Points for helpful answers

[Former Member]

Hi,

My comment/suggestions is this:

moderators/ authors of the forum should think how to improve system for giving points.

Here quite good example:

Posted question was answered 3 times. Ok. Difference between first and second answer is only 2 minutes, so it could happen that when the second answer was written, the author was possibly not aware that question was already answered.

But you cannot say the same for the third answer, which is exactly the same as two answers before. The person answering is the leader of the SD forum with more then 1000 points within 30 days, so I would expect more professional approach.

The whole system with points is similar to rats running game and not professional forum.

Its good that SDN recognise people who actively support other users on the forum, but I think that kind of punishment should be implemented for those who try to achieve best result repeating other suggestions in hope that lazy person will just provide a points to the last user who posted the same solutions others.

The judgement could be done by moderators.

If you observe some posts you quickly recognise that major motivation is not how to help others, but rather how to get more points.

I don't know any other forum (and I am member of many - mostly linux related) where the situation is similar.

Regards

Rafal

[former_member184555 · Accepted solution]

Hi

This is most common especially in active forums. If the thread is still kept open, you can see atleast 10-12 similar replies. Today also there are threads in SD forum with similar replies. My sincere suggestion is...stop thinking about these kind of issues. If you think about the happenings in Forums, you will stop visiting it due to frustration. I saw many people expressing their frustration and finally they became inactive. These points will not give you any recognition (many members may not agree with me). The recognition through points is not long lived. Because I have seen many members becoming inactive in contributions after getting few thousands of points. That is their satisfaction level where they lose interest in gaining points and stop contributing. They say that due to work pressures they couldnot contribute much. It doesn't mean that they didn't had work when they contributed actively. Now most of those people are out of our memory. More than gaining points, I value the satisfaction that we get when our suggestion solves the problem of the other person. I always suggest my friends to treat forums as a good place to learn and contribute whenever you can share your knowledge with others.

SCN is not a paid service and hence we cannot demand anything. This is a common place for SAP community and it is our responsibility to keep it clean. Everyday many new members join in the forums and we cannot teach them discipline. I can say that majority of the members follow the rules and behave with discipline and only a minor percentage of people are spoiling the spirit. My reply is not aimed at any specific person and these are purely my personal feelings.

Regards,

Ravi

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I agree with Ravi.

> I can say that majority of the members follow the rules and behave with discipline and only a minor percentage of people are spoiling the spirit.

This is also true. Newbies to the forum have a bit of grace to get used to it and see how it works and particularly the quality of the discussions which is expected, so they can participate even if some parts are repeated.

If they make a habit of it, then please use the Abuse Reports button, and they will be informed that their habit is not adding value.

If they go into a mindless ponits frenzie, then we reject their posts, remove points, etc.

Having said that, some folks seem to think that the forums are like voting booths, and the most popular answer is the correct one to convince the OP.

An example I can remember from a few months back =>

Sometimes the OP is also the problem, as are a afew top contributors (measured in ponits) as well.

But they are all in a minority.

Cheers,

Julius

[former_member188685 · Accepted solution]

>

> An example I can remember from a few months back => 

some how i missed the above thread...:-)

[Lakshmipathi · Accepted solution]

These points will not give you any recognition  
        (many members may not agree with me).

I also one among them

That is their satisfaction level where they lose interest 
            in gaining points and stop contributing. They say that due
            to work pressures they couldnot contribute much. It doesn't 
           mean that they didn't had work when they contributed actively.

Initially during 2007 & 2008, I was also contributing lot of suggestions and earned points in bulk. But of late, I am terribly overloaded with various assignments and I could not concentrate much on this forum. It is not because of points accumulated but time constraint. But I continue to monitor the forum to warn new comers / lock threads etc., and of course, then and there, I am giving suggestion also. I never get bored to give suggestions and in fact, I like to spend my leisure time going through this forum.

My reply is not aimed at any specific person 
                  and these are purely my personal feelings.

I know Ravi you are one of those very sincere members giving advice to newbies and also taking self interest to click Abuse button quite often which must be appreciated. I also know this comment has not pinpointed anybody but just thought to express my opinion also; thats it !!!!!!!!

thanks

G. Lakshmipathi

[Former Member]

Hi Rafal,

I agree with your observations. While the system of awarding p o i n t s has encouraged many experts to offer possible solutions to the problems posted, several other users seem to have made answering questions as their primary activity. This in itself is not bad but it very often leads to 'irrelevant' or superficial or even repetitive responses. I observe that even some u2018top contributorsu2019 do post some very irrelevant & slipshod responses probably while hurrying on to earn more p o i n t s. And these many unrelevant, superficial and duplicate answers also make search based on keywords a tiresome and time consuming activity.

One might think that others do not r e w a r d such responses and therefore this behaviour should take care of itself but it turns out that unless there is a u2018disincentiveu2019 to discourage u2018superficialu2019 answers, it may not be resolved. I see some posts mentioning 'negative p o i n t s' and I strongly support it. We can start with a -2 added to the list of available scores that a user can award to a post.

The only intention behind this is to induce more responsibility in users while posting on SDN forums. I expect this to significantly improve the quality of the posts, reduce the quantity of superficial posts, increase effectiveness of searches and encourage users to put more focus on how they use these forums. The downside is that users may misuse this feature to discredit each other but I am sure that the existing high standards of moderation is more than adequate to put a check on such incidents.

Regards,

Krishna.

PS: Pls don't mind additional spaces as I couldn't think of a better work around to post matter with certain keywords.

Edited by: Krishna Chandika on Jul 29, 2009 4:30 PM

[former_member184555]

Hi Krishna Chandika,

Negative points is a good idea but, it will reduce the activity in the forums. P o i n t s is one of the motivating factor for the members to participate more actively in the forums. If the activity is less, the chances of getting replies is also less for any query. Then even members do not prefer to post the questions also since there is no chance of getting replies. Even now also, there are many good consultants who donot show interest to spend time in SDN for posting replies to the queries. They use SDN, especially search, when they need some help, but never post replies to others' queries. The current system (p o i n t s) is not motivating them.

Definitely something has to be done to avoid junk in the forums but that should not demotivate members and the forums should not become inactive. The efforts of the moderators has streamlined the functioning of the forums to a great extent and I feel increasing the number of moderators may still improve the quality.

Thanks,

Ravi

[Former Member]

> Negative points is a good idea but, it will reduce the activity in the forums. P o i n t s is one of the motivating factor for the members to participate more actively in the forums.

I don't see the problem. People will no longer need to simply ignore the mindless point-posting or use the Abuse Reports -> they can lob 2 ponits off the "offender".

This will be helpfull for the notion of a self-moderated community. Currently we have to resort to flame wars even to tell offenders to improve their behaviour. In many cases they just ignore it.

Moderators have the ability to assign ponits and also remove already assigned ponits. We use it with restraint and caution, but I can assure you that it is highly effective in such cases after other methods (e.g. rejecting posts, posting copies of the forum rules, etc) have failed to attract their attention.

> If the activity is less, the chances of getting replies is also less for any query.

Yep, only the good ones... and an improvement to the search hit rate.

If this is misused, then the person can also report it. Considering that we have rejected a total of 25852 posts (and this excludes posts and threads completely deleted or locked and left as-is), I expect such misuse to be only a fraction of what we currently see.

Cheers,

Julius

[Former Member]

Hi,

Agreed with Julius, In fact i can say " WE ALL are self Moderator" just we need some discipline and some dedication. My personal opinion on this is, I believe in the Concept of " LEARN -- EARN and RETURN" , I can honestly say that i Learnt a Lot from SDN, if speaking about SD forum there are experts like Mr Lakshmipathi, Mr Ravi Sankar, Jelena, Rajesh, any many more , there answers are like benchmark answer. Learning part comes from Blogs, Forums, Articles and Wikis, Whenever i feel doubt i go there and have confirm with my personal view. Earning part is getting customers confident by giving them the correct solution., And Returning is contributing that knowledge to the FORUM from where i learnt these. I believe Pts will have only a small contribution to the motivation level of contributor, but the feedback which they receive from the posters has a big impact. When ever we see some good feedback we feel internally satisfied.

I have also noted that point by Mr Rafal, and i believe it will not be happen again from my side.

Together we did, together we are doing and together we will do our best to keep forum Clean, helping and knowledge dictionary.

Thanks,

Raja

Edited by: Raja Singh Chhabeda on Jul 30, 2009 7:21 AM

[Lakshmipathi]

I feel increasing the number of moderators 
     may still improve the quality.

I will recommend your name Ravi

thanks

G. Lakshmipathi

[Lakshmipathi]

there are experts like "Mr Lakshmipathi,"  Mr Ravi Sankar, Jelena, 
     Rajesh, any many more , there answers are like benchmark answer.

Thanks Raja for honouring but to be honest, whatever I learned is only a small drop of ocean and still a long way to go. Of course, everybody are in the learning process and as for as possible, we should try to keep the forum clean and in that way, I have been / am contributing to some extent.

thanks again

G. Lakshmipathi

[Former Member]

>

>

I feel increasing the number of moderators 
>      may still improve the quality.

>

>

> I will recommend your name Ravi

>

Me too, I second your opinion.......

Thanks,

Raja

[former_member184555]

Hi

Thanks to Lakshmipathi and Raja. But I do not have the idea/dream of becoming a moderator or a mentor. I am not at all suitable for those jobs. The reason being lack of patience and tollerance.

Regards,

Ravi

[Former Member]

Then again being a moderator will be great opportunity for you......atleast you can improve on that two weakness :-).....

Thanks,

Raja

[former_member184657]

...having said what Ravi and Julius said, I need to add how Professional the forums have become over the last year/year-and-a-half, thanks to the untiring efforts of the moderators.

Speaking on behalf of ABAP Forums(but can generally extend it across SCN), the situation was terrible - for want of a better adjective. But the dedicated efforts of all the moderators have curtailed the menace to great extent. But with more and more newcomers floodig the forums daily, the cleansing ritual is expected to take time, and a wee bit of noise is bound to be present.

The best to tackle this meance is the Abuse Reports. The Moderators rely heavily on them, as it cuts their tasks in searching for problem threads from the stockpile.

Numerous dicussions have take place on improving/scrapping/redefining the points system, but we always come back to square one - meaning the current practice is the best practice.

pk

[Former Member]

Hello,

Thanks for your replies.

I was thinking about the improvement, because in some cases (some threads) I saw a need to stop several replies. On one of the forums (SUSE forum) I participate I can get plus and minus points. Plus is like on SDN. Minus means that for example my reply has nothing to do with posted question or for some other reasons (like breaking forum rules). I thought that this kind of system wouldn't be bad here as well. This is my personal opinion, but since you have longer experience on that forum, so you are probably right in saying that current system is the best one.

I personally don't care about points and my main goal is to improve my knowledge (a time when I worked with OSS messages was quite interesting, so forum is for me similar). Whenever I have time I try to read some threads.

best regards

Rafal

[former_member184657]

Not surprisingly, this point has been discussed too.

Here's an example:

The suggestions here were good too, but sadly it never saw the light of the day.

pk

[Former Member]

For the moment we do have a minus ponits rating system, but it is all-or-nothing...

Unfortunately I have not heard anything further about a more granular one which lets the OP "punish" bad answers, nor an open rating system were folks who read the thread can add their rating.

Probably it is much easier said than done.

Cheers,

Julius

[ThomasZloch]

I think there should at least be some comment by SCN officials, even if it is only "sorry can't be done at the moment, will consider it in the future bla bla", as a sign that brainstorming on these topics does actually make sense.

Thomas

Another one without "official" feedback:

[former_member184657]

This one too

pk

PS: Thomas, you had a different thread a while ago. You are making me look stupid now

Edited by: kishan P on Jul 10, 2009 3:10 PM

[ThomasZloch]

I made a mistake with the link, but that version existed only for about a minute or so.

I nevertheless apologize for any inconvenience caused

Thomas

[Former Member]

I guess some things take time, and I know that some of the topics and suggestions discussed here are under construction.

In this specific case (a negative points system or extending the range of the abuse reports catagories) I have not seen any updates either.

In the former case, I suspect it is like opening a development request with JIVE and being shown their version of SAP note # 11...

In the latter, I would expect it to be configurable and not hard-coded...

Cheers,

Julius

[Former Member]

Hi Rafal,

Sorry for the late reply of this question as it was intended on me. I would like to say that i was not aiming at points for giving and contributing into the forum. I am giving my time to help others to learn the things. We all are helping each other here. Regarding the thread which you have mentioned, i really was not even thought about the points at that time when i was replying, After coming back from office i generally browse the forum and reply to threads which are still kept open. That thread was open so i just added that.

I appreciate your observations and Ravi, julius and other's comment. Anyways if that is the case of professionalism i will definitely take care of it next time. But things do happen, as the discussions between users goes on then may be the answer given by the first replier may be right but the other replier has explained and justified that one.

Thanks,

Raja