Sticky 'Q&A' or 'Most Asked' per forum

[Former Member]

Hi there,

wouldn't it be cool and helpful to have a sticky thread per forum compiling the most asked questions and the respective answers (or threads) which solved this questions?

Of course this would require some editors in charge per forum. I think those could easily be appointed out of the

top contributors per forum or it could be one of the forum 'mentors' (isn't there assigned someone of SAP for each forum?).

I believe this could help reduce duplicate answers and questions as well as aggregate fragmented (very long threads or answers spanning several threads) threads.

And it were a great quick reference even for active community members who sometimes remember that there has been this and that solution but fail to enter the right keywords in the search box themselves to find it.

For a few, very crowded forums this probably would require two or three editors, which might require a little technical adoption to SDN to enable edit authorization on a single thread to n distinct people.

Another side effect of such a possibility would be the fact, that deserving community members chosen as a forum editor could add "SDN forum editor" to their CV, a 'rank' much less prone to fraud like the points system is sometimes said to be.

just my easter egg. probably it has been discussed earlier and I just failed to find this discussion due to some of the reasons mentionend.

regards,

anton

[Former Member]

Hi Anton,

I would like to invite you to the following discussion:

to share your ideas there. The issue raised there is not exactly the same, but some of your ideas touch on how people are rewarded, and I think you have some valuable ideas with regards to reducing clutter.

On the other hand, if people didn't have the opportunity to post the same answers to the same questions over and over and over again, how could they earn thousands of points? (Yes, I admit, that last statement was dripping with sarcasm, so I had to terminate it with a smiley).

Martin

[Former Member]

Hi Martin,

I won't take care in this discussion. To be honest, I think those reward system are altogether ridiculous. If I could I'd give my points to some poor people who seem to desperately need it for whatever reason (ego? do they put it in their CVs?). Watching this, I think there is really some kind of fraud which makes it much more ridiculous in my eyes. But if they have fun with that they should do that.

I personally see it like this: I take part in two forums here on SDN and in some others elsewhere. If you actively be there for just a little time, you quickly get to know 'the gang'. You know who are the real gurus, the occasional lurkers having good and bad ideas and answers and the passive beneficiaries. You know who's nice, harsh, ironic, helpful or an ****. I don't need any points for that. It's a matter of ordinary human interaction which I learnt during the last couple of years (oops, dozens that are).

These days someone here asked for some functionality that allows him to ignore people who didn't award him points for his answers. Now, for me that is poor. Did he think of the quality of his answers? Maybe they were not worth any points. Or did he think of the possibility that someone who doesn't reward points for him once might answer one of his questions which then couldn't be seen by him because of the ignore function?

The function that I asked for was simply meant to be a, well, usual Q&A function. Something both helping a newbie to find out what questions are asked and if the one she's about to ask has already been answered, and a quick reference for the active people to find the complete answer complementing the fragments in one's brain ("...I know we had this already...").

But I am following the other thread for amusement ...

anton

BTW: I like the SDN t-shirts though. Which currently depend on the points. Hmmm...

[Former Member]

Ah, Anton, my old nemesis...

Of course, that question about ignoring users was from me, but I'm sure you knew that.

Anyway, one point I made in the other discussion, that I gave you the link to, was that doing away with the points system altogether would do away with much of the clutter, because people wouldn't just reply with any old answer for the sake of trying to score a point. So at least I think we agree on that much.

Given the amount of clutter that is currently on the discussion threads (for which the points system is probably at fault), ignoring users may be another option to try filter out the clutter, because you know that there are certain users that just take chances, giving dumb answers to try get points. (But I don't seriously think it's a good idea).

But I think that your suggestion is very good - compiling an FAQ per forum which should (hopefully) prevent users from asking the same questions over and over again.

Cheers,

Martin

[Former Member]

In the past, and we have confirmed it. Often times when we saw repeats of the same question over and over again someone would write a very thorough blog on the topic and it normally eliminated the questions for around 6 months. At that point the questions would start comining again normally the response would then be a link to the blog for hte answer - it has become a trend.

Perhaps people just need to learn to use the "SEARCH FORM"?

On all the other points I think you guys might be on to something but we do need to have more than just a handful of people wanting it we need to show a strong case for the actions we take, help get acceptance for ideas and that helps us push them through and get them done.

[Former Member]

You could adopt the same method used for searching notes on Service Marketplace - force the user to do a search before creating a message (Not that I think it really helps)

[Former Member]

Hi,

It is a good idea of having a list of FAQs in each Forum and also possibly a list of reference materials.

Since users ask for reference materials in the forums.

In addition to that when someone tries to post a question he could be provided a list of matches in the forums and the weblogs(Since most of them are truthfully lazy). So that he could look in these results and probably get a solution from these and decide whether the problem he has got is unique and may post the question in the forum.

Regards,

Wenceslaus.

[marilyn_pratt]

I would be glad to help out in the forums where I "lurk". What we need is to have some folks who are interested in the very tasking and tedious work of going through entries and help sort. In forums such as ABAP and XI where I sometimes have my eyeball, I can see that it would be a tremendous effort because of sheer volume. But I would be willing to give points to folks willing to work with me on this!

Let me know if I have any one interested :-).

Marilyn

[Former Member]

Hi Marilyn,

Are you a moderator in these groups you mentioned? I wouldn't mind lending a hand, depending on how you envisage this happening. For example, if you could zip up the threads in the ABAP forum and send me that (because our internet usage at work is limited), I could look through the content and compile a list of the most-often asked questions with references to where the answers are or what answers solved the question. (Although I guess one would divide up the posts by date ranges or something and hopefully there will be more people interested in helping).

If you are keen, let me know and we can discuss the finer details by email.

Regards,

Martin

[Former Member]

Hi Martin,

Marilyn is a member of the SDN team - so in a round about way yes she is a moderator of those areas.

As for having the content offline - we've no ability to do that.

Craig

[marilyn_pratt]

Hi Martin,

I'm a content strategist on SDN and as such am very interested in making information more accessible and user friendly on, among other areas, the ABAP page. You might have noticed the redesign process that my other SDN colleagues have engaged in lately when updating and redesigning pages such as the Java page: <a href="https://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/developerareas/java">Java Page</a>

To that end, I am very interested in seeing how we can further the goal of making some of the content in the fourms even more accessible from the pages of SDN. Suggestions around that are so welcome.

Marilyn

[marilyn_pratt]

Well, I see that you and I were thinking on the same wavelength. I just answered Bhanu Gupta along the same lines: using top contributors to have moderator rights....although for a slightly different reason.

I love your idea of having a "frequently asked question" vehicle. I'm not sure that the threads are the best way of creating that though. Some SDNers have already approached that topic by creating a blog around such a Q&A (See the XI FAQ for example) but that means individual ownership and maintenence. I think there may be more appropriate technologies for such a collaboration than the linear discussion forum or the personal blog. Using some kind of tool that would lend itself to collaborative publishing might be the answer. Having bandwidth to maintain is key. I noticed that in some instances folks declared it would be great to start an FAQ (in a forum for instance), but didn't really follow thru.

Marilyn

[Former Member]

Hi,

I actually think this is a good idea. I do not know if

something has been discussed before about this.

I do get confused sometimes, thinking that some solution

has been provided for the same question. But I am unable

to find it. It might be a strenuous task but can be done

for as suggested "most asked questions".

Regards

Srikishan