On December 13, we shared that during the migration to our new community platform, we intend to streamline the site, by removing some blogs, comments, questions, and answers that align with certain criteria.
After the announcement, we received feedback about the proposed deletions, including the lack of a way for members to retain a full backup of of their blog content (for example, including images). The JSON method listed in the original blog post is not adequate for this purpose, and members were struggling to figure out how to keep a full copy of their blog posts that were targeted for removal. Members also wanted a way to identify for migration some blog posts that were important to keep despite the low view numbers, for targeted purposes.
The community spoke, and we heard you! The feedback and concerns led us to re-evaluate certain aspects of the plan. As a result, we now plan to migrate ALL published blog posts, regardless of view numbers and subject matter.
We do still intend to leave behind questions and answers that meet the criteria originally listed (see below). That part of the plan remains intact. And after migration, we will continue to investigate longevity of content on the site and how to better incorporate content review and removal into our ongoing operations.
We all agree that what makes this community shine is its content, the contributions of our incredible experts. We hope this change in plans will better serve our contributors and keep the content flowing in the community.
Below is an updated version of the original blog post, with the change in plan reflected.
If you have further questions, please email the team at sapcommunity@sap.com.
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As we announced earlier this year, we are moving to A New Home in the New Year for the SAP Community. As a professional community that has been running for 20 years, we have accumulated hundreds of thousands of content items. After analyzing the user-generated content and conducting numerous technical migration tests, we have decided that this migration is the best time to remove some content, to ensure a positive impact on the site’s overall performance.
When identifying which content to leave behind during the migration, we first tackled the question of publication date. We are not removing any content that was posted in 2022 or 2023 (and now 2024); all of that content will migrate to the new platform.
For content posted prior to 2022, the next focus is on content type. We have decided to concentrate on removing only Q&A; we will not remove any published blog posts (posts that are in draft status or in status "needs more work" will be deleted, however).
For identifying which questions not to migrate, we focused on three main criteria: number of views, accepted answers, and whether the question was related to a previous migration or community platform. Below is a more detailed look at the guidelines.
Published questions to be removed:
- If the question had zero answers, and it had 3 views or fewer in 2022, it will not be migrated.
- If the question had an answer, but that answer was not accepted, and the question had zero views in 2022, it will not be migrated.
- If the question had “SAP Community” as its primary managed tag, and it was published before March 2023, it will not be migrated.
Note that if we delete a question with comments and/or answers, the replies will be deleted as well, as these threads can't exist without the parent content.
We know that published content plays a large role in every member’s reputation in the community, and we can assure you that any missions or badges that you earned with that content will not be lost—you will keep all of those missions and badges, even if the content they were based on is not migrated.
Next Steps
If you are among the users who have content that will be deleted, you will be notified via email by the end of January 12 (the email header is titled: SAP COMMUNITY MIGRATION: content that will not migrate to the new platform). If you have a question about your content, you can send an email to sapcommunity@sap.com ; the team is working diligently to reply within 48 hours.
If you wish to keep a text copy of your content, you can request an export file using functionality available in the profile:
- Log in to the SAP Community.
- Click on the avatar at the top right and select “My Account.”
- Open Account & Settings on the left and select “Privacy.”
- Select the “Privacy Settings” tab.
- In the “Download your information” section, click on the Request button.
The system will automatically generate a file of your content, which will be available in that section for you to download. (Please note that if you have a lot of content, the file generation may take some time.)
We look forward to relaunching after migration with a community that is responsive and vibrant, and ready for more of your excellent content.