IMPORTANT information regarding posting in this forum - please READ

[matt]

You may have noticed that recently a top contributer has disappeared from this forum. This is because, after warnings, he continued to break the rules - so his account was deleted, together with over 5000 points.

To prevent any further account deletions or point reductions, please take care that

1. You follow the rules of engagement, that you agreed to when signing up for the forums

2. You do not reply to posts with just a link or single links

3. You do not reply to posts which break the rules - e.g. asking for step-by-step guides, or easily researched questions, or asking others to do their work, or asking for documents or other material, or posting their email address.

4. You absolutely do not copy answers, or portions of answers from anyone else, except small parts, with attribution.

5. You do not ask or answer questions that have been asked many times. A little search should verify this

6. Do not ask for or offer points

If you spot anyone breaking these rules, please hit the abuse button (the little triangle), to notify the moderators. Please note, this is directed at a small minority of users. Thankfully, most members abide by the rules, and do not harm the forums.

Thank-you for your understanding and cooperation

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

due to the current demands: bump

[Former Member]

thanking you for suggestion guru.

[matt]

Bump for a new audience.

[Former Member]

Yeah. It is worth the time to read about guest-o-blaster on SCN Urban Dictionary

[matt]

So, why shouldn't you post just links or copy and paste from elsewhere? It helps the person asking the question, doesn't it? Well, in the short term, it does. But consider the following:

1. The asker never learns to search for themselves - which is an important skill to have as a SAP professional.

2. The forums become full of links

3. The forums don't have any original information - ending up being a copy of SAP help or sapinfo etc.

4. The forums are full of the same questions.

5. Points 2-4 mean that it becomes more difficult to use SCN as a knowledge base to find answers when you've got a problem 6. Points 2-5 mean that real expert gurus often don't want to be part of SCN.

7. An article copied from another website may well break copyright law, and mean SAP (and you !) can be sued.

[Former Member]

Well I am a bit puzzled by this requirement: "You do not ask or answer questions that have been asked many times" as after trying hard to search previous answers to address my issue I am about to give up as I can't find a way to search (if there is a way then is very well hidden) - very disappointing as this used to be a good source of information

[JL23]

you can even use google to search in scn.

enter your search words followed by site:scn.sap.com

if it is a basic question then you certainly find it with answers. if you dont find question and answer, then  you can certainly ask the question.

But if you read the replies to most basic questions here in the forum, then the reply has a link to another discussion. This just proofs that one has not searched enough and others were able to find the answers easily.

[Former Member]

I completely agree with this. The search feature is not very user friendly. It has too many filters and is cumbersome to use. sapfans has a better search feature and thats a much smaller site.

The other issue I have is the quality of answers which some of the so called experts give. It seems as though they dont bother to read and understand the question and just type something up. This shoudl be something the moderators should look at as well. If someone has a habit of giving irrelevant answers they should be docked too. This falls in the same category as copy pasting old answers or help links.

[JL23]

Many things are done which cannot be seen by the majority. Rejections of answers happens too. Direct contact in repeating cases of giving wrong answers is made too.

But it is primarily the task of the OP to clarify that the question was not correctly understood.

[Former Member]

Hi Elisabeta,

I have this url Google Custom Search- SAP Community Network Search saved as a favourite, which is often better at finding content than the SCN search itself, however I don't think anyone would argue the current SCN search feature works very well - it needs massive improvement.

One of the ways to help improve the search function is to improve the quality of content that is actually going into SCN, hence Matthew's initial post.

Cheers,

G.

[Former Member]

This message was moderated.