What the **** is going on in the ABAP forums?!

[Former Member]

I've been away from SDN for a few months due to work comitments and am only just starting to browse regularly again...

I can't believe how bad the standard of questions and answers in the ABAP-General forum has got. I thought it was as bad as it could get but i was wrong. Simple, repetitive questions. Massive cut and paste answers that often have nothing to do with the question. Everyone saying Please reward with points often after supplying a wrong/inacurate/irrelevant answer. Constant streams of interview questions. Same answers being copied and pasted again and again by different people... The problems go on and on and we've seen them all before, yet it still seems like hardly anything is being done about it.

Seriously, what is the point?! I know the moderators must be hard pushed to manage it all but isn't there a way to clean it up a bit please? It's painful to browse at the moment.

As far as I'm concerned, the forums are a bit of a waste of time and space at the moment as the content is so watered down with rubbish unless you are about to write your first ABAP program they are of no use to anyone.

Gareth.

[Former Member]

Friends

My take:

1. SDN has now become a place, where any guy having no knowledge of particular SAP product, can ask for a question (trivial or otherwise), and expect quick response (from points and reputation hungry people)

2. Thus, to be a SAP consultant, you need not have any particular skill - except you should be lucky enough to have heard of SDN

3. And, SDN is probably on way of creating an ecosystem/market of SAP consultants available at low costs with almost zero experience (but confident of exploiting a huge available knowledge base in form of SDN)

4. If you have interviewed candidates for SAP jobs in this part of world (India), you would definitely understand how serious this issue might turn out in a few years

5. Further, icing on cake are these certifications

The big question here: Is anybody, who matters, listening?

Regards

[Former Member]

>The big question here: Is anybody, who matters, listening?

It sure seems that nobody who matters from the owner of SDN is listening...

[Former Member]

I think a good way to return the quality is to take down the points system, at least from the forums.

Everyone saw how clean it was the days the points system crashed.

Just give points for things that need some time and effort like blogging and code snippets, and make an entry limited, something like 1 blog entry per day and 2 or 3 snippets per day. That way maybe the code snippets section will improve.

And make that code system not numeric, like any PHP BB having users classified acording to reputation or posts.

[Former Member]

Yesterday I responded to this thread with the plain and simple answer of 'No'. You will notice that my response has been removed.

[https://forums.sdn.sap.com/click.jspa?searchID=12554521&messageID=5534110]

I then recevied the following email: -

************************************************************

Hello,

You have received this email because the message you posted below has been rejected by our moderators.

You may want to check out the terms and conditions for using our forums: https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/HOME/RulesofEngagement You also find a link to them in the first thread of every forum.

Hope you understand and continue to participate in our community.

All the best the CN Community Team.

sdn@sap.com

Subject: Re: code not executing.......pls try to make it execute....urgent

no

Posted: 6/4/08 12:41 PM

************************************************************

I see that in the email I recevied contained a link to the terms and conditions to the forum. Was this link also sent to the user who created the thread in the first place asking for someone else to do their job, erm let me think. They couldn't even be arsed stating what the error was. Yet I am the one who is told to following the terms and conditions.

Why do so many people get away with the creation of plain stupid questions.

@ Moderators I seriously think you have your proprities wrong

I am now considering leaving this forum. I think I may join the well established SAP fans who do not stand for these stupid threads being posted in the first place.

[Former Member]

Would like your thoughts on this:

"If earnest people stop answering forums and posting blogs all togather, would this menace correct itself?"

Like virtuous/vicious circles

Regards

[Former Member]

Wouldn't it be interesting for all threads that have a subject of "Urgent", a timer is attached to the thread which prevents anyone from responding for 24 hours. For any Subject which is "Hi" or "Hello', an auto response is sent with a smiley face and a waving hand, and then attach the 24 hour timer. Since the posts of this nature are threads which could have been answered by using the Search Engine or SAP help, might this be a way to slow down the Point Hunters?

[jurjen_heeck]

> Since the posts of this nature are threads which could have been answered by using the Search Engine or SAP help, might this be a way to slow down the Point Hunters?

How about renaming the "search forum" link to "do the needful"?

[Former Member]

That's a genius idea

[Former Member]

>How about renaming the "search forum" link to "do the needful"?

Great, you idea is very "needful".

Please, SDN admins, do the needful to rename the "search forum" button to "do the needful" !

[Former Member]

Seems that it's not only the forums which have fallen prone to this "disease". An alarming number of new "blogs" are copy/pasted from SAP material; often spanning just half a page, written in illegible english, and providing nothing new whatsoever. I think the general issue is that "some people" are not sufficiently educated in how to use a tool like SDN, in that they're unaware of the basic rules of contribution, respect and the need for substance.

Or perhaps they just figured out how to use the forums and blogs to their own advantage? Wouldn't surprise me too much if there are "rings" of people out there, simultaneously posting/answering each others questions and rewarding each other in order to reap points and climb through the ranks of "best contributors"... I frankly think an investigation into forum abuse should be considered. As for the blogs, there already is a vetting process in place, to my knowledge; unfortunately it doesn't seem to work too well.

As for myself, I think I'll spend the rest of my day writing a 200-word blog on ABAP data types

[jurjen_heeck]

>

> As for myself, I think I'll spend the rest of my day writing a 200-word blog on ABAP data types 

So, in which timezone are you? What is the rest of your day?

[Former Member]

It was very refreshing to see all the locked Interview Threads in the ABAP General Forum. I had to pinch myself and make sure it wasn't a dream. Now how about the all the Urgents? Slowly doozing off, could use some more coffee. (_)&

[Former Member]

Couldn't we also block those "rewards if helpful" postings? Personally, I find it obnoxious to see this specific request at the end of a reply. It reminds me of one specific incident I experienced in the US, where upon leaving a restaurant my waitress came running after me to inquire whether or not I had remembered to leave a tip at the table... for heavens sake, it's out of courtesy and appreciation that we reward points, not in order to boost the contributions of professional point reapers who probably spend most of their working day in here in order to build their own presence... and they all seem to originate from the same cultural sphere (but of course I'm not allowed to say that, right?)

[Former Member]

>and they all seem to originate from the same cultural sphere (but of course I'm not allowed to say that, >right?)

• ALERT ***** Poltical Correctness Alert ***** ALERT **** !!!!

It's obvious that there are a lot too much beginners "from the same cultural sphere" with a lot too less seniors to help them. They get in charge of jobs that they don't even understand and so cry for "urgent" help on SDN...

[Former Member]

Sorry, this is off topic, but I guess that is okay here in the Coffee Corner. Besides, I have already done my daily rounds to remove the above mentioned unmentionable words from my forum area.

Specifically regarding tips in restaurants in the US, I have also made that "mistake". My US colleagues explained it to me: Service is not included in the charge and it is considered extremely impolite not to tip. It can be compared to your "employer" not paying your salary at the end of the month, even although you thought you did a normal job. Most people would go running after that.

From my travels in foreign countries, I have experienced that it is sometimes easier to abide by other norms and certainly a better option to be aware of them, rather than not. Other countries often have other commercial habits and economic models for making money.

Unexpected non-compliance with local commercial practices can even involve a lot of unexpected effort to get your money back again. Alternately, an [ancient curse|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times] might softly be spoken if you are the one still with the money.

Officially contacting the embassy is the "politically correct" thing to do, but I find the [Lonely Planet Guides|http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/] more usefull. The online summary had this to say about the US:

> Tipping is expected in cafes, restaurants and better hotels. The going rate in restaurants is 15% or more of the bill; never tip in a fast-food or self-service environment. Taxi drivers, bartenders and hairdressers depend on similar-sized gratuities.

</off_topic>

[Former Member]

>

Alternately, an [ancient curse|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times] might softly be spoken if you are the one still with the money.

hm. if that curse also works on SDN, we have -at least- the prospect to end up in [XXXX|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_Times]. the beer is supposed to be good, so - no worries!

[naimesh_patel]

There is lot of noise in ABAP forums. It is mainly because people don't search the forum ( and searching will not get them proper results because of the high noise) and post their questions.

The best way I can think of is:

1. Appoint more moderators.

2. Each New question will go to moderators first for Approval

... There shold be some system which can keep track of Users who have specified number of "Unapproved" questions. Delete those users.

3. If Approved, it will come on the forum and anybody can reply it.

Moderators life will be bit hard, but they will make the community clean.

Regards,

Naimesh Patel

[Former Member]

>

> The best way I can think of is:
> 1. Appoint more moderators.
...
> Regards,
> Naimesh Patel

i agree with this - if (no offense meant) not with the other two. what is 'moderating' about? it's about drawing a line. the rules say where the 'main lines' are. the mods decide how to interpret them and they do not hesitate to implement the drawing.

you have truckloads of traffic in SDN. you need more mods. if you can get real observant ones like Senor Alvaro Tejada Galindo you'll improve. if you get someone like HaTran, you'll be moving in a save haven. think about it.

[Former Member]

>

...
> 2. Each New question will go to moderators first for Approval
...
> 3. If Approved, it will come on the forum and anybody can reply it.

To me this sounds a bit like Soviet Union in the 50ties.

There should be solutions more compatible with a free and (I think) liberal place like this. A lot of them have already been suggested, but the owners and operators of this site stick to the current modalities. No one (outside) really knows why but I guess the actual system best supports their goal to grow in numbers.

regards, anton

[Former Member]

But at what cost?

What is more important - quantity or quality?

Gareth.

[Former Member]

>

> >

> ...
> > 2. Each New question will go to moderators first for Approval
> ...
> > 3. If Approved, it will come on the forum and anybody can reply it.
> 

>

> To me this sounds a bit like Soviet Union in the 50ties.

>

> There should be solutions more compatible with a free and (I think) liberal place like this. A lot of them have already been suggested, but the owners and operators of this site stick to the current modalities. No one (outside) really knows why but I guess the actual system best supports their goal to grow in numbers.

>

> regards, anton

I don't think this plan is even possible to execute. You would have to have an enourmous amount of moderators to view each and every post.

It all comes down to this. You must find a way to remove the incentive for forum abusers to actually come her and keep posting their rubbish. People are posting urgent questions and are getting answers, so even if other forum members point out to them that this is not conforming to forum rules. In the end it yielded the result they were hoping for and probably won't change their ways the next they have an "urgent" issue.

If you increase the difficulty in being granted a user id, preferrably a long time needed for activation ( a week will suffice) and make sure that repurcussions are in order (either deleting the user id, or simply freezing it for a day for first offense, 7 days for second, or something similar) this way either the bad apples stay away from sdn, or even better they change their behaviour and conform to the rules.

[Former Member]

>

> But at what cost?
> 
> What is more important - quantity or quality?
> 
> Gareth.

my view exactly!!

[Former Member]

It is a shame the people who run SCN don't share our sentiments!

I'm genuinely not sure what benefit there is in being able to boast about user numbers on SCN when the overall quality of content is so low.

Gareth.

[Former Member]

An alternate suggestion: Rename the "ABAP, General" forum to "Advanced Business Application Programming, General" forum.

=> That way, folks who use the search and read up on things will be more likely to find it, and those who search ask less questions and better ones...

(PS: I don't work for SAP nor this site so cannot comment on those remarks. I just help out a bit as a part of the community team effort).

[Former Member]

Hi,

I guess SAP prefer all the dumb questions to be on SDN forums than on sapservice messages....

Olivier

[Former Member]

Nice theory Olivier!

[ThomasZloch]

This has been asked for a couple of times:

In my control panel, I would like to be able to maintain a personal blacklist of certain user IDs, in order to filter out some of the Jabberwocky.

Does not solve the overall problem, but relieves individual pain.

Mahlzeit

Thomas Z.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

[Former Member]

yuk! and we are the 'saved labour' in support at service.sap.com?

[Former Member]

This will eventually also lead to crappy OSS messages, standard prio high asking for a fake CV

[Former Member]

>yuk! and we are the 'saved labour' in support at service.sap.com?

I do think so...

Otherwise we would have got real answers from SAP to the state of total decay of these forums.

I've come to the conclusion that they are satisfied by the situation...

Olivier

[Former Member]

This thread - pretty much sums up the state of the forums for me. As far as I can see, it has only been locked because of the argument, not because of the original question and answers...

[Former Member]

which perfectly underlines my statements about mods!

what kind of moderator has less than 100 posts in more than two years? this guy is perfectly polite, i'll give him that but he wouldn't be any longer if he had to make that very same statement hundreds of times per day. and if he did so, he'd have more than 60odd posts all together. clearly he was summoned and did the job at hand, which is fine - but that is not enough.

[Former Member]

 yuk! and we are the 'saved labour' in support at service.sap.com?

I do think so...
Otherwise we would have got real answers from SAP to the state of total decay of these forums.
I've come to the conclusion that they are satisfied by the situation...

From recent OSS posting with SAP on service.sap.com, I half-think I'm one step away from seeing my OSS messages posted in ABAP General forum. 😛

[Former Member]

I totally agree with you, as I too point out [here|;. A delporable state of affairs indeed!

How come none of the powers that be responded to this thread yet?! Nowadays I only come to Coffee Corner to have some laughs but I feel even that will have to stop......

[Former Member]

Hi,

Given the sad state of the forums a moderator should send 100 mails per day and not per year...

This is why I've always thought this job cannot be executed by voluntary people on their free time.

These are not hobby forums (except Coffe Corner !) but supposed to be professional (Expert !!!) forums run by a very big software company.

Olivier

[matt]

>

> This thread -  pretty much sums up the state of the forums for me.  As far as I can see, it has only been locked because of the argument, not because of the original question and answers...

"And please refrain from writing a whole posting in uppercase letters. This can be understood as yelling by some readers. " I think that was Martin's idea.

[Former Member]

my request to moderators is that if you dont want to see this type of posts anymore just make company mail id mandatory

then for all newbies or fresh aspirants you have to create separate forum(for example at the end of abap development you can create guest or newbie forum) or you have to ignore them.

[Former Member]

> K.P.N wrote:

> my request to moderators is that if you dont want to see this type of posts anymore just make company mail id mandatory

>

> then for all newbies or fresh aspirants you have to create separate forum(for example at the end of abap development you can create guest or newbie forum) or you have to ignore them.

I for one like that idea. Combined with Ravi's suggestion to have exceptions (on approved request), otherwise I would be a gonner.

It reminds me of the Fanbook which SAPFans had running a few years back. It even had a moderator, who called himself POD, "The Prince of Darkness".

Nice idea K.P.N.!

[Former Member]

it's working! right now at the moment the topics containing interview questions are being -very politely- locked. obviously we managed to get through to the conscience of the one mod i was -indirectly- critizing. i do apologize to him.

[ThomasZloch]

Jan is on fire now...add five more mods and the future looks bright.

but...there will also be less of the funny stuff!

[stephenjohannes]

Who needs moderators when you can answer questions like this?

I'm still trying to figure out the moderator moved a CRM 52 post out of the CRM 2007 forum to the CRM general and framewok, but allows junk like the above to be posted.

The one that got moved was:

I'm sorry but CRM 52 questions are related to CRM 2007 as they have the same tech foundation. It should not have been put into CRM general & framework.

Take care,

Stephen

[Former Member]

Great Success. Congratulations Mylene !

[Former Member]

After reading all of these messages I think the following is a sound method of making sure that these posts of disapproval will be a thing of the past, hopefully

1. After creating a new account it will take 1 week for that account to be activated.

2. not conforming to forum rules will result in your account to be deleted

3. answering to posts which don't conform to forum rules will result in your account ro be deleted.

This way the point hunters will go away, asking for a cv will be a thing of the past and people posting URGENT#$!!!! questions will no longer trouble us.

So what do the moderators think about it?

Kind regards, Rob Dielemans

[Former Member]

My suggestions

1. delete terrible posts once a year, including user ids - and publish the names on SDN

2. block their ip on sdn

3. inform ther employers if you can find them

I would assume that any SAP partner company would gladly get rid of these offenders.

[Former Member]

Well I'll re-make a suggestion I put forward some months ago in [A role for "Untermoderators"...? |; ... i.e. as the number of people posting swells, why not grow the numbers of people who are able to help keep the place tidy too?

As for the quality of the questions, sure there's some dross but some nuggets too - I've certainly learnt a thing or two digging in to answer what initially looked like a straighforward question.

btw, there's plenty of complaints that people don't search before posting but the search seems to have gone down hill - e.g. I couldn't find "untermoderator" through the SDN search and so I had to page back through the Suggestions forum instead... it didn't show up in Google either... do pages expire?

Jonathan

[olivier_segol]

Hello all,

First post in the coffer corner, I used just to read posts of this forum. But as a lot of you, for several weeks I was questionning myself what forums will look like in 1 or 2 year with more and more stupid questions without searching. I thing this is a major point to solve. More stupid questions, more questions already posted lead seaching throught forums become more and more difficult. And this lead peoples to post again and again same questions.

Perhaps the idea that we have to paid to have responses goes in the good direction. It's a problem of efforts / benefit.

If at user creation, if it's take 1 week to the user to be activated (I mean to post), it will prevent people to create several users as shown in the example. Another part of the solution could be not to remove the points system but to extend it with a "Hall of shame". It should not be only a rewards system for good users. For example posting a question without searching it's 10 points of shame and so on.... For sure it's more work for moderators but it should work at the end.

If people cannot create users easilly, and with shame points displayed in the business card, the hall of shame of users, companies... perhaps users will pay attention to what they do.

Olivier.

[matt]

So, reward points and penalty points.

I like it.

matt

[jurjen_heeck]

Me too, but how to stop the malicious ones from abusing a penalty point system to silence their critics.....?

[Former Member]

I'm glad this topic still gets a lot of interest and there are still people on here who are actually bothered.

Rob, I think your answer is my favourite and is certainly the one my colleagues and I come up with the most.

As pointed out, there will always be people who are too lazy/uneducated/short of time/whatever to do their own job or to research a problem they are having. Nothing we can do will ever make that go away. The issue is how we react and deal with it.

I don't believe charging for SDN is the answer - a lot of people will move back to SAPFans.com and/or other sites and as someone else has said, people will feel they have the right to post the rubbish if they are paying.

We've all been over this topic numerous times and on each occaision a common output is everyone wants to see more and stricter moderation. I honestly believe a moderating approach similar to SAPFans.com would help a great deal in cutting out the root cause - things like people asking for points and people posting CV's are symptoms or effects of the fact original posters are allowed to ask stupid questions or ask for fake resumes. Things like using "Hi" in the subject of a message or not bothering to search before asking what regular SDN contributors/readers know is a common question can all be cut out with simple moderation.

So we come back to moderation of the forums - something we've gone over time and time before.

Blag, I can see you have been sorely missed in the forums - you were still very active last time I was on regularly and I can see a big difference between then and now. Although you may feel like it is an uphill struggle you were obviously making a big difference. It's a shame there aren't more of you

Nick, I've just seen your response whilst writing this and you raise an interesting point I've not considered before about managers having an input in the use of SDN. I think the problem here is that (certainly in my opinion) the majority of the noise appears to originate from off-shored resource which typically will be quite removed from their customer/manager/employer. In some ways I've always considered the explosion of the IT market in India for example to be working against itself - there appears to be more jobs that suitably qualified workers leading to the state we have now of fake CV's and people in jobs who don't know what they are doing. I'm guessing management in this scenario will be happier to have a team of people producing all of their work with SDN's help rather than a team of fully certified, heavily experienced consultants who are too expensive to obtain any off-shoring work...

I also agree that removing the points system won't necessarily solve all of the perceived problems - again I think points abuse is something else stricter moderation could help to remove.

Anyway, before I really get on my soapbox I'm going to stop rambling

Gareth.

[Former Member]

I also think that responding to posts which don't conform to forum rules should result in the posters id to be deleted.

This is the only way to prevent from people continuing to post interview questions or asking for fake resumes.

[Former Member]

Firstly Gareth, welcome back.

I've got to say your summary of the state of the ABAP forums is spot on. It seems to be getting increasingly difficult to wade through the interview questions, one line questions, 'please write this program for me', 'how to find the difference between two dates', 'how to display an amount in words in lahks', etc, etc. I contribute to keep skills fresh that I may not be currently using and to challenge myself and grow my understanding, but it becomes more and more difficult to feel I'm getting anything from contributing (and while I'm always motivated by helping my fellow man, it doesn't pay the bills).

While some blame the points system I don't believe that getting rid of it is the silver bullet that some suggest. If someone posts the usual list of one line questions 'What is sapscript', 'what is idoc' etc the removal of the points system won't stop this. It might (and only might) stop people replying, but it won't reduce the volume of questions.

After that I need to add something positive. I think the responsibility to keep the quality lies with anyone who runs a team of developers. It's up to us to know what our programmers are posting on SDN, by posting this type of question they're exposing their ignorance and incompetence. Forum moderators can lock posts and accounts, but if a developer's team leader or manager sets out the acceptable use of these forums this can stop this behavior at source.

Regards,

Nick

[kiran_k8]

Hi,

How about removing the pointing system itself ? I guess that will be of some help.Atlast it is all about knowledge sharing.

Thanks,

K.Kiran.

[matt]

Maybe we need new abuse categories - "Poster should search", "Interview questions", "spoon-feeding demanded".

[Former Member]

That's sad to hear -:( I had been away from SCN for a while...So my Moderator job haven't been done...Still...Newbies and Point Hunters post more quickly that we Moderators can handle...Something must be done about this...Sooner or later...

Greetings,

Blag.

[stephenjohannes]

I haven't seen as much point-hunting in the CRM forums, however the "newbie" hangout factor appears to be less. I do see quite a bit of can you please do my work for me type questions, but beyond that it isn't too terrible.

However expanding on David's idea perhaps the solution is a two-tiered approach

"Free" lightly-moderated forums(basic tos moderation) that continue with the points and chaos

"Supporter" heavily-moderated forums that enforce strict posting rules, and you have to "pay" for posting rights. In other words anyone can view the threads, but you have to pay to post a question/answer. I think US 500 is probably too high for an individual subscription. How about somewhere in the range of $5 to $20 per month which would be a flat charge of $60 or $250. This is more comparable to other message boards that offer "supporter" subscriptions. If someone constantly violates the strict posting rules then they can be terminated with no refund.

At the end of the day why should we expect to get a free lunch from using SDN? IMHO there needs to be some other mechanism beyond simple social community mechanisms to resolve this issue.

Take care,

Stephen

[Former Member]

>

> "Supporter" heavily-moderated forums that enforce strict posting rules, and you have to "pay" for posting rights.  In other words anyone can view the threads, but you have to pay to post a question/answer.  I think US 500 is probably too high for an individual subscription.  How about somewhere in the range of $5 to $20 per month which would be a flat charge of $60 or $250.  This is more comparable to other message boards that offer "supporter" subscriptions.  If someone constantly violates the strict posting rules then they can be terminated with no refund.  
> 

i can only speak for myself but if i had to pay to answer questions - and i only ever had one myself - i would stop coming here. i'm perfectly willing to help people, but not if i have to pay for that!!

i do think the removal or re-design of the point system would help a bit.

mostly i think, really good moderators - like in SAPFans - would to the trick. and they are good. they are not getting paid but doing a hell of a job.

[Former Member]

mostly i think, really good moderators - like in SAPFans - would to the trick. and they are good. they are not getting paid but doing a hell of a job.

Mylene,

I couldn't agree more with you

Gareth.

[Former Member]

mostly i think, really good moderators - like in SAPFans - would to the trick. and they are good. they are not getting paid but doing a hell of a job.

So...That mean that we're not good....That hurts -:'(

Greetings,

Blag.

[Former Member]

moderators of this forum have lot of patience.

only problem is that they are bit busy

[Former Member]

>

> 

> mostly i think, really good moderators - like in SAPFans - would to the trick. and they are good. they are not getting paid but doing a hell of a job.

>

> 
> So...That mean that we're not good....That hurts -:'(
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> Blag.

Senor Alvaro Tejada Galindo,

that was not what i was saying and please do not behead me on base of your assumptions. you are fairly good, but you are only one person and - i think even you will support me on this - that is not nearly enough.

there's more to the moderating thing, i think - i cannot say for real, because i'm not a mod - but according to my experiences in SAPFans the thingy goes like that:

- there are rules: most of them are agreed upon by members. you even can (once a year) make suggestions on what they should be. mind you - these rules are strict and becoming more so, since that place has a wide variety of religions/countries/races (same as SDN i guess).

- the rules are enforced by the mods but they have standing approval of the owner of the site - that seems to me to be a big difference to SDN.

- you can even go so far as to critize the site, the content, whatever - you would not be subject to banning or deletion or anything else simply because you advanced an opionion (of which you were pretty sure it's not approved of by the site-owner). as long as you are reasonable and polite there's no interfering.

- the mods there have learned -i think it was the hard way- that if their actions are not approved of by the regulars, they will be critizied. this would not happen here, would it?

apart from these: SAPFans does not have an organization where one mod would be restricted to her/his forums. as far as i recognized over the last 8 years its more like: I'm on vacation from ... to ... can you take over my forums? and even if a mod is online and another thinks, that needs clarifying, she/he would do so. and that's cooperation for me. that's moderating for me. and they are good at it, became more so over the years. they are - in my opinion - top notch.

still, there is the matter of traffic. i do agree that it needs more persons to cope with all this on SDN. i do think, a snowy and an abap_doc in company with ilya and baz could do SND tons of good - provided: you got restrictive rules and you're backing up your mods - whatever the cost - and: you lend an ear to your regulars.

i'm aware i might be facing a ban because of this post, but then: go ahead

[Former Member]

i'm aware i might be facing a ban because of this post, but then: go ahead 

Of course you're not going to be ban -:) We're just going to delete your account and lock your IP from all SAP related pages....LOL

Ok...I must agree with you that the moderator force of SAPFans is pretty amazing...I haven't seen so many locked threads in my whole career...I wonder when those guys work...(And people say the same thing about me here LOL)...

As had been state before...SCN must hire full-time Moderators...I would be glad to do that job...I spend almost my whole working day on SCN (Besides my everyday work...)...So having to do that because I could get paid, would be awesome...However, I don't see any plans to do that...This is to me both a Professional and a Family Community...We help each other, so clearly Moderators should be member of the Community...I would like to have a Moderator who's just here to get paid and not for contribuiting with the Community...What I mean? Me and other Moderators, not only do Moderation, but wrote blogs, wiki's and stuff...

SCN is part of SAP...But it's not SAP...They had separated budgets...They had separated business....That's maybe why the Team is so small...And that's maybe why they are not planning on investing on Paid Moderators...

So....To me...What is needed is to educate people...make them read the rules of engagement....search in the forums and blogs before posting....stop hunting points...Maybe that's even harder, but it's the best we can do...

Greetings,

Blag.

[Former Member]

Senor Alvaro Tejada Galindo,

>

> Of course you're not going to be ban -:) We're just going to delete your account and lock your IP from all SAP related pages....LOL
>

be my guest

>

> Ok...I must agree with you that the moderator force of SAPFans is pretty amazing...I haven't seen so many locked threads in my whole career...I wonder when those guys work...(And people say the same thing about me here LOL)...
> 

those guys do work, i assure you. but i also assure you that they are some kinds of 'maniacs' (i will die for this remark on SAPFans, believe me ) they WILL moderate -whatever the cost- it's kind of implemented in their personality or such. but do you recognize how good they have become?

> As had been state before...SCN must hire full-time Moderators...I would be glad to do that job...I spend almost my whole working day on SCN (Besides my everyday work...)...So having to do that because I could get paid, would be awesome...However, I don't see any plans to do that...This is to me both a Professional and a Family Community...We help each other, so clearly Moderators should be member of the Community...I would like to have a Moderator who's just here to get paid and not for contribuiting with the Community...What I mean? Me and other Moderators, not only do Moderation, but wrote blogs, wiki's and stuff...
>

it's up to you to decide what you really want to do. imho a mod cannot be a real good contributor. that's a contradiction in terms.

senor! you got a familiy and most of the SAPFans moderators do also. they cope with SAPFans, marriages, jobs, cats, dogs and a variety of other things. so: my statement is: as long as there's enough capable people, this should work! remember: they are not paid. they are simply top because that's where they belong.

[Former Member]

Hey

>>As far as I'm concerned, the forums are a bit of a waste of time and space

Yes,now it is the same but when i started using SDN in few years ago it wasn't like this,there were guys who were more inclinded to helping people rather than gathering points.I don't know what has happened in the recent years which lead to the downfall.

Its not just the ABAP forum,i see same thing happening in XI forum too,today only i came across a thread where the poster wanted sample resumes and a person copy pasted two resumes,one with 6 years of exp. and second with 13 years:)).

my bet is that SDN will die out(if it already hasn't) in 6 months to 1yr.

what are your bets?

Thanx

Aamir

Edited by: Aamir Suhail on May 22, 2008 10:23 AM

[Former Member]

I agree to the point of interview questions, providing wrong answers, those are all irritating. But apart from SDN we face lot of other irritating issues which are part of our life with which we used to carry on. SDN is a community network there are features to report abuse, moderators are doing a tremendous job when ever an issue is raised. As part of the community, if am not reporting an issue somebody else who has got concern will definitly report the issue.

I don't agree with the fee for accessing the SDN. SDN is a platform to learn and share our knowledge, at one point of time everybody is fresher who needs an opening to evaluate certain things. (I don't want to go into the details of newbee questions, those are irritating, we live in a free world and so no other go). It is better to leave the way as it is.

For me, all the areas of SDN provide me an opportunity to learn. Sometime the so called stupid questions shows me ways not to go in a wrong way. Even though I am not contributing much, as I am a technical guy, points in the forum section motives me to answer what I know.

I am irritated by reading the following line, there are lot of people putting extraordinary efforts to run SDN, so we should refrain from mentioning like this instead of what the actual problem is

>>my bet is that SDN will die out(if it already hasn't) in 6 months to 1yr.

Everybody is unique and each one has got different qualities, and SDN is a worldwide community. I don't think with out SDN I can learn any new things.

BTW am not an ABAP guy.

[markus_doehr2]

I share some opinions of the posters here - although I´m more OS/DB oriented I sometimes look into other forums too.

A LOT of very basic questions are asked everywhere. I often have the impression that people who ask so many really basic things are not willing or not educated enough to search. I know, it´s much easier to post a question and force people to help you (aka urgent etc.) than searching with a different number of terms and evaluate the answers. I think the biggest problem is that people do not understand what others are writing, they want to know "where to click" or "which transaction" instead of even TRYING to understand a certain function/thing/statement.

There was a life before SDN and there were working installations and applications so I don´t think it´s that crucial if it would disappear.

Markus

[Former Member]

If you read the thread due to which i was compelled to respond to this posting on SDN,probably you will see the reason why i m so concerned

[Former Member]

Hi Gareth - good to see your byline.

My answer to your question is simple, at least if you know a little German.

The Forums were designed for "essers", not "fressers". If you get a bunch of "fressers", the whole psycho-social structure will collapse. (Imagine a dining-table 2000 feet long with all the "fressers" trying to reach for the gravy bowl and the bread-basket at the same time.)

My solution is real simple.

A nominal yearly SDN fee - say $500USD or whatever the EU equivalent is.

ALSO, and most importantly, the fee must be paid by the member - not the member's company.

Fees to go to a charity of SAP's choice, or to one of the university programs that SAP is trying to start-up. (Speaking of which, who posted three years ago about how SAP has got to get into the educational system like the UNIX vendors did?)

Best regards

djh

[Former Member]

Wouldn't that make the stupid questions more reasonable?

"I'm paying 500 dollars a year, so I have the right to ask how can I declare a global variable"

Maybe stricter rules, besides, I think most clients would complain to SAP if they see their developers are getting lost because they don't know how to sum a field in a table or changing the date format and they don't have the SDN backup, of course they could always search the 20 daily question about changing the date format, but everyone knows how picky some people can be.

[Former Member]

Hi Ramiro -

Good point - hadn't thought of it.

OK - then the SDN fees go to pay the salary of actual paid moderators.

These folks work just like the moderators in moderated Google groups - they don't let fressers get a seat at the table.

Regards

djh

[Former Member]

Thanks Gareth, for starting this discussion again. It has deteriorated a lot in the years that i'm active on SDN. And I think I have a solution for this problem

Although the word has negative connotations i think a purge is needed.

Simply put, first post a big effing banner on the site explaining that not conforming to the forum rules will result without warning in your user id being deleted and maybe your ip address banned as well.

And then stick to these new rules for ever!

This way probably the hits will go down tremendously, but in the end it will benefit not only the SAP community but also, and more importantly, it will also benefit the quality of the product SAP .

Warm regards, Rob Dielemans