If SCN was a medical forum...

[Jelena]

Disclaimer: this is fiction, any resemblance to the actual posts or persons is purely coincidental.

What if there was a website just like SCN but for the doctors? If there was, here are some the posts that could have appeared there.

What is a patient and what is medicine? Please send me detailed documents with step by step instructions and pictures.

Post dated 1452 AD: 
A: What is the best possible treatment for cholera?
B: Try leeches
A: Solved myself
Post dated 1578 AD:
C: I have the same question, how did you solve it?
Post dated 1655 AD:
😧 We experience the same issue. Can you post your solution? 
Post dated 2016 AD:
E: This can be solved by sanitation and proper hygiene. Assign points if useful.

 Hi together! Lorem ipsum something something fluffy bunnies. Pls hlp urtengly. 

I’m new to brain surgery. My patient is on the table and my requirement is to make an incision. Please guide me.

[1 hour later]Please reply urgently! The patient woke up and is now running around threatening to sue me. 

A: Dear Gurus! John Doe is here. There is a patient in my room and there seems to be something wrong with him. Any ideas?
B: Have you tried asking the patient?
A: Yes, I did
B: What did he say?
A: I can’t understand, the patient is screaming.
B: Is patient injured?
A: Thank you! I will check and revert with the results
A: [later]The patient does not appear to have any injuries.
B: There must be some reason for crying. Where do they experience pain?
C: I had a patient with the same symptoms. Check if they are mentally ill.
[few more random diagnoses added]
A: Dear gurus. The patient is actually a female. She seems to be cursing me as she is in labor and I’ve had no assistance from this forum. I will speak to my manager on how can we address the cursing. 

Hi team! Here is my patient’s picture, his x-rays and lab analysis results. Any suggestions on what to do?

Do any of these look familiar?

[ChrisSolomon · Accepted solution]

OH MY <insert higher deity name here>!!! This is spot on....but sad too...we can laugh....but it really is just this serious....in many (most?) cases, it is not so much a human life at stake...but that of a company (budget). Some things I see posted on here (and WAY too common now!!!!!!!!!!!) are enough to put a company out of business if it were not for "good" folks of SCN helping out. If these companies were a person, I would love to grab them by the shoulders and shake them as I scream "Wake up!!!!!"....but the coma...or sedation....seems to be very deep with many of them.

Seriously! What do WE do? At some point, I think it comes back on us as well. I know for fact (as I have received it!), if you call out these people, then it becomes a whole other battle/discussion that turns on you...but if enough of us say "enough", can we not stop this nonsense? I know a few (of us) already do our parts to at least to be sarcastic if not down right confrontational, but that is a fine line between "accepting all into the community" and "accepting a high standard into the community". We have the good ol' SCN rules of engagement, but seriously, the folks creating this noise and nonsense are NOT going to be reading and following the rules before they begin posting. .....but then the "new" SCN will be solving ALL of this, right?

[SimoneMilesi · Accepted solution]

I do not believe being sarcastic is the right way since sarcasm rely on humor and each country has its own kind

I prefer to say it loud and clear "study a bit more and try yourself, only then ask here" when i meet this kind of threads.

More effective, less demoralizing (for whom is really wanting to improve) and more...honest?

[ChrisSolomon · Accepted solution]

"for whom is really wanting to improve".....that assumes a lot. I find that many generally do not care about improving themselves(their knowledge) versus getting the answer handed to them to complete/fill their job/task.

[Jelena · Accepted solution]

Simone Milesi wrote:

I prefer to say it loud and clear "study a bit more and try yourself, only then ask here" when i meet this kind of threads. 

Lately I prefer not to say anything and let the moderators do their job. But, unfortunately, it seems that whatever you do it's largely ineffective in slowing the rising tide of such questions.

IMHO SAP, as a company, should be even more concerned about this since when something does not work well it's the SAP software that is likely to get a bad rep, not the people implementing and supporting it or the business "leaders" who make hiring choices.

[SimoneMilesi · Accepted solution]

So what? Close every door? In Italy we say "Gettare il bambino assieme all'acqua sporca"  (throw away the baby with dirty water) and it's never a good option imho.

It's hard, it's frustrating but it's what we have to do (and all we can do) to try improve the quality of the community.

I think moderators (to link with Jelena's late answer) HATE me since i keep notify them what i think is wrong.

Any other option? Give up? Naaah.. i'm a stubborn developer from one of the most stubborn cities in Italy: the solution we adopt is charge&destroy the obstacles instead of give up

[Matt_Fraser · Accepted solution]

I'm with Jelena and Simone on this one; I think the sarcasm gets lost, especially across cultural lines, and instead of nudging someone towards a more fruitful approach, it often just gets their hackles up and it devolves from there. Simone, we have the same saying in English: "Throw the baby out with the bath water."

As Jelena says, SAP usually gets the bad rap when implementations or projects fail, despite the decades-old record of successfully running numerous Fortune 500 multinational organizations. So, there should be a vested interest in ensuring the consultants who implement their products know what they're doing and follow best practices. There have been a number of initiatives over the years along those lines -- when I first started working with SAP, it was the "Pre-Configured Client" to start implementations off on the right foot, and then it was the introduction of the ASAP roadmap to get a rein on out-of-control large projects and standardize the plan, along with the formation of the "R/3 Simplification Group" in SAP Labs Palo Alto and the various "Simplification Guides" they published (those were GREAT). So, clearly SAP has had this in mind.

Then came SDN, and later SCN, and this too was fantastic, a great resource, but it also opened up a can of worms of people finding advice from resources of unknown provenance. Does that person answering your question really know what they're talking about, or will following their advice destroy your Chart of Accounts? Or open you up to serious audit risk? Of course, the online Q&A forums existed before SCN... witness SAPFans, etc -- but with SCN there is the official SAP "stamp of approval," so to speak, as they own and operate the site, even if they don't own all the content.

I'm not really a fan of being overly harsh with people asking questions when they are truly in dire straits and need some help. If I've got my system crashing around my ears right now, obviously I don't have time to go take a course, I need some urgent help. My first recourse, clearly, is to open an official Incident / Customer Message with SAP Support, but while I'm waiting on them to get back to me, naturally I'm going to pursue every opportunity for a quick resolution. So, if I come to SCN, do my diligent search but don't find an answer, then post my question, I'm going to be a bit miffed if the answer I get back is "You should know this, go back and study." Yeah, that might be the right long-term answer, but... I'm also going to be miffed if the answer is something that could lead me into damaging my system further, and hopefully I know enough to weed out those kinds of responses.

If the poster clearly hasn't searched, or if they're clearly fishing for interview questions, and so on.... fair game. Use the Alert Moderator button.

[former_member221827 · Accepted solution]

First off, the original post is hilarious!  It was a great start to a monday.

Being one who probably has posted a few basic questions, I appreciate a less critical take on the SCN "beginner" questions.  Being from a small development team supporting an SAP system I hired on without SAP training with a general CS background.  (It's difficult to find people willing to do ABAP work in a small town).  Even after exhausting co-worker knowledge and searching SCN for more than an hour I'm always hesitant to ask questions.  Not knowing what I don't know there are sometimes simple solutions to problems via SAP functions that I've never seen before and wouldn't have known to look for, so a question will get a moderator frown.

I do agree that the problem is somewhat on SAP's side having a proprietary system and language with expensive courses and a general lack of documentation.  Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I have a very hard time finding out what the parameters do on SAP functions without endless SCN searching.

TL;DR I understand that it's frustrating to see lazy and basic questions from the community, but the learning curve on SAP is rather steep.

[ChrisSolomon · Accepted solution]

I have ZERO problem with "noobs", beginners, seasoned, experienced, etc. people who genuinely ask ANY question trying to learn more no matter how "basic" the question may be. Bonus points when they walk you through the problem, their thought process and attempts! However, I have NO patience or compassion for those that come in as a brand new user ("glass"?), showing ZERO community participation, and post something like "Hello! I am an ABAP consultant and have been assigned to configure ESS/MSS for one of our clients. I have no experience in HR. Can you please send me a complete step-by-step configuration guide for ESS/MSS?"...Sadly, this has become more and more the new norm on SCN now.

[AntonFarenyk · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

You are a great model for “beginner”. If everybody on SCN had a half or even quarter of your attention to details and written English skills…well Jelena would not get enough material to joke about. Unfortunately, in some SCN spaces quality questions like yours are simply rare in the ocean of garbage.

[SimoneMilesi · Accepted solution]

Chris, to be completely honest: it's a steel learning curve for everyone, the experts as well the new ones

I also post BASIC questions in forums outside my area of expertise, but the point is how you do them.

If you show you already tried and got the breaking point it means you are a pro-active member.

Specs dumps show you are a lazy b******d

[Jelena]

+1 to Christopher. There is a huge difference between the questions posted by the SCN members who are genuinely stuck even after doing their due diligence and "do my job" or even "Google this for me" questions. If I cannot answer the question by copy-pasting the exact same words into Google then I'll help. Unfortunately, most often it's not the case.

For example, here you can see my own old question that can easily seem very basic to an experienced consultant (all we were missing was the right keyword). Notice the difference between my post and "Dear gurus, my client requirement is to implement intercompany manufacturing process. How do I go about it? Please guide me."

[former_member221827]

Thanks to all for the responses.  Makes me feel better about my constant research when doing SAP work. Jelena, I get your point on how correctly wording and showing your attempts/thought process.  That really makes a difference in how you are able to understand the problem and give suggestions.

[Matt_Fraser]

Brilliant brilliant brilliant! Thank you for a perfect ending to the week.

[JL23]

it is not?

You want say that I am not a mad-doctor?

Now I need something to drink

[SimoneMilesi]

Great movie and perfect character choice, Jurgen!

[Former Member]

A great way to end the week; thanks for the laughs, Yelena!

[BenedictV]

extremely funny Jelena

I am sitting here at a client office ona  quite Friday afternoon...laughing out loud...with tears and getting weird looks from people around me

I wish I could explain this to them