How to contact moderators?

[monika_eggers]

How can I contact the moderators, or the particular moderator who deleted my post and only sent the generic notification "Please see the Rules of Engagement for more information on why content is rejected", when I can find exactly zero violations of those rules?

More precisely I posted to this thread http://scn.sap.com/message/16014741#16014741 that I have the same problem and the link posted is not working anymore. The only thing that I can guess that upset the mod might be that it is a 2009 thread. That she or he locked the thread hints at that explanation, too. However, the Rules of Engagement do not have a rule against necroing threads! In forums where such a anti-necro rule exists, it is a bad rule. I will explain why. This thread shows up as the first search result on Google and on the forum search. But with the broken link it is useless. I could post the same question separately, but it looks like I didn't search and would probably prompt someone to search, find the exact same thread and link it or repost the old link. Also people who search in the future will get the old and broken (and now locked) thread as the top search result.

Sooo ... I would like to discuss with a mod why mods are deleting posts for violations of non-existing rules and that anti-necroing is bad[tm]. But I can't find any way, the Rules of Engagement don't seem to allow comments, there is no link to a contact form, the only form of contact it mentions is clicking "Alert moderator" on an existing post (which is obviously not appropriate here.)

[moshenaveh · Accepted solution]

Hello Monika,

My name is Moshe and I'm a part of the SCN collaboration team and handle the moderation service together with . Usually when members have issues with their content being rejected, they contact sapnetwork@sap.com (can be found in the rejection template).

It would be great if we could discuss the points you raised ( I will schedule a meeting). Later on, if needed we could add Jurgen (highly appreciated moderator) to the conversation.

Thank you,

Moshe

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Naveh,

Good that I found your reply..!

Recently even I posted a question which my team is really struggling with and with SCN being the best source of learning/help I posted my question here.

I got some replies also on it with people trying to suggest me.

But all of a sudden moderator has rejected that content with no reason provided to me.

This was highly disappointing where moderator deleting posts without providing any valid reason.

I have been a great follower of SCN since last 4-5 years and always have kept the decorum of the scn while posting any post/blogs .

going with SCN policyfor rejecting  a post ,

Points-cheating: i don't think so that this was done in my post !!!

Defaming another member: This was definitely not done ...!!!

copyright infringement: this was also not the case !!

I am really felt being let down by this rejection ( without any valid reason  ). If my post was having any issues, moderator could have very well asked me via comment or reply. I could have edited or could have taken action for my post then accordingly.

May i know now the reason for the rejection..!!

I have also written to sapnetwork@sap.com .

Regards,

Vishal

[agentry_src · Accepted solution]

Hi Vishal,

What was the question and where was it posted?  I can check to see if it might be considered failure to search or perhaps in the wrong space.

I agree that simply removing a post without explanation does nothing to educate the OP (Original Poster) to prevent similar posts in the future.

Thanks, Mike (Moderator)

SAP Technology RIG

[moshenaveh · Accepted solution]

Hi Vishal,

I'm sorry to hear that. Please forward me the EMail you sent sapnetwork@sap.com (so I can check what happened). My Email can be found in my profile.

Sometimes content gets rejected by mistake.

@Mike- Thanks for offering to help. It was posted in CRM so I can take it from here.

Thank you,

Moshe

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the reply.

My question was

oppotunity to case to quotation in SAP CRM

posted on  Jun 9, 2015 4:23 PM

In brief while creation of quotation, product was not getting copied to it from opportunity.

Being technical I even found out the reason that a product selected flag was not marked.

But don't know where in customizing we have to do so !! Or may be some other solution may be applicable to fix it

This was posted by my id in SAP CRM forum.

Nice to see my concern getting addressed and i ensure you  if something wrong with my post content, I will accept it.

Regards,

Vishal

[moshenaveh · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I prefer that we do this via Email so we can engage the relevant moderator.

Thank you,

Moshe

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Naveh,

I have forwarded you to the mail id i found in your profile.

Thanks and Regards,

Vishal

[agentry_src · Accepted solution]

okay Moshe.

[Former Member]

I had the same issue. They took down my post for asking a question. Glad I spent 2 hours searching this website to not get answers. Thanks for taking down my post moderators and wasting even more of my time...

[Jelena]

Have you checked if there was a note added by the moderator when rejecting the post? It'd be in your Notifications area under Actions button (top right corner).

I doubt it was done for just asking a question. It could've been for a) asking the same question that's already been answered many times on SCN; b) adding your question to someone else's discussion. The latter is now expressly forbidden by the ROE. But, if I may point out, you chose to ignore the rule here by adding a question to this post from last year.

Sorry if you feel that adhering to SCN ROE is "waste of time", but the rules apply to all the community members.

[monika_eggers]

Yeah, it's a mess and it's getting worse.

[agentry_src]

Hi Colin,

This is not to address your dissatisfaction with the Rules of Engagement, but using SCN Search, while not quite worthless, does have serious deficiencies particularly with phrases and more complex searches.  I recommend that you use a Google Custom Search at all times instead of the SCN Search.  It does a much, much better job both finding the right content and determining the order/relevance of the search results.

Regards, Mike (Moderator)

SAP Technology RIG

[suryha_nallamothu]

Its Really good and helpful

[JL23]

It was me and I explained my view in 2 Blogs.

[monika_eggers]

Well, as you can imagine, nobody is following your blogs to find out what rules individual mods think up. So as long as your view has not made it into the rules of engagement, you should refrain from imposing your view when applying the rules. Also, maybe there is no way to send another notification besides the standard one that links to the rules, but you can still send messages separately from that. A link to the rules which does not contain a reason for deleting the post with the message "Please see the Rules of Engagement for more information on why content is rejected" is kind of problematic. So please send a message in addition.

Also, does the forum software not enable you to split threads? Most forum software does, but I guess this one doesn't, then.

Now let's look at the reasons you give.

"Please do not reopen old questions, especially not with just "I have the same problem". This doesn't tell anything. If the discussion was marked solved, then existing answers should help you too. If not, then it can't be the same problem." => This does not apply here. The marked-correct answer only provides a link and the link does not work anymore, as I pointed out in the response I wrote.

"Better create an extra discussion, mention there the old discussion ..." That is your opinion. Your opinion is wrong and I'm going to tell you why. It basically breaks the search. The old post (not this one specifically, any old post) has the high ranking (which is why the asker found it in the first place). Adding another link to it will just increase the search rank of the old post, which must have been either incomplete or wrong or not considering all the possibilities things can go wrong or the answer changed in a new version. The next person searching will again just find the old post, following your advice open another thread for the same problem and so on.

"A discussion which is already marked solved does not attract people to answer it again." => That's a good point. Can mods unmark it as solved if it turns out a supposed solution is not a solution (anymore)? You should do that instead of deleting the re-question.

"Don't forget that you are not the owner of this discussion, but the owner gets email updates for each new reply. This can be very annoying years after his problem was solved. I was already several times contacted to lock the old discussion to avoid that people can add new questions." => Instead of locking the thread, tell them to click the "Stop email notifications" link at the right-hand side.

"Before you ask a question to the owner of the discussion, please check the user before adding a reply to him. If you click his name, then you are taken to his profile where you can see when he was last logged in. This can give you an impression if you can expect an answer from him. Don't do it if the discussion is older than a year and the user was not online recently." => I'm not asking the owner of the discussion. I'm not sure why you think this would be directed to the owner. It's obviously directed at the general public, and for the benefit of the general public (those searching for the same question again and receiving this as one of the top search results).

"Frankenstein, type F: This is actually the most annoying type from my point of view. Just this little sentence: I have the same problem, how did you solve it." => I did add more details. Like, apparently, the original poster, I did not try to send data from one transaction to the other (while all the other search results I can find in the forum are about some kind of coding that stores some intermediate results). I also detailed that I both tried going to the transaction via entering it with /n and by clicking back and neither worked.

"Whats wrong:  The question is asked to just one person, the original poster (OP) of the question, instead to the entire community. This person was often not online for many years [...]" ==> Again you claim the question is just asked to the OP. I really can't figure out why you think that. It is no less asked to the entire community than the original question was.

"If the same question(how did you solve it) was asked a year before by someone else without any reply, then the same words are not really more sexy a year after." => Actually I just had a case in the CRM forum where exactly this resulted in getting a solution (there I was the OP and someone else necroed it).

"Why did the question not have an answer? Maybe it was not good explained. Explaining the problem in other words can make it more understandable. Adding more detailed info, e.g. error message numbers, steps of execution, release infos as well as telling directly if the given answers were tested and why they did not work could give it a valuable push." => Which is exactly what I did.

"However, the person who added the reply is not the owner of the discussion." => So what?

"He is actually celebrating a party in neighbors garden." => Nonsense.

"The OP gets eventually updates by mail years after he had asked the question (like getting telephone calls from other residents in the street)." => She can unsubscribe.

"And in the rare case of an answer it is not even possible that this answer could be marked with correct answer, because only the OP is able to do that, so it stays open" => Yes, that is unfortunate. Can mods mark such threads as solved? In the forum I mod I can.

"and someone else will come along and ask, an eternal loop" => Whether or not it is marked as solved does not really influence whether someone else will ask. If a question is there, they will see it.

"Not to forget that SCN has a reputation system. Helpful and correct answers will assign points. Since only the OP is able to mark a reply as correct or helpful it does no really attract others to answer a question which is added to a question of someone else." => I don't know anyone who would not answer a question she knows the answer to because she won't get points for it.

All in all I can only find very few valid points in your arguments.

[JL23]

As I am currently only with a mobile phone i will read and answer in detail on Friday. But honestly you are asking basics, which are explained in SAP Help as you can see with this search in Google

ecatt multiple transactions site:help.sap.com

Is help.sap.com for SAP employees not acceptable?

[agentry_src]

The request for the specifics for anti-necromancing has been in process for about a month and is due to be discussed in the next Moderators round table meeting.  The idea of adding has come up in various discussions, but most recently another experienced Moderator pointed out the same discrepancy that you mentioned, that of telling people to read the RoE, but finding that the RoE does not mention it at all.  We are trying to fix that.

The Rules of Engagement do not cover all circumstances, but are meant as general guidelines with some specific items absolutely barred (like plagiarism and copyright infringement).  So in many cases, Moderators are having to determine if a certain behavior contributes to confusion, incorrectly addressed notifications of updates, or poor quality content.  When I work with new Moderators, I usually tell them they will soon come up with their own "style" of moderating.  It is fine if they faithfully follow my "style", but there are many different acceptable styles of moderating.  Most of us take a lot of pride in the level of quality measured by the large visitor count, page views, and frequent folks who have their issues addressed by folks who donate their time and effort to help, including but not limited to the Moderators.

Speaking as a moderator who also does not like necromancy as a general practice, I find that very few denizens of SCN have taken up this practice.  Usually it is new members who are still getting their feet wet who do most of the things which Juergen mentioned in his blogs.  Generally I have found that with a gentle remonstration, they rarely repeat such behavior.  I have kept the links to his documents since I will find it easier to point new members there than to try to constantly (usually several times a day) advise the member to try to stay within the rules or stay within common sense Forum practices.

As far as the Moderator tools on the Jive platform, generally they are not held in high esteem by anyone, but most of us have gotten used to the limitations and find out what works to get around the limited utility.  The notifications only work well if there is a DM (Direct Message) to the person who was reported via the Alert Moderator feature, there was a note added to the Moderator Queue item or something similar, though less often used like an email.

The problem that comes with the idea of adding all the direct communication is that being a moderator is purely for volunteers, so there may not always be time to do the extra effort.  The benefit is that the new user does get more information and is less likely to repeat a mistake more than once after shown the reason behind the removal of their post.

Similarly the branch functionality (splitting the recent responses off into a new Discussion separate from the older parts of the thread) is even more tedious and time consuming process mostly because it requires the moderator to create a new Subject for the branched discussion as well as sometimes adding a link to the original answered thread if the posted solution has been unsuccessful.  Then once it is created, the Moderator has to modify it so that it is checked as a question.  And finally for new members, the Discussion will often show right back up in the Moderators Queue if the new member is still under mandatory moderator review.  I have done it, but my preference is not to enable such behavior but for the person who does it to create their own Discussion.  I usually take the time to paste the objected post in the body of the DM, but frequently don't when the necromantic post is simply someone saying they have the same problem, but the posted solution does not work.  If the posted solution does not work, then they actually have a different problem.

From the tone of your response to Juergen, I doubt that you will agree with very much of what I have said.  However, I am not trying for agreement, but to perhaps provide a better understanding of why things may be done a certain way in SCN by Moderators.

Regards, Mike (Moderator)

SAP Technology RIG

[JL23]

I am sorry that you did not receive the notes added to the rejection, I am usually adding notes to each rejection, and I did it to this one.  Unfortunately this time the technical unreliable Jive moderation tool met with someone (me) who has quite some difficulties to moderate SCN via the Blackberry web browser on the mobile device.

I had added notes to the rejection, saved the notes, but forgot to select Reject/Approve  when I submitted the decision. This lead to the fact that your reply was still under moderation, so I selected reject and submitted the decision again. But in this case the earlier entered moderator notes do not get attached to the mail and the notification.

Unfortunately I am not able to show you an evidence since Jive does not even allow me or other space moderators to see rejected replies which is contrary to rejected discussions.

The rejected reply was the 7th re-opened discussion in 24 hours in the MM space. You are not singled out.

We are not responsible at all if an external side deletes its content an makes links in 5 year old discussions useless. One more reason why users should explain in their own words instead of just adding links as reply. 

I can as well not change the search algorithm of Google, it is unfortunately the same problem with SAP help, the 4.0 help is first while it is hard to find current most recent help.sap.com content via Google, of course it has to do with the number of hits, and 4.0 release docu is probably 15 years in the web while current docu just a few weeks or months and has not as much views. But there are options in Google to filter for the new content, or to search for content from a certain web site as I gave you an example above.

And beside of a) reopening an old discussion, which has b) just a link-only reply (not wanted today either) the discussion was c) about eCatt which is not at all a component of the MM module.

Reopening old discussions brings very often discussions in front which are real bad examples:

basic questions, link replies, link farming, asking for points, promising points, posting email addresses and asking to get material send.

I personally would like to delete the entire discussion as it has no value with a broken link. But this would remove 10 points from the person who had given this link that certainly worked in 2010 and helped the person who asked for help. Deleting this discussion would then be another reason for a complaint.

Anything else is explained in my blogs and other answers given in this thread.

I see that we are different opinion on this matter, and I do not believe that I can convince you with a 3rd blog or a 2 mile long reply here, like you can't get me over to your point of view.

As a moderator I also have to think about the few people who are helping all the others, they get encouraged to do so by the SCN point system. For those it is better to have a new discussion, where you can finally give a helpful or mark the answer as correct, instead of reopened solved discussions.

PS. Don't even try to accuse me that I am doing it for my own points. If that would be the case then I would answer all the basic questions instead to reject them.

[Jelena]

We had a discussion just  recently in this same space on restriction of "necromancing" on SCN. I agree that when it's not specifically spelled out in ROE then it's confusing to the person whose post gets rejected and also puts moderators in an awkward position. That's why I proposed to make it official and it seems that some action has already been set in motion. I'm sorry to hear it caused some misunderstanding and frustration with your post.

I do disagree, however, that necromancing is good practice, especially on SCN and the reasons were explained in my discussion. Proper action upon finding an old thread would be to post a new discussion with a link to the old one. Something like 'I have such-and-such issue and found this old thread, but it's not answered, has anyone had any luck in solving this'. Then if someone replies and the issue is resolved you would mark your post as answered and recognize the helpful answers. I'm pretty sure such post would soon outrank the old discussion on the search engines. (When I search in Google, I always look at the more recent posts first.) Also SCN search has an option to search answered threads only, I believe. So even if it may sound a little counter-intuitive (just like many things in the SAP world are), it is, in fact, more helpful to people other than yourself.

[agentry_src]

Hi Jelena,

I just saw that the RoE has been updated to address both Thread Hijacking and Resurrections.  Woohoo!

Cheers, Mike

SAP Technology RIG