The new recognition model

[hofmann]

While I was on vacation SCN changed the recognition model. Now we do have badges (is the Jive forum software prepared for a user that has the icons: SAP, Moderator, Mentor, Active Contributor and whatever other icon may come?) and the yearly contest runs a little bit longer.

I still do not understanding how points and badges will lead more people do answer forum questions, to write blogs, articles or update the wiki. A badge and the associated points are not really an incentive. When trying to get people into SCN, one thing that is keeping them away is the missing visibility (to employer, client, SAP, CV, etc) of achievments done. SAP Mentor and Topic Leader keep them asking, but to get that status ... not all are willing to invest the time necessay.

Why not recognize the active contributors with real assets, something they can show to their employers and justify that open SCN browser window? Something that will really serve as an incentive to activly participate? Like:

500 pts: free OKP training access

1000 pts: free virtual classromm training

1500 pts: access to a training environment

2000 pts: exchange of ideas with SAP / developers

About the name change from top contributor to Topic Leader: To be a topic leader, well, you need to "lead" the topic. To lead it, you need to be actively involved. To monitor them and to give access to SAP events is a good idea to involve them in the real world. What about bringing the topic leaders and the SAP developers together so they can exchange experiences or ideas on a regular basis?

br,

Tobias

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

> About the name change from top contributor to Topic Leader: To be a topic leader, well, you need to "lead" the topic. To lead it, you need to be actively involved. To monitor them and to give access to SAP events is a good idea to involve them in the real world. What about bringing the topic leaders and the SAP developers together so they can exchange experiences or ideas on a regular basis?

Actually this does happen, but it has squatt-diddley to do with SDN ponits. The main problem here is how people can "earn" them and with what little knowledge of interest to SAP developers it can be done.

Quality content and particularly interesting insights is what will probably interest them more, and that is not easily measured by "Monopoly Money" where you role a dice against a wall, or the dice has 10's on all 6 sides (ponits gaming).

AFAIK some forums are actively moderated by SAP but most are actively observed ...

I think that is the idea behind "Topic Leaders" --> and hopefully the measurement metrics for this will drift away from ponits over time.

At least that is my opinion and pleasant experiences to date when interacting with SAP. It might not apply to several other forums, depending on the noise levels in them (again, a ponits frenzy problem).

Actually, yesterday was my rant-day, but I could not resist the low hanging fruit. Sorry

Cheers,

Julius

[hofmann · Accepted solution]

[...] but most are actively observed ..

I also heard this urban legend.

I think that is the idea behind "Topic Leaders" --> and hopefully the measurement metrics for this will drift away from ponits over time.

Well, than SCN made a bad choice by choosing this name. As stated, topic leaders should lead: only someone nominated by the developers should be a topic leader.

br,

Tobias

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Just take a look at the views on interesting discussions.

Developers nominating SDN Thought Leaders might have been a better idea, but they might have their own agendas aswell, not to mention product strategies and office politics

A public rating of the overall value of the thread / blog / article / wiki would IMO still be the closest match.

Log on to OSS and take a look at the new radio buttons. Someone seems to be listening.

Cheers,

Julius

[hofmann · Accepted solution]

Developers nominating SDN Thought Leaders[quote}

nice name. Let's put a badge on it.

Tobias

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I could have said "Module Champions", but I didn't

[stephenjohannes · Accepted solution]

At least the title was not "thought leaders".

As much as I think there are still problems with the recognition system in terms of how things are given, out I will be the first to admit that for my area CRM, the numbers are relatively close to how people have participated.

That being said, gaming the system is not as much of issue (due to lower traffic) and we have attempted to use the wiki to counteract bad behavior through providing answers.

My own particular areas in need of attention again

- More wiki entries(I have slacked off for a while)

- A little more strict moderation for basic questions in CRM General and CRM Webclient UI

Take care,

Stephen

[hofmann · Accepted solution]

- A little more strict moderation for basic questions in CRM General and CRM Webclient UI

That's to keep people away. But how to get them to participate in the first place?

br, Tobias

[MaheshChandra]

Like:
500 pts: free OKP training access
1000 pts: free virtual classromm training
1500 pts: access to a training environment
2000 pts: exchange of ideas with SAP / developers 

Hi tobias,

some people created Fake ID's and gaining 200 points in a single day.(Top contributor). if any one follows this shortcut, within 30 days he will exchange his ideas with SAP / developers.

i think they give wonderful ideas, which SAP developers shouldn't imagine in dream :-). may be that's the reason behind Not to implementing this type of Ideas

regards

Mahesh

[hofmann]

Mahesh,

I implicitly considered the point gaming problem solved when I thought about incentives. To make it harder to cheat, you can add more obstacles like: must have published 2 blogs.

But these people are not who I'm thinking of: there are a lot of competent consultants and clients out there that are eager to participate in SAP events (like: TechED) or magazines, but not in sharing their experience in SCN. Simply because being a presenter at TechED adds more value to their CV and employer than having 1000 pts on SCN. Many companies are not even encouraging their employees to participate on SCN. Being an active contributer won't have any impact in their performance review.

Being recognized as a topic leader - and maybe receive some special treatment at TechED, [see Laure's blog|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/20350] [original link is broken]; - also isn't always encouraging them: not everybody has the money or time to go to TechED or the time needed to collect the necessary points to be a topic leader.

br,

Tobias

[ChrisPaine]

> not everybody has the money or time to go to TechED or the time needed to collect the necessary pinots to be a topic leader.

Nor the sort of employer who might agree to send them ( not speaking from experience of course )

It's worth noting, I think, the distinction between the really high level contributors and those at a level, say for the sake of an arbitrary figure less than 2000 pinots, and the motivation of those two groups. Those who are already very active are likely to already be seeing a benefit from their SCN experience and may even be able to sell it to their employers - for them the initiatives that Laure mentioned are worthwhile, I think, and achievable. For the other group it's a bit pie in the sky and I do like your suggestions - more people on SCN can only lower SAP's support costs and enhance the product, so provide something tangible to r3ward them and to placate their bosses.

One of the things that was mentioned when the Certification-5 were busy touting their wares was the idea of expert level certification leading to the possibility of skipping first level SMP support. Now that would be worthwhile.

Alternately how about access to one SAP TechEd presentation for every 200 pinots? Or perhaps priority registration for TechEd sessions?

I'm really not sure what will happened, one can only hope that we don't get a repeat of the Idea Place SSO issue with solutions/ideas being rushed into place so someone can make an announcement at TechEd/SAPphire.

[stephenjohannes]

The problem here is that we allow consumption of content for free. Fundamentally we are never going to bring the contribution rate beyond 40% of active consumers without charging for consumption.

By charging for consumption it means that you ration access to the information and only allow further access if the party contributes in some fashion. A basic system would be all content consumption cost a certain amount of credits. You are allocated so many credits gratis per month. You can earn credits by contributing content back. The type of contribution that earns credit could be as simple as solving/answering a question, contributing a blog or wiki or reviewing content that you provided. The monthly allocation stops "credit gaming", and helps limit people using the site as a training mechanism. One other failsafe mechanism to prevent gaming is your credits earned in areas that could be abused are put into escrow and not available until review/cooling off period has gone through. The system would also allow folks to lose credits for bad contributions if needed.

However I know the above idea is not really technically feasible and also represents a radical change in how the community would interact, but I think that just changing the perks of being recognized is not going to solve the fundamental problems of participation.

Take care,

Stephen

[hofmann]

The problem here is that we allow consumption of content for free.

Besides technical problems, I fear that when you change the free access model and apply a points for consumption model, we will see really soon point selling on ebay or even create a black market.

But it's a good idea to raise the value of a contribution.

br,

Tobias

[former_member181931]

Hello again,

This discussion shifted a bit, but I find it very interesting.

First of all, yes I can imagine very well how points would end up being on sale on eBay After all even the famous, sturdy, (German) white SAP bag with the blue logo was found on eBay!

I find your question "What does SAP get out of SCN?" interesting. It is true that SCN (and particularly the forums) are a way to leverage the community to support SAP customers and partners and alleviate the workload on the additional support channel. But I believe this is not all of it.

Communication: the wealth of content on SCN. SAP Product and Solution Teams use SCN as a communication channel, and it can get very technical and therefore very useful to the community.

Feedback from SAP users: in a way SCN members can influence SAP by providing feedback and communicating their pain points. There is a lot of information that SAP can find on SCN. Is this information proactively researched, analyzed, and routed back to the respective SAP organizations? Probably. But I'm too "young" on SCN to know for sure. Web analytics are a crucial tool for that. Think about the power of this information for SAP user groups such as ASUG and DSAG who could include SCN member feedback in the ir influence. Maybe this is already happening, I may just not be aware of it yet....

"SCN as a showcase for SAP's Web 2.0 expertise"? This is not why it was created. Sure, the SCN numbers do help showcasing our leadership in this area (for a software company), but that was not the primary purpose of the site. Education, Support, Collaboration, Interaction, these are to me the reasons for SCN to exist. Do you want to add to this list?

Another thing I would like to point is that participating on SCN should be a win win situation. SAP benefits from these contributions, but so do the SCN members. Many times I have read fellow members explain how working on a question that was tough at first helped them learn and grow their knowledge, something that will help them in future projects. And I'm just talking about the forums. Do you feel that way too?

Gosh, again I am long. If you see "edited" at the end of this note it means I still haven't figured out how to be within the limit of characters

Disclaimer 1: My writing style may be "stiff" but this is not my intention. I am not a native speaker either.

Disclaimer 2: I am an SAP employee but these are purely my personal views

Good weekend everyone,

Laure

[David]

Feedback from SAP users: in a way SCN members can influence SAP by providing feedback and communicating their pain points. There is a lot of information that SAP can find on SCN. Is this information proactively researched, analyzed, and routed back to the respective SAP organizations? Probably. But I'm too "young" on SCN to know for sure.

......and I'm too old to remember correctly - LOL. Actually, this was a primary reason for why the site was put in place. The other one was the Communication piece you mention. This goes back to the dim early days of 2002 when we had the first versions of NetWeaver being discussed and Shai Agassi thought that SCN (SDN only in those days) would be a good venue for getting rapid feedback from potential user/developers on the product. The whole Downloads area was designed for this coupled with the Forum topic called Trials, Previews, and Other Downloads. It was hoped that people would post feedback there and then SAP developers would benefit from the rapid turnaround.

Communication was aimed at those working with established SAP products. It was envisioned as a growing self help market based on the idea that between the leading edge information (How to Guides, Blogs on practical experience, Forum postings, etc.) - solutions to real problems encountered by developers and implementers would be more rapidly resolved. Naturally, the fact that we were promoting this ourselves was thought to be a good thing as it would make us look more friendly (and I still believe it does).

Points were more or less an incidental designed to try and encourage a rapid growth of contributions - mostly for the Communication aspect of the site. The more material you have, the more likely you are to be helpful. A good question to discuss is whether the site has matured enough not to require this. Even better would be an abstract one about the life cycle of these types of portals. Defining the various phases a site can go through and what mechanisms are normally introduced during these phases to either induce new membership/contributions and for mature sites to retain interest, but that will surely make me exceed the character limit

[hofmann]

solutions to real problems encountered by developers and implementers would be more rapidly resolved.

Customer / user feedback that will be considered by SAP. That's a motivational asset, should attract more high profile contributors from all areas. Would like to see SCN as a (valued) feedback channel, this could be used to attract more people to share their experience and pain points.

The only thing is:[ is SCN the right forum for giving valuable feedback to SAP|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/20039] [original link is broken];? Looking at Idea Place: maybe SCN isn't really working as a feedback channel. Too much noise in the forum? Product Managers want a filter to sort out ideas with no (community) support?

I don't know how many times I talked with someone from SAP about a recurring SCN forum topic and the answer I got was: "you want to have SAP takes a look into it? Write an OSS message." Or does someone have some (recent) examples were common problems on SCN influenced an SAP product? If so, please share. Could use some good examples to convince more people to join.

br,

Tobias

[Former Member]

Yeps, I know of many.

The most spectacular to date in the security forum was an interview question which turned out to be ponits-gaming.

After the guests had left the building we carried on discussing the merits of the products and it ended in a successfull development request.

-->

There are many more.

Cheers,

Julius

[hofmann]

Yeps, I know of many. 

Please share more of these success stories. It's good to show such feedback to potential SCN contributors even when they will never have an idea / input that will make it into a final product.

br,

Tobias

[Former Member]

Okay, I will update this thread from time to time when I remember to and post some more highlights as examples as I go along.

From this week's efforts I can offer a new authorization object in place of the pestilent S_TABU_DIS groups of tables:

Some related notes are not released yet, so keep an eye on them via SDN.

SDN is great for sharing ideas with SAP and engaging in discussions when the forum is well moderated anough that SAp has the ability to listen (i.e. low "noise" levels"). However, it should not be used for bug reports IMO.

Cheers,

Julius

[ThomasZloch]

Nice...obviously you have influential SAP people frequenting the Security forum, something which I cannot say of the ABAP forums, otherwise suggestions like this would not go uncommented for years:

Rich Heilman drops by from time to time but seemingly doesn't take up such suggestions, Thomas Jung is busy teaching Web Dynpro ABAP (he only rebuked Naimesh Patel's work-around, see blog link in that thread), Horst Keller hasn't been seen since years and Andreas Blumenthal never ever, are there other 800-pound-ABAP-gorillas that I'm forgetting? Siegfried Boes and Herrmann Gahm are very active, but they represent performance aspects only.

Thomas

[Former Member]

To my knowledge the official route is still SAP Note # 11 but I cannot say that I have ever found this process efficient nor usefull. If the problem hasnt hit mainstream shortdumps yet or the suggestion isnt going to make someone famous, then you simple get ignored. This is particularly true if you are a consultant and I have even heard one customer's representative making comments along the lines of chasing consultants away and taking pleasure in proving consultants wrong. Particularly in security this "right and wrong" thing is a double-edged sword..

That is why it is priceless to have good contacts in SAP and interact with them via SDN to get valuable information and insights and feedback for all, and know at which ponit to go offline without becoming a nag

Cheers,

Julius

[harishtk1]

Received a mail from Mark Yolton this week, urging me to buck up and accumulate the required ponits to be a recognized contributor as I am apparently very close to that accolade. Therefore , I have been browsing the forums to see where I can make any meaningful contribution, and it is the same old plethora of very basic questions, and the same 5-6 people jumping in and giving very detailed answers.

So I thought I would focus on people who are already recognized contributors and answer their questions - Surely these people would not raise questions lightly without putting ins some effort already.... And what do I see, the questions are as basic as anything else... They have accumulated 400 + ponits but have made 600 + posts. the only conclusion that leapt to mind was that most of these ponits were obtained for awarding ponits to other questions.

So,only 1% of the contributors are Top Contributors, and atleast a few of them are there because they have awarded points atleast 250 times.

[OttoGold]

Hello Harish T K,

if you know any BW-IP, you can get my ponits:))

check my question here:

regards Otto

p.s.: supposed to be funny, hope you don´t mind

[hofmann]

Harish,

250 pts to be an active contributor, not to be a top contributor (aka topic leader). Posting 250 questions is also a form of being active (minimum point distribution: 750 pts).

Whats missing in the active contributor scheme is a differentiation of the points: 200 pts in forums, 50 points for other contribution (feedback, blog, article).

br,

Tobias

[ThomasZloch]

> Dear sirs,

tsts, still locking out the ladies, haven't you been rebuked by our female SCN titans already?

Thomas

P.S. did you notice they haven't upgraded your last name yet despite your new contributor level?

[hofmann]

still locking out the ladies

Report abuse -> Harassment

[harishtk1]

hmmm, Posting 250 questions is active, but hardly a contribution, in my humble opinion.

Anyway, I do recognize that it is very difficult to have a fool proof system, I just can't help ranting at regular intervals.

[Former Member]

Three recent "things" achieved via SDN are:

- SDN security recognition --> [credit given to security researchers who practice responsible disclosure|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/index?rid=/webcontent/uuid/c05604f6-4eb3-2d10-eea7-ceb666083a6a]

- Security functionality wishlist "ticket" solved --> [development request for external e-signature function delivered by SAP|https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/Security/Solved-ElectronicSignatureextendedtoLDAPforSSO]

- Security guru Dieter Goedel from SAP was shown some topics discussed on SDN and [quite likes the forums now|] ...

Cheers,

Julius

[OttoGold]

Three recent "things" achieved via SDN are:

Congrats, Julius. Thank you for the time and effort you put into this! Cheers Otto p.s.: thank you for those LinkedIn lines.

[OttoGold]

By the way: have you ever noticed the ratio between posts and points for a lurker and for a contributor?

Lurker (example): 80 questions, 6 points

Contributor: 5 questions, 1000 points

This could work like the "limit" you can see with peer-to-peer networks...

Otto

[ThomasZloch]

I think your lurker is more a leecher, a lurker would have 0 questions and 0 points.

I can tell, because I was one until late 2007

Thomas

[hofmann]

Julius,

thanks for updating the "show case" list.

Looking at: service.sap.com/rollin, the SCN is one channel to give input to SAP:

Rollin of Development Requests

"The goal is to gain a broader and prioritized view on the requirements of SAP customers globally."

Collaborating with SAP through communities

- SAP User Groups

- Customer Engagement Initiative

- SAP Community Network

As the SUGs are good in communicating the input they gave to SAP, SCN is falling short. There are cases - as given by Julius - but maybe SAP is more interested in talking with SUGs instead of reading the forums. Looking forward to see some implementation statistics from Idea Place.

br,

Tobias

[Former Member]

I dont think is is a show case. You just need to stick to it for the long run. You also need to take lots of camels and water with you

I also tried the SUGs for the development request, but it was fruitless. SDN and contact to the developers (via the Mentor program) did the self-explanatory trick without any hassles.

It just takes time to make such investments in an SDN recognition.

Cheers,

Julius

[Former Member]

>Lurker (example): 80 questions, 6 points

>Contributor: 5 questions, 1000 points

Is this mean less question and more points has always (peer-to-peer) network?

[Former Member]

Contributions via SDN have three more achievements I can report (as requested)..

All required kernel changes so it took a while (downward compatibility and imaginably strict change controls).

The UI's are what interest us though, and these will become available for the kernel functions in the next EhP's (so not need to hack or c-call anymore):

--> http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/Security/Solved-Passworddownwardscompatibilitydefaultedto+0

--> http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/Security/Solved-Abilitytoassignsecuritypoliciestospecific+users

--> http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/Security/Solved-Lastfailedlogoninformationdisplayedatsuccessfull+logon

Cheers,

Julius

[Former Member]

I would also like to assign a huge recognition to the person who can correct the markups of the quotes via chevrons which have been broken now since months.

Cheers,

Julius

[Former Member]

Two more SAP notes with new functionality from SDN ideas --> http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/Security/Solved-ExtendthevaluepopupinPFCGtoimportfrom+clipboard

Mass org. level and mass menu maintenance.

Cheers,

Julius

[former_member181931]

Hello all,

So far so good, Jive likes all our badges

I think the badges are one good way to identify someone on SCN by seeing how much this person has contributed recently. It acknowledge the effort from active contributors. I personally like them. I don't see them as THE incentive to contribute. The quality of SCN content and the feeling that being part of this community helps you in your daily job, as well as the feedback that the community gives to your content is what I think should be motivating our members. Giving back to the community for what you learned by participating.

As for the benefits that are tied to a status such as Topic Leaders, I have to say that I'm still learning: getting to know our Topic Leaders, seeing what they bring to the community and evaluating what benefits would be valuable to them. We are careful when thinking about monetary benefits. We know that the point system can lead to abuse and point gaming, and having prizes for Topic Leaders that have a high monetary value could create more point gaming. So I am carefully looking at this right now.

In addition to measuring quantity, it is important to measure quality, I agree with that. We've been thinking about it as a team and we're looking at the possibility to go toward ratings. I've been reading what others (including some Mentors) have to say and, not surprising, there are pros and cons. But ratings together with page hits would be a powerful tool to evaluate and recognize good contributions. We're in the brainstorming phase right now.

The Forums attract a lot of newcomers and a significant proportion of the traffic/activity. Moderation is crucial to the quality of content and I know that Moshe has been working with a couple of moderators to identify FAQs from the forums and capture them in the wiki in one place, to avoid these questions from being asked over and over again. Is this what you are alluding too as well Stephen?

Thank you all for the feedback and discussion, keep it coming! I'm building an extra thick skin working on the point system and I can tell you it brings a lot of hot potatoes my way!

And Julius: I don't think you ever miss any opportunity to rant about the point system Actually, we should probably declare September 1 (for instance) the "Happy Julius Day" where you would NOT complain about ponits LOL

Laure

Edited by: Laure Cetin on Sep 2, 2010 7:57 PM

[stephenjohannes]

Tobias,

Actually the funny part really its not to keep people away, but rather steer the conversations in a fashion that encourages a better quality of conversation. In other words a lot of people hesitate to post "tough questions" because they get drowned by repeats or questions that should have been answered elsewhere. IMHO by changing the type of questions asked , you can attract people to post questions that may have not have asked first. In others make the community more attractive to people who want to have expert level conversations, while providing ways for those just starting to still get the information on what they need.

In the webclient UI forum I can see some of that where we can get some great discussions about how to approach problems and solve certain issues at much more deeper level than what function module or object do I need to use for a task.

@Laure

I thought you would have read this article on SCN about the CRM wiki project by now

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/index?rid=/library/uuid/50b21ce1-87aa-2c10-d8b3-ee589f7772fc

Bingo, that's been my idea all along. If you take a look at these wiki pages:

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/CRM/CRMWebClientUIFramework

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/CRM/CRM2007-ForumThreadstobe+ported

You can see the project we have been working for the last year or two. It's a slow process, but I can honestly it has reduced or elminated duplicate questions/answers. Sometimes these wiki entries stir or expand further discussion.

Take care,

Stephen

[Former Member]

I like your thinking and approach Stephen, also agree completely about driving away good questions when the answers are of poor quality or blatant (and incorrect) guess-work.

I have done some wiki work in the Security Area have have made a "reminder to self" about a few things while reading your post, but it is quite difficult to find good wiki-gardeners in my experience.

Anyway, good post! Thanks for the "food for thought".

@ Laure: How about disabling the ponits system each year on the 1st of September --> not quite a "moment of silence" but rather "a day without noise", the "Happy Julius Day"? I would be honoured!

Cheers,

Julius

Edited by: Julius Bussche on Sep 2, 2010 10:52 PM

[former_member181931]

@ Julius haha I should have seen this one coming!

@ Stephen: can't believe I never came across this article yet. But I'm all caught up now. I tweeted about it and even reviewed the article

Thanks for the links, this is great work you've been doing in the wiki.

Laure

[ChrisPaine]

I've often wondered about the work in converting some of the most often asked questions in the WDA forum into the Wiki, but looking at the WDA Wiki, it is soo out of date and nasty to navigate, I've just given up.

Having someone who is willing and able to take on this work would be excellent - what would be even more useful is some sort of standard of how best to go about it. With Wiki quality varying vastly from area to area, it seems there aren't (as far as I'm aware, I have this strange feeling I'm going to be pulled up on this one) any really standards on how best to lay out a site - perhaps that's because that's what it being a community organised site is all about.

The other point is that with Thomas Jung publishing his excellent series of weblogs about WDA, you could almost replace the wiki with a link to his blog list. So I just doesn't seem worthwhile...

Sorry for straying somewhat off topic - my main reason for posting was to ensure I got notified about any further comments on this very interesting thread.

Cheers,

Chris

[hofmann]

Chris,

I'm not a big fan of the wiki. Too much content there is already in the SAP Help. Keeping a wiki clean and updated is hard work. I personally prefere the blogs to see how others solved a problem.

my main reason for posting was to ensure I got notified about any further comments on this very interesting thread.

Isn't there already a feature request about subscribe / monitor a thread ?

br, Tobias

[hofmann]

but rather steer the conversations in a fashion that encourages a better quality of conversation.

So, back to the question: how to get the people that are willing to participate in high quality conversations? As long as SAP is growing, there will never be a shortage of newbies with basic questions (1 billion SAP users? 1% asking questions ... still an impressive number).

To attract the "high potentials", I considered as an incentive learning materials: this can be a win-win situation. The contributor gets free training material and with it, he will no longer post basic questions. As "I have access to exclusive material because of my SCN participation" can attract more professionals to participate. As training material alone won't get them to participate (already trained, company has access to training material, etc), maybe other incentives will get them participating (webconference with developers; on linkedin they are discussing giving (payed) access to SAP training servers).

br,

Tobias

[ChrisPaine]

To come back to a point that is often raised in these sorts of discussions, and apologies for doing so, but I feel it is relevant, one wonders what SAP wants to get out of SCN? I'll raise it and try to answer it, and then relate back to thread... bear with me

My friends and colleagues often accuse me of being overly cynical, but I don't believe that a company like SAP does anything out of pure generosity. Instead there is some meaning, some motive. Why do SAP want more people engaged?

Do SAP really worry about the quality of the questions and answers in the forums - what do they lose if we go elsewhere?

Well, SAP do use the forums, a lot, out of interest I've been drilling down on the users who've been asking questions in the Web Dynpro ABAP forum, and a surprising number are actual SAP employees, these aren't the NW framework guys, but the guys building our next batch of functionality. They are learning from SCN. So SAP has an interest in ensure they get a better education.

Otherwise - SAP would like partners to be able to build good solutions for customers quickly/cheaply, so that their software isn't seen as difficult and cumbersome in comparison the competition. Again, another reason to be interested in quality, and to reach as many people as possible.

So if I consider these as drivers, what sort of incentive does make sense?

Free training does make sense - note how Thomas Jung just recently revealed all the WDA introduction lecture available as eLearning FREE on SCN. I could certainly see how giving access to other TechEd content could as you say be very useful - but ...

(sorry I'm going to have to break off there just when I was getting relevant - Wife's out for a night with the girls and my 9month old son has just decided to scream ceaselessly for his mummy. Need to be a good dad, and apparently me using the computer is not working as a settling technique...)

Chris

[ThomasZloch]

> (sorry I'm going to have to break off there just when I was getting relevant - Wife's out for a night with the girls and my 9month old son has just decided to scream ceaselessly for his mummy. Need to be a good dad, and apparently me using the computer is not working as a settling technique...)

Mine is 7 months old now...you need a handheld device that you can hold and type on with one hand, while carrying the little guy on the other, iPhone works well, just not for very long texts...unfortunately he finds the little black thing very interesting and keeps grabbing at it...

[hofmann]

Baby carrier may help

Reminds me: I have to buy one really soon ... And one-hand typing with my Dell Streak won't work.

[hofmann]

what SAP wants to get out of SCN

Trainers for their employees? I do hope that SAP is also interessted in getting to know how their customers are using their product, what are their implementation errors, usage problems and missing functions (as well as identifying new possible hires).

SAP is using SCN as a show case for Web 2.0 community building et al. What counts there (media, analysts, etc) are the numbers: 90% of twitter's user only post 1 tweet in their life? That's ok as long as twitter is used by billions of people.

br,

Tobias

[former_member184555]

what SAP wants to get out of SCN

I believe, this will never happen. SCN is resolving many issues and it is directly reducing the load for SAP. If there is no SCN, atleast 30-40% of these issues are to be handled directly by SAP when the OSS is raised. This is expensive for SAP and may be expensive for client (in future, if SAP charges more for support) which again is not a positive aspect.

Honestly, it is the members (that includes moderators and mentors also and not the paid employees) who are doing the service by spending their time and sharing their knowledge. Very rarely we see an employee of SAP actively contributing/participating in forums for a long period. I observed many people(with SAP tag next to their name) and none of them were active for more than 6 months.

[moshenaveh]

Hi Chris,

I certainly agree that an updated & user friendly wiki space can reduce the amount of repeated question.

Few months ago I've discussed this approach with couple of moderators and we agreed to pilot a process that hopefully would make the situation a lot better. We are starting to see some very positive results. It seems that more and more wiki spaces are moving in this direction.

I will look into the matter of the WAD wiki space and try to organize a wiki council also around this topic .

It Is very important to mention that many, if not the majority of wiki spaces, are being kept up to date and provide great service to our community.

Please feel free to contact me and we will discuss how you can get involved ( contact details in my business card).

Any other moderator that is interested in hearing more details is also more than welcome.

Regards,

Moshe.

[ChrisPaine]

Hello Ravi,

sorry I believe that you have misunderstood me.

I did not mean to convey the impression that SAP wanted to stop using SCN, but wanted to question what use SAP found for SCN. The reduction in SMP support costs that you brought up is an important one to consider.

to "get out of something" can have two meanings in the English language. - 1) as per "What can I get out of this situation?" and 2) as per "How can I get out of this situation". The meanings are quite different, but the language is very similar.

As to your comment about SAP users, I have had a different experience. Thomas Jung has been incredibly active in the Web Dynpro ABAP area. And if you look at the list of "[Leading Contributors|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/leadingcontributors]" in many categories (although not all) there are SAP employees there and in many cases these names have not changed for quite some time.

[former_member184555]

Hi Chris,

Sorry, If I have used your quote wrongly. But, my intention was truly for what I have expressed. English is not my first language and hence there could be mistakes in expressing my feelings and my apologies for that.

I agree that there could be people like Thomas Jung who have done remarkable contribution to SCN. But, the generalisation happens based on the majority and always there will be exceptions. When everybody is worrying about the quality of forums, it doesn't mean that the quality has come down completely.

SCN is directly helping many people like me and indirectly SAP is also getting benefitted. How long can we expect quality volunteers to work as moderators, mentors and active contributors. When the community is growing very fast, we need more people to participate and more people to manage it. Since SAP is also benefitting from this activity, I believe, it should employ people to see that none of the questions are unanswered. If there is no solution for any question, the thread should be closed stating the same reason. If the question is very basic or asking for documents, the thread should be locked or deleted, sending a message to the OP. This will definitely increase the participation of quality members because everybody has interest to spend time in SCN, learn and also to contribute.

I respect the SCN a lot becasue I have learned so much from it. Now a days, though we could see some good questions in the forums, there are no many good members to reply with quality suggestions/solutions. SAP should think about this problem.

There are many discussions with suggestions from members for the issues, problems and developments in SCN and I feel, before finalising any decision like recognition model etc., there should be public discussion for their opinions to improve the model. It gives the members some sense of responsibility and ownership to take it forward successfully.

Regards,

Ravi

[JPReyes]

Completely share your vision, and its something I have particularly been putting pressure on... I recently had a conversation with Laure Cetin regarding this particular (Well more focused on current Topic Leaders rather than a per points basis) and I'm pretty sure she's doing her best to look into the different possibilities.

Regards

Juan