Addressing this message only to SDN community:Not intended as a question

[Former Member]

Dear SDN Team,

Not able to find a proper place where people can place your feedback about this site and other comments,i am using this post as a medium.

I wish to address what vague rules you have recently introduced into this website.When a thing is already perfect,why you people are bent on making it imperfect.

What is this logic that a person cannot have 10 issues pending with him at any time.He is forced to close an issue to post next.Further he has no other option than to award full marks to any random answer.This practically happens as people have no time.You are making your database a junk by encouraging your rules.

Further so much processing happens to open a webpage that overall site is very slow.Who is the person who has introduced 10 issues rule here.I am not the CIO otherwise he will be fired.

I am not at all happy the things are recently going with this site.

[former_member184657]

This message was moderated.

[Former Member]

I am not at all happy the things are recently going with this site. 

I must disagree with your statement. I am happy to see the work the moderators have been doing since the stricter Rules of Engagement have been introduced. Anyone who is familar with the ABAP forums can see the improvement. I also feel the restriction of 10 open threads is fair. I wonder about people who will post several questions over a short period of time with questions that could be answered with a simple search.

I realize that reality says "you can not please 100% of the people 100% of the time". The 10 thread limit does seem fair to me. I also realize that it could be reasonably possible that a User may need to have 10 threads open. My suggestion/question to the SDN Team would be, if a User does have less than the 10 open threads, give him the option of Re-Opening a thread has been closed but still needs an answer.

As others have stated, you can still close a thread without awarding points, and you can still state that you are looking for a solution even though the thread has been closed.

[Former Member]

> have more than 10 open questions at the same time, which >he/she absolutely cannot resolve without the help from SDN >members, then there must be something wrong with that >person

No sir/madam, there are people who will expect anything unnatural to happen with R/3 which may or may not be possible.But knowledge gap is a lot .Therefore forums of sap are growing at such an astounding rate.Its upto you ,you take it as success or failur of SAP.

[Former Member]

> I also feel the restriction of 10 open threads is fair

I have only one short reply to this.

Check java.sun.com forums.You will get the answer how a forum site should be.

[Former Member]

Dont you feel this left bar is so obstructing to read replies.

One has to click on this arrow every now and then.Scroll

everywhere to read replies.

[Former Member]

there's a tiny little triangle in the top right corner of the left-hand-side navigation area. use it to hide that area.

[former_member188685]

>

> > I also feel the restriction of 10 open threads is fair
> 
> I have only one short reply to this.
> 
> Check java.sun.com forums.You will get the answer how a forum site should be.

I don't like your short reply and mentioned site too,,

you can't compare one website with another. As a Community member i am using SDN from 2004, i have no issues like what you have. I feel you didn't explore may of the features of SDN . There are Forums based on different areas, Weblogs section, Wiki Area, Articles, Downloads and e-learning etc.

I think you are from java background.

Warm Regards

Vijay

[Jelena]

>

> Check java.sun.com forums.You will get the answer how a forum site should be.

First off, when I go to that web site, there is no link that says 'Forums'. Oh, wait... I have to click 'Participate'. Don't like this already...

Since you have only been registered on SDN in May 2008, you might not know that at some point the SDN forum looked almost exactly like Sun's Java forum - polluted with primitive questions and posts with non-descriptive subjects. I think that current state of the SDN forums is a huge progress, even if we have to live with 10 open question limit.

[Former Member]

@ Jelena : Thanks for the statement that the moderator efforts are appreciated. There are many of us and also some folks who do more quiet but a lot of excellent work in the background (much less noisy than me to keep the forums is a reasonable good shape.

> I think that current state of the SDN forums is a huge progress, even if we have to live with 10 open question limit.

Personally, I find that limit correct, also going forward. People forget their open questions and the watch mails have a validity period of 90 day by default. So a reminder to go back an follow-up can be an education for free... from the efforts of others who took the time to provide usefull answers or even learn why their answers were not complete or even incorrect.

That is actually my main motivation for participating at SDN, and I try to put something back into it and help to keep the forums and site in an orderly state by moderating some forums in my free time.

Another usefull feature of the 10 open question limit, is that when interview question spammers are faster than the moderators... they hit a break-point at the 10th question. It at least gives them something to think about, and the mods can clean up while they are reading the rules

@ aditya

> aditya sharma cross-posted and duplicate posted some questions:

In your case, I have observed that the open questions are sometimes locked and not deleted. I have deleted some. So you now have less than the 10 question limit. If you respect the rules, I will make an effort of going back and closing locked questions for you. Please confirm?

@ all: If David Halitsky does not have a problem with the 10 open question limit, then I dont believe that anyone can justifiably challenge it

Cheers,

Julius

[former_member110461]

Just to add my comments that in my mind the forums are now much much better since the 10 open question limit. They are now getting back towards the sort of quality we had back in 2004 when I started using SDN (to the person who started this thread - yes some of us have been on SDN for over 4 years).

Therefore, although the 10 question limit may not be perfect (I closed down some questions which had not been answered - but then again I do tend to ask rather hard questions), it is a suitable solution and has far more advantages compared with it's disadvantages.

Additionally, thankyou to all of the moderators, they are doing a great job whilst maintaining their day to day jobs too.

Paul

[Former Member]

>

Further he has no other option than to award full marks to any random answer.

As the others have said, you don't have to assign ten points randomly, you can simply mark it as "solved".

But I think this is the problem. A poster has no other option to continue other than marking it as "solved" even if it is not. So if a future searcher is looking for an answer to the same question and is looking only for solved threads, he or she may be misled.

So I think there should be another option for closing a post - something like"unresolved, but closed".

My pet peeve is people who ask multiple questions every day, day after day.

Rob

[Former Member]

Hello Aditya Sharma,

I would also favour moving this thread back to ABAP General to see who agrees with you. I would be interested.

For your information, I have deleted 2 of your cross-posted threads today.

I recommend that you read [the rules|https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/wiki?path=/display/home/rulesofEngagement] before posting further.

There are not many rules, but they are good ones and we enforce them.

Cheers,

Julius

[Former Member]

Why ones should mark a question answered even if it is not answered.Dont you people think that there could be a possibility that 10 question in succession are not answered well because of technical difficulty.Why would a person should mark them answered.

Isn't that making your database inconsistent.And if one is bound to make a question answered then why not award marks.It may benefit other person in some way.

I stick with my decision fire the person who advised this.

[Former Member]

So I guess I should be fired now?

We looked at the entire site from a historical basis and made a decision on the average, the average was around 7 open questions with many extremes of 100 or more, we opt'd for 10 and we stick by that.

If you have more than 10 open questions, according to the feedback we solicited from random samplings in the community, then you are focused on more than one thing and one problem probably leads to another. In many cases that we investigated we saw many of the open questions were actually "support" related and did not belong in this "non support" forums. It was a toss up and we made the decision and will not be reversing it anytime soon. Not to say we won't but it will be awhile in order to see how this works out.

[Former Member]

> I stick with my decision fire the person who advised this.

Really, I cannot believe that there are many people who would agree with you... as it was also a popular request from the SDN community which started this and most seem happy with it.

So you want to fire the majority of the people who contribute to SDN as well?

I think you are on your own here, or you would be left on your own here when everyone else has been fired

Cheers,

Julius

[former_member188685]

>Why would a person should mark them answered.

>Isn't that making your database inconsistent.And if one is bound to make a question answered then why >not award marks.It may benefit other person in some way.

>I stick with my decision fire the person who advised this.

Marking a question answered doesn't mean that it is answered and also you need not to give points to any one. it's your wish , if you think some body provided some input or hint then you can give the points. otherwise you can simply mark the Thread answered , and give some comment if you got the solution else you inform no solution for this post.

If a person opens a Thread and he got solution from some where else not from SDN, ex: OSS, then person can provide the solution what ever he/she got and can mark the thread answered. But i don't think a problem which there for long time, and which even cannot be resolved by OSS. in those cases There is some Database inconsistent will occur as suggested by you.

Vijay

[Former Member]

Furture trend will reveal to yourself.

Keep in touch with trends to determine answered/nonanswered.

Mistake i would say you are making here is that you are treating

user = (ideal user) whie no user is ideal today,all are selfish and they join your site to get rid of their daily issues.

I would suggest simple approach,take answered/nonanswered /open ended or closed out of context and from there plan for further enhancements.

[JanStallkamp]

Hi.

>

> Mistake i would say you are making here is that you are treating
> user = (ideal user) whie no user is ideal today,all are selfish and they join your site to get rid of their daily issues.

I've been following this thread now some time and decided not to take part. It's completely ok that you don't like some of the decisions made by the SDN team (I'm not member of that team but I know some of them and like the work they do). If you would fire them that's ok too. You are not in that position and I don't think that their managers think in the same way.

But: Don't claim that all users here are selfish! That is something I don't accept at all. There are a lot of people in this community who help others. Perhaps you have seen that people not only ask questions, there are a lot people here who answer. And some are writing very good articles and blogs and contribute a lot. This is a web community not an additional help desk! I know that we have that type of users with some hundred questions asked and not a single answer given to someone else issues. But that's not the majority and I've seen people who started as a consumer and after a while started giving good answers. That's the way a community works and I like this community very much.

And btw: if one would expect every user to be an ideal user then we would not need rules of engagement, 10 open question limit and so on. We would not need moderators at all. But users are not ideal so in some areas we need rules. In my opinion SDN officials only introduce stricter rules if there is no other way to solve problems in this community.

Best regards,

Jan Stallkamp

[Former Member]

Just to point out something obvious I think you are missing...

Just because you mark a question as answered doesn't stop people from posting more answers to it. Sure it means they won't get any points but who cares about that?!

Oh right, I forgot, most people only answer to get points. My mistake...

Gareth.

[pokrakam]

>

> Just because you mark a question as answered doesn't stop people from posting more answers to it.  Sure it means they won't get any points but who cares about that?!
> 
> Oh right, I forgot, most people only answer to get points.  My mistake...

Hi Gareth,

I wasn't going to respond to this thread because it is one of the most senseless arguments I've read here. However just to cheer you up I thought I might mention that your scenario of people answering a closed question did [actually happen|;!

What's more, the questioner even allocated points for a closed thread. Wonders never cease!!!

Cheers,

Mike

[Former Member]

Mike - I don't have an example at hand, but people sometimes mark a question as solved and immediately add another question to the same thread.

Rob

[martin_nooteboom]

Rob [here|; is an example for you.

Regards,

Martin

[Former Member]

Dear friends,

If you are all over yet,i wish to mention that if i am able to

take invalid steps and your website is allowing me,its not my failure.Its the checkpoints which you need to work on.

But sadly focus has been more on unwanted issues and less on moot points.

And so many are standing by to justify them.

Also one person addressed in a way that all users are not selfish and answer is many are... and 2/3 out of 1 are enough to play folly wih the database.

Reagrds,

Aditya Sharma

[Former Member]

What?!

[Former Member]

I find every point raised in this thread directly related to your statement that we are not being intelligent about the only 10 questions rule. I also see no evidence that the decision was a bad one, in fact by the other points raised it shows that there are enough "bad apples" that the rule was a good one to implement.

We monitor trends very carefully and have done so since the forums opened in 2003 I think we have a pretty good handle on what we are doing, we make mistakes but we fixed those when we do and this one is to soon to tell.

Those you feel are only here to get rid of their daily issues are not part of the community they are the people that come and take but do not give and frankly they are the ones that raised the need for the 10 quesiton limit to begin with. As everyone is part of the community they work together and they give and take and therefore the 10 question limit has not hurt them at all.

Now should we add another option "On Hold" for a question that has no possible solution at the moment - we could, we could but I fear it would be just as quickly abused by those only coming to get their issues solved and are not participating in the community so it does not seem like a good idea at this time.

As I stated earlier for now this stands, you can continue to hash things out and express your displeasure BUT we are not going to change it until we've had a chance to measure it's success or non-success, currently it's been very successfully and we've see improvements across all forums.

[Jelena]

I like the "on hold" option, although it would probably make sense to treat it the same way as an "open" question or have a separate limit (e.g. 2-3 "on hold"). I personally had a couple of questions that had to close, but still would like to find an answer to.

In response to the honorable topic starter. Being born and raised in a totalitarian society, I personally hate any limitations that anyone is trying to impose on me. For example, I go mad when I read any medical advice for "women over 35". What happens to a woman on her 35th birthday? Does she become a different person than she was yesterday? Same thing with 10 questions - why not 7, 8 or 15? Although I've never had over 5 or so unanswered questions at a time, the fact of the limitation (i.e. certain lack of freedom) itself is upsetting (to me).

However, I can also see the clear benefits to the community here. All emotions aside, if one just has to have more than 10 open questions at the same time, which he/she absolutely cannot resolve without the help from SDN members, then there must be something wrong with that person. I would even go as far as to say that this is most likely the result of not using his/her own brain and search engines. Also, before the limit, I used to see many "unanswered" questions where, really, nothing was left to add. People were just too lazy to mark their old questions.

The reality is that SDN is, essentially, a private enterprise. Therefore, the owners or "managers" have full rights to impose any standards and limitations. If many users disagree, it is likely that any unreasonable limits will be changed. But somehow I don't see anyone else disagreeing so far...

[ThomasZloch]

>

Further he has no other option than to award full marks to any random answer.

Does one really have to award full points in order to mark a thread as answered? I don't think so.

Other than that, my opinion is the complete opposite of yours, he or she should be promoted rather than fired. There is a clear tendency now (in the ABAP forum) towards less duplicated and redundant content, the junk factor is declining.

If you want to turn this into positive territory for yourself, maybe post a final comment when closing a thread, e.g. your solution, whether you found it yourself or at a different source than SDN, or a reason why the problem isn't a problem any more, since you can obviously move on with your work and ask more questions even without a solution to previous problems.

Greetings

Thomas

[RichHeilman]

Moving this thread to the "Suggestions" forum.

Regards,

Rich Heilman

[Former Member]

Kindly consider this thread.If you do not get the depth of what i am saying here,your team will be in real critical situation in future.Data has become almost inconsistent for you already ad soon , you have applied this rule

[Former Member]

>

> Moving this thread to the "Suggestions" forum.
> 
> Regards,
> Rich Heilman

Actually Rich, even though it obviously belings here, I think it may do better in the ABAP forum. I think people who may tend to agree with the OP will never see this here.

Rob