marilyn Pratt in this direction,

[Ratings, Blog Contents and Some Magic Formula (the good kind)|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/21124] [original link is broken];

Thank you Otto and Marilyn to bring this up.

OttoGold
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Ladies and gentlemen, please comment. Pick one place where to comment, but do not stay silent! We need to measure the quality and we need you to WRITE DOWN your opinions. I am not going to publish the email conversations with some of you, please do it yourself, tell us what you think.

For those who didn´t read my blogs about the value of SCN contributions in the CV/resume: if you post your opinion, I can (and other people too) cite you and link your idea to support the position.

Thank you for the time and effort you put into this.

Best regards Otto

Former Member
0 Kudos

Hi Guys

Can we also ask that you allow for an additional option under reporting post for people who are posting random answers in the hope that they can improve their forum points. I've noticed a couple of people giving really poor advice and confusing other users because they are guessing on topics they don't understand. The result is completely unrelated answers that are really stupid.

here is an example of a user who seems to be on a mission to do this:

In this case, a post about viewers he responds back with an answers about classes and characteristics which is classification related which has absolutely nothing to do with the topic.

Another case where he has instructed a customer on something that he doesn't understand or know. This particular user seems particularly guilty of it and I would love to have responded with "Will you stop responding to posts you don't *##&#% understand".

I understand there are cases where people are actively trying to help, but having people throwing random responses back that are completely off topic is just confusing and creating unnecessary spam on the forums, particularly where its clear that the answers are purely in the interests of getting points.

former_member203108
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Even, I had come across such kind of posts. I think the new badge system lures people. Everybody wants a shiny badge to be displayed next to their name. So, they write something which is irrelevant and sometimes they do get atleast 2 points for such kind of reply.

Former Member
0 Kudos

Or just remove the root cause of this problem and several others on SCN...?

No 2nd prizes for guessing what that would be

Cheers,

Julius

OttoGold
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

No 2nd prizes for guessing what that would be

Past: Julius Day -


> 1 day

Future?: Julius age -


> forever?

Cheers:)))) Otto

Former Member
0 Kudos

Or just remove the root cause of this problem and several others on SCN...?

No 2nd prizes for guessing what that would be

Cheers,

Julius

I agree.

Since SDN saw fit to attach those ugly 'you-have-made-some-points-this-year' badges to our names, I dare not even show up here anymore for fear of my colleagues/boss noticing when they pass by my desk!!! Can't afford that badge next year, honestly - have to be quiet.

So I am all in favor of removing the root cause! Go for it, Julius!

OttoGold
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Go for it, Julius!

That would make a great song!

Former Member
0 Kudos

It should however IMO first be replaced by a solid idea for sporty measurement with less downsides.

Eg. would you prefer to be called a "module champion" by your colleages?

Cheers,

Julius

Former Member
0 Kudos

It should however IMO first be replaced by a solid idea for sporty measurement with less downsides.

Whatever for? People have been contributing on other sites without feeling the need for ... ... ... virtual motivation.

Eg. would you prefer to be called a "module champion" by your colleages?

I would prefer not to be mentioned by them to my boss along the lines: spends much time in SDN when should be working. Those badges are not helping there. You cannot even suppress their display in your personal profile! There are not many companies in this country that appreciate their working force 'hanging out' on public boards during working time. Some of them even shut down access to SDN (and not only for security reasons).

former_member203108
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

What I feel is, even though the OP has awarded points, a Moderator or somebody should justify those points and see whether really the user deserve it or not, If not, he should unassign those points.

For example, , check the second reply of this thread.

The user misunderstood the concept, even though reading F1 help document and he is advising the same to the OP. But the OP is marking it as helpful answer.

Edited by: Ahmed Rifaee on Oct 6, 2010 3:19 PM

OttoGold
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

What I feel is, even though the OP has awarded points, a Moderator or somebody should justify those points and see whether really the user deserve it or not, If not, he should unassign those points.

YES!! I support the idea. We should design and implement a workflow process to get the points approved. We cannot give points to every stranger. I vote for 5 approvers in a serie!

We should also implement a WF scenario to get notified if the OP didn´t close the thread. Every moderator should receive the notification, that there are threads which were not closed!

Cheers:))))) Otto

Former Member
0 Kudos

> What I feel is, even though the OP has awarded points, a Moderator or somebody should justify those points and see whether really the user deserve it or not, If not, he should unassign those points.

Personally I avoid this, unless there is a bias...

It is the OP's decision and if folks misuse the system then we should not hide the downsides to it by making them believe that the OP was infact gratefull and diligent - when in real life they are not.

Contrary to popular demand, there is no martial law on SDN

Cheers,

Julius

Former Member
0 Kudos

I personally don't see any reasons to have points for helpful answers. Its too easy for someone to simply give them to anyone that responds, even though it has nothing to do with the actual answer to the problem.

I agree on the approval sequence though Maybe we should even use SAP to do the approvals, it may force some of the SAP people to build more user friendly screens when they have to do 5 approvals for every SDN point award

ChrisPaine
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

G'day to the grumpy old men

Hi guys - I can't help but agree that points do impact the quality of the forum responses - but I'll play devil's advocate here - would there be as many quality responses in the forums if there was no way in which to publicly recognise those people providing the quality response. For many people I would suggest that the recognition that is provided by SCN points is a motivating factor in contributing. I like seeing my name there amongst the "Experts" in my area, although it is ,as previously debated, arguable if these are indeed experts - but my point is that it is motivational to receive recognition. I don't think this needs to be through points, but I think it does need to exist - and how else to do it, I do not know.

Perhaps rather than just slamming the current system - which we are very good at we could potentially think of better alternatives - after all the topic of this thread is "Suggestions for forum improvements".

I'd also ask that we remain thoughtful of those who reading this thread do not have as great an understanding of the English language as many of us do - so if we could be mindful that some might interpret what we see clearly as a sarcastic and humorous comment as an actual suggestion.

Gracious I'm turning into a grumpy old man myself...

Good to seem some more comment on this thread though!

Cheers.

Chris

Former Member
0 Kudos

Perhaps the solution then is to rate the quality of the responses rather than to allocate points. I'd rather see some people contributing 20% of what they are if they are quality posts rather than having the amount of posts they currently have of which only 20% are useful. I.e. rate a golf medal based on percentage of points to total posts and have a minimum number of points to obtain medal status. I.e. 100.

As an example, you have some people with 1000 posts and 300 points. Now, I don't know about you, but unless they are doing a lot of contributions to the Suggests and Comments or coffee corner section, thats a pretty low hit rate on answers, even if some people may not actually be allocating points to answers.

The other issue is the "cost" of these incorrect answers, which inevitably there are. In a lot of cases, questions asked relate to problems at customer sites. I'll see a person post a response that sends a person on a wild goose chase which is actually costing their business time. Perhaps the solution is for the moderators to do negative points for answers which have nothing to do with the question so that these people learn that by posting wrong answers, they actually negatively impact the customer and/or project costs.

As an example in the content management space, I cringe every time I see someone ask how to do an object link to a purchase order. The reason for this is because some newbie trainee consultant is always going to post the way to do it. The reason this is a problem is that SAP DMS should not be used for invoices, so in effect, all they are doing is giving the consultant/customer a work around to solve the problem in the wrong way. This may not seem like an issue if the customer is getting a solution, but the cost implications of doing is are astronomical when the company builds an entire solution on SAP DMS, including workflow and enhancements, and then has to re-migrate this solution to the correct area in a couple of years when they find out its the wrong area and they can't add OCR. In reality, this little post could cost a couple a couple of hundred thousand dollars. The roll on effect is even more damaging, because the consultant is given points for the correct answer, so the next time they post exactly the same thing. Other trainee consultants see the post as a legitimate answer and before you know it, there are 100 customers out there who have implemented the wrong solution to solve a problem and nobody knows why.

The latter problem I don't know how to solve. I'm not sure whether the solution is for the moderator to override the points, or potentially delete the post so that other customers are not misguided by the answers but it does show a major issue with this area.

This problem often stems from a lack of knowledge on the consultants side because in some cases they are self taught and therefore haven't bothered to understand the basic architecture behind the area they are implementing in SAP. If the consultant learns the correct way later, it doesn't affect him, the customer on the other hand already has a solution built in the wrong area of SAP that doesn't support growth or expansion of technologies because they aren't integrated into that area.

Edited by: Athol Hill on Oct 7, 2010 10:18 AM

Edited by: Athol Hill on Oct 7, 2010 10:19 AM

Former Member
0 Kudos

Perhaps rather than just slamming the current system - which we are very good at  we could potentially think of better alternatives - after all the topic of this thread is "Suggestions for forum improvements".

?

We have thought. Often. Which is why we made a ToC - so can easily find where which thought 'resides'.



      1. [Introduction of a secondary point-system|]
      2. [Designing a u2018recognition and votingu2019 system|]
    [Considering the honeypot system|/community 9111575#9111575]
    [Inventing an event driven honouring|/community 9135164#9135164] </ul>

    Edited by: Mylène Dorias on Oct 8, 2010 8:53 AM
    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Hi Mylène,

    Sorry - I wasn't intending to comment on the excellent suggestions that have been made - but more on the recent flurry of activity and comments - which although expressing the general despair that we all feel about falling standards and the general dislike of the point system weren't generally adding a lot to the thread IMO - as per my response right now

    Please forgive any unintended offence - and please don't take it as any criticism of the excellent index - without which we would certainly be lost!

    Have a good weekend,

    Chris

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    By taking look at various forums one can notice very easily some forums are really very well moderated and some are not at all.

    Don't want to point out directly any particular forum but when tried to report via abuse in these lightly moderated forums havn't seen it effective at all.

    May be some where there is statistics "How many abuse reports raised and solved of coursed some times turned down as well"

    Don't want to be offencive but I think all the forum should have same moderation level in one forum we are restricting OP's reffering to the forum rules and in others we are simply answering them for any kind of questions with any subject and tolerationg answers by copy pasting and linkfarming is a big disappointment.

    Just wanted to raise this and I am sure may of us might have noticed this already.

    Let's hope to see some positive changes in those light moderated forums

    Have a nice weekend ahead

    -Pushkar

    Edited by: Pushkar Patil on Oct 8, 2010 1:43 PM

    former_member203108
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    when tried to report via abuse in these lightly moderated forums havn't seen it effective at all.

    I think its all depends on availability of Moderator of that particular forum. Even, i have come across some situations, where immediate actions were taken for all my abuse reports but sometimes I can see the actions only after few hours or even days.

    hofmann
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Mylène,

    the problem is not the lack of suggestions from our , but how SAP is adopting these ideas. Reminds me how facebook thinks community interaction has to occur: Release something nobody wants or needs and say: be lucky to get that.

    - Badges. Maybe I'm wrong, but are the most suggestions here not related to quality?

    - Topic Leaders: still think that top contributor is more appropriate, but: who asked for a name change?

    - New counting system: annual points will be zeroed on 01/01/2011?

    At least, they are good at taking things away: no more golf balls, iPods, (special recognition during TechED), etc.

    br,

    Tobias

    PS: you have to put an imaginary tag around my post. I tried, but the HTML features of these forum tools do not adhere to my quality standards, but nobody is willing to throw away the wiki, blog and forum software.

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    but nobody is willing to throw away the wiki, blog and forum software.

    Br, Otto

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    Please forgive any unintended offence - and please don't take it as any criticism of the excellent index - without which we would certainly be lost!

    Thanks for the elaborate flattery.

    No offense taken, Chris. Forget about the index - it was just a (failed) attempt to keep a little structure to our suggestions for improvements. We are lost anyway, I dare say, since the only feedback we had is that one wants us to repeat all we collected here singularly in the IDEA-place. As for me: Not. Gonna. Happen. Did the work once. :-P.

    Mylène,

    the problem is not the lack of suggestions from our , but how SAP is adopting these ideas.

    Which brings us back to the beginning of this thread, where harald suggested to get some feedback from SDN on the subject of quality measurement and the overall masterplan-of-life for SDN. Where is harald, btw.??? I start missing him, since I start getting the feeling we are going round in circles ...

    Br, Otto

    Had any feedback there, Otto? (We have not started to call a badge - lemonlike or other - a feedback, no?).

    Anybody care to explain to me why we get more bugs instead of less with every new version? I was gone for a while, but I seem to remember that the quote-thingy used to work

    So, how about some ideas what we are going to do now?

    Edited by: Mylène Dorias on Oct 8, 2010 4:44 PM

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Had any feedback there, Otto?

    General feedback and some actions as described in those two blogs. Do you want me to repeat evertyhing here? Ok:))

    - every part of the SCN runs on different "platform" (Portal engines does not count:)))

    - newest (technically) part of the site is idea place

    - it is possible that the "new SCN" will look like Idea place (if you would care to visit Jive pages and register for a demo, you could get a better picture) - for those who are not interested I am going to write another part of the blog, where I am going to map "our" (feels like you now think of me as a collaborant with a lemon, right? pity... was trying to be helpful and you started this topic for me...) demands with what new Jive "engine" offers. If you care, drop a line what you would like to know now or comment below the blog when it is out. I promise to link the blog here if you will not consider that a SAP marketing...

    - it is not possible to "upgrade" current parts of SCN, we have to "migrate" it. That means we have to work on the scenarios (what, when, how...) and the timetable (out of control of all the people I have ever talked to).

    - the time from when "we" start "talking" about the new engine (like Jive SBS - I am not their salesman, I only think it is highly probable we will get their latest toy here) to the moment we get it could be year, two, three. I am sure you don´t understand why I blog about it or talk about it here, since this is a) out of control b) will not be told us c) will take months, but I think it is better to talk about it and start asking (and commenting) than nothing

    - since it is very likely Jive will be the vendor of the new system (would you offer any other vendor?), I concentrate on exploring and explaining the new Jive here

    - since it is very likely ... I am sure some SAP internal evaluation process is on the go, would be just great to be able to see/read some feedback. I will ask questions about this, but don´t have any idea who is resposnible, if he/she would talk about it and if it would be approved to blog about it... again, nothing new, but I care and try to help here

    - since it will take some time to start moving this, it is very likely we will get some more minor improvements of this "old site" before we get a new one

    - even if you all can laught, a wiki page with some minor improvements appeared and is linked from the mentioned blog. Again: it is better to have this one than nothing. You can see the two names responsible for the wiki (and probably about the improvements as well, at least for the decision making, or decisioners helping...) - example: longer posts allowed

    - the IT guys reposnsible for SCN are responsible for variety of other IT things (so SCN is few percents of their job) and it seems they don´t come here to talk (obviously) and they hardly care about us - the users. Since they are no users of this site, they have no idea what does it take to "live" here. We and they don´t share the user experience.

    Any questions? Any special interests?

    Br, Otto

    hofmann
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    repeat all we collected here singularly in the IDEA-place. As for me: Not. Gonna. Happen. Did the work once

    100% agreed. If I only could give you 1.000 pts for that statement.

    SSO only for S-Users and not for P-User ID. Logged on to SCN, switched to IDEA-place -> not logged on. Let me take the your frase to the next level:

    Not! Gonna! Happen! Ever!

    br,

    Tobias

    Kuhan_Milroy
    Active Participant
    0 Kudos

    Oddly enough, I had not seen the request for Single Sign On to Idea Place from SCN, so it has been added.

    Status: Coming Soon

    [https://ideas.sap.com/ideas/1434]

    I know the log on experience for Idea Place is not ideal and the reason is simply because it would have been this or nothing. Idea Place is a pilot today. There is a lot of energy that goes into these forums, if this could go into Idea Place, then WE could increase it's chance of success.

    Maybe this is coming from left field for some, so let me give some more background on the story.

    In general, there are a couple of ways to get projects started. One option is to get an executive to like an idea, give a bunch of resources and then enable a great solution to be built; commonly referred to as top-down. The other practice is to start with a very small amount of resources that one gets by working together with other teams (big credit to Anne Hardy in Vishal's group), then do what they can to prove to higher ups that it is a worthy project to invest in more; referred to as bottom-up strategy.

    I would love to say SCN and related projects is SAP's #1 priority, but it is not... and this is why Idea Place got started as a bottom-up strategy. To do so, required making some sacrifices. Yes, SSO with SCN was pretty much out of the question. Actually, even recognizing SCN user ids was out of the question but we had some great people who managed to pull that off (thanks Harry Weppner). So if we consider that the other option would have been NEW accounts that would have been disconnected from SCN forcing Idea Place visitors to create yet another account with a separate username and password, I think what we have is pretty good.

    So Idea Place began... as a bottom up strategy, as a Pilot. This has proven well, thank you to those who have supported Idea Place, so far. Idea Place has had a lot of internal and external interest, visibility and buy-in and I would say is on a good track for SSO with SCN. However, Idea Place is not out of the woods yet and it needs your support to really showcase the solution, get enough ecosystem usage such that it gets internal buy-in to fund this project well.

    Understand that Idea Place is here to provide a stronger voice to you; not only for SCN but across all SAP's products and solutions. It takes a lot of time to scour 15 pages of forums discussion for a few requests highlighted here and there. And then to be able to determine whether this is a single person's random thought or a true pain for a greater group - it is just too difficult; especially, for a busy product or solution manager. That is what Idea Place is working to make our lives better for; to provide a stronger Voice of the Customer into SAP while providing a scalable model for product and solution managers to consume feedback and engage in discussion.

    I do ask for your patience while Idea Place moves from infancy into adolescence and then adulthood. As leaders and influencers in our community (you are the top 1% of SCN), I ask for your support. Idea Place needs a chance. If half the energy in these forums, went into sharing ideas on Idea Place, commenting, voting and encouraging other to do the same via blogs, forums, tweets, chats or however then WE can greatly increase the chance of success for Idea Place.

    Thank you

    Kuhan

    hofmann
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Kuhan,

    it is just too difficult; especially, for a busy product or solution manager.

    And you think we are not busy and have spare time left to do work twice? The ideas are already in SCN, someone needs to transform them to Idea place.

    If half the energy in these forums, went into sharing ideas on Idea Place

    When you want the SCN users to share information, than I believe Idea place is suffering from a severe design erro: access. Idea place is locking SCN people out, whereas you want them to participate. To capture the ideas, you'll need a tighter integration into SCN (not just SSO, but also a link for: make an idea out of your thought that will create an Idea place item).

    br,

    Tobias

    Kuhan_Milroy
    Active Participant
    0 Kudos

    Hi Tobias,

    Just to clarify, I think the dialog and discussion occurring in the forums are quite good and I am not saying that discussion has to be only done on Idea Place. The innovative process happens in mysterious ways and of course, I encourage it to happen however, wherever and with whoever it can. And when the idea is ready (boiled, digested, solidified) then submit it on Idea Place.

    Idea Place is not only an interface for idea collaboration it is an interface for idea communication. Not only can a community member submit ideas there, they can also track them and see where each idea stands. When an idea is updated, they will get a status update providing transparency on what is happening. If the owning team wants to reach out to interested parties, for say a deep dive, then Idea Place will facilitate that connection. Without following the Idea Place, then there is no way to see where an idea is ranked or what the status of it is or be a part of further elaboration.

    When you want the SCN users to share information, than I believe Idea place is suffering from a severe design erro: access. Idea place is locking SCN people out, whereas you want them to participate. To capture the ideas, you'll need a tighter integration into SCN (not just SSO, but also a link for: make an idea out of your thought that will create an Idea place item).

    Any SCN or SMP user has access to Idea Place, can you explain how they are 'locked out'?

    As for linking from the forums to Idea Place, good idea. I've created that one now too.

    [https://ideas.sap.com/ideas/1436]

    Cheers

    Kuhan

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    Mylène wrote: Where is harald, btw.??? I start missing him, since I start getting the feeling we are going round in circles ...

    Mylène, a late response as I recently switched employers and thus my focus is currently on other areas. But to your point, I had already my fair share of silly postings and I cannot discard the feeling that it's a bit like unsolicited feedback or more like a one-way street. It seems odd that SAP doesn't really moderate and summarize the discussion (and conclusions), which gives me the feeling of a project where the community can state their requirements (in a more incidental, possibly repetitive fashion), but we won't really know the solution/product until it's shipped. That's fair enough and I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised!

    (Footnote for Otto: Yes, I read your blogs - thanks for keeping us posted)

    Anyhow, as I don't see any specific tasks where I can help, I'll try to avoid further repetitive and opinionated SCN meta postings (I've vented enough already so it's time for some self-control) and focus on the stuff that I'm getting paid for (SAP technology) or that tickles my geek interest (e.g. fun stuff like Scala).

    Cheers, harald

    p.s. (@Kuhan): I'm not really familiar with the idea place, but the site seemed still too awkward for a meta discussion on SCN (or any other topics with multiple ideas). E.g. we have currently 51 ideas on SCN, yet there's no (generated) overview page summarizing the ideas along with number of votes and comments (not to mention status and short conclusions or action lists). Maybe it's already there or somebody else has already requested it in help us improve the idea place... (admittedly I'm not really willing to spend much time as a beta tester there)

    Kuhan_Milroy
    Active Participant
    0 Kudos

    Hi Harald,

    There is existing functionality in the Idea Session to filter on Submitted, Under Review, Delivered, etc... ideas. This can be seen well with the ideas for Idea Place as it has 67 ideas alone and we have started some stage updates. With that said, a major Idea Place upgrade will be underway soon, so for Idea Place, we will be reviewing all the ideas. At this point, the votes are still low and it is a little early for the process so some more time will be beneficial for that case.

    There also have been some subsequent ideas on how to provide a more consolidated view of the ideas, including: Expand/collapse option. [https://ideas.sap.com/ideas/1356]

    My Ideas [https://ideas.sap.com/ideas/1121]

    However, it is clear that the ability to manage many ideas and perhaps the next phase of elaboration may need to be part of the site. Ideas and feedback on this is welcome... in Idea Place.

    Cheers

    Kuhan

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Do Ideas on Idea place match Community expectations?

    BrO

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    I just spotted a comment by Harald below one of the Ideas. He also voted (against:)). Thank yo, Harald.

    I welcome others to do the same. Please help us decide, it will not take you more than few minutes.

    Isn´t it better than having to "migrate" all your ideas manually?

    Come on, people, vote and comment:))

    Cheers Otto

    martinlang
    Advisor
    Advisor
    0 Kudos

    The often referred to "Failed to Search Properly" abuse option has just gone live earlier today.

    As with the other abuse options, but maybe this one even more: think about it and give folks a chance to learn. Not everybody who hasn't searched properly does so intentionally. Some folks are inexperienced with forums and if we can teach them a few tricks, they can become awesome contributors.

    However there will be cases as often discussed in this thread and others, where this abuse option is very applicable, so I am hoping this is a small, but good improvement that ultimately is designed to help maintain or improve the quality of forum discussions.

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    Thanks for the update. And I agree with the warning, because the search feature is not necessarily one that easily provides good results. I don't have a proper name, but essentially I think the Failed to search properly is supposed to catch situations where the poster asks trivial questions, questions that have been answered before (and should be easy to find) or is simply inconsiderate by throwing out something without putting in some effort/thinking on her/his side. The latter often falls in the category requirement dumping. So instead of limiting the abuse to a failed search effort I would have preferred to see something more general that points out a general lack of own effort before posting. But I think usage in that broader sense is is probably the way it was intended...

    I'm actually thinking of the many threads where you people ask questions that have not been answered before, but would be trivial to find out with a quick test in the system or something similar, but not necessarily a search.

    Jelena
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    >

    > The often referred to "Failed to Search Properly" abuse option has just gone live earlier today.

    Yay! Thank you. See - it wasn't so difficult after all.

    To your point - I remember a fairly recent post when someone asked how to find a "terminal resolution" while search with the correct word (monitor/display/screen) would have brought some results. In that case it was clearly a "lost in translation" issue.

    former_member184657
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Thank you Martin for the much needed updation

    Too bad it came at a time when I have less need for it

    Your Caution warning will be heeded to.

    pk

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Ladies and gentlemen, check the slip about the APIs here:

    regards Otto

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    <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.

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    I find the new SCN infrastructure 2.0 blog relevant for the readers of this interesting thread:

    cheers Otto

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    Is it typo error or now after Forum,blogs, wiki now something wrong with articles...

    http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/20dfd97d-5792-2d10-acbf-aa32f044b1d0

    Today it's 26th August 2010 and the article is published on 28th August 2010...

    Sorry the article is really nice.. just noticed something wrong on the date ...

    -Pushkar

    former_member46
    Advisor
    Advisor
    0 Kudos

    Well its the first time I've seen that. I will pass the bug information on.

    Thanks

    JasonLax
    Product and Topic Expert
    Product and Topic Expert
    0 Kudos

    Thanks for reporting this. It's not a bug: it was intentional. The author wanted this date and since I can't be at work Saturday to upload it, I went ahead with it as is.

    (I didn't think anyone would notice...)

    By the way, the author has provided an updated version that will be uploaded soon. If you liked it, please provide your rating and a comment.

    Thanks!

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    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?

    lbreddemann
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    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

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    >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.

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    Chris & Lars,

    added to [ToC|].

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    It probably has been said and discussed already, but I couldn't find it...

    If people report abuse it seems that in some cases the message is deleted (I guess by a moderator), but any existing replies to the original message seem to remain. I find this rather confusing and would prefer a complete delete to keep the forums clean (especially if a message is worthwhile deleting it seems that probably nobody should have answered it).

    And just as a side note I must admit that the report abuse process is still not clear to me: I'm assuming that if I'd report abuse and the recipient of my complaint disagrees I'd get some feedback (so I stop doing this). Also, I prefer using the report abuse feature for really silly questions, instead of posting some general [RTFM|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rtfm] answer. I'd appreciate a short comment if I'm off here (or some pointer where the usage is described in more detail)...

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    >If people report abuse it seems that in some cases the message is deleted (I guess by a moderator), but any existing replies to the original message seem to remain. I find this rather confusing and would prefer a complete delete to keep the forums clean (especially if a message is worthwhile deleting it seems that probably nobody should have answered it).

    Sometime the abusive message is the reply,for example on thread I started myself where someone has replied with a completely off-topic link - I've responded that I couldn't see the point of the link, and reported the response as abuse - the stupid post is removed but my comment about it remains. .

    Now I guess that the mod is trying not to offend me by removing my reply - but it does look a tad silly there in the message.

    The alternate I've seen is where the message gets locked, this is nice because it clearly shows other what not to do, but it does rather stuff the search functionality up (well, stuffs it up more)... Perhaps if there was some way that locked messages could be excluded from any search?

    I do wonder if the mod's ever do reply to those who report abuse, but I've never had any negative feedback, so I keep doing it...

    former_member184657
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    It probably has been said and discussed already, but I couldn't find it...

    As you expected, there has been a discussion on that one too

    pk

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    And just as a side note I must admit that the report abuse process is still not clear to me.

    Not clear to me either. Maybe some of the mods could write a blog about it? Then such source could be easily referenced without discussing the same things again and again or explaining to the curious/ angry users.

    Something like the blog about "asking questions" (i don´t remember the exact name). I think this topic is worth a blog.

    By the way, I would like to read a log about the daily routine of the moderator as well.

    Regards Otto

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    Kishan, thanks a lot for the good reference. Now I'm officially part of the ruling majority on SDN who cannot conduct a proper search before posting. My only hope is that some kind moderator might have mercy and deletes my message. Hold on, maybe I should just hit the report abuse on my message to provoke that?!...

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    > By the way, I would like to read a log about the daily routine of the moderator as well.

    There are a few. Matt wrote a nice one -->

    Cheers,

    Julius

    former_member184657
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Kishan, thanks a lot for the good reference. Now I'm officially part of the ruling majority on SDN who cannot conduct a proper search before posting.

    Thats the last thing one can accuse you of. Unless you thought of some gory search terms like beheading and headless, the chances of you spotting that thread was minimal.

    pk

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    >

    > It probably has been said and discussed already, but I couldn't find it...

    >

    > If people report abuse it seems that in some cases the message is deleted (I guess by a moderator), but any existing replies to the original message seem to remain. I find this rather confusing and would prefer a complete delete to keep the forums clean (especially if a message is worthwhile deleting it seems that probably nobody should have answered it).

    Awesome!!!

    I am not the only one ... (well, there's been Jurjen, of course)! In the course of my 'Beheading Thread' I felt more and more like I was some miser who begrudged the mods a quick-mod tool. I feel much better now

    Since we are three of this opinion, let's add this to our wishlist for forum - improvements: a moderating tool, which does not 'behead threads', but -for example- moves the whole thread to a 'trash-bin-forum' - it should be as easily usable as the 'beheading'-tool, but without the 'corpses' ...

    marilyn_pratt
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Hi Chris.

    Removed. (hopefully the right one to non-existent post)

    marilyn_pratt
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Hi Otto,

    A quick cut and paste from the moderator guide (which is accessible for moderators only)

    Explains what the moderators do with abuse reports.

    Here is the tasks they would perform with the list of reported messages:

    Per each reported message, you'll see the message subject, the thread name, and date posted (of the original message).

    When you click the message subject, the message text will expand, along with the abuse report, as added by the reporter.On the top right corner of each message, there is an actions drop-down where you select the required action:

    Defer - An action will be taken later, leave in the abuse report.

    Approve - The abuse report is unjustified. The message should be left as it is.

    Edit & Approve - The message is valuable, but should be edited in order to remain published.

    In this case, an editing pane will open so you can edit the message.

    Reject - The message is an actual abuse and should be removed.

    In this case, the following email notification will be sent to the author:

    Subject: Sorry your SAP Community Network Forum Post has been rejected

    Hello,

    You have received this email because the message you posted below has been rejected by our moderators.

    You may want to check out the terms and conditions for using our forums: https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/HOME/RulesofEngagement You also find a link to them in the first thread of every forum.

    Hope you understand and continue to participate in our community.

    All the best the CN Community Team

    Sandra_Rossi
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Thanks Marylin (and Otto for the question), that's very nice to see how moderators do their job. I was interested by this one especially as I was not aware of that: "The message is valuable, but should be edited in order to remain published."

    Next times, I'll take time to write these abuse reports so that it can be published directly.

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    Yep, and the comment field is very usefull for us to understand the context of the report. I always read that first and know the reliable reporters.

    Actually, when I finally get to meet PK in person then we will probably have little to say to each other anymore...

    Where usefull and appropriate I also provide feedback to the person who reported the thread, but that is not scalable in ABAP General for example.

    Personally I am still of the opinion that having active and knowledgable discussions is the best deterent. You seldom find abuses of such threads.

    I also predict that Anton will post next...

    Cheers,

    Julius

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Julius, sorry to disappoint you...

    Thanks guys for the education.

    And on to another forum suggestion...

    I get <mails_wot_is_e> sent to me to notify me of updates to threads - which is really useful. I'm sure we could come up with/there is a better way, with personal RSS feeds etc, but the <mails_wot_is_e> work for me at the moment. (That said, trying to look at my watch-list times out, seems my proxy can't believe any website should be that slow to respond... I guess that's an issue when you start being active.

    However, very often - especially when it's threads like this one - users are using formatting in the thread which doesn't transfer through to the <mail_wot_is_e>l. Strike-though is an example of this which can mean that the <mail_wot_is_e> version of the thread can imbue quite a different meaning than intended.

    My <mail_wot_is_e> client does support formatting, I doubt that there are many left out there that do not. I think we should be able to receive formatted notification <mails_wot_is_e> ? (emphasis added to make it easier to spot the enhancement request I'm putting forward

    Sorry - this post in initial version failed the forum guidelines check - wtf!!! Please read for <mail_wot_is_e> E M A I L... far ooot! Any mod that is able to get around this and replace the text, please feel free!

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    @Marilyn - Thanks! I no longer don't as much look like I'm going crazy in a thread I started myself.

    former_member184657
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Actually, when I finally get to meet PK in person then we will probably have little to say to each other anymore...

    That's not true. We need to discuss if the flick to fine leg is more elegant than a cut to square leg. We also need to exchange notes on some behind-the-SCN-curtain activites too

    pk

    ThomasZloch
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    >

    >

    > Edit & Approve - The message is valuable, but should be edited in order to remain published.

    > In this case, an editing pane will open so you can edit the message.

    Actually I'm often using this option to add my comment to the post outlining what is wrong with it, then locking the post. This way the original poster and the community can see what was wrong and hopefully avoid such behaviour in the future. If a poster remains ignorant about the warnings, then we have a nice track record to be presented to the "Men in Black" who can turn anybody into a Guest if justified.

    It was said before but cannot be stressed enough that precise abuse reports are of great value in keeping the forums clean, especially in a forum with huge traffic like ABAP Development, where it is impossible to study every single message.

    So thanks to all who are doing this already, and to the others, please join in!

    Thomas

    former_member184657
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    Even as I appreciate your approach, I have one query. What happens to all these locked threads? Of course they can be kept in the database for a certain period to know the history of the OP. But then after a certain period, say six months to one year, could these locked threads be deleted? I mean, there's no point these "useless" threads keep occupying MBs and GBs of database space.

    Also, can there be a counter on the number of post lockings on a OP? This will easily help catch repeat offenders. A step further would be to auto-forward the OP to the "Men in Black" after a certain threshold.

    pk

    ThomasZloch
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    >What happens to all these locked threads?

    I had the same thoughts about this, will probably ask in the moderator forum, but only after searching for existing discussions of the topic

    > Also, can there be a counter on the number of post lockings on a OP? This will easily help catch repeat offenders. A step further would be to auto-forward the OP to the "Men in Black" after a certain threshold.

    Sounds interesting, let's see what the Admins say.

    Thomas

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    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

    former_member184657
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    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 😄

    pk

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    > ... 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

    ThomasZloch
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    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!

    Jelena
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    >

    > 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.

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    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...

    Former Member
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    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

    Former Member
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    > 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

    Jelena
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    As promised, here is my wish/complaint/suggestion list:

    1) Search seems to be one of the major u201Cpain pointsu201D so far. Quite frankly, I stopped using SDN search a while ago and here is why. For example, try entering u201Cidea placeu201D in the Search box on the front page. The relevance seem to be way off, comparing with the search for u201Cidea place site:sdn.sap.comu201D on Google, for example. Next, try narrowing the search down to Blogs. Why does every entry start with u201CSAP Network Blogu201D now? But thatu2019s not all u2013 now try going back to your previous results. If you click browseru2019s u2018Backu2019 button, it will take you to the front page. Who designed this?

    2) I absolutely agree with idea of using Reputation. It works well on many forums (e.g. slickdeals.net) and anyone can add either positive or negative u201Crepu201D. This would help to better recognize the value of contribution, I believe. For example, sometimes I see an excellent reply by someone on an older post and Iu2019d like to give u201Cthumbs upu201D to the user. But I canu2019t assign p-o-i-n-t-s on someone elseu2019s post and even if I reply with u201Cthank youu201D, the post is most likely not being watched anymore. Moreover, itu2019s possible that miserly OP hasnu2019t even assigned any p-o-i-n-t-s for that (I do get that sometime u2013 u201Cthanksu201D but no p-o-i-n-t-s, not that Iu2019m complaining but still). There are some drawbacks but this system has worked successfully on many forums for years (there is even a word u201Creppedu201D = added to reputation).

    3) Newbie posts could be dealt with similar to the spam emails. When reported to moderator, the message would be moved to a u201Cspamu201D forum and permanently deleted from there after N days. If anyone wants to search the u201Cspamu201D forum u2013 here you go. Naturally, the users would get warned and u201Cguestifiedu201D after too many u201Cspamu201D posts (thatu2019s what they are, actually).

    4) Reasons for u201Creport abuseu201D button MUST be changed. I think the reasons should be along these lines:

    - Wrong forum

    - Did not use search/did not read documentation

    - Generic/Interview/Do-my-job question (i.e. useless for SDN community)

    - Something to do with copyright

    - Offensive post

    - Other

    5) Markup language could be at least partially replaced by the buttons in editor. There is a lot of space on the toolbar, why not use it? I personally donu2019t care about learning almost another programming language, yet its description occupies a large chunk of the screen. (See also this [post|])

    6) The whole last page of the thread being replied to should be displayed below the message editor. Currently only one post is displayed and, on top of that, I have to scroll to it because of the above mentioned markup u201Cdocumentationu201D.

    7) This might be a bit bigger project, but I think the forums could use a reorganization. Ideally, the users should be able to u201Croll upu201D or hide the areas they donu2019t care about. For example, I mostly visit SD and ABAP forums. SD is buried in the middle of other modules and ABAP is also not easy to find anymore. Also the u201Cgeneral discussionsu201D should be either at the very top or very bottom IMHO.

    😎 ...and we should be able to use any words, except profanity, in General Discussion forum. Why do I need to spell "p-o-i-n-t-s" like I'm selling Viagra or something?

    Edited by: Jelena Perfiljeva on Jun 21, 2010 5:01 PM

    OttoGold
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    8 wishes = 8 years

    ChrisPaine
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    Has the issue with extra long posts rendering as just a big mass of unformatted text been resolved? I've recently seen some posts that last week had long sections of code compressed into a mess, suddenly appearing as reasonably formatted? Eg

    Surely if one of our wishes had been realised, someone would tell us? Or were they saving it for the SAP Inside Track on Friday...

    I really hope that it is either: I am confused (more than normal) and some kind mod has fixed the layout of those posts - or it has been fixed and we are still trialing the fix (given the recent issues I can believe this). Please, please do not try to make a publicity stunt out of it. Just be upfront and as transparent as possible and let us know!

    And if it is fixed!

    THANK YOU

    Chris

    Former Member
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    Chris wrote:

    Just be upfront and as transparent as possible and let us know!

    Excellent point and in my experience an important ingredient for keeping users happy. Beats me why we have ad pictures in the forums but are not informed about updates or possible problems. But maybe they just forgot about an existing feature described in the [SCN Forums Guide|http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SCNGUIDE/Forums] :

    Announcements: If case of a planned downtime, service outage or other important message, a corresponding announcement will appear in a special box under the "search" box.

    Cheers, harald

    p.s.: I think I've worked too long in projects asking for silly documentation and that's why the following thought came to my mind: Apart from our long wish list, I think a good starting point for changes would be a rewrite of the <a href="http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/HOME/Rules%20of%20Engagement" target="_blank">forum rules of engagement</a>. Some changes I'd like to see:

    <ul style="list-style:circle!important">

    <li>Short summary at the top</li>

    <li>Provide an explanation what the intended use/goal of the forums is (ideally also banning any trivial questions)</li>

    <li>Clearly indicate that forums rules are rules and point out consequences for violations (message deletion, user deletion, taking away points awarded for "non-compliant" questions, etc.)</li>

    <li>Remove polite wording where it adds to confusion (e.g. do not cross post is much better than saying please do not cross post, which merely discourages such practice).</li>

    <li>Ensure that all common forum rules are listed (to avoid duplication in sticky postings in each individual forum)</li>

    </ul>

    Ideally report abuse categories would reflect those rules...

    Jelena
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    Greetings from the Coffee Corner forum! Per Chris Paine's suggestion, I'm quoting my reply to a thread there regarding the SCN degradation:

    While I'm all warmed up on this - just have to say that personally I think that from the functionality / visual appeal / ease of use, etc. the SDN forum is in the Top 10 worst, right behind MSDN (which has a different kind of problem being totally bloated and overrun by bells and whistles).

    I frequently visit 3 other forums that are run by small groups of individuals and seem to be using the same or similar PHP engine. And I do like their simple look and intuitive interface much better.

    It's understandeable that, just due to the information volume, the technical solution for SDN might not be as easy. But, considering the amount of maintenance issues in the past couple of years and slow and lukewarm response to the users' suggestions, I think "Jive Software" should be fired.

    Excellent thread, I'm trying to gather my thoughts and will post later.

    Meanwhile, dear Moderators, would it be possible to move the terrific ToC by Mylène Dorias to the top of this thread? Asking everyone to read through 7 pages (and growing) to find if their idea has already been mentioned is unproductive and simply cruel.

    marilyn_pratt
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    Hi Jelena,

    I've taken the liberty to replicate Mylene's table of contents to the beginning of the thread as you requested.

    MZ and PK excuse my bumping your contents down but it does make sense to start with the TOC.

    Former Member
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    @Marylin, thanks a lot for moving Mylène's summary to the top, but can you please use her latest summary found here: .

    @WhomeverThisIsOfInterest: And just because some seem to be missing the feature for linking to messages instead of whole threads: I used the tag to produce the link above (which is also shown in the Further Markup Possibilities help when posting a message). It would really be nice though, if the application would assist us in creating those references... (right now I'm copying whole links and then delete everything but the message ID)

    OttoGold
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    It would really be nice though, if the application would assist us in creating those references... (right now I'm copying whole links and then delete everything but the message ID)

    Such tiny usability feature would take me like ten minutes to implement on any of my websites: Please place a button, next to the abuse one, which will provide the complete link to the single message, dear SDN team. Thank you, Otto

    marilyn_pratt
    Active Contributor
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    @Harold

    Copied the latest version

    Former Member
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    Off lately I have noticed no. of documents which are repetitive. There are ample topics uncovered which anyone can pick and write something about. But this is not happening. People will choose topics which have been covered earlier and will make some tweaks and changes in some portion of the documents and publish in their names. I personally know few people who has done that. First of all this should not be encouraged. Secondly, even if somebody is using contents of already existing document, they are supposed to give due credit to the original document owner. Some people used the screen shots from others documents and will not give credit. This is unethical. SDN needs to scrutinize all these documents before anyone can post it in here. For eg. there is a document "Record Mode Concept in Delta Management" the screen shots which have been used in this documents have been actually used by some girl in Dec 2007 while she wrote her blog. This gentleman without any shame has used all those screen shots and there is no due credit to the poor girl. This should be stopped.

    Former Member
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    If you can give the urls of both the original and the copy, we will look into it.

    Rob

    Former Member
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    +1 for more abuse categories and more specifically a "User did not search - common question" abuse category to get rid of the stuff that clogs the forums.

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
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    Hi All - you may have seen that [Ideas Place|https://ideas.sap.com/] has been launched - with one of the specific aims of getting feedback on SCN...

    So it looks as we may have a more structured way to continue this thread. However, much to my chagrin, there is a fairly major restriction to the current release.

    [Add Service Market Place User login support|https://ideas.sap.com/ideas/1022]

    currently you can't log in using an S user id - which is what I use for SCN. Which means I can't log in to vote for the idea to fix this bug. As fellow enthusiasts for change in SCN - perhaps those of you who don't use a service marketplace id could place your vote to the idea - and then perhaps when it is implemented we could do something to migrate the list of ideas in this thread to Ideas Place?

    hofmann
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    Hi Chris,

    there is also no SSO between SCN and Ideas Place (p-user).

    br, Tobias

    Former Member
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    >

    > However, much to my chagrin, there is a fairly major restriction to the current release.

    > Currently you can't log in using an S user id - which is what I use for SCN.

    Damn poetic justice!

    Rob

    ChrisPaine
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    @Rob So poetic that I felt inspired enough to post a [blog ranting about it|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/19703] [original link is broken];.

    As an aside - I've seen some posts where the poster manages to insert little images next to the link - to indicate that it is a forum post link, a blog link, a link to a person, etc.

    How do they do that? - I can't see it on the list of forum markup. Is there special hidden markup code (or is it just that you can sneak some HTML into your posts if you are sneaky enough?)

    Perhaps (keeping somewhat more to the thread topic) the forum engine could automatically inspect links and depending on where there were linking to provide an icon - a little SAP blog icon, a little SAP forum icon, an SAP article icon, an external link icon...?

    marilyn_pratt
    Active Contributor
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    Offtopic: Great blog post Chris - your first I'm thinking. And it prompted a transparent response at least.

    Back on topic- Since it looks like we won't be pushing suggesting the Idea Place while access hurdles are not yet addressed, shall we think of another way to consolidate ideas around forum improvements (or other SCN improvements)?

    I could imagine having a wiki space. With links gathered from this and other threads.

    Easier to tag wiki content as well and consolidate as an interim solution.

    In the wiki you can embed in markup language all sorts of things - including thumbs up and down.

    I checked Jive admin and see that avatars are disabled. Do you have a link here to what you are suggesting? did you see it in this forum or somewhere else?

    ChrisPaine
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    Marilyn,

    [link to forum post where little people icons appear|;

    [and little forum icon post - also a thread by Kishan|;

    interestingly - I could vary the individual post appearing at the top of the link by changing the parameter &start= - so you shouldn't have to search far. When you think about it, that's pretty obvious really - but it would also be nice to have a simple way to link to a particular post in a thread (rather than manually counting the sequence and adjusting the URL).

    marilyn_pratt
    Active Contributor
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    Ah...too easy.

    That is part of the markup language (using curly brackets, user, ID= user number)

    By linking to my name here you can see my user ID 50850 so produces my name and icon and link. Just as advertised.

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
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    ah ha! - as per

    Not sure why I didn't notice these on the Further Markup Possibilities

    Oh well, live and learn (and look silly in the process

    marilyn_pratt
    Active Contributor
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    Never silly for asking. The "too easy" comment was really to myself in that I was surprised I could answer something positively/correctly today. Seemed stumped stymied by almost every other post I engaged in if you know what I mean. But at least I did see a colleague update with urgency the development request to change the dropdown abuse box to include "Failed to Search Properly" - I'll breathe more easily when it is actually implemented. Two years IS a long time. Unfortunately no easy way to change it in Jive Admin functions or it would have also been a "too easy" and done by me comment today.

    I've had some internal conversations about Idea Place as well as Semantic Search, I escalated (again) the forum hiccups, stutters, and posting fiascos. So lets see what other havoc I wreck. Its almost Friday.

    Kuhan_Milroy
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    The only challenge to posting ideas in the wiki is that they would need to be resubmitted into Idea Place by the original idea submitters. There are some additional Terms Of Use that need to be agreed to by the submitters that are beneficial for SAP to consume the ideas. I'm not saying don't do it - just that this point needs to be considered. Some ideas may be a known commodity and the votes are the value but if the ideas are unique and valuable on their own then for SAP to consume them the submitter will have needed to agree to the Terms Of Use on Idea Place with an audit trail.

    Cheers

    Kuhan

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
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    >additional Terms Of Use that need to be agreed to by the submitters

    Didn't we all have to sign some sort of disclaimer that everything we put into the forums we gave up rights to when we signed up for an SCN account?

    Section 8 of the current SCN terms of use:

    >By transmitting or uploading Content to SAP, You grant SAP a perpetual, unlimited, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to: use, reproduce, adapt, display, perform, modify, transmit, translate, distribute, and create derivative works of the Content; to make, have made, offer to sell, sell, lease, or otherwise distribute any Content or product; and to practice any method, embodying such Content (including the right to sublicense any of the foregoing). You further represent and warrant to SAP that You have the right, title, and/or authority to grant such license to SAP. SAP may elect not to post or publish the Content that You send or upload. If SAP elects to post or publish the Content, SAP may in its sole discretion elect to withdraw the posted or published information for any reason and without notice.

    So perhaps I couldn't upload the Wiki content - but Marilyn as part of SAP could?

    bah -it's all too much legalese for me - and it's past 5pm - I'm offski..

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    Perhaps (keeping somewhat more to the thread topic) the forum engine could automatically inspect links and depending on where there were linking to provide an icon - a little SAP blog icon, a little SAP forum icon, an SAP article icon, an external link icon...?

    I would love to see such functionality for the links.

    Together with my ideas about links from this thread:

    The interaction should be around the content and not with the tools.

    My idea (start with the simple things because they mostly help the most):

    (just an example of tiny details that could help imo): In nearly every thread a hyperlink is used/ provided. Would be cool if the page/ the engine understand that it is a link and let me vote for the relevance. The everytime I would read a thread which is not mine, I would see if the links (to other threads, SAP help and many more sources) is relevant or not - if the link helped the guy who was reading the thread before me.

    The interaction should be around the content and not with the tools.

    Another example for the same: Understand that most of the "knowledge" here, can be created by only linking/ sequencing some threads together. Would be cool to be able to navigate from thread to thread using bidirectional links (this page is referenced from these threads: t1, t2, t3 etc). This way the search will be much easier and "relevant". This way it will be easy to understand which threads is being referenced again and again (then it is very important) and which people get points for only repeating the content provided by others.

    Regards Otto

    marilyn_pratt
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    Of course you could upload the wiki content. You can now as a user (or at least put it in a staging area). And you would be able to inside of a wiki space here. I was thinking of making our own wikispace here open and unrestricted to any logged on user, much like the forum spaces are at the moment or your ability to post a blog yourself once you are autonomous.

    But if I understand Kuhan he is saying we would need to sign additional terms of use when the ideas are migrated to Idea Place and that would be per idea creator, I suppose, inside of the Idea Place environment. Here on SCN no additional TOU.

    Kuhan_Milroy
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    Didn't we all have to sign some sort of disclaimer that everything we put into the forums we gave up rights to when we signed up for an SCN account?

    So perhaps I couldn't upload the Wiki content - but Marilyn as part of SAP could?

    bah -it's all too much legalese for me - and it's past 5pm - I'm offski..

    Section 8 of the SCN TOU refers to the right to redistribute submitted "content". Ideas that may contain intellectual property for the purpose of putting in an SAP software product that SAP sells for money, requires an extra clause.

    The additional term is pretty common in the industry. the intention would be to remove this additional TOU and get these terms rolled into the SCN TOU post Idea Place pilot.

    Kuhan

    Former Member
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    Another thought - in ABAP OBJECTS, the construction class=>method is often used; however, if you try to use this in the the subject of a post, the ">" causes everyting to the left of it to be disappeared in the forum list. See .

    It would be nice if this were fixed.

    Rob

    ThomasZloch
    Active Contributor
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    fixed

    When I see this I replace > by &gt; (quote my post to see what I mean), but it would be nice if this could be done automatically.

    Thomas

    Former Member
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    when pressing "Next Page" in the list of topics

    the forum queries the database again

    this means that any topics that were updated since the initial search

    jump from Page 3 to Page 1 (for example) and I don't see them

    best practice in web apps is to cache the search result keys

    and then page through them - this solves the problem

    to see updated posts - rerun the search

    or "selecting a page should do just that - not re-run the query"

    Edited by: FireBean500 on Jun 7, 2010 4:06 PM

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
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    Sorry double posted - some strange error message about parent element not being avaliable - interesting to see the NW error screen pop up though!

    Edited by: Chris Paine on Jun 8, 2010 9:49 AM

    Former Member
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    One of my biggest peeves is cross posting. I'm not sure if this is feasible or even possible:

    When users post a question, now they have to post it in a particular forum. Instead, could they just post a question and have a list of forums in which it will appear (maximum of three or so).

    So for example, if someone has a question and can't decide whether it's more ABAP or Financials related, he or she can ask the question, then select one of the ABAP and one of the Financial forums and post it.

    The question would appear in both forums as would all of the answers. Cross posting would no longer be an issue.

    Rob

    Former Member
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    Yep, cross-posters are actually worse than ponits-gamers in my books.

    The ability to "mirror" threads accross forums would be a very cool feature to use for those who do ask cross-functional type of interesting questions.

    Cheers,

    Julius

    Former Member
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    > When users post a question, now they have to post it in a particular forum. Instead, could they just post a question and have a list of forums in which it will appear (maximum of three or so).

    Not sure what you're exactly suggesting there, but I'd say the most general solution is tagging (and is already used on SDN, e.g. blogs). Why do we need fixed forum structures when I can compose my own personal feed of interesting messages by choosing the appropriate tags...

    Anyhow, back to our general improvement theme. I know it's trivial to critique other applications, but really tough to build a good one (not sure what my score would be). However, on SDN I'm constantly stumbling across some (for me) odd design choices. Today I felt the urge to talk about the e-mail notifications for forum watches:

    <ul style="list-style:circle!important"><li>It would be nice to have a choice between e-mail notifications and a monitoring page on SDN, where I could see all changed items I'm watching (with some nice-to-have auto-refresh, e.g. realized via [comet|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_%28programming%29])</li>

    <li>Despite my overlong postings I enjoy getting concise information: Why address me in the first line, why remind me about points when I cannot give any points (so let the application resolve the if you posted, not the user) and why provide a link to the thread instead of the message (especially poor for long threads like this one)?

    In general the e-mail body should start with the actual posted message. SDN message subject with poster is already present in the e-mail subject line, update time mentioned in the e-mail seems rather useless and not to be my time zone (and e-mail has already time stamp, which should be accurate enough in most situations).</li>

    <li>The mandatory disclosure statement still tickles me, but then again, I'm no legal expert and it's at the end of the thread. But I would love to see an explanation about the trade secrets, \[..\] confidential information etc. and in which scenario I could receive this e-mail in error and why exactly I shouldn't distribute it...</li>

    </ul>

    I'll stop for now, but I feel already tempted to continue my complaints in other areas. Let's see how long the self control lasts...

    Cheers, harald

    Former Member
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    In phpBB forums this function is called 'shadowing'. You can move a thread with the option 'Leave shadow topic in place' - which will cause all answers to the topic to be visible in all the forums where the topic is 'shadowed'. In addition, you can manage shadow topics separately from their original (e.g. you can 'delete' a shadow topic, leaving its original intact.).

    That what you are looking for?

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
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    Hello,

    Another minor improvement to add to the wishlist. As you may have seen in my previous posts sometime my speeling(sic) is not quite up the the perfect standard so I often use the very useful spell check button on the message editor.

    However, the spell check does not recognise a lot of standard SAP technical terms. Surely it wouldn't be too hard to add terms like BAdI (or is this a conspiricy to get me to refer to them as explicit enhancement spots?) etc. Perhaps even include all the standard class names, program names, FM names, Enhancement spots, package name, transaction codes, etc? Since this is SAP running the forum, access to that sort of database of text shouldn't be too hard?

    Perhaps also make it a user selectable option (as per many email packages) to enable users to select to always do a spell check before posting?

    My ultimate wish in this regard would be for a better editor - as per a Gmail type interface with WYSIWYG editing capability and inline spelling correction etc - but I'll go for a baby step here...

    ChrisPaine
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    Opps - double (well triple actually) post -

    Edited by: Chris Paine on Jun 8, 2010 9:51 AM

    Former Member
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    Chris wrote:

    Perhaps also make it a user selectable option (as per many email packages) to enable users to select to always do a spell check before posting?

    I use the spell check integrated into the browser, so that I see immediately any misspelled words. Here I can choose my preferred language and maintain an additional custom dictionary. I don't really make much use of the latter, but one could easily imagine that we could maintain such a list in the Wiki. The SAP spell check is suspicious to me, because haven't seen anywhere a possibility to define my language for spell checks (and obviously that would be required) and it's not spell-as-you-type...

    Is there a reason that you don't use the spell-check provided by the browser or should you actually use some browser, which doesn't support it and doesn't have an extension for that (seems unlikely)?

    But I must say that I fully support your request for a better editor (seems to be quite a few out there that are pretty good). Furthermore I'd really be delighted if we could answer threads inline (instead of a new page). Seeing only the message I'm replying to is insufficient for me in most cases, especially in a thread with a little bit of history.

    By the way, is there some nifty trick to get tags to properly syntax highlight ABAP language? It seems to automatically assume it's Java, which I find rather annoying. Again, there's many examples of syntax highlighters out there that try to recognize the language and then highlight it (even with support for ABAP).

    Former Member
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    Double posting, though I tried to be really careful to avoid this. Not sure how it happened, but maybe somebody with more powers can delete this message...

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    Some time ago I was asked to create a SAP-terms vocabulary (for czech - my native language, with equivalent in German and English). Maybe such thing could be created here on SDN? Of course such thing cold work as a part of the spell check (you have my support, Chris) and help the multi-language teams to use the proper words. It could even improve the quality of the content on SDN if people could check the wording in a vocabulary. And... what is the best thing about SDN, we could use the crowdsourcing and let the people of SDN to create the vocabulary for themselves by themselves.

    Regards Otto

    Former Member
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    One more thought:

    One of the problems that I see is that some members treat the forum as a consulting service. They ask and ask and ask questions, but are not willing to give anything back to the forum by helping others out by answering there questions, blogging or adding to the WIKIs.

    We already have some controls in place to ensure that users cannot have more than ten open questions at a time, but I really don't think this helps much. But since some treat the forum as a consulting service, we could force them to actually pay for the service they receive. Monetary payments wouldn't work but we could do something like this:

    When a new user joins, he or she is given say 100 complimentary points (not the same as point system points). Every time a user asks a new question or responds to his or her post, a point is deducted. Every time someone else responds to his or her post a point is deducted from the OP's total.

    But every time a user responds to a post, the responder has a point added to his or her total.

    This would encourage (force) users to be more active in the forum by helping others out.

    It would also encourage people to think their questions through before posting and discourage FAQs, because their point totals would go down if they get too many answers (FAQ) or have to repeatedly explain their problem.

    Rob

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    One of the problems that I see is that some members treat the forum as a consulting service.

    My support! My opinion: For me anything would be better than nothing. At least I hate situations like: no point received, 100 posts/ questions asked. Even 1:1 would be better than nothing (of course for more than like 10 posts for example).

    Otto

    Former Member
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    When a new user joins, he or she is given say 100 complimentary points (not the same as point system points). Every time a user asks a new question or responds to his or her post, a point is deducted. Every time someone else responds to his or her post a point is deducted from the OP's total.

    Such approach seems seems to be based on the underlying assumption that posted questions and comments to own questions are kind of parasitic. However, consider the nice posting from Hermann , which is a good counter example.

    Also, I'd like to repeat that I don't see anything wrong with posting only questions without answering some as long as the posted questions are interesting. I do agree though that questions that haven been answered before (where the answer should be easy to find) and especially questions stating just requirements and asking for a solution are annoying.

    Possible approaches for this problem and forum rule violations in general:

    <ol>

    <li>Enforce compliance via point system, by requiring a minimum number of points for postings and deducting points for forum violations. This should at least slow down people with questionable intentions and be quite effective if one could also prevent point farm schemes (i.e. people creating multiple user ID's and using them to accumulate points).

    I would refrain though from introducing several point systems (what would be the goal of each and why do they have to be separate). I prefer one point system indicating (to some degree) proficiency, which can be increased or decreased based on some posting evaluation scheme (and obviously here's plenty of room for improvement on SDN).

    </li>

    <li>Have a powerful voting/filtering system in place that allows users to mark/suppress rubbish postings.</li>

    </ol>

    In the end I think it would make sense to have different user classes (not all are equal) and gradually increase capabilities within the forums to trusted/proficient users. Right now we only seem to distinguish between moderators and all others. One example might be that users with a given level of proficiency can vote on postings with forum violations and a certain number of votes would automatically move the posting to a hall of shame forum (kind of a spam folder, thus keeping references intact and serving as a reminder to think before posting)...

    Cheers, harald

    Former Member
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    >

    >

    > Such approach seems seems to be based on the underlying assumption that posted questions and comments to own questions are kind of parasitic. However, consider the nice posting from Hermann , which is a good counter example.

    Good point, but if a user like Hermann has lots of extra points saved up, he probably wouldn't mind.

    >

    > Also, I'd like to repeat that I don't see anything wrong with posting only questions without answering some as long as the posted questions are interesting.

    I think you'l find that those who ask hundreds of questions without receiving any points tend to ask uninteresting or poorly thought out questions.

    > I would refrain though from introducing several point systems (what would be the goal of each and why do they have to be separate).

    It was just meant as a starting point. I'm sure others will have better ideas.

    Rob

    Former Member
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    The lowest common denominator of SCN's problems is the ponits system in combination with consulting companies who measure performance dependent appraisal on it.

    If that could be nibbed at the bud and ponits made more quality focused, then the quantity of implications from it could be reduced drastically and moderation made a lot easier as well.

    Some trolls might even start using the search. Freshers would be more encouraged to test themselves before launching a generic question chain which slowly closes in on the real misunderstanding.

    Perhaps they would even RTFM..

    Cheers,

    Julius

    Former Member
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    One small side note to my complaint about formatting issues (see 😞 Lately I've encountered several cases where the Preview functionality shows my (admittedly really long) posting with proper formatting, but as soon as I hit the Post message button all the (wiki markup) formatting is lost.

    I know that SAP is looking into those formatting issues, but if there's no change soon, I'd love to see at least this inconsistency between preview and actual posting fixed.

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
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    > If that could be nibbed at the bud

    That would be really nice! - You do have to wonder why certain individuals are responding to practically every post in the forum when their own knowlegde on the issue seems no better than a Google (NB not SCN) search on the topic - indeed many of their posts are just rehashes of posts someone else has made in the past - or even links to the old posts.

    I don't necessarily think this is bad - don't jump in yet Harald It is obviously teaching them something about SAP - they are having to spend time searching for the answer, and by doing this expanding their knowledge. I even do this myself when I see a question I don't know the answer for - the thing is I then refrain from posting - if I could find the result by searching so should the OP. And everyone is happy - well possible not everybody because the OP has their answer and the respondent has their pinots (hmmm if you were actually given bottles of wine rather than mispelt tokens how the forums would be different

    And the reasons that not everyone is happy: I won't rehash that - there are many example in the thread. And I happen to agree with most of them.

    The point I want to make relates back to my quote from Julius. Why are those posters spending so much time and effort? Because their company is actively using SCN pinots (sic) as a KPI? If this is really the case - I have heard annacdotal evidence to this effect, but never heard it confirmed from anyone working at one of these companies - surely SAP would be able within SCN to easily find companies where there are many many "active" members - the statistical blip would be very obvious.

    So - if it would be so easy to find - why has this not been done and these companies asked to cease and desist this practice? Perhaps, because these companies go a long way into making up some of the statistics of SCN that SAP are so proud of?

    ChrisPaine
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    ( post split to avoid formatting issues )

    Again, I believe we come back to the conflict between a community driven and company (SAP) driven environment. Although we might not like it, we are as effectively trapped as iPhone users to the Apple application store - the content we want is here on SCN - SAP notes cannot be sourced in forums elsewhere and SAP vigourously protects their IP.

    So although I too might want to nip these practices in the bud - it is SAP that need to respond - by giving greater autonomy to SCN - let the community manage it completely (I doubt this is going to happen) or to clearly state what they believe is the use for the forums and why they continue to let practices like companies using SCN for KPIs continue.

    To make a an extreme comparison - We are not a democracy - we are a benevolent dictatorship. Fortunately the dictator is benevolent! But it would be really nice if they could stand up and state exactly what they mean...

    Many of you will have seen the [Presi by Mark Finnern|http://prezi.com/fc4vtxpvpi6w/assemble-your-tribe/] in it he asks "Should you create Community" and answers an emphatic "NO". Yet here we are in limbo because that is what is what appears to be happening - we the communitee are wondering what SAP direction/action is going to be. We are gathering ideas, but it before we tear ourselves up we need input from SAP to this process too - Not just for SAP to take our input and consider it. But for them to feed into the discussion.

    Sorry for such a long post - seems we all care, possibly too much, about something that would seem to be out of our control...

    Former Member
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    Problem is that rapid answers and linkfarmers often dont even read the content they are almost randomly guessing about, let alone the question.

    People do make mistakes, but when I see repeated behaviour like this then it is best to catch it early.

    One of my preferred weapons of choice is to show them why their answer is wrong - that makes them think a bit more next time.

    Cheers,

    Julius

    Former Member
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    Chris, nice posting, I truly enjoyed it.

    Now to the outrageously funny statement that companies rate employee performance by SCN points. True or not (I'm tempted to lean towards the latter) doesn't matter, essentially motivations that drive silly postings are probably similar. So finally I'm proud to present the solution for our forum noise problem and believe it or not, is a clear win-win. Don't ask me how I did it, it's my job to make the impossible possible...

    We should create new honeypot forums where any postings will earn double points and as an additional incentive posting in those forums will result in auto-e-mailing of printable certificates with nice titles based on point level. This should channel their efforts nicely and keep them out of our view. Not to mention the fact that this is even charitable thanks to SAP's donation program...

    Ah well, that's probably way too much effort. Maybe we should just start giving appropriate answers to silly questions: <b>[RTFM|http://xkcd.com/293/]</b>!

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    Maybe we should just start giving appropriate answers to silly questions

    Microsoft can lead us the way. Otto

    ThomasZloch
    Active Contributor
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    >Maybe we should just start giving appropriate answers to silly questions

    please do so occasionally!

    Can you find the silly reply in this thread (a true classic)?

    Cheers

    Thomas

    bump: now I found it, also check out (Amit and I are friends since)

    OttoGold
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    Some more topics/ updates/ suggestions:

    Somebody to care about the trials/ the voting threads and stuff:

    Integration of the valuable content to SDN:

    Career center points:

    Subject matter expert status (?). More possible recognition types than the usual (active, top, moderator, mentor)

    Morale points or some appreciation points

    Hope that somebody will add his/her piece to the discussion.

    Regards Otto

    Former Member
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    What I would like to see is ideas around the fact (for me at least) that the ponits system is a motivation program and not a recognition program.

    It primarily motivated people to ask questions on SDN and gives them some "monopoly money" as power to run the show for a while until they break the rules. It does often also keep the answers polite, until you snap

    I do not believe that it really motivates gurus to answer questions or engage in interesting discussions. If anything, the side-effects of ponitshunting deters them.

    The career center was one step in the right direction to make contributions recognized without the ponits system activated for that specific forum.

    Were there an idea to recognize contributions generally and not rew-ard answers of all ilk, then I think even moderation could be done away with

    The closest suggestion to it which I have seen is for logged on members to be able to "rate" a post once each - possibly via some "heat indicator" or ponits themselves.

    It would also be a more "self regulating" community and less of a moderated one, and less content filter workarounds...

    Downside is (as always) abuse using multiple IDs (we already have the guest-o-blaster for that, bit it would need to be upgraded...) and proliferation of urban SAP legends (also not really anything new).

    Some recoding is also an obsticle to a running system...

    Cheers and enjoy the weekend,

    Julius

    OttoGold
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    In my opinion everybody here wants at least some little value back from the SDN contributions. I tried to restart the discussion mentioning Mrs. Sarah Otner who is interested in the real value (real is something like material, the objective one, at least for me) of the SDN both for the contributors and SAP. Check the restart here:

    People should keep that in mind, that this is a competition (if you don´t hunt for money, you want to win, this is what we do here...) and there should be a way the winners (of course that is for fun, but why people love games? To win, ok?) are recognized. If nothing else you have probably read some "complains" from the old-friends here, who don´t like the lames (on the customer side blah blah) who take money for our knowledge.

    Regards Otto

    Former Member
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    I dont like the "winner" concept, and bigger is not better either.

    Basically, you need to send an invoice at the end of the day and it needs to get paid (that is even Zen... ;-).

    Bearing that in mind, the recognition of contributing to SDN should support it, like the EcoHub does.

    That it realistic and sustainable.

    Everything else is only a "calling" - like nursing and terrorism are as well

    Cheers,

    Julius

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    We are here and now and know where are we going - towards the invoicing:)))... so we have the mantinels to play the game within, let´s introduce the concept how to get from A to B.

    By the way... (I have presented the idea before, sorry to repeat it here): this is applicable to education and support (because that is what we do here on SDN, educate and support). When one is a subject matter expert he can definitely ask for money for the advices, right? Then it is no game, but could be useful (money are said to be useful).

    The key thing to understand here is: some of the people are going to change the job, some are freelancers etc. Based on this "personal" status one wants to get different things back... Sometimes it is a better job, sometimes the money, sometimes something else... Will be difficult to find a solution suitable for all the people (well, that is a ned idea, right? ))))

    Otto

    Former Member
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    If it adds value, then you can either invoice it (people who use the detailed search will find your contributipns) or it consider it to be "common good" making your life easier should you have to work on that system oneday.

    This is certainly true in security.

    You cannot "milk" anyone on SDN (see my above post) as contributions are voluntary in a recognition program.

    Compare that to how much plagarised code is posted in an attempt to earn rubarb ponits...

    Cheers,

    Julius

    Former Member
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    People should keep that in mind, that this is a competition (if you don´t hunt for money, you want to win, this is what we do here...) and there should be a way the winners (of course that is for fun, but why people love games? To win, ok?)

    I'm not sure if I understand fully what you're saying, but just by choice of words I tend to disagree. I don't think competition or winning are the right words. I can only speak for myself, but I'm hanging out here for knowledge exchange and to profit from/share some experience (and possibly just vent from time to time).

    I think Julius has a good point talking about our motivation. After all, if we look beyond the trivial questions, why should we share our knowledge/experience on topics where we painfully invested lots of time to learn that (possibly even with a person not willing to put an iota of effort into it)? That's where the exchange aspect comes in, but it obviously requires that there's enough people with certain level of knowledge who are willing to share.

    I have seen a fair share of answered threads hijacked by people determined to squeeze the last bit of information out and get to the final optimal solution/explanation. That's the spirit I like to see more often.

    In general I think we're lacking one big thing: There's far too many people who don't love at all what they're doing (and this clearly shows in their quality of work or here on the forums in the quality of their questions/answers). The upside is of course that skilled people face less true competition in jobs. But let's hope that we continue seeing enough people on SDN who love what they're doing and take pride in it.

    So whatever SAP has as a goal in mind for this community, they should make an effort to communicate this and ensure they attract the right people (including making SDN attractive and a valuable site) and deter the unwanted folks.

    Cheers, harald

    Former Member
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    I agree with you and for me SDN threads are discussions which share knowledge.

    Sure... you can focus on the OP and go for the ponits only as re-ward. But that is not why I enjoy SDN and I have seen several "wanted" gurus leave because of the pestilence of a re-ward based system controlled by some lazy OPs.

    Unfortunately this makes strict moderation, also of some content, necessary to keep the level of professionalism up to scratch.

    Personally I would like to see the end of that as well - I am actually a rather friendly person in real life and dont like washing the dishes either

    Any ideas on a more "recognition" focused system?

    For a start, how about a "Post of the month / year" sticky per forum? Anyone can nominate a specific post of exceptional value and then we open a poll to vote on them. If there is interest, I will create a pilot thread in my forum to see how much traction it has.

    Cheers,

    Julius

    Edited by: Julius Bussche on May 22, 2010 10:18 PM

    Former Member
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    In theory I don't really care about any point system as I don't see that it could serve to judge expertise (especially in a fragmented and complex area like SAP) and as far as rewards/incentives are concerned I feel that the actual content should be enough (so let's hear what others think).

    However if we talk about managing sites and possibly trying to steer a site into a specific direction (e.g. cutting down noise level, trying to get interesting discussions/questions), I can see that a point system possibly could help. E.g. I quoted already the [reputation|http://stackoverflow.com/faq#reputation] approach on [stackoverflow.com|http://stackoverflow.com/] as an interesting example.

    Essentially their reputation measures acceptance by other users and that's a realistic and valid concept. People with enough ratings by other users (with a certain acceptance rate) are could be allowed to vote on any questions/answers/users (mark up or down). The more accepted you are, the more power you get on SDN (i.e starting with being able to post questions after some level, then voting, etc.). The interesting part is that this would allow the community to control the content, yet to some degree it would intially be controlled by carefully choosing the people who can start rating others.

    The tricky part though for any tweaking or introduction of a different point system would be how to handle existing points. Though I don't have any statistics to support this, my gut feeling is that the current system is highly inaccurate and thus questionable (e.g. too many good answers without any points, silly answers with points, etc.). I doubt though that people would be willing to start fresh.

    Whatever we do though (ah, well, I mean of course what <em>SAP</em> does), it would be good if the main focus is on quality of the content (e.g. relevancy, accuracy and reliability) and how to make it easily accessible.

    Now, after all this blabber let me get to your post of the month suggestion: Good thought, though I would suggest instead to introduce tags in the forums assigned via voting (e.g. memorable/interesting tag). And if voting is too tough to implement, then maybe an editor's pick tag could do the start. As long as voting on thread level is not possible I suspect the nomination concept will not work...

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    For a start, how about a "Post of the month / year" sticky per forum? Anyone can nominate a specific post of exceptional value and then we open a poll to vote on them. If there is interest, I will create a pilot thread in my forum to see how much traction it has.

    Good one! After creating a pilot, please drop a line here, to let us check. Sounds interesting:)) The only problem will be that people would have to (should have to) check all the threads to pick the best. What will not happen:))

    Unfortunately this makes strict moderation

    In my opinion all this "stricter moderation" an stuff should deal with this problem: you have subject matter expert who is an ordinary user and a moderator who is not (probably not often:)) or doesn´t have time (probable from my experience). I wonder how many moderators we have and how many forums are there? Is it at least 1:1?

    Otto

    Former Member
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    Given how many times threads are viewed, I would think the chances of being nominated once are fairly good. After that the poll is open for a while and attention to the exceptional posts is even more focused.

    We already have a polling functionality, but not sure whether it is accessible for this. Will check whether it works.

    Regarding "tagging": some moderators maintain an FAQ and memorable threads sticky. In the security and ABAP areas we got alot of input for them and in security there are regular requests for updates. But that is not as much fun as a poll might be...

    Cheers,

    Julius

    former_member181995
    Active Contributor
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    The only problem will be that people would have to (should have to) 
    check all the threads to pick the best. What will not happen:))

    Hello Otto,

    For me, this is surely an added advantage since it will require you to read each an every post in order to pick the best one. The more you read the more you get

    Cheers

    Amit.

    Former Member
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    Hi Julius,

    Polling can be a good way to recognize a good thread.

    But practically looking at the number of forums we have and the threads that come up every day, pick one - for a month/year/week is also a tough job.

    The better thing I feel is, for example if a thread is answered - while rewarding points (2,6 and 10 point stars) add one more saying the answer was 1)Genius 2)Very Good 3)Not Useful and may be a chance to add a small note. This way each and every thread gets monitored by the one who posted question and also seen by the one who has answered. Along with the current point system this will also run parallely making some one receive a "genius" status. It some thing like - someone is having only 100 points but has posted answer where he/she was recognized as a genius 5 times. That should be a good morale boosting thing. So like how we can see top 3 contributors in each forum we can see the genius as well.

    Again my focus here is recognize the good contributors and make every possible effort not to loose them. There will be participants who dont want to follow the rules/system/process who find some way or the other whatever level of moderation is done. But this is a different problem.

    Regards

    Sadhu Kishore

    Former Member
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    > But practically looking at the number of forums we have and the threads that come up every day, pick one - for a month/year/week is also a tough job.

    Any one can nominate a contribution and for moderators who take active care of their forums it is not much additional effort.

    Personally I think that a public poll on the guru post of the month per category is more fun and interesting. People will try to concentrate on quality and not quantity of links posted....

    It is completely independent of moderation and the points system. It is like the Funny Threads sticky in the Coffee Corner, except the other end of the spectrum...

    I am talking to SAP about it and hope to find some support to give it a try.

    Cheers,

    Julius

    Edited by: Julius Bussche on May 24, 2010 10:27 PM

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    we can see the genius

    Well, well, let´s send the sms messages and vote for the SDN Idol.

    Former Member
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    >

    >Any one can nominate a contribution and for moderators who take active care of their forums it is not much additional effort.

    I hope that you are not mistaken in this. I have managed a couple of such 'events' as a moderator on other fora - and believe me - it turned out to be a lot of effort.

    Apart from that? Why make it 'governed' by employing moderators? Why not let the community interact with itself?

    I am strongly in favour of harald's suggestions - tagging + voting on posts will soon show which answers are expertly done, since the 'real' experts will see to it, that they vote the answer up (while the OP, who has been told that his attempt at solving a problem is [a really bad idea|;, only has the possibility to vote you down once).

    What I personally really, really like about the idea is, that everybody participating in a thread has some kind of influence and with such an instrument you could at least act on an individual basis on every post in the thread (thus enabling you nicely to 'vote down' all of the echos = different authors repeating the same answer over and over ... and other related phenomena).

    >

    > I am talking to SAP about it and hope to find some support to give it a try.

    Why run ahead and implement a part of a possible solution to all the suggestions gathered in this thread? What about the other items on our list of suggestions? I am not sure that we should disband at this stage, everybody picking up a single pearl and hurry to bring it to safety.

    Former Member
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    Okay. Then lets leave it and see what happens instead.

    Where I agree with you is that not all moderators would want to maintain such efforts so it would be inconsistently spread - and then people will complain.

    Perhaps just a grand annual event?

    Cheers,

    Julius

    Former Member
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    >

    > Where I agree with you is that not all moderators would want to maintain such efforts so it would be inconsistently spread - and then people will complain.

    See?

    Now you start arguing in favour of harald's suggestions, too! So, let's keep moderators out of it + on their job (this is IMHO enough time and effort as it is ...) and let the community interact - hard to complain there to anybody, then ;).

    The more I think about it, the more the idea appeals: off goes the KPI - argument (I am sorry to write that - unfortunately that is not a joke - to my everlasting embarrassment I have been present, when such a question has been asked.).

    How about the honey-pot proposal???

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    I'm irritated that there seems to be a need by quite a few people (majority?) for what I'd call ego boosters (sorry for this negative and judging phrase, but couldn't think of a more neutral description). I read too much about rewards/incentives that don't seem to be content driven (and where I don't see the value for the community).

    E.g. when Julius proposed a post of the month I understood this is as a way to make interesting content more visible to people who possibly don't read all the crap out there (and thus might miss some good stuff). I suspect that many are possibly seeing this more as showcasing a user, but to me that's not the idea.

    However, as I feel that my visions/ideas are at best compatible with a smaller minority, I can only come back to my hope, that at some point we'll get feedback from SAP what they envision (yes, I'm aware it's WIP per previous postings). Without knowing where we headed it seems kind of pointless to discuss how we get there... (aeh, where?)

    Of course I'm aware that I'm also just another person contributing to the uncoordinated chatter. Thus I'm happy to see that Mylu00E8ne keeps us honest here (thanks for putting in the effort to summarize and reminding us of the bigger picture).

    Maybe I'm just too pessimistic and a bigger effort as done by the [certification 5|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/18849] [original link is broken]; might be a possibility to push things in a certain direction. But who is willing to invest so much time if the outcome is quite questionable?

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    The best thing (in my opinion) for SAP to do now is to tell us the form/ shape how can we are expected to express the wishes. And if we can do it in the needed way, somebody should be responsible for reviewing it and provide feedback. Describing the form of data exchange (XSD?) should narrow the gap between the SAP team and the SDN fans. Otto

    Former Member
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    Wishlist (in sequence of appearence):

    <ol>

    <li> [Distinction between answeredsolved closedunsolved functionality|]

    <li> [Enhance SCN search|]

    <li> [Friends-And-Foes functionality|;

    <li> [Metrics for quality measure|]

    <li> [and information on the direction of the forums|]

    <li> [FAQ collection forum|]

    <li> [An open, overall SDN suggestions site|]

    <li> [More abuse categories|]

    <li> [Personal status of the person posting|]

    <li> [Improvement of formatting issues|]

    <li> [Stricter moderation|]

    <ul style="list-style:circle!important;">

    <li> [Penalising whoever answers basic questions|]

    <li> [Cutting points/guestifying responders|]

    </ul>

    <li> [Visibility of number of people following a thread|]

    <li> [Invention of u2018honour badgesu2019|]

    <li> [Substitution of the points-system by:|;

    <ul style="list-style:circle!important;">

    <li>[Introduction of a secondary point-system|http://forums.sdn.sap.com/post!]

    <li>[Designing a u2018recognition and votingu2019 system|http://forums.sdn.sap.com/post!]

    <li>[Considering the honeypot system|http://forums.sdn.sap.com/post!/community [original link is broken] 9111575#9111575]

    <li>[Inventing an event driven honouring|http://forums.sdn.sap.com/post!/community [original link is broken]9135164#9135164]

    </ul>

    <li>[Bring transparency to the moderator-elevation and maintenance process|;

    </ol>

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    Dear fellow SDN members, I wonder when (and how) we will move the discussion to the idea place platform. Please check it here: https://ideas.sap.com/. I also remember some people promised a blog about how to take part in the Idea place job:))

    Have a nice day, everybody, Otto

    Former Member
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    Today when I was navigating through blogs, found an interesting loop. Please check the same [http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/7425/sdny.jpg]

    Not sure if its a bug, or something. Hope it is the right place to post it.

    Regards,

    Gowrinadh

    former_member46
    Advisor
    Advisor
    0 Kudos

    Please report issues such as these to sapnetwork@sap.com. Be sure to include the following information:

    1. Userid and password

    2. PC Operating system and version

    3. Browser operating system and version

    4. Exact navigation steps (URL by URL) they took up to the point where they received that error.

    Thanks!

    Edited by: Gali Kling Schneider on May 31, 2010 6:52 AM

    Former Member
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    I noticed some possible inconsistencies regarding naming conventions, for example the term "BI" refers in SAP lingo as far as I am aware to the SAP BusinessObjects front-end tools such as Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Xcelsius.

    The term "BW" refers to the backend, therefore it is called "BW Accelerator" (BWA) (instead of BI Accelerator/BIA)

    Are there plans to update SDN according to the official naming strategy?

    Another question, sometimes I see Xcelsius referred to as "Crystal Xcelsius", I am not sure why is that, just seems inconsistent, as the downloads etc. all refer to "Xcelsius", and it never was a Crystal product.

    former_member181921
    Participant
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    Hi Andreas,

    Over the past few months we've been aligning SCN with the technology map, to be more consistent with the way solutions are communicated. You may have noticed that the pages and navigation have been updated. The next step is to update the forums structure to address the inconsistenices, including the ones you have identified. BI refers to the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio of solutions, including Enterprise, Xcelsius, and BI OnDemand among others. As for Xcelsius, its former name was Crystal Xcelsius which is why you may see it referred to as such.

    Please stay tuned for more information about the forums restructuring. We hope to finalize the plans soon.

    Former Member
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    Hi,

    I am also closely watching this thread. But I am not sure if or when some constructive actions will be taken. Keeping my fingers crossed till then.

    My favourite improvement would be to have a "closed - but not answered" button. It would be useful if threads open for say 9 or 12 months are auto closed.

    Cheers,

    Mz

    Former Member
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    How about even stricter moderation in the ABAP forum?

    If a moderator believes that a poster is asking a question rather than debugging a program?

    Rob

    Former Member
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    I don't know what tools moderators have for identifying true cross-postings, but for sure there's no automation. It would be nice to implement some simple solution to prevent truly identical cross-postings.

    Here an example of a lost soul searching for the right forum...

    <ol>

    <li>: </li>

    <li>: </li>

    <li>: </li>

    <li>: </li>

    </ol>

    Anyhow, in addition it would be nice to hear some comments from SAP about suggestions made in this thread. But I guess we just have to be patient, because the pace is dictated by somebody else...

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    That should be easy to automate such search. If nothing else you could count a hash for a message (like 0..255) and compare only the messages with the same hash if they are really identical. Or if you would like to be more precise, you can do this with paragraphs. About the progress: I got few emails that some people who can change something has read through this thread and few other comments and will see what do for us.

    By the way: Did you read my blogs, the "Tiny details..." series? I wonder what do you think about the suggestions because you´re probably very clos to me with your ideas and enthusiasm:))

    Have a nice day, Otto

    Former Member
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    You were lucky there, Harald ... the OP was 'innocent' enough to keep the topic title identical. In the last couple of weeks I have been stumbling over the more sophisiticated cross-posters: different subject-titles, identical body ...

    Former Member
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    > By the way: Did you read my blogs, the "Tiny details..." series? I wonder what do you think about the suggestions because you´re probably very clos to me with your ideas and enthusiasm:))

    > Have a nice day, Otto

    Yes, I did ;o)

    While I second your thoughts there, I am in doubt that this is the way to go ... personally I would prefer one single point in that jungle called SDN, where a 'wish-list' is centrally maintained. And yes, of course - an 'advocat' should be 'on call' on that point.

    OttoGold
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    personally I would prefer one single point in that jungle called SDN, where a 'wish-list' is centrally maintained. And yes, of course - an 'advocat' should be 'on call' on that point.

    But that will not come for free, right? You must do a little marketing around it. And maybe this way of expressing the thoughts can attract some more attention than exchanging chat messages in the forums. At least that would be my feeling if I would a manager and wanted to take a decision. I hope it is better than doing nothing at least:))

    Regards Otto

    Former Member
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    Hi Otto,

    By the way: Did you read my blogs, the "Tiny details..." series? I wonder what do you think about the suggestions because you´re probably very close to me with your ideas and enthusiasm:))

    Yes, I did and I can relate to most of your comments. Based on your blogs I can easily tell though that you're far more enthusiastic than I am...

    About the progress: I got few emails that some people who can change something has read through this thread and few other comments and will see what do for us.

    Yup, we'll wait patiently and see what comes. Though I wouldn't even mind if people who cannot change anything but know SAP's visions for SDN could comment on some of the postings made.

    Cheers, harald

    OttoGold
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    Now I am certain that this thread is watched by 4 people at least. The author, Harald, Mylène and me:)) Or if there are some more fans, raise your hands:)) Otto

    Former Member
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    +1 from me I closely watch this thread too hoping for any improvments from the suggestions given.

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    I would love to hear which of the mentioned suggestion do you support and which you do not (and why). And to get some fresh blood (I hope that is a "saying" in English, I am not a vampire:))) you could share your own ideas, maybe? Would be cool! Thank you for participating. Otto

    former_member184657
    Active Contributor
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    -:)

    pk

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    same question for you, pk. Drop us a line about your ideas;)) Otto

    Former Member
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    Well i couldn't think of anything new apart from the loads of suggestions already suggested. I would strongly support the correction of formatting problems which Herald pointed (i think in an another thread) and the addition of a new option to indicate a thread is closed without resolution.

    Vikranth

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
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    Hi Otto,

    I think you might be suprised how many people are at least browsing this thread occasionally - or following it.

    and how about that for a potential enhancement - the ability to view the number of people following a thread - not just the number of reads or potentially the number of unique user reads - but given that user guest would be mentioned a fair bit - perhaps not a very accurate measure - hey it was just a suggestion!

    Hopefully we can all feel free to make suggestions without others belittling us too much...

    - Chris

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
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    @Otto

    Nice vampire reference - with your name it must come up a bit

    [Otto von Chriek - Discworld Wiki|http://discworld.wikia.com/wiki/Otto_von_Chriek]

    But I agree it is good to have more that the handful of regulars involved - I hope that the replies to suggestions in this thread are kept constructive enough to ensure that others are not afraid to air their ideas.

    -Chris

    former_member184657
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    I have two very strong pet-peeves.

    Improving the search functionality

    Improving the quality of the forums.

    Improving the search functionality :

    This has been a perennial problem with SDN since its inception. A case in point is this thread

    Improving the quality of the forums :

    SCN has made good progress with its stricter moderation. I've noticed the vast improvement in the forums from 2007 to now. The change is simply amazing. For this I would like to credit all SAP employees and other moderators behind it for cleaning up the mess. Enormous time and energy was expended to bring the forums to its current state. But having said that, there's still scope for improvement, which brings us to what Rob says - even stricter moderator. The n00bies come in the dozens and hence a tight leash needs to be maintained on not entertaining basic questions. I still feel its the so-called contributors who need to be penalised for answering basic questions. The n00bies dont really care if their ids get deleted, or worse dont understand why they suddenly became a Guest and are not able to log-in into SCN. Penalize the Contributors and that should scare a few crows. You cannot stop the n00bie questions, but you can definately stop users from answering to such questions.

    I would also like to see more options in the Abuse Report Categories, a point stated by Thomas a century ago.

    The closed-but-not-resolved option should be incorporated.

    Zero tolerance towards thread with vague titles, sloppy effort in framing a question, offering/asking for ponits, all caps or high-priority (the rest are anyway deleted or locked).

    I want to go on and on. But I dont want to sound too grumpy and old on a Friday morning!

    pk

    ChrisPaine
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    Well articulated!

    I could not agree more on the searching.

    But I wonder, is it a good step to become a more highly policed community - or perhaps we should instead look at ways in which we can get the community itself to police the postings - as per your suggestion on alternate abuse reporting.

    I think we need to think about why a "so-called contributor" would respond to a inanely simple post. Is it the prospect of 10 easily gained forum points - if so - why do they care so much about them?

    Perhaps - a completely blue sky idea - it might be possible to, based on community voting of some kind, on a thread, mark the thread as "answered in Wiki" or some such, and thus reduce the points avaliable for the thread? Perhaps also if a person saw a thread and chose to create an answer for it in the Wiki, then post the reference in the thread, some sort of additional points could be awarded if the wiki article meets solves the question.

    Just ideas - and, yes, I realise that you can get points for Wiki contribution, and also that the more I type the more I'm agreeing with your points...

    But I certainly think that if search capabilities were better, we would at a stroke solve some of the issues with posting/forum quality.

    former_member184657
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    Back in 2008 when SCN started taking steps towards stricter moderation, a lot of non-moderator community members came forward to enforce a community-policing in the absence of Moderators. We ensured that the n00bies are pointed towards the rules and abide by it, to make seaching more efficient. Consequently we kept hitting the Abuse button, so that when Moderators arrive (from different time-zones), they can directly check the Abuse report logs and take appropriate action. There was even a feature where 5 Abuse Reports on a thread would automatically temporarily delete the thread - (I guess it doesnt no more that way now).

    While there are still a few members who help with community-policing, the law breakers vastly out-number this SWAT team.

    The points/no-points discussion was also taken beaten to death during those days. While a mojority of members including me (in this forum and CC) are against the points-system, it cannot be completely disowned. The points, is to some extent an indication of a members proficiency, making the OP rely on his solution more than the others. Case in point - a look at the points accumulated by Rich Heilman indicates his stature in the ABAP forums. But inversely a famous link-farmers 20,000 odd points is truly misleading (as are his link-farms ). So again we have a split verdict on the points-system.

    Your "blue-sky-idea" also revovles round community involvement. If the community could in general stick to the rules, we wouldn't be talking about alternate solutions. Would we?

    Yes, improving the forum search can help in improving the quality of the forums. I say this because, more and more community members are beginning to realise that they will be pointed to or at times ridiculed for not searching enough. But when they actually search, what do they come up against? A whole bunch of unrelated threads. Searching is no longer the quickest way to get info. The average closure time of a thread in ABAP General, if properly attended to, is half an hour to one hour. Searching can take much much longer than that!

    There... you made me grumpy and old for a second time today

    pk

    ChrisPaine
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    If the community could in general stick to the rules, we wouldn't be talking about alternate solutions. Would we?

    Indeed! - but at the moment we don't give the community anything to allow them to help enforce the rules - or rew@rd them for helping. Despite your indicated dislike of the p0ints system it is a very good carrot for encouraging contribution (have I just compared myself to a donkey there?). Posting "Please search the forum for this question it has been asked many times before" and adding a link to the forum rules does not gain any p0ints from the n00bs.

    Bother! I'm almost back to agreeing with you... But the p0int I wanted to make is that rather than trying to enforce punitive measures on those that do respond to inane questions, we should make it worthwhile to instead identify those questions for what they are...

    Hopefully this doesn't make you feel any grumpier or older - and if it does, then I could indicate that it's almost Friday evening for us, yet most of the other people reading this thread will only just be starting work...

    - Chris

    • as an aside - I have been trying for several minutes now to get this message past the filters that stop you using forbidden words... is it not possible to turn this filter off in this particular forum - I mean - how else are we supposed to discuss the topic without using the words!

    former_member184657
    Active Contributor
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    Posting "Please search the forum for this question it has been asked many times before" and adding a link to the forum rules does not gain any p0ints from the n00bs.

    But it does attract points from the Mods

    But the p0int I wanted to make is that rather than trying to enforce punitive measures on those that do respond to inane questions, we should make it worthwhile to instead identify those questions for what they are...

    Identfying the inane questions and clamping down those questions is also undertaken in ABAP General. For example, no basic Date questions are allowed. This is now an unofficial rule in this forum (mentioned in a sticky).

    Other questions like "Sending Mail", "converting amount to words" are also not entertained. Responders who only reply with a link and no supporting texts are also clipped.

    So yeah the measures are in place, but so are the violators. So let me reiterate that, its the responders who need to be penalised. Begin with cutting their points (this was also taken as a deterant and worked like magic) and then after a couple of warnings, straight to Guest-land.

    All in all my point is, continue to do what we are doing now with increased agression.

    Yeah its almost weekend and I feel the grumpiness receeding

    pk

    Former Member
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    Kishan/Chris, nice postings and good thoughts...<br/></br>

    I so strongly agree that the forum quality should be improved, but I keep wondering what SAP's (aka site owner of SDN) thoughts are on this topic. Obviously they are committed to improving forum quality, but at what price and what is their vision/goal? Am I the only one getting frustrated talking about possible changes when we don't even see any feedback from SAP what impacts past changes had (there should be some metrics, otherwise it seems silly to talk about improvements)? E.g. how did the situation look like before and after the introduction of limiting the number of open questions.

    <br/><br/>

    Also, if the majority is happy with the way the forums are, what is SAP's standpoint? Is for SAP quality more important than a huge user community? What if most people actually embrace the forums as a way to get quick answers from others without doing much research? E.g. when I quickly need an answer to a problem, of course I'd ask my knowledgeable colleague sitting right next to me. Nothing wrong with this approach as long as long we both agree on it. I don't want to say that this is the <em>use model</em> I envision for the forums, but it's for sure a valid one...

    <br/><br/>

    So when we talk about forum matters I feel completely unqualified, because I'm lacking any decent background information. Of course that doesn't stop me for posting wish lists and possibly rather inadequate views.

    <br/><br/>

    Anyhow, my main reason to stick around in the forums is for knowledge exchange. On top of that I'd love to see the generated content as a knowledge base to tap in and yes, it would be so nice if the search features support that. Even better if we'd have some way of tagging wrong answers (posting another reply is not an option in my opinion, because I doubt we have the time to read all this when searching for a quick answer).

    <br/><br/>

    As far as answering basic questions is concerned I don't think that there is necessarily something wrong with it. Not everything is obvious or easy to find for a newbie even though it might look different when looking from the other side with years of experience. As long as the mix of questions is right or I could easily filter the content to get to the interesting stuff I don't care that much. Also, sometimes I'm just in a good mood and feel like helping or sometimes I'm just upset with wrong answers (e.g. <a href="http://forums.sdn.sap.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9064187">here</a> I got carried away). Am I the only one with such urges?

    <br/><br/>

    I'm tempted to continue ranting against the point system, but I did that already so let me try to behave. Though I'd like to say that the point system might actually be useful if for example high score junkies keep answering any posts and people are simply happy that they get answers (apart from us grumpy folks whining about forum quality).

    <br/><br/>

    Cheers, harald

    <br/><br/>

    p.s.: No, I'm not proud for making this whole thread even more unreadable by posting another overlong message.

    Former Member
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    >

    >Am I the only one getting frustrated talking about possible changes when we don't even see any feedback from SAP what >impacts past changes had (there should be some metrics, otherwise it seems silly to talk about improvements)?

    No, you are most certainly not. I have been seconding your arguments that SAP (the owner of SDN) should show a little interest in the topic by making the next move. This could be delivering the statistics you have been asking for. But all I see is silence. This does not encourage me in the least.

    >

    > Also, if the majority is happy with the way the forums are, what is SAP's standpoint? Is for SAP quality more important than a huge user community?

    What does it look like?

    >

    > Am I the only one with such urges?

    Again, you are not. Yesterday, [I got upset|]. A thing that is bothering me greatly are the misleading, obviously false and on top of all even dangerous answers I come across sometimes.

    And yes, I sometimes also answer basic questions when I have the feeling that the OP isn't lazing about, but somehow confused or cannot find her/his way around buckets full of information. I find nothing wrong in answering them.

    However, pk - I don't waste my time here 'policing' the forums - if I am around and have the time, I hit the abuse button - but most times I don't - and that for several reasons:

    <ol>

    <li>I am missing a clear picture of SAP's on how they wish to run their boards - is it quantity or quality (yes, yes with that I am back at haralds side)? E. g.: since the word points is allowed once more in the forums, I have no urge to hunt down point-hunters - why should I, if SAP is content?

    <li>I do not feel responsible. This is neither my site, nor am I a moderator of this site ... I am a moderator of another site - and believe me, I would never tolerate there what is tolerated here. Again: where is the big picture?

    <li>I am sometimes frustrated. SDN's moderators are giving all they can: but they do not act uniformly. Could it be, there are no guidelines for them either?

    <li>Policing by members can only do so much. A couple would go around and help - but I bet, most do not have the time for that or do not want to spend it on permanently hitting the abuse button.

    </ol>

    former_member184657
    Active Contributor
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    Harald and Mylene,

    Thanks for your inputs, which are spot-on. I concur with you that basic questions are not completely untolerable. I resist hitting the Abuse Button whenever I see that the OP has put some effort into trying to understand/solve the problem. My rant is against those who are lazy enough to even frame the question right. Having said that, language barrier is one thing and being genuinely lazy another. aN EXMAPLE ISTHIS STATMENT THAT im makingrite nwo.

    I know that I dont own SCN or that Im not a Moderator or SAP looks unconcerned about these issues or there's nothing in it for me despite investing so much of my time into it. I just do it beacause SCN has the capability of being a fantastic repository of SAP knowledge. I just cant let it rot and go waste.

    So I just keep doing my bit, day-in day-out.

    pk

    Former Member
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    Mylène, thanks for the detailed and excellent answer. I guess there's nothing left to say...

    ...let's see if I'm disciplined enough to keep my mouth shut or if continued reading in the forums triggers uncontrollable posting desires...

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    @Chris: thank you for the von Chriek reference, I will use it to replace my name in the forums to become even more attractive:))) "regards, von Chriek" sounds much better than "regards, Otto" )

    regards, von Chriek:))

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    As far as answering basic questions is concerned I don't think that there is necessarily something wrong with it. Not everything is obvious or easy to find for a newbie even though it might look different when looking from the other side with years of experience. As long as the mix of questions is right or I could easily filter the content to get to the interesting stuff I don't care that much. Also, sometimes I'm just in a good mood and feel like helping ...

    Harald - I don't think there is, or should be, anything wrong with anyone replying to even a very simple question with accurate and correct information. If the poster wishes to respond to the OP's question - that's up to them. One problem with these post is that the searches then become even more difficult to navigate - especially as some of the simpler questions prompt less experienced responses which although sometime will "work" are certainly not best practice. (Eg. example of accessing SAP "unreleased" framework classes to retrieve value which in given framework should not be avaliable - URL of current WD session for example.)

    I do find irritaing some posts where the OP has obviously little or no experience in the field and is asking the community to tell them in a step by step manner how to achieve the result that they have been requested to produce. Clear cases where the OP should take a little initive and go through the examples and tutorials ( eg: [very simple concept explained in detail|] - in this case I marvel at the responses - the respondent must have bene a primary school teacher in a past life with that level of patience). Again I should ask myself, why get upset? - the two people involved in the discussion were both obviously happy to be involved, and together they got the outcome they wanted - isn't this a win-win?. The reason I'd be upset is that the forum now contains another thread full of information that would be better presented in a Wiki or learnt through following some eLearnings, tutorials, etc - so the already poor search capability is further degraded.

    ChrisPaine
    Active Contributor
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    (post split to avoid silly formatting issue)

    to your point:

    ... or I could easily filter the content to get to the interesting stuff ...

    Perhaps it would be possible to have our cake and eat it if it were possible to somehow label posts like the example as "beginner question" and be able to filter them out if wanted in searches - OP's could even mark their own questions as such. The obvious way to implement this immediately would be to have a "Beginner" forum for some of the more heavily used fora.

    Sorry for another length reply - I do hope that the folks at SAP are also following this thread and it is just that they are all so pre-occupied with SAPPHIRE at the moment that we haven't heard anything...

    - Chris

    Former Member
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    Hi Chris,

    Seems like we're always arriving at similar points, forum quality, searches and in addition you brought up tagging. The latter is rather interesting, since tagging is used in other areas on SDN, just not in the forums (rather counterintuitive). So I don't really see a need for a beginner's forum...

    One point is interesting to me though: *I doubt that SAP sees the forums as a <em>knowledge base</em> otherwise the design should clearly be different (I suspect content pages on [SDN|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn], the [Wiki|http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/WHP/Home] or now [docupedia|https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/community/docupedia] is supposed to be that?). Sometimes I'd like to use the forums that way though, instead of just reading/posting current threads or reacting on changes in watched threads.

    By the way, if anybody is interested in a different way of having a community driven question&answer site head over to [stackoverflow.com|http://stackoverflow.com/]. Read through their [FAQ|http://stackoverflow.com/faq] to get a quick and basic introduction, including their point system called reputation, which seems much more planned and usable than what we have on SDN (so especially recommended reading for SDN point system advocates). Also, I really like the simple layout of the site along with the structure that allows you to vote and see most useful questions/answers first (and also to cast negative votes when appropriate). Not to mention the fact that tags instead of fixed forum structures seem much more appropriate for content that often spans several topics.

    So let me repeat myself for one last time: I'd really love to see a design paper from SAP on the SDN forums, where they discuss what goals they had in mind, what design approaches they had considered, why they arrived at the choice that we see now and what they envision for the future.

    Cheers, harald

    p.s.: I knew I couldn't keep my mouth shut...

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    >

    > By the way, if anybody is interested in a different way of having a community driven question&answer site head over to [stackoverflow.com|http://stackoverflow.com/]. Read through their [FAQ|http://stackoverflow.com/faq] to get a quick and basic introduction, including their point system called reputation, which seems much more planned and usable than what we have on SDN (so especially recommended reading for SDN point system advocates). Also, I really like the simple layout of the site along with the structure that allows you to vote and see most useful questions/answers first (and also to cast negative votes when appropriate). Not to mention the fact that tags instead of fixed forum structures seem much more appropriate for content that often spans several topics.

    Hah!! They even have a 'badge' [for necromancers|http://stackoverflow.com/badges/17/necromancer]. SDN could use that one, too!! All in all that site looks good - I do not presume to understand even 1% of what it's contents is, but I like the structure, the layout (if not the colours ;o) ) and some of the 'ideas'!

    Former Member
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    What we have until now - an attempt at a ToC

    Wishlist (in sequence of appearence):

    <li> [Distinction between answeredsolved closedunsolved functionality|]

    <li> [Enhance SCN search|]

    <li> [Friends-And-Foes functionality|;

    <li> [Metrics for quality measure|]

    <li> [and information on the direction of the forums|]

    <li> [FAQ collection forum|]

    <li> [An open, overall SDN suggestions site|]

    <li> [More abuse categories|]

    <li> [Personal status of the person posting|]

    <li> [Improvement of formatting issues|]

    <li> [Even stricter moderation|]

    <li> [continued stricter moderation|]

    <li> [continued stricter moderation|]

    <li> [Visibility of number of people following a thread|]

    <li> [Invention of u2018honour badgesu2019|]

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    Maybe we could elaborate the topics and describe how it should work in detail. Maybe SDN team will not like that but will have an outline about what is needed, how long will it take to implement it and what are the reasons for the certain details to have. We could even estimate how much would it take to implement for us. We all are the programmers here so we could estimate the cost in some standard JSP, PHP, .NET. Would be better than nothing, wouldn´t it? Regards Otto

    marilyn_pratt
    Active Contributor
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    Mylene your wishlist TOC is excellent compilation of many of the ideas raised here by other community members. Thanks for doing that diligence and consolidating and linking. We for our part are also evaluating how to make the process of idea exchange, evolution, implementation more structured and transparent.

    I'd have to do a bit of archeology and pinging of fellow colleagues and ex-colleagues to reconstruct the complete illustrated history of the forums on SDN/SCN and perhaps even with all our strategic ppts and strategy contents that still might be a somewhat less-than-satisfactory exercise.. Understand that the entire website is and was an evolution. And, despite the fact that there were many stages of planning and execution (and learning from other communities and environments) a great deal of what happens here and in any healthy community is based on dynamism, diversity and density (to quote a heroine of mine Jane Jacobs) and the idea of spontaneous and sprawling growth is not necessarily a negative thing. One can over-engineer and over-structure a community to death (Read about Jacobs community theories in Life and Death of Great American cities). She is considered one of the grand architects of healthy, intelligent community growth and I think there are many important corollaries.

    To those that are concerned about the "listening" and the participation of SAP in these dialogues, trust me, best to know that we are hear listening, thinking fast and hard how to assimilate some of these ideas, raising others to offer and counter but perhaps it might not be in the community's best interest if we were constantly over-vocal or too vocally engaged in this conversation in that it seems to understand the needs we need first and foremost to tap into your community responses and opinions and yes, evolving wishlists and requests.

    Quiet doesn't mean uninterested and inattentive. It may simply denote listening.

    There are new members of our SCN team who are in the process of learning as well.

    You might be interested to see that much of what you are thinking and feeling here is also reflected in the recent Survey results which will soon be posted publicly in the form of a blog by editor Keith Elliott.

    OttoGold
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    Thank you, Marilyn, for the post. It is a nice feeling to be pleasantly surprised like this.

    I have one question: I understand the work is being done inhouse and the real-time involvement of the Community members is not probably possible. But, i hope, there is a way we can increase our changes - how can we spare your time, how can we formalize the suggestions to help the in-house-hard-workers deal with the output of the Community with less effort.

    There must be something we could do. If we would have to wait passively, stand in the corner, it would ...tear apart the spirit that has created these suggestions/ this value (for me that is a real value, even if that is not yet implemented).

    You can see and feel the potential, the energy, the time and the brains here, there must be a way you could use the energy. I am sorry for the word "must", but that is how we feel it (I do feel it this way and dare to speak in the name of the others as well). Regards Otto

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    For those who didn´t know this way of co-operation has a name, note this is called the crowdsourcing.

    If you would like to learn more about it, check the presentation here: http://www.icclab.com/content/what-we-do

    Regards Otto

    p.s.: SAP has a crowd of people here with a great energy, knowledge and enthusiasm here and needs to learn how to utilize it

    pp.ss.: also check this one: http://www.asset-sbit.nl/images/stories/ego/jaargang9_editie2/ego_jaargang%209_editie%202_artikel%20...

    Edited by: Otto Gold on May 11, 2010 3:01 PM

    Edited by: Otto Gold on May 11, 2010 3:14 PM

    marilyn_pratt
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    The must is an imperative for us as well. I'm fairly confident you will soon see a platform for ideas more publicly exposed but before that happens, we here on the SCN team also need to be confident that such a mechanism is properly resourced, engaged with and implemented in a way that will be satisfactory and productive to both sides (community and SCN team). At the moment I am left saying thanks to all of you here for your drive and determination to push the must forward positively and assure that suggestions here are not only viewed but being incorporated into that strategy that Mylene asked about in a previous part of the thread.

    former_member181931
    Contributor
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    Hi everyone,

    I've been listening as well, as part of the SCN Collaboration Team. I am one of the new members that Marilyn mentions so yes, I am still learning! And I appreciate all your comments in this forum and the thread, it helps me understand the community needs better.

    A couple of comments from my side:

    - We listen to all the suggestions given by the Community and take the time to discuss them internally, evaluate their priority and then we make a formal request to IT for a new feature or an enhancement. This takes some time and sometimes, it's true, we have to prioritize. Sometimes as well, changes can be part of a bigger project and that leads us to rethinking the overall picture

    - An example of us listening and taking action: I recently found out about the limit of characters in the forums and want to see if it is possible to increase the number of characters allowed. I've taken this to the team and we will contact IT to find out if the circumstances have changed, if we can increase the limit without burdening our servers too much.

    - I would like to repeat here that we see the upcoming Idea Place as a good platform to collect ideas from the community, in a structured way, and to act on them and provide feedback back to the community.

    - Yes we have moderator guidelines and moderators have the possibility to interact with each other, on a private forum, to exchange tips, best practices, ask questions, etc. There are already doing a great job for content quality and abuse management, I think we can thank them for that.

    - About the ability to see how many people follow a thread, what would be the value for you? I mean, if you don't see if it's SAP people or other, what does it bring to you? Doesn't the number of views give you an indication of the attention given to the thread? I am trying to understand the request here.

    - I saw you comment on abuse categories, could you maybe specify here what additional categories you would like to see? And hopefully the words will not be filtered by the system...

    Thank you for engaging with us and for your help to improve the forums.

    Laure

    Edited by: Laure Cetin on May 13, 2010 9:38 PM

    Former Member
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    Hello Laure,

    Great to see that members of the official SCN team are directly interacting with the forum members for suggestions and improvements and thank you for providing the examples of the steps being taken for the suggestions given. I think you missed to give feedback on one of the other main suggestion which has been going rounds for quite sometime. The addition of the new option to close a thread as unanswered. Any decision or outcome on that yet?

    Vikranth

    former_member181931
    Contributor
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    Hi Vikranth,

    We raised this point within the team a while ago, and we started discussing a way to have these questions answered.

    Because the purpose is to find an answer to your question, right? We don't want the question to be flagged "couldn't be answered" and fall in the "[oubliette|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oubliette]", which in French literally means "forgotten place". I'm not talking about torture here , the expression in French means that once in the oubliette everyone forgets about you and you're basically lost.

      • BTW [Rob Burbank blogged about forum questions |http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/17662] [original link is broken];yesterday: asking the right question will give you a better chance to have your question answered I haven't read all of it but will do later today. **

    We haven't come to a conclusion and need to do a follow up. I think I will restart the topic with the team, let's see what they will say about this. I'll keep you all in the loop

    Laure

    OttoGold
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    Because the purpose is to find an answer to your question, right? We don't want the question to be flagged "couldn't be answered" and fall in the "oubliette",

    This is not necessary. You play play around with such threads.

    Examples:

    1) a space (forum??) accessed from any forum, where all such questions will be moved. Answering question from this void would be challenging. People like us (the enthustics:)) could try to answer the questions without caring where did the question come from (what forum).

    2) could be challenging like you can get double points by answering the question or something. or any other mechanism that would... indicate one is active in this particular area (like a contrbutions tab for this purpose)

    3) or any other ways the people could come us. Well, guys (girls), what do you think?

    Regards Otto

    Former Member
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    Hi Laure,

    We raised this point within the team a while ago, and we started discussing a way to have these questions answered. Because the purpose is to find an answer to your question, right? We don't want the question to be flagged "couldn't be answered" and fall in the "oubliette", which in French literally means "forgotten place".

    Excellent point, but to me the goal find an answer to my question is not only applicable to questions that I posted, but also to the ones that I didn't post yet. So let me hijack the thread once more...

    I'd prefer if we look beyond the needs of the original poster and also consider that the lifetime of a thread goes beyond the time where people actively post to it. What arguments speak against considering the forums as a <em>knowledge base</em>?

    For a knowledge base any feature that allows us to identify and retrieve valid information quicker (and mark wrong/outdated information) is useful. I know I'm belaboring old points, but I like to point again to the [stackoverflow site|http://stackoverflow.com/], which has many interesting features that support the knowledge base aspect:

    <ul style="list-style:circle!important;"><li>Possibility to vote on questions/answers and different sorting capabilities to make finding the proper information easier</li>

    <li>Tags instead of fixed structures to account for the fact that questions are often in more than one category (e.g. like it's done already for blogs)</li>

    <li>A more useful point system, yet full open access (e.g. I think it's great to keep the site open by allowing anybody to post, but having [some features only available to more seasoned users|http://stackoverflow.com/faq]; and of course much more like the [bounty|http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/01/reputation-bounty-for-unanswered-questions/] feature...). As a sidenote, if SAP would really want to make this more of an expert forum, why don't they limit posting questions to users with a certain minimum number of points? (I personally prefer "open" sites, but that's just me.)</li>

    <li>Consider editing of answers without any restrictions (i.e. now impossible if somebody replied) - this would require further adjustments to keep a consistent and reasonable structure, but would be a great benefit for later searches, because one would not need to wade through all postings in a thread</li>

    <li>...</li>

    </ul>

    Cheers, harald

    ChrisPaine
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    It was a couple of years ago that I posted a question about how I thought it might be a good idea to have some sort of:

    [indicator in the forum lists that could give you an idea of the status of the person posting the question|].

    There were many hopeful replies about something to be looked at, but I still have the same issue, and same wish for it to be addressed.

    >

    >Yes, now I've got it. It would be helpful to you to have the point tally next to the author topic. Then you could decide whether the person asking the question is someone you would like to engage with. Or perhaps that the person asking the question has already answered some and has some "karma" or credit to his/her name.

    To go further from Marilyn's reply - I'd not necessarily want to have the point tally shown, but perhaps a couple of different icons:

    1) user has less that 10 forum points and less than 10 posts (newbie poster)

    2) user has greater than 10 forum post but has many more posts than points (leech)

    3) user has greater than 10 forum posts but has many more points than posts ( super contributor )

    4) user has greater than 10 forum posts and has similar number of points ( contributor ).

    (nb all numbers and ratios purely indicative - I'm not really sure what the stats out there are or whether 10 points is a good point to mark someone as no longer a newbie.) - Perhaps a flag to show that the user is an "Active" contributor which can be easily seen in the forum lists? Obviously there are some contributors who are "super contributors" but have many many posts - quite possibly because they are involved in posting an responding to threads such as this for which they would not get points. I'd not want to have them out of the equation either, nor would I want their status as leaders of the community to be diminished! It's tricky!

    Just some little simple visual indicator to show that the poster is not just a "leech" with 198 posts but 0 forum points, but is attempting to actively put back some of what they are getting out of SCN. This may cause some of the more inane questions to be ignored by those of us with less time to spend on the forums, but hopefully it will mean that those who give back - get more back in return as those that answer posts have their posts reviewed earlier by more people.

    - Chris

    Kuhan_Milroy
    Active Participant
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    Hi all, Marilyn brought your thread to my attention.

    So something which may be of interest to the passionate members on this thread. The SCN team has been brewing an idea crowdsourcing solution for SAP. Simply, the community can share ideas (and feedback) around a context. Then other members can comment and vote on the ideas within the context. A context being a product, solution, or... a SCN functional area?

    Now executing on ideas still exists as a challenge, however, the ability to see prioritized ideas will make it easier to solicit feedback from the masses as oppose to counting names on a thread. And I 'hope' make a stronger business case.

    Anyway, this may be useful for the type of feedback shared in this thread. I'll follow-up with Marilyn and the SCN collab. team but feel free to share your thoughts.

    Here is a bit of a leak...[http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/18885] [original link is broken];

    Cheers

    Kuhan

    OttoGold
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    I would like to know the details about the Idea Place. Looks like that is a face to face things. Or is it a introductory meeting and the Idea Place will be a part of SAP web pages? Would be great to elaborate. Just in case this is a secret before the show on SAPPHIRE, can we expect to read a blog or two about it? Like what was the SAPPHIRE experience and what will come next? Thank you for the initiative, this can move us all forward with a lightspeed. Regards Otto

    Kuhan_Milroy
    Active Participant
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    Hi Otto, yes more will come after SAPPHIRE. The site will allow a SAP product/solution/service/community manager to host a topic area that they wish to solicit feedback on - e.g. CRM Marketing or Crystal Reports. The site will grow organically, so to start we will have a few teams on board and add to it overtime. My next blog will be post SAPPHIRE but I may squeeze a mentor meeting in before hand if I can get them.

    Per your comment on light speed, I do want to clarify that the site is a way to solicit ideas, comment and vote in a central place. The teams that manage a context area still need to have the ability to execute on them. If a team has too many ideas and is catching up in developing them, they may not find a benefit for the site.... yet.

    Cheers

    Kuhan

    OttoGold
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    Thank you for some more details!! I am looking forward to hear more and maybe try that myself one day. I hope your SAPPHIRE show will be a big success and other people will like the idea od Idea pl. as well.

    But looks like (from your "job description" and the example about the CRs) it starts for BO, is that right? Is there any schedule or a list of teams which will participate? I am especially interested in any SAP topics and think I am not the only one here. Of course any use for SDN would be cool, but I can understand this is about the money and people:)) And you can find both in SAP. By the way, is it your idea or how it is connected with the mentor meetings?

    Oh my, looks like I must stop it now or ask another zillion questions:)) Thank you, Otto

    p.s.: I am afraid that is the little journalist in me:)) Sorry

    Edited by: Otto Gold on Apr 27, 2010 8:53 AM

    Kuhan_Milroy
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    Hi Otto, well 'SAP BusinessObjects' is a past life. I now head up the SCN Solution Management Office and the Idea Place initiative on SCN. We will have a mix of SAP teams to start and do intend to grow. Great to see your enthusiasm. I will announce more later and aim to answer your questions.

    Cheers

    Kuhan

    Former Member
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    My thoughts on the matter at hand:

    Giving posters the opportunity to mark a question as u201Csolvedu201D when it really isnu2019t and allowing only ten open threads at a time was done for two reasons:

    1) It forces people to revisit their old posts and u201Cdou201D something with them. Quite often, we would have a question with many good or many contradictory responses, but the OP would not give any response to indicate which ideas did or did not help.

    2) I believe the idea was to encourage posters to show which ideas helped by assigning points.

    But this did have some negative consequences:

    The posters who didnu2019t care before still donu2019t care after the changes. When they reach the ten post limit, they will simply go through some of their old posts and mark them as solved without either providing meaningful feedback or assigning points to answers that helped. Quite often, rather than meaningful feedback, the original poster will add a meaningless comment like u201Csolvedu201D or u201Casdu201D or u201C.u201D If you follow my comments to these posts, you know how I feel about it. (It brings old posts to the top of the forum list and pushes current, relevant questions down.)

    So from this standpoint, the current system doesnu2019t work at all and is worse than before. But what to do? Scrapping the current system will leave the problems described above.

    I think we need to change the way posts are marked as resolved. Now the text for this option says u201CMark as answeredu201D. Change this to u201CMark as no suitable answer foundu201D or something like that. Change the icon that appears beside it to something that indicates this. But give the moderators the opportunity to remove this and ask for an explanation if it appears that suitable answers were given. This would be more work for the moderators, but the community could help out if a new category were added to the abuse button.

    Threads could still be resolved by assigning full points to an answer u2013 no change needed there.

    Rob

    ThomasZloch
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    Summary of my thoughts regarding closing threads (a lot has been mentioned in this thread already):

    - introduce "not answered" status in addition to the existing "answered" status

    - "answered" threads are found by the search, "not answered" ones are not found (just like deleted or locked ones)

    - moderators in their SME role can set the appropriate status if required

    - remove the comment box when status "answered" or "not answered" is being set, OP can make another "normal" post to their thread if required

    - keep the limit of ten open threads before new ones can be unleashed (in my very personal opinion three would be more than sufficient...)

    Regarding the polls, worth a try, maybe the old "more abuse categories" and "negative points for dangerous replies" initiatives will have a second or third chance this way...

    Thomas

    matt
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    I want to be able to search open threads - it helps with moderating, to find offending words and phrases. Maybe unanswered closed questions could be simply archived (deleted)?

    ChrisPaine
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    Controversially - I'd quite like to still be able to search threads that have been closed as "unanswered".

    Having just gone through a bit of housekeeping myself - some of the thread's I've had open for a long time, which were not resolved, still had some useful bits of information and suggestions in them. It would possibly be useful when searching to find that someone else had the same problem, and look at what they tried to resolve it.

    I would like, however, to have this as an option to search for these types of thread - with the default search being those threads that had actually been marked as answered or not yet closed.

    Within that subset of threads that are marked as answered I'd also like to be able to filter by those which are marked as having an answer which is a solution - and those which are not. - This would be particularly useful because of the huge number of current threads which are currently marked as answered - but have not provided a solution.

    Finally - thanks for making this thread a sticky and renaming it! I hope there is much constructive feedback.

    Chris

    OttoGold
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    I think we need to change the way posts are marked as resolved. Now the text for this option says u201CMark as answeredu201D. Change this to u201CMark as no suitable answer foundu201D or something like that. Change the icon that appears beside it to something that indicates this. But give the moderators the opportunity to remove this and ask for an explanation if it appears that suitable answers were given. This would be more work for the moderators, but the community could help out if a new category were added to the abuse button.

    Maybe double points can be assigned for question older than X and marked as unanswered, or maybe a contest of some kind can be introduced for the people who would consider reading through these threads as a new challenge or something like that. I guess all of us here has asked a question which has not been answered or you were not content about the answer.

    Former Member
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    Here are some rather unsorted and incomplete thoughts that pop into my head when I think about the forums and read some of the comments in this thread:

    </p><p>

    <b>Direction</b>: SAP owns the forums and to me it's unclear where they see the forum's future. What is their vision and if it clashes with the majority of forum users are they still willing to push it?

    </p><p>

    <b>Quality metrics/Tools</b>: If possible I'd like to see metrics that SAP uses for measuring forum quality, including the impact of forum changes like the introduction of a posting limit. Furthermore it would be nice to understand what tools SAP/moderators have to keep the forums clean (as I'm assuming that people in this thread are posting because they are concerned about the forum quality).

    </p><p>

    <b>Approach for improving forum quality</b>: I think this truly asks for a <em>moderator</em> willing to go through suggestions and summarizing them in a prominent spot. Why do we need to waste the time of so many people when one person could make our life simple and foster discussions (I'd expect SAP to step in here)? The approach I've seen so far seems to be outside any good practice that we use in our real life projects...

    <br style="margin-bottom:0.7em;"/>

    So until there is a good tool in place with voting capabilities I think the least we can do is properly summarizing suggestions.

    </p><p>

    <b>Noise level in forums</b>: This is in my opinion the main problem and we'd somehow need to ensure that people would do some research before posting (and beginner's questions are completely acceptable if they did their research and got stuck). As this is probably impossible, ideally I could somehow define myself what noise is (e.g. like training my e-mail spam filter) or which people I trust (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust">web of trust</a> concept), but I think that's most likely not realistic.

    <br style="margin-bottom:0.7em;"/>

    However, maybe we could have a definition of <em>trusted</em> users and the ability to only read postings from <em>trusted</em> users (display filter). As a starting point moderators are defined as trusted and then a certain number of <em>trusted</em> users can certify other users as <em>trusted</em> upon request (needs obviously some queue). Key point for marking users as <em>trusted</em> should be a certain number of postings with clear ability/will to do some research. Obviously our interpretations are subjective, but I think it would be worth a try along with a proper <em>abuse-report-process</em> for allowing to remove <em>trusted</em> status.

    <br style="margin-bottom:0.7em;"/>

    This way we'd still have an open forum, but would give at least some control back to filter out noise for those who'd like to skip the silly questions.

    </p><p>

    <b>Expert status/forum points</b>: I don't think we should attempt to judge expertise by forum points (I discard this as silly until somebody proves me wrong). It's ok to display forum points, but let's not start to grade users via some icon by their points. I think we're basically looking for a measure of accuracy of the information presented based on the trustworthiness of the poster (tough one, see my comments above).

    </p><p>

    <b>Leeches</b>: Not sure why this keeps coming up. I'm reading the forums for expanding my knowledge and understanding of SAP applications. If somebody keeps asking <em>good/interesting questions</em> without answering questions from others, that's completely ok. So instead of introducing silly question-versus-answer-posting comparisons I'd like to say that the emphasis should be on ensuring that <em>people post good/interesting questions and do their research before posting</em>.

    </p><p>

    <b>Dumbed down search</b>: A proper search should give me the option to search for threads with different status, i.e. answered, unanswered, closed, etc.; there is absolutely no need for some forced suppression of thread categories. So please refrain from designing applications that assume to know what the user wants and needlessly limit the user to that expectation. User-definable default settings for searches are a very good option though...

    </p><p>

    <b>@Kuhan</b>: Thanks for giving the reference to the <em>idea place</em>. I guess there's no much to say from our side without some further details, so let's wait and see...

    </p><p>

    Cheers, harald (and I apologize for spamming the forum with overlong messages)

    Former Member
    0 Kudos
    Noise level in forums: This is in my opinion the main problem and we'd somehow need to 
    ensure that people would do some research before posting

    When raising an OSS message to SAP, the user is compelled to solution search before entering a message. It would be useful if this can be applied while raising a thread. It might help with noise reduction.

    Regards,

    Priya.

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    > the user is compelled to solution search before entering a message. It would be useful if this can be applied while raising a thread

    My assumption is that there's quite a few people out there who really don't want to search. I.e. they don't want to spend any time and simply get a quick answer. For such people forcing a search would probably be pointless, because you just need to enter some bogus search phrase and then click on create message (as in your OSS example).

    However, your example brings me back to my question for metrics to measure quality improvements.It would be very interesting to see what impact the forced search approach in OSS had, maybe somebody from SAP can comment (and show that my thoughts are too negative). For me the use pattern is pointless, as I never start any investigation by utilizing the link report a product error and instead use the traditional search for SAP notes. Apart from the fact that the normal SAP note search is more flexible (can change displayed columns, like adding category, can freely choose applications and support package level, etc.) I'd say it's plain wrong from a functional perspective to start an OSS search with an entry point report a product error (that's what I know after I did my search, but probably I get carried away with silly details).

    In general though I think it's very important to keep "good" users in mind when making forum changes. And here I'm not sure how many would enjoy being forced to search before posting, especially since they'd anyhow done a search already and the search capability would be limited. I.e. in order to get the best results I want to determine which search engine I use, which domains should be checked, etc.

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
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    Is this how it ends? Nothing again? Otto

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    Milroy picked this thread up on Thursday last week. We now have Monday morning.

    That leaves Friday and some overtime on the weekend for crisis meetings and the emergency taskforce to have made some progresss to report back on...

    But I do agree with you, if you want something done or at least rejected then you need to follow-up after a while.

    Regarding with the sticky thread for suggestions, we tried something similar in the moderator forum but it became a crows nest of mixed topics so reverted back to one thread per topic and trying to stick to the subject matter (I am also one of the guilty one's here.. :-).

    Perhaps a central thread to track them and their status would be usefull, if someone is willing to administrate it as a "registry" of ideas.

    Cheers,

    Julius

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    Harald's question for the metrics is not answered.

    Several suggestions are already in this thread.

    I think the next move should be SAP's.

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    if someone is willing to administrate it as a "registry" of ideas.

    I definitely vote for the "registry". Could you please shed some light on how this can be implemented? Of course taking the Security aspect into count:)) Have a nice day, everybody, Otto

    OttoGold
    Active Contributor
    0 Kudos

    One more idea... we can create a sticky for this topic. Anybody with a new idea (not mentioned by anybody else yet) could create a new thread, add it to the sticky and describe the idea and some variants of the solution in the first post. Next people can start talking about that and the author of the thread could "moderate" his thread.

    How he or she would do that: can ask question, can discuss with other people and especially:

    an author, after reading and considering all the ideas, can use Edit button to improve the original idea

    This way we would:

    - have a "dedicated forum" = the sticky

    - everybody can work on his/ her ideas

    - anybody can participate

    - we could create polls for the best ideas suggested what we could measure:

    a) the level of the maturity - one can estimate if the thread is worth considering by the community as a final suggestion

    b) the number of the members discussing the suggested (number of posts, level of agreement etc.)

    c) number of views of the thread

    d) any other suggestions?

    We could start immediately, what do you people think about it? Otto

    Former Member
    0 Kudos

    Hi All,

    Wow.......... I didn't expect this thread to get this much attention. It's feels good to hear thoughts from others.

    SDN Rockz..............

    Cheers,

    Mz