Annoying forum messages

[Former Member]

Dear all,

I am not sure how many times you might have been told that

"We are sorry but your message can not be posted since you have used forbidden words/phrases. Please edit your post according to the forum guidelines and re-post."

I cannot believe that you cannot even post threads which has clean words in it.

Can we please filter swearing words and bad language instead of filtering clean questions.

This forum has quite a lot of problems if you look at it.

Sort things out SAP!!

Regards

Jehanzeb

[Former Member]

Hi Jehanzeb.

I would like to suggest my opinion.

I really feel encouraging by everybodies replies.

In Addition, If you think you might have not used such words and still you get these anoying messages.

You should just clear the cache or Temporary files.

I also had faced the similar problem inspite of preventing any use of those kind of words.

By that , So Far So Good.

Good Luck & Regards.

Harsh Dave

[Former Member]

Helloo Dave,

Thanks for your informative suggestion, I like when more people join into the conversation and put their experiences into words here.

I would love to clear the cache and temporary files if I didn't have 15 user accounts which I use on daily basis. If I clear the temp files I will loose all my user name and passwords which I don't remember.

I think SAP should fix their little bugs instead of explaining (excuses) to others how they should be working.

This might sound bit harsh but I found that for every question I asked (general forum related) they have the strangest answer to it.

Like if you look at the post composition,if you add a code into the post instead of auto-wrapping text, it puts the text all over the place. I did create a thread on that issue too however nothing happened since then.

I guess they are still figuring out how to fix it (or) how to explain to users, how to use the system.

Regards

Jehanzeb

[Former Member]

OK let me see if I can make this clear to everyone.

The filters are based on the rules of engagement, use a word or phrase not allowed or in violation of the rules and the message is blocked. It's not a bug it works quite well. We will also NOT publish the list of forbidden words simply because we are constantly tuning it BECAUSE people are constantly finding workarounds which continue to violate the rules. Posting the words simply makes it easier for the violations to take place.

So READ the rules and you should be fine.

The issue with the formatting is being worked on and we are waiting for the fix, the problem is on the forum software side not the SAP side therefore we are waiting to receive the fix ourselves.

[Former Member]

I faced the same issue and didn't understand at all what might be the filter words because my posting was far from anything illegal. after some trying i found out that it was the phrase 'ehmail ahddress' (typos intentional) which wasn't allowed.

while I do understand that posting mymaihl at somewhere dot com is not allowed I still don't understand what's wrong with 'ehmail ahddress'. I can think of a lot of topics where someone wants to discuss issues about ehmail ahddresses.

conclusion: posting the blacklist or informing the poster about what is wron once I try to submit a posting would be a better solutionas the current.

my 2 cents,

anton

[Former Member]

The "e" word and the "u" word simply because they were key indicators based on reports of abuse of threads, we struggled with adding both because it's simple not a direct correlation to abuse and yet they were both key indicators of abusing taking place (majority wise).

"Please send ... the document via e...."

for example.

(the above phrase looks odd because we also filter the most common phrases which are associated with the ill behaviour)

[Former Member]

Soon we'll have all the English alphabets in the block list. So you cannot use any of them. Might as well change it into Arabic or something.

Have you noticed how big job you have taken in your hands by saying "we are taking feedback from users"?..You will never get a standard feedback from any one of them.

Instead you are collecting number of angry user's who cannot use the forum for their work purpose because of this intervention.

I am not against the block listing bad language or swearing words however I don't think this high level of security is needed in this type of forum where you are blocking each letter.

Get standard list of swearing and bad language list from online, (Google it) add it into the block list but for the love of God, please do not block each and every letter.

I might be wrong here or maybe some people might not like my comments but by reading the last post I feel that this blocking list is going in a totally different direction.

Regards

Jehanzeb

[Former Member]

No one said we are blocking letters, are block list is relatively small and focus around ensuring that users don't violate the rules of engagement.

We block the words associated with violations not letters, and only two words are actually blocked yet several phrases which contain those words are in the list.

[Former Member]

Hi Jehanzeb,

I, for myself, cannot see any reason why we should get angry users in here, just because of some words or phrases that are not allowed to use. Normally I can anwer each question without any issue here. Just sometimes, once in a while, I am facing a issue here. Then I try to formulate the answer a bit differently and that usually works. Ok, may be that is because I am dealing with those 'bad things' happend in this community in the past already for a long time and you are quite fresh in here. May be you should read some of the discussions about all these u.r.g.e.n.t, a.s.a.p. questions as well as the one asking for documents to be sent to the private address without sharing the knowledge here, in this forum and the coffe corner as well. You might understand why this happend.

kind regards

Siggi

[Former Member]

Siegfried,

I respect you and every other person who uses this forum. My intention is not to make people angry or create dispute around however, I am sure you would understand when someone (new member) types one question and gets to know that he cannot post it for some "secret" reason which he needs to find out in his post.

Short posts are fine however, long posts takes forever to find what could have been an "inappropriate" word.

I would say if there is going to be a banning list then at least the system should prompt the user which word or words he has used in his post which are inappropriate and cannot be used.

Showing a red message on top of the post does not help at all (That includes a link to a big long article).

I can fully understand your situation and I do know how it feels when some stupid idiot comes into the forum and starts asking stupid questions (I run my own private friends forum too).

However, the question here is to make the system "user friendly" (in other words system usability) as much as possible and not too much of restrictive.

Regards

Jehanzeb

[Former Member]

Absolutely correct.

I agree with you.

I tried 5 times taking almost every single word out to see what could be causing the issue.

In the end I typed

Testing

post the thing and then re-edited it and it allowed me to use the whole thing.

Strange world of SAP forum! This is the first forum I have seen doing these things.

Regards

Jehanzeb

[Former Member]

I guess you didn't take the word "urgent" out of your post.

There is a message that comes up when you use words like this telling you to check the rules of engagement. And there it tells you what words are disallowed.

But I agree that it's a bug that allows you to edit the posting and put it back in (like I just did)!

Rob

Edited by: Rob Burbank on Aug 20, 2008 9:16 AM

[marilyn_pratt]

And we will work to rectify the bug. But those who willfully disregard the rules will be booted out of here. Silly to play cat and mouse games and counter productive to the purpose of these forums.

[Former Member]

This was the post:

[]

Rob

[Former Member]

The bug allowing you to edit and avoid the filter is being fixed already we are waiting for Q&A and then to deploy.

[Former Member]

can we have the link for the list please?

I can't seem to find it.

Regards

Jehanzeb

[marilyn_pratt]

The rules of engagement explain what we would have you avoid, but it isn't an explicit list. We are taking this feedback and thinking how best to deliver a simpler and clearer communication around the "forbidden list". Thanks to you and others for your feedback.

[jurjen_heeck]

> I am not sure how many times you might have been told that

>

>

> "We are sorry but your message can not be posted since you have used forbidden words/phrases. Please edit your post according to the forum guidelines and re-post."

>

> I cannot believe that you cannot even post threads which has clean words in it.

>

> Can we please filter swearing words and bad language instead of filtering clean questions.

I think the real problem lies in the fact that one does not get an indication which word(s) or phrase(s) triggered the rejection. I know of one occasion where I've corrected my post three times to still have it rejected. Now I already give up after the first rejection......

Maybe the preview functionality can be expandend with a pre-check?

[ThomasZloch]

> Maybe the preview functionality can be expandend with a pre-check?

Very good idea. Dear SDN administrators, is there a realistic chance that this could be done?