Community Blogosphere - the future going forward

Former Member · ‎02-08-2007

I just posted probably the shortest I've ever written, but it was necessary to draw attention to this thread and considering it's about the blogs I need those reading the blogs to see it.

We have a problem growing in our community and it revolves around the content or more to the point the expectations of what people expect to find in the blogs. Over the years the blogs here evolved into very rich technical content with the addition of the BPX community it started to evolve again into excellent strategy, theory and conceptual content - yet we have those who complain when something is posted.

Therefore until the end of this month you have your chance now to input your thoughts and feelings on what you expect to find in the blogs here. We will then take your feedback and find alternatives to the other content and figure if there is anything we can do to ensure you get what you want BUT IF YOU DON'T tell us then we don't know. Your feedback will help to make the guidelines for blogging within the community - made by the community for the community.

Please give us your feedback so we can get back to enjoying our reading and collaborating together!

Former Member · ‎05-21-2007

I know I'm probably too late but my take on it is topic is:

if what you are reading

1. is not news to you

2. feels "too junior" for your knowledge level, or

3. you just pain don't like it (etc.)

then don't read it!

Even a repeated topic can have a different twist when written by a different author. So why not just let the reader decide???

It feels as if you are trying to make this an elite club. I think you should call these postings 'articles' and not 'blogs'.

Nigel_James · ‎02-28-2007

Really blogging is about a conversation, a narrative, a story. Some of the conversations we have here are technical. Some of the conversations here are process (because we are the Xperts), and some of them conversations are musings and ponderings.

There is a place for all of this. Booting tech stuff off into tech papers I believe makes them 1. harder to find and 2. Harder to write. This might be a good thing as there is more thought involved and possibly more review.

For me it is not about the points. They are a very nice side benefit and so are the shirts and other goodies that get handed out. I think the motivation has to be 'I want to contribute to this conversation' rather than 'I've written 2 blogs. Where is my t-shirt?'.

Whatever the point system is someone will work it out and possibly game it.

Anton said once 'Blogging is a posing platform'. (I hope I am quoting him correctly. Quoting people incorrectly gets you in hot water) He's right. It's the catwalk of our industry.

So there you have it - my thoughts as this review process comes to a close.

May the force be with you SDN team as you try and decipher this all and take this community to new and more awesome levels.

regards,

Nigel James

Former Member · ‎02-24-2007

Craig,

I detected four groups of blogs:

- Technical Articles

- News

- Thoughts and experiences

- References.

Technical Articles and References can be linked to the actual Technical article area ( It is not clear to go there ) and to wiki respectively. Maybe we have to be more clear about the kind of blog or publish them in distinct areas.

Regards,

Ignacio.

Former Member · ‎02-24-2007

Hi,

I'm in the community since quite 1 year, I wrote my first blog this week, so I have maybe just a small vision of sdn and its dinamics but I would like to share my thoughts.

From my point of view a community should not be driven by "access rules" or by "moderators" but the community should drive itself defining and applying its internal rules.

I think that the main problem now is that the sdn community do not have the possibility to make its member respect its own rules.

One of these rules is "do not blog if you have nothing to say", so let's take the blog problem as an example.

First I think it's not correct to decide if someone is allowed to write a blog.

Who can decide that? A moderator? do you think this is really applicable to a community? How many moderators would it need, how much effort for them? How to define a clear access rule?

Additionally, how, in general, can you say if something is interesting or not before having heard it?? The community has to decide what's interesting!

Analyzing how it works today (AFAIK), when a blog is published the author automatically gets 40 points.

After some days the blog is reviewed and the author could gain some more points depending on how much the community was interested in it.

question 1: Why the initial 40 points?, to me it sounds like "post quite whatever you want, at least you'll get 40 points.."

question 2: How do you decide if the community was interested in a blog without any real feedback from the community?

Don't you think that the blog process could be changed into something like:

1) everyone is allowed to blog

2) no "intial" point for each blog

3) the community do not just comment the blog but also rate it, (like it is normally done for answers in threads), and members may even mark it as a copy, or as a suitable WIKI content, or whatever else (labels?!)..

4) after a week (or maybe more), depending on the poll result points would be awarded if the case, or the blog would be converted into a WIKI (by the same author) or removed(?) if considered not interesting by the community.

Obviously a final higher level moderator check would be necessary to avoid any kind of trick or "strange behaviours".

In this way everyone would become a "small" moderator, and the final result would be a unique global democratic community moderator.

Initially I thought that removing a blog labeled by the community as unuseful would have been a right decision but I reconsidered it because a really low rank in the search engine would have the same result of a deletion but would probably avoid a too strong impact (and risk of misunderstanding of the aim)

I think that this would discourage from posting "just to get points" blogs, and would give the community the change to govern and teach itself.

Just some thoughts,

Kind Regards,

Sergio

pokrakam · ‎02-12-2007

I have always found the SDN version of 'blogs' a bit different to the rest of the net's view on what a 'blog' is. This has always bothered me, but not overly so. I think many of the Quality Blogs such as Thomas Jung's developer journals, various FAQs etc should really be "Technical Articles".

I am not really trying to suggest a new category, I think that's where we are trying to head with the Wiki. The problem is that there are 40 points awareded to a technical article / howto published as a blog (incorrectly in my view), and 40 points awarded to someone's musing on technology. As has already been pointed out, much of the disputed blogs are really blogs in the true sense, such as you'd find on blogspot.com etc.

I would really see the distinction between blogs (in the rest of the net sense) and howtos + technical articles (what SDN called 'Blogs') made clearer. By all means lets move the techie knowledge stuff to the Wiki.

Just my thoughts,

Mike

Former Member · ‎02-11-2007

Let me first comment on the <a href="/people/tarun.telang2/blog/2007/02/08/widgets-for-sap-applications-on-mobile that has triggered it and that Craig has chosen to insist as being good enough for SDN and quoted in this thread earlier.

- Since we are minding the language here, I would stop at saying the blog was ‘superficial’. Ofcourse others can think otherwise. That is why there is a ‘comments’ section, where one can opine. And I should also mention that content has since been added to the blog in case you are checking it out only now.

- If it was ‘creative’, I would think people on average get such creative ideas once every 243 seconds. Yes, I am being sarcastic, can’t help, my apologies.

- If it was about widgets, how?

- If it was about possibilities, suffice to say there are already applications(widget or not) running in real-life where people are transacting with the back-end ERP system using the cellphone. Long time back(probably close to last century end) SAP released webconsole which could be used to run SAP mini-apps over internet-capable cellphones, and it is still around. My company did a case-study presentation in TechEd in 2005 on a credit-line check application that customer ran on blackberry (not a widget I admit, but then this blog was only so much about widgets anyway).

- If it was about this once in a lifetime event called iPhone, S(D)N is still not a proper place for it I would think.

All I can think of in defense of this blog was the appeal it might have for people who get excited with the buzzwords and/or iPhone. Nothing wrong with it, same as nothing wrong with people who are not and say so.

Now, back to what this thread was for:

- I think SDN is doing a great job. A growing community has to be a chaotic community. We need to see the comments on blogs in this respect. I would say SDN publishing this or any other blog is perfectly ok. Someone commenting it is not worth SDN shall also be ok in the same vain.

- Moderators have final say on what gets published. We shouldn’t bug them about it. But we should be able to say what we think of it in the comments section. If it gets acrimonious, moderators can step in. Let there be a guideline to not contact moderators just to say a blog is not worthy of SDN. Moderators also need to learn to 'ignore' such communication if it still comes to them.

- A subjective piece is bound to get subjective comments. Earlier, most blogs were how-tos, and the comments accordingly found objective faults in them if there were any. Now, you have people talking about ideas, where it is bound to trigger opinionated subjective comments from others. It is inevitable, and it is not wrong. Over-moderating it would be pointless.

- Do not compare no of blogs while analyzing the acrimony on blogs page, compare no of readers. Earlier, say there were 5000 readers and say 1 negative comment per 10 blogs. If you extrapolate it to 100000 readers, you should expect 20 negative comments per 10 blogs. You need to analyze whether situation has really gone worse, or whether you are ignoring some parameters. It could be that what you need to look at is increasing the no of moderators. (I think in Freakonomics or some other recent book, there was this study that said that any feeling of group connection or community is lost once the size of entity is more than 160 people. If you go by it, to have a cohesive community you need at least one facilitator per 160 people by this account.).

- As an interim measure, you can let the blogger moderate the comments. He/She can approve comments before they appear on S(D)N. This way commenter would anyway have communicated his/her opinion to the blogger, and you would still not have the negativity that you are trying to avoid. It may make blogs less interesting though.

- Any mechanism that makes a ‘good’ blog stay longer on the main page would be a good idea. I had given <a href=" suggestions</a> in an earlier thread in this regard, one might look at similar methods to make sure we get the blogs we like. This way, blogs page can stay as it is, however the blogs not appreciated would disappear faster (maybe you can have a top-n blogs of the week at the top followed by the most-recent list). Most-recent list in my opinion is something that should be persisted with.

Lastly, I understand a 'community evangelist' may at such times feel as being in the most thankless job in this world, but it is not so. S(D)N and its blogs page are hugely successful, and regardless of some turbulance in comments section at times, blogs, bloggers and the S(D)N team have been of tremendous value to all members. It is human nature to complain vociferously but appreciate silently (at least I am so).

cheers,

Former Member · ‎02-09-2007

Please do not remove the "Most Recent" list. I am also one of those morning coffee guys.

Former Member · ‎02-09-2007

Before I provide whatever inputs I might have, I would like to point out the following in your blog entry-

Over the years the blogs here evolved into very rich technical content with the addition of the BPX community it started to evolve again into excellent strategy, theory and conceptual content - yet we have those who complain when something is posted.

(the highlighting is mine)

It seems to insinuate that folks who are complaining are complaining even when something (that is rich technical content, or excellent strategy, theory or conceptual content) is posted.

I complain - in comments on blogs. I think comments are meant to provide feedback to the blogger even if negative. And I think your statement above is biased. Somebody asking for honest inputs shouldn't already be taking positions I would think. I do hope you didn't mean to convey your disapproval of 'complain'ers with this.

former_member181923 · ‎02-09-2007

Petr/Nigel -

It comes down to the questions of:

1) what outward face does SAP want to present on the main SDN page?

2) how do non-SAP developers perceive the scope of their responsibilities to SAP and SDN

I think these two questions should govern the discussion - not navigational issues. Once consensus is reached (ha-ha) on the answers to questions (1-2), I'm sure Craig and his team are more than competent to resolve any resulting navigational matters.

Regards

djh

former_member181923 · ‎02-09-2007

Take what Mark Finnern calls the "how-to" blogs off the main blog page and list links to them in a "sticky" index post at the top of each Forum.

Posters would still get the 40 points for these "how-to" blogs, but ... ...they would not clutter up a main page that should demonstrate the strength of SAP by showcasing the fact that SAP is courageous in its willingness to encourage diversity of opinion within its development community.

This is not at all a "knock" on "how-to" blogs - I find many of them useful and I keep my own list of links to the ones I think I will be able to use in the future.

I just don't think they belong on the main page and could more easily be accessed via the "sticky" Forum indices as outlined above.

Plus, of course, this approach would remove the distressing "cheer-leading" and "preaching to the choir" which now sneaks into what seem to be "how-to" posts on the surface ...

Regards

djh

petr_solberg · ‎02-09-2007

Craig,

please please please please under no circumstances, please do NOT do this:

'One thought we had was to remove the "Most Recent Blogs" view and not show them - only the individual topic areas.',

selfishly speaking only for myself, I have a routine, of every morning for 15 minutes with a coffee checking the newest blogs in the blogs section to see if there is anything of interest for me.

By having all newest blogs horizontally across components in one vertical list enables me to see where I got to yesterday morning and read up through the list and see if there are any new blogs relevant to the components that are in my technical orbit.

If you do what you suggested above,

''One thought we had was to remove the "Most Recent Blogs" view and not show them - only the individual topic areas.'',

people like me will have to navigate between vertical components blog areas and that will be both time consuming and inconvenient.

Many thanks for giving consideration to this feedback and no hard feelings from the last time we were in contact re: PHP and SAP

Thanks,

Petr.

Former Member · ‎02-09-2007

I spend most of my time on the SDN blogs.

I hate to suggest yet another way to categorize things because this is so hard to moderate as it is, but perhaps categorizing blogs by high level such as like what Craig has mentioned is a good idea. These might include

1. Personal Experiences

2. Theories, Ideas and Concepts

3. Strategies

4. Marketing and Product Releases

I enjoy the real world examples the most.

What I least enjoy are "consulting" type blogs that contain inaccurate information. I think that this does a disservice to all community members. I know this goes against the idea that we are an open community but I think that SAP still has some responsibility that information being shared is accurate. Especially since a majority of the community does not comment when something is incorrect.

As a customer that is moving from the R/3 world to ERP and Netweaver, there are many challenges. In the world of Netweaver the first place I go for information is SDN. If I read a "consulting" type blog telling me that I should use technology X instead of technology Y, I want to know the following:

1. The blog contains accurate information

2. The blogger has some related experience with the technologies

3. That as SAP and SDN is doing its best to ensure the community is getting accurate information.

I came across a blog like this the other day and the only thing that was in the bloggers business card was the company name.

Perhaps bloggers who are beginners should be limited to the "Personal Experiences" type of blogs. Or there really needs to be a thourough vetting process if you are writing blogs outside of this area.

Just a couple of thoughts for the discussion.

Former Member · ‎02-09-2007

I think you should take it easy and enjoy the success you've been part of. Building such community so quickly is such a great contribution to anybody involved in the SAP world. Especially on the technical side of the SAP world.

In most cases the quality of content ranges from acceptable to great. Now there're exceptions and SDN should treat them as such. Don't make the mistake to drastically change a system that works to address few situations. But if you believe the system is that bad, well maybe i should try to look at it through your eyes.

I don't think the community should be policing. Let freedom be and let time take care of the rest. But at the same time , SDN should try to maintain a basic level of moderation to avoid anarchy. At the end there's still more good than bad.

If I may, I'd like to request SDN to add some more serious and higher quality content via sponsored content. Especially on the new topics. I know that costs money but SAP has money, right? Sometimes I wouldn't mind reading sponsored content in this ocean of free stuff. That could occasionally improve quality and professionalism and interest...

Take care

former_member10945 · ‎02-09-2007

Just a few comments, kind of fractured as I haven't really thought this through yet, but i will try and break this up into major areas:

Content Location:

For me I'm not sure this matters much --- When i make something that is static its a blog when it changes its a wiki, but when I am looking for information, which I assume is the bulk of your audience, I don't care what form it's in. The only things I care about in that case is, I can find it and if I have a question the author of the content sees the question. So overall a blog is preferential, it's more of a conversation.

Content's Content:

If you put out dumb stuff, then you will be known as someone that puts out dumb stuff, seems obvious right? I check the "Blogs" page many times a day, if something on there doesn't strike me as readable then I don't read it and I certainly don't waste time commenting on it. I don't get everything emailed or RSS-ed to me, why? Because a lot of stuff just doesn't apply to me --- its not that it is bad, it is just that I don't care about every area. Now, if the content could be easily rated, a la, Digg I might subscribe to the top 5 blogs of the week feed or something like that and who knows my eyes might be opened up to a whole world of XI/MDM-ness that I find fascinating -- then again, maybe not!

Gross Negligence:

Plagiarism, copying, et. al. should under no circumstances be tolerated by the community and up until this point it has not been which is great Do I think SDN needs to remove this content, No. Do I think they might held legally liable if they do not -- yes that is possible, so I understand the need to expunge the material. However, I don't believe comments or community reaction should be removed or toned down. Google is a powerful tool I would look very negatively on someone who I knew had stolen/copied/derived a work without granting credit and if that is not enough motivation not to steal other people's work then, certainly no punishment SDN could levy will work.

"thinking so you will too."

-d

Former Member · ‎02-08-2007

for me it's actually rather simple

a blog that

- adds something individual/original and/or creative to our common knowhow

- and has something to do with our day-2-day job

- and, to a fair extent, respects/acknowledges other's work

is well worth to be published.

with respect to this categorization

- I liked today's blog about the iPhone with the SAP widget on it (creative) even though I am bored with the general iPhone hype

- I disliked today's XSD blog, because it lacked originality and empathy for the topic presented

- I appreciate beginner's blogs, even if I consider them to be very trivial or if similar content has already been blogged,as long as I get the feeling that the author adds some kind of personal experience or perspective

- I can't stand advertorial blogs like the notorious BUSINESS ONE LANDING PAGE .... crap; this definitely belongs elsewhere(marketplace, forum, ....); I get really angry imagining each SAP 'component' announcing their translation to the 26th language in the blog space

Actually, I am no peer reviewer or judge. Just a user. Interested reader. I do not want to have any strict rules on blog content. If I consider a blog to be unsuitable I do add a comment stating my concerns. Sometimes more readers do the same. I think this is way sufficient, the author has to stand this criticism and maybe also the company listed on her business card. Most probably he will think a little more about his next contribution. Maybe this requires from community moderators a little more relaxed acceptance of 'flaming' or a formalization thereof (thumbs up/thums down voting on blogs).

my 2 cents. anton

former_member374 · ‎02-08-2007

Hi Craig,

We may be too big by now to be able to please everyone in the community. Which means that we will have to live with the fact that not all members are happy all the times, which is tough when you are on the receiving end of the complains.

Nevertheless I like that you(we) are doing a pulse-check. Looking forward to the comments. May be we get collectively a couple up to a handful different suggestions that the community can vote on and that is the rule for the a year when a new round of community feedback/revision phase could happen.

Let the dance begin, Mark.

Former Member · ‎02-08-2007

We have the so now we need to know where it all goes.

I for example want good honest content, your stuff from your own experiences. Your real life information, things you did with your team how you interact with the virtual and physical community, how you implemented your project the hurdles the solutions!

I think, /people/tarun.telang2/blog/2007/02/08/widgets-for-sap-applications-on-mobile or /people/johannes.reich/blog/2007/01/18/who-poses-the-requirements-for-business-document-content, are perfect blog entries, /people/michal.krawczyk2/blog/2007/02/08/xipi-command-line-sample-functions is a cross between a blog entry and a wiki entry, and /people/raja.thangamani/blog/2007/02/07/accomplishment-of-tab-and-auto-tab-in-bsp-part-i is a perfect Wiki entry.

I would like to see the more technical HowTos and tutorial go into the library and the Wiki. I would like to see the theories, ideas and concepts - the strategies the effect the overall market is having -- those are blogs. I want more Podcasts and Videocasts and I want the community to speak up and share what they are doing.

Nigel_James · ‎02-08-2007

Today we had a post pulled because it wasn't substantial enough.

We have had accusations of plagiarism... some well founded.

We have had blogs that look very similar to each other.

My blogging philosophy is if you don't like it move on. Live and let live. Plagiarism is absolutely not acceptable but if a guy writes a post and you think it is too beginner or the content has been covered 100 times before, can you pull your head in and hit j in google reader?

I thought the iPhone post was a good one and I thought that guy who wrote that really short blog and then copped some flack and took his bat and ball with him was a good one.

Why are we so snitchy round here? Aren't we grown up professionals? This is not a gamers site. It is the developers network for the third biggest computing company in the world.

Kind regards,

Nigel

Community Blogosphere - the future going forward

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