Restric one line text in old discussions

[Lakshmipathi]

Is there any control adding one line text like "I am also having the same issue" in old discussions?  This is more in sales space and really giving a big head-ache.

G. Lakshmipathi

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

I think we will not see that issue for a year after the start of the new SCN since the old discussions are archived and cannot be reopened.

In general you have my support for the idea, but I guess a program cannot differentiate if the oneliner is a answer or  exact what your pain is.

Maybe it should compare dates between discussion creation and a new reply as well as when the OP was last here and if this all is about a year ago or even more then just not allow to save.

Or put the words into a blacklist. I just googled: I am also having the same issue site:scn.sap.com

and this lists 64000 hits (despite of the fact that such replies do not survive the day in MM)

A funny site note, I even saw such "I am also having the same issue" on discussions with home made Z messages

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Juergen,

A funny side note, I even saw such "I am also having the same issue" on discussions with home made Z messages

Its a good thing you can still see humor in this.

I don't believe that SCN ever achieved the goals that I originally dreamed about. I once hoped that SDN (and later SCN) could be a resource for SAP professionals sharing answers about specific and uncommon problems they faced in their day-to-day work.

It has instead devolved into a quasi-blog, where most posters just type in whatever questions that pop into their heads at the moment.  For experienced consultants, who are trying to find answers to uncommonly difficult problems, SCN is just about useless.  We have to wade through hundreds of answers to questions whose answers are easily found in help.sap.com; before being able to find the the more valuable nuggets of knowledge.

I have grown very weary of opening new posts, and finding that they are simplistic questions that have been asked and answered dozens of times before.  Although the MM SCN group is cleaner than most other SCN groups in this regard, it obviously requires virtually a full time moderator to maintain structure and order (yes, I have noticed how much time you spend on SCN!)

I don't have a solution to this problem, but I am quickly losing motivation to continue to participate in this treadmill to nowhere.

Best Regards,

DB49

[moshenaveh · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Thanks a lot for your constructive feedback. I see the new community as an opportunity to address the issues you are raising. We expect that the AnswerHub platfrom will reduce the amount of repeated questions with the auto complete feature. We are also investing a lot of resources in enhancing our moderation team/capabilities. Another important feature that will help filter out these questions is the down voting feature. We are also thinking about solutions yet to be discussed.

I hope that all these together will take us to a better situation and service to our members/moderators.

Thanks again,

Moshe

[Jelena_Perfiljeva]

Regarding old threads - SCN simply should've implemented the feature available on many forums (Tripadvisor is the first example that comes to mind) where a thread gets locked automatically after N days of inactivity.

+1 to DB49 and I'd also call for a major clean-up of the old stuff on SCN. I'm so sick and tired of hitting circa 2008-2009 discussions (when point games and abuse were rampant) with massive copy-pasting, all kinds of nonsense and just dozens of copies of the same exact question.

[moshenaveh]

Hi Jelena,

But what if a question is answered after a year after the expert finally get to it or another user via Google. What is the main reason for not allow inactive answers? Poor search experience?

Regards,

Moshe

[Lakshmipathi]

what if a question is answered after a year

I have seen SDN / SCN in the last 10 years and hardly 0.01% the OP update the thread once they find solution to their query.  So this being the case, as already suggested, I also prefer to auto lock threads which are inactive for longer period.

G. Lakshmipathi

[Former Member]

Moshe,

Poor search experience is by far the worst thing about the current SCN; and anything that could be done to improve it would be a worthy change.  Current search experience is abominable, if your goal is actually to be able to find a technical answer that meets your business requirements.

I personally, however, do not agree with others who feel that locking old threads is a solution that will improve this problem. 

Ideally, I would like to see the crappy questions 'somehow' segregated from the good ones.  As I mentioned above, I don't have a solution that would solve this requirement (although your 'downvoting' option has some merit, if these scores could be used to limit search results, and if regular users could be counted upon to properly rank the questions, and if the voting was not abused, and if, and if, and if.....).

One other easily implemented possibility would be to limit the number of 'open' threads each user is allowed to have at a given moment in time.  This might help to eliminate the crappy repetitive and un-useful questions in the first place.  The old SDN used to have this feature, and I was sorry to see it go.  IMHO, anyone who has more than 10 questions opened at a time has probably not put much effort into searching SCN in the first place.

Best Regards,

DB49

[Jelena_Perfiljeva]

Moshe, we've already had a discussion regarding "necromancing" on SCN:

As a result, it was written in ROE specifically as unwelcome behavior. But, of course, many SCN members continue to ignore this. Automatically locking the thread would not improve the quality of questions overall, of course, but if it'll make the moderators' life easier it's something worth considering.

+1 to reinstating the 10 open question limit, I thought it was very reasonable.