Why I stopped contributing (especially to expert forums)...

[Former Member]

In reply to the recent topic that raised the suggestion of Platinum contributors, Rich write:

<i>In response to the above, I have to say, that the driving force behind most of the top contributors here on SDN is to help their peers. If a Top Contributor slows or stops in his contributions, it is either one of two things, 1) he simply doesn't get anything out of it anymore( the feeling you get when you help someone) or 2) he is not contributing due to lack of availibility, meaning that maybe his employer has cut him off from doing so during work hours, or the work load is simply too much and there is not time for contributing.</i>

I'm interested in the reasons why people have stopped or slowed, especially in the product expert forums.

I thought I'd share my experience, as I was one of the top portal forum area posters for a while.

Basically I got tired of the repetitious questions where there had been no attempt to do basic research. So, rather than using the search option, or following the well documented links to the wiki pages which a few of us spent quite a bit of time constructing, people would just post a question.

What's wrong with this? The forum is here to help. Yes, but I like to find the more meaty, interesting questions! For example, after the 1000th question about logon tickets or "how do I get involved in this portal thing", all with well documented answers, it was becoming harder to find a "new" question or one which made me think "yeah, something to spend some time working on".

Of course, it did help that I was travelling away from home more and it was often more productive to spend some time answering questions when stuck in a hotel room, so I also can tick the "time availablity" answer to reduced SDN posting.

Cheers

[suresh_datti · Accepted solution]

You can't really blame the beginners.. you will continue to see the basic questions as long they keep getting rapid fire replies.. after all it is much quicker than searching (notwithstanding the shortcomings of the SDN search feature).. & yes you can earn 'easy' points that way too.. And even if the beginners become knowledgeable, there will be more of them, as this is an ever growing community.. When I go through the forums, I normally use the filter 'Questions with no reply' & try to focus on what interests me.. it might make sense to remove the expert & just name them as forums..

~Suresh

[stefan_grube · Accepted solution]

I second this.

I answer to the questions where a topic is involved that is interesting enough to investigate.

Questions like: "What is XI" do not belong to that kind of questions

Regards

Stefan

[Former Member]

Interested in the reasons why people stop contributing? What about that:

- because I became obsolete and can't compete anymore in this global economy. Too many knowledgeable people out there

- because the students outsmarted the master

- because I need to have a real job and make a living.

- because I need to have a real life outside SDN forums

- because it was fun to contribute and be number one last year and let it go this year

- because as interesting and challenging SDN forums are, there're plentiful out there in the marketplace

- because...

[Former Member]

Good morning Mike,

Case of same stuff different bucket over in workflow. Lots of 'How do I trigger a workflow' questions, but too few 'Check out this wierd stuff, can we work through it'. But there are still enough curly ones to keep me coming back.

We seem to be heading toward being an interview question/answer line: <b>which stinks</b>. If someone gets the job based on this form of cheating - and it is cheating when people are given interview questions responses - they are supposed to be checking your experience - then the client who is unlucky enough to have hired gets someone with no experience or skills of their own.

Anyway, the fun is in following a really tough question where two or three people put their heads together and come up with a whole greater than the sum of the parts. If we cannot keep the standards up then this will die.

Regards

Gareth

[former_member374]

Hi Michael and Gareth,

This is not exactly the thread that I was hoping to come back to from my 3 month family leave: Why top contributors stop contributing.

It is for sure an interesting question and something that keeps us Community Evangelists up at night.

I think we are the victims of our own success. Because we have such active contributors and timely replies people get lazy and don't search. And there is a reward for posting a new answer or a copy from an older answer in points.

How could we reward searching and reusing? It is sad that the challenging questions are drowned out in the noise of repeated ones.

Extra newbie forums don't solve the problem, if you are too lazy to search, you are also too lazy to find the right forum.

We do have mark for review in the Wiki. It would be great to have something similar in the forums too. Where members can mark a question as repeat. Experts can then set their filter to no repeat questions and it would shame the poster.

Another possibility would be to put in an extra step when opening a thread. Once the question is posted, a search is started in the background and possible threads are shown, which can be checked out without loosing the question, that way the system searches for you.

> We seem to be heading toward being an interview

> question/answer line: <b>which stinks</b>. If

> someone gets the job based on this form of cheating -

> and it is cheating when people are given interview

> questions responses - they are supposed to be

> checking your experience - then the client who is

> unlucky enough to have hired gets someone with no

> experience or skills of their own.

These interview questions only help you if you research them before, which means that someone is doing his or her homework, which isn't a bad thing. The answers help to get deeper into the topics too. We all started once and having these answers helps also to ease the fear of the interview for people that are less experiance. There are only so many interview questions that can be asked and prepped for, so it goes back to people not searching It is the task of the hiring manager to find out the real depth of candidate's knowledge.

Any suggestion to bring our members to search more are greatly appreciated, Mark.

[former_member10945]

Simple suggest:

1. Give everyone 25 points.

2. Given anyone who signs up from this point forward 25 points.

3. Post a question you lose 1-5 point(s).

It's too hard to incentive searching so you need to make a slight disincentive to post a question. I guess you should be able to go into negative points or something just so people don't start making a million accounts.

-d

[suresh_datti]

Nice idea.. at least, even if it makes a few people start using the 'search forum' option, things will improve..

~Suresh

[pokrakam]

I must 'fess up to posting less than I used to in the Workflow forum and dropping down the rankings. Partly due to time and partly for the same reasons already mentioned - noise.

BUT - people keep responding (hey, repeat question = cheap points). It's the same as SPAM - as long as folks who think they have just been emailed the world's best kept secret keep clicking on those links and buying snake oil, SPAM will continue to flow freely.

I make a concious decision most of the time not to answer people who do not try. If more people ignored the "How do I write a program" type questions then the questioner would come back with something more detailed.

So we're back to the 'victim of it's own success' - and one may even argue that the whole points system has come back to bite us. On the WUG mailing list, responses are much harsher (without being unfriendly) pointing people to the help/FAQ as there are no real rewards for answering a lazy question for the umpteenth time. I sometimes even wonder whether folks here have a stock list of answers ready to paste - just do a search in the Workflow forums for "check your bindings".

Just my 2p.

Cheers,

Mike

Message was edited by: Mike Pokraka

- ahem, of course that should read "not to answer people who do not try". Fixed.

[Former Member]

People posting generic questions are not that sensitive about a big point score so this is not going to work. ('A weight of 20 tonnes or 50 tonnes,- what difference - to a dead body?' is a crude translation of a local proverb in my native place )

I think experts should use their expertize to zero-in on interesting questions (Like looking for zero replies questions in last two days - something that I try to do not that I am an expert). Afterall there can be only so many interesting questions that people will post.

I often use an analogy to understand such a situation - if you are put in a room with a noble laurate, you will be excited and thank your lot - but the conversation will die out maybe in an hour or so. Because you can only think of so many things to talk about - 'interesting' to both of you.

However, if you see a barbershop, there is incessant chatter, and never a dull moment.

I may have elevated my tastes to not join the barbershop chatter, but, that doesn't mean anything to anyone else. That chatter is alive, and mostly good for participants even if it is superficial.

Bottomline - the ratio of challenging to mundane posts on a democratic platform like SDN forum will always be low (which itself is relative to where you see it from). Just got to live with it.

And, we can't say barbershop is 'any less' than a room full of noble lauretes - can we?

Message was edited by:

Ajay Das

[pokrakam]

Hi Ajay,

I dont' mind the barbershop at all (nice analogy!), it's just as nice nice to talk about the weather and quality of toasters instead of particle physics and psychology; and 10 years on I still learn stuff from novice questions.

However the issue as I see it is that the forums are sometimes more like a cigarette counter. I don't blame the questioners either - hey, if you get so much near-instant response then why bother searching?

Cheers,

Mike

[Former Member]

Hi Mike (and others who say the same thing)

Yes, if you can use the forum as a near-instantaneous search, why bother to use that silly rectangle on the left! None of this Google concept of searching based upon thousands of servers and billions of indexed pages - this is searching based on thousands of forum member's combined knowledge..

I've suggested in another forum that giving a point for closing a thread in addition to the point for giving points might help in increasing the closure rate, which would make it easier to find the interesting posts.

Cheers

[suresh_datti]

PL take a look at this .

~Suresh

[abdulbasit]

It is very good idea. I will make improvement :

Loose 10 point when you post a question.

Get 5 point back when you close the thread.

This will minimize the open threads.

Abdul.