Question and Answers requests in private messages

[DominikTylczyn]

Since a couple of weeks I have been receiving private messages soliciting answers to various questions, for instance:

Hello Mr. Dominic
Today I mentioned a problem with the qm module, can you help me? You can reach the problem from my account

or

I have defined the product substitution, but product substitution is only working for fulfilling Sales Order and Forecast. However, I want to utilize the product substitution for Safety Stock fulfilment also. How can I do it in Order Based Planning model?
Also, Inventory holding cast is same for both product as well as substitution cost is Zero.
Please help me to find solution for it.

or

What is the Pros and Cons if the SAP Customers are not upgrading from SAP ECC 6.0 EHP 5.0 to EHP 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0 ?
Can you please provide the details explanation on it

and then expediter to the previous one

Its urgent can you please respond as soon as possible

The pattern is troublesome

• The questions are poorly formulated - there is no context, no reference to SAP standard, no screenshots to illustrate the problem - as if my crystal ball can tell all that.
• The questions are sent with private messages, to me only. If I respond to them, the SAP community will not benefit.
• It looks like the senders feel entitled to private counselling and advising on what looks like they job tasks and responsibilities. 

I engage in SAP Questions and Answers because I do believe in the community, in knowledge sharing. I think it is important, it is a good thing, it is fun and rewarding. But I am not one stop SAP hotline. I do not feel like solving other people's issues privately, without any benefit to the community or doing their jobs for them. If I did that, I would have to ask for their paychecks. 

So, if you want to draw my attention to a problem, do not ask a question in a private message. Instead, post the question on the SAP community Q&A pages, tag me in the question, send me a message with a link to the question. I will do my best to respond. I will provide an answer if I have anything to say about the issue, if there is anything I can contribute to the resolution.

@RaymondGiuseppi @Lakshmipathi @Caetano @Sandra_Rossi How is it on your side? Do you also get such messages? How do you feel about them?

[RaymondGiuseppi]

I often get personal messages asking for support outside the forum, and while I do enjoy helping, it can be frustrating.
I'm not available 24/7, and I prefer not to provide solutions via email, since that only helps one person. The whole point of this community is to share knowledge so everyone can benefit.

[Lakshmipathi]

Yes quite frequently, I too get such DM asking for help but I recommend the members to post the question in the forum 

[Sandra_Rossi]

I just blocked private messages because of these requests. All these people don't understand what a community is, how to build it, they just want to be helped personally (as we can see, people abandoning their question after getting an answer, or just answering "I solved myself" or "solved", i.e. no feedback to the community). Some of these people have good reasons of course.

They can be educated though. Thank you, community champions, to have the courage to tell them individually to ask their question publicly.

[Caetano]

Hello
I also receive private messages in the SAP Community and in Linkedin. People probably see that we are answering many questions and they approach us privately because they don't want appear publicly asking a question, or because it is easier to ask questions in the chat. 

If it's a question from Linkedin, I always explain politely that I'm an SAP employee, and that I should use official SAP channels to support customers and partners, and also that the question should be posted in the forum, so that it becomes a reference for other consultants with the same question in the future, and other consultants can also answer. 

I can solve many issues because I worked a long time in product support, but I don't know the answers of ALL questions (unfortunately 🙂 ), so it's always good to have more people providing the inputs and answering a technical question. 
Regards,
Caetano 

[sreekanth_narayan]

Thank you, Caetano. No comments. Sharing is caring, and being open is necessary. In 20 years of experience, sometimes I never know about 86 controls of an order type; however, when I land on the screen, I get the power and resolve it fast, so it's all in the learning and keep sharing. Looking forward to working with all. 

Have a good weekend. 

Thank you, 

Sreekanth 

[Lakshmipathi]

Yes I agree @sreekanth_narayan  we need to be open but the question is upto what extent. The very purpose of this forum is to exchange and share knowledge from experienced to newbies and if the member reach out on one to one and asking for help, I don't think, we should encourage this practice. Moreover, everybody have their own official deliverables on a full time basis and it is not possible if too many people reach out in multiple ways for assistance.  We are stretching sometime beyond our normal hours, to help the community here.

[Ryan-Crosby]

I've had this happen on a few occasions too, but at least when it has happened I have been provided more specifics and no sense of urgency.  I do, however, agree that it's better that it be posted in public for the benefit of the entire community.

[DominikTylczyn]

Thank you for all your responses.

I guess I'll start responding with a link to this post to the private messages requesting responses.

[Ryan-Crosby]

I bookmarked it so that I could do the same 😀

[Neeraj_Jain]

Appreciated Dominik, you point out this problem on this forum. On regular basis I am also receiving the queries from LinkedIn members and I always recommend that go to SAP Community and raise the question and unfortunately some people ask how I can raise the question on SAP Community or registered on SAP Community. Then I elaborate the process how to register and post the question on SAP Community alongwith link of creation of to create Universal ID.

Have save link of this post for future reference.

[AnnePetteroe]

Hi @DominikTylczyn - thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. I will make sure to add this to new community guidelines and getting started material we are working on. I will also include it in our next revision of the community tutorial for new community members. 

I have also taken note of @-mentioning, and will add recommendations not to tag more than 2-3 community members in questions. 

(cc @Neeraj_Jain @Ryan-Crosby @sreekanth_narayan @Caetano @Sandra_Rossi @Lakshmipathi @RaymondGiuseppi)

[DominikTylczyn]

Thank you! It's great we can incorporate that into the community guidelines.