A Moderation Proposal

[Former Member]

Youu2019re all probably aware of the fact that many questions in have been asked and answered repeatedly. I'm thinking of adding a section to that says something like:

Please do not ask questions like:
Which is better SELECT/ENDSELECT or SELECT INTO TABLE?
Which is better MOVE-CORRESPONDING or MOVE individual fields?
Tell me about performance tuning?
Which is better MOVE or = ?
Which is better SELECT SINGLE or SELECT UP TO 1 ROWS?
These questions have been asked and answered many times before. Please search the forum. Questions like this will be locked or deleted as soon as they are noticed.

So my question to you is u2013 Do you think this would be helpful or not? If so, are there other questions that you would like to see included or should some of these be excluded. Or is this over-moderation?

Thanks for your ideas.

Rob

[amit_khare]

Hi Rob,

It will be a good addition only if the people who are asking these kind of questions are using there common sense and reading the RULES and using SEARCH before posting any query.

Nothing can stop a person from posting this repeated query if he is under the impression that he/she is is the first one ever to came across with that query and now seeking an answer to something unique.

If those people are not bothered as of now about using there common sense...then I am hoping lot more will come with the same mode of thinking..

Regards,

Amit

[Former Member]

I'll take that as an "ok".

Rob

[amit_khare]

Yes. Any suggestion which can help in improving the SCN is more than welcome

[former_member156446]

In ABAP general we have but how many times we answered question related to linefeed, Outlook emails etc..;

There is no harm in doing that, as we already had similar things in ABAP general.. and assume it will repeat in performance tuning as well.

I am sure this would be for some time, with the upgrade of the forum ( I am not sure when ) there is a help threads that will drop down as soon as user types in to post a new thread. That will solve the problem completely.

[Former Member]

Yes - the same sort of post exists for performance and tuning, I think we need to explicity say that some posts are not appropriate and will be removed.

The FAQ is intended to help people asking questions. This is intended more to help responders and searchers (if there are any) by keeping the forum cleaner.

Rob

[naimesh_patel]

Good idea to restrict the posters who don't search before asking.

Addition to the "Not Allowed" question you can give a link to SAP Help or some of the interesting discussion for those questions.

Regards,

Naimesh Patel

[Former Member]

>

> Addition to the "Not Allowed" question you can give a link to SAP Help or some of the interesting discussion for those questions. 

Well, I'm not sure if these would appear anywhere in the help files, and I'm not sure if any of these questions had "interesting discussions". There are plenty of dicusssions, but not many interesting ones - many of them are arguments that black is white and rebuttals.

Rob

[ThomasZloch]

Hi Rob,

not over-moderation in my book, it would help to reduce the redundance, which is very welcome. There is just too many ignorant folks that seem to unload their questions without any preparation or research effort, some can't even properly phrase a descriptive and polite question. Lock'em up

Also include the Join vs. FAE questions, I think this has been investigated from every angle by now.

Thomas

[Former Member]

Thanks Thomas - but I think i would substitute "lazy" for "ignorant".

Yes - adding the FAE question would be agood idea (but notice that there haven't been (m)any questions on the subject since the other sticky went up

Rob

[Former Member]

Any more thoughts on this? Particularly from those opposed?

Rob

[Former Member]

Rob ,

The below questions can be included :

1. Using of For all entries VS joins.

2. Usage of Sort and Delete adjacent duplicates before for all entries .

3.Performance on these table BSIK/BSAK BISD/BSAD BSIS/BSAS - we have nice blogs for this and this has been answered many times.

If the Poster posts a question which has been asked and answered many times .Other members answer it rite away to get quick points and the question is closed . To stop this why dont the moderator give 2 or 4 points who notify this question to them first . And just in case if the questions is answered and closed , the points awarded should be reverted .

Posting an already posted question for the first time a penalty of 2 points and the poster should not be allowed to post for next half an hour and the penalty should be severe as the time increases.

Thanks,

Karthik

[Former Member]

Good ideas - but there's not much that a moderator can do on the last point. You could try suggesting that in the suggestions forum.

Rob

[Former Member]

Last chance...

Rob

[Sm1tje]

Seeing all the same / similar posts on the ABAP general forum which have been answered over and over again, makes me wonder if people ever read this. So, even though it's worth a try, I don't think it will help that much. Is there no way that people should be 'forced' to read it like when installing new software you are always asked for license agreement. I know what you are thinking now...nobody ever reads this part. But it is only a suggestion and I was looking for an improved version of this license agreement.

So not reading this at all, you are not allowed to post to the forum.

In the end, probably the only thing that will work is blocking the user.

Maybe it will be better to ask people nicely NOT to respond to these questions at all how tempting this may be in our 'search' for some additional forum points.

Kind regards,

Micky.

[Former Member]

Thanks Micky - my intention is to lock posts that do not follow these rules without marking them as solved. If a person has more than ten unresolved questions, he or she is blocked from posting. So posters of these questions may find themselves effectively blocked.

Rob

[Sm1tje]

Ok, that's a way to go. But there are many others out there, who just forget (not on purpose) to give points and close (mark as answered) a thread. They will be locked as well, and don't have a clue as to why they were locked.

But I do understand the 'dilemma', something has to be done...no question about it.

Good luck with that.

Micky.

[Former Member]

You can force people to do a search first, it's just a question of computing power. Concievably, it's not that hard to do.

If a person wants to post to a forum, the SAP SDN 'server machine' should be able to keep track, every day, to see if they have done any searches in that specific forum. Unless there are at least, say- 2- searches in a particular forum, the person cannot start a new thread, or possibly even post, to it.

God Bless,

Regards,

Dan P.

[Former Member]

Too complicated to filter out or put many rules before posting. Folks here need to be more responsible in contributing and asking questions. It needs to be moderated. Most questions here are repeated. But then if everything is filtered out, there wont be much activity in this forum. But I have no objection if the threads are locked by the moderator if the questions are repeated. Especially the ones mentioned above. It shows lack of motivation and effort on the part of the person posting the question.

Regards,

Abdullah

[ThomasZloch]

> Most questions here are repeated. But then if everything is filtered out, there wont be much activity in this forum.

That was my thought as well. It would be very negative for the overall forum quality if experts like Siegfried, YukonKid or Hermann would lose interest. It is quite rare that a completely new problem surfaces, even one with at least partially new aspects.

After some time in operation now I have to adjust my first reply from above slightly. However there is still a lot of stuff that can be locked immediately or even after some replies.

I admit that the right balance is difficult to maintain, and I don't envy our moderators

Thomas

[Former Member]

Maybe you should address not the people asking, because they don't read recommendations anyway,

but the people answering.

I was a bit annoyed, because one post was closed, where somebody wanted to show that the FAE is faster. But if you would finally post not the percentages but the total numbers, he would show the opposite, I am quite sure about that. And please, if one moderator decides to leave it open, the other one should not close it.

But please close all performance wikis!

at least these two,

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/wiki?path=/display/abap/abapPerformanceand+Tuning

https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/ABAP/ABAP4TuningChecklist

plus

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/wiki?path=/display/snippets/bestwaytocodenested+loops

Siegfried

[Former Member]

@Siegfried

I think that you are arguing that moderators should discourage people from answering redundant questions. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.) But in the post in question the entire usual gang had weighed in with answeres that have mostly been heard before.

What I ask myself before locking a thread is "Can this discussiion lead anywhere new or interesting?" The question here had been discussed to death and I didn't think would lead anywhere. There might be new points brought up, but the overall conclusion was not likely to change.

Rob

[Rui_Dantas]

I am not very active around here so who am I to give suggestions, but I would say it would be good to have an "official" good answer (whenever possible, and explaining in which cases a given approach is recommended), instead of only sending them to the search button.

From what I have seen, by searching other threads people will (unfortunatelly) often find incorrect answers.

[Former Member]

That's a good idea, but kind of hard to implement. Who decides what the official answer should be? A moderator? Not everyone thinks the moderators ideas are particularly bright

Rob

[ThomasZloch]

> "official" good answer

The threads linked in the sticky threads of this forum go into that direction. They have been suggested by members and approved by our capable moderators. Just have a look.

Thomas

[Rui_Dantas]

>

> That's a good idea, but kind of hard to implement. Who decides what the official answer should be?

> A moderator? Not everyone thinks the moderators ideas are particularly bright

I can quote a reply by Thomas Zloch in this thread: "... experts like Siegfried, YukonKid or Hermann ". From what I have seen people already know a couple of names that can be trusted, so it might not be that difficult. Anyway, answers can always be corrected and evolve, and one good thing about performance issues is that the correct thing to do can be proved with numbers, it's not just a matter of opinions or tastes. E.g., some runtime tests can easily show that FAE advices are often nonsense.

>

> The threads linked in the sticky threads of this forum go into that direction. 
> Thomas

yep, I know that, I am just suggesting linking to these approved threads (sticky or not) when they exist, instead of just sending people to the search button.

[ThomasZloch]

> instead of just sending people to the search button.

I must disagree. Searching for existing answers before posting as well as reading sticky threads should be common practice for every forum participant. I expect people to put in some own effort before turning to the community to have their problems solved.

Thomas

[Rui_Dantas]

I don't want to turn a thread that is supposed to avoid endless threads into an endless thread itself, but:

1) yes, people should of course search for previous threads, I never said they shouldn't;

2) it is also true that some threads have incorrect answers and it is often hard for someone looking for help to know which answers are correct and which ones are not, and that's where I think official answers for common questions would be good; you said that some sticky threads already exist, so why not recommend those threads (and others), or maybe wikis / blogs, in the "please read before" thread?

(anyway, it was just my 2 cents, I think I'll stop here)

[Former Member]

Great - but if you have any suggestions for threads that should be included, please let us know.

Rob

[Former Member]

> or maybe wikis / blogs

good idea but the above mentioned wikis should be closed or updated first

Anyway I don't think that the people want the read much, they want answers, even if they are of very low quality.

Most problems could be solved very easily if the trace data would be provided.

Siegfried