The little SAP flag - should it inspire confidence?

[ChrisPaine]

Hi,

sorry, just have to have a little rant here -

I've been browsing some of the forums I like to frequent recently and I noticed a new and highly active poster - "Excellent" I thought! Then I saw that the new poster was from SAP! "Brilliant!", I thought. "We're going to get a lot more help on this topic - great stuff."

Then I started reading some of the replies.

"Not so brilliant" ,I thought.

"Incorrect/false information", I thought.

So I responded to the posts and corrected where I could, and gave a little advise.

Now I'm used to reading wrong and misleading info in the forums - but not from posters with the little SAP flag against their name.

I'm wondering if SAP should have a policy of junior employee SCN members (users with less than several hundred forum points perhaps) not having the little SAP flag against their name.

I trust the advise given to me by someone with the SAP affiliation - and if I didn't know any better I'd take their word as gospel - yes I'm a bit gullible...

This in mind - is there some process to "certify" SAP employees before they post in SCN - or some guidelines for SAP employees so that they only post when they know the answer?

Driving along the snow filled mountain passes of technical forums is hard enough - but when the little flags that supposedly mark the way direct you off a cliff - it becomes a tricky proposition indeed.

rant over.

Cheers,

Chris

[marilyn_pratt · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

As sound as your logic is, I believe the designation of the flag is a product of an SAP userid so pretty hard to change the rules associated with the flag appearing. But let me suggest a more practical solution, as uncomfortable as it may seem to "whistle blow" , I think that using a mechanism like the abuse button might be in order if such behavior of SAP employee misinforming exists. I think there might even be a designation for it in the abuse attributes called impersonation. (now I don't want to infer that anyone is purposefully posing as one thing while being another) but that might be a discrete way of having the user scrutinized more thoroughly (if you further qualify in the comments). I've had my own hand slapped once for writing something that someone felt was inappropriate and using the abuse was a discrete way of making me aware of that transgression.

I really appreciate your candidly airing this here. Also feel free to contact me directly if you feel that an intervention by our team is in order.

[esjewett · Accepted solution]

Hi Marilyn and Chris,

I've frankly been scared off from using the "Abuse" button to report incorrect information because none of the categories describe the case of incorrect answers and I can't find any documentation of what happens when that button is pressed.

Maybe there can be a little "When to use the abuse button" section added to the Rules of Engagement? - [http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/HOME/RulesofEngagement]

With regards to the SAP employee posting wrong answers issues - this is definitely a black-eye for SAP whenever it happens. It sounds to me like responsible participation on SCN is something that all SAP groups should be aware of internally. Since I don't have a little flag by my name, there is no way I can tell if this is the case or not

Ethan

[OttoGold]

From a flag you cannot understand the experience of the man in the field.

You can use the points counter for this. Of course there is always a possibility that the experienced guy got lost in the forum and has lose his way to the field he has no real experience in.

The only solution (well, not only, but I think that is not a bad one) for this would be to implement a tool (like a part of the business card or part of the rew-ard poi-nts page) where you can immediately see how many poi-nts the guy received from which forum. You would understand immediately that a guy who has 10.000 points but only 50 from ABAP WD forum is not a ABAP WD guru. Maybe... one day... SAP will listen to the suggestions and implement this for us:))

Have a nice day all, regards Otto