A Modest Proposal

[Former Member]

The new ABAP forums are a good way to organize related discussions. But there are still a couple of problems that I can see:

There are still a lot of duplicate posts.

The same questions keep getting asked over and over.

I don’t have any way to deal with the first problem, but it seems to me that the second problem could be dealt with by having a sticky post at the top of some of the forums with answers to the most frequently posted questions. I’m thinking in particular of the ABAP Performance and Tuning forum where people frequently ask for commonly used tuning techniques.

It seems to me that if this were posted at the top of the page, it might answer a lot of those questions before they were asked and also reduce network traffic.

Rob

[Former Member]

Hi Rob,

We already have a solution to that: the new WIKI FAQ (see the button on top of the SDN?). There is already an extensive ABAP FAQ, and I ask everybody to refer to this FAQ and to add new questions & solutions.

Mario

[Former Member]

OK, but...

Since people who post questions that have been answered mutiple times aren't even searching the forum they are posting to, let alone the WIKIs.

I guess I was also thinking of something from SAP - general guidelines that you could take to the bank rather than (somtimes conflicting) opinions.

Just my 2 cents.

Rob

[Former Member]

That's right, but you have to be persistent. When many people answer with a reference to the FAQ, even the laziest person will check out that they should search there. Currently not even many regulars know about the FAQ.

And in addition: it saves time for the regulars to search the old answers, they just need to refer to the FAQ.

And finally: you could make a sticky note with a link to the FAQ (which is actually already available in the "rules of engagement" and if you look closely, on top of each forum)

[RichHeilman]

Rob, the issues you mention are well understood and measures have been taken to try to remedy the problem, as mentioned, the WIKI is a first attempt, and it will take time to change the "culture". This will not happen over night and I expect that it will ever fully change completely. We will always have the duplicate posts, we will always have people asking the same questions. The only thing that I can say is that it may be better. With well known contributors like yourself, pointing these persons to the WIKI, will help the issue over time(i hope). So keep answering the questions, but if you see that it is one that is on the WIKI, link to it. If it is something that should be added to the WIKI, then add it.

Regards,

RIch Heilman

[marilyn_pratt]

Hi Rob,

Thank you for the positive feedback concerning the new ABAP forums and for highlighting the redundancy issues, as well as proposing the guidelines suggestion.

I must admit, I was at first more than a little disappointed that people still persist in using the general ABAP forum as a dumping ground for questions that could and should be posted to the subcategories that we created. As you point out, some folks aren't searching forums they post to, don't take time to select the best place for posting, and aren't looking to the Wikis yet as the place for FAQs

I did consider writing further (blogging) about taking more care when posting. The growing size of the general ABAP forum reduces its performance and efficacy so it's really a shame people are not using it properly. After some discussing internally with colleagues, I came to the conclusion that the desire to "improve" might best be organic and come from the community. I remember having a similar discussion during SDN day with Bhanu Gupta about behavior modification in the BI forums and learned a lesson from her that quiet persistence is often a good way to educate. The thought is: the more people offering gentle correction to the community about behavior, the better the behavior.

Although we (SAP) can create guidelines,the broader we (the community) generally does a good job of helping us fashion those guidelines.

Just as some of the community helped us determine how to subset the ABAP forums, I would look to the community to help fashion the guidelines too. As a leader in the ABAP area, your suggestions are very welcome, Rob.

[Former Member]

As the saying goes, "you can lead a horse to water...".

Maybe what we need is to have a option on a response to a post that sends the poster a polite "Try searching the forums/Wiki first for basic questions". They could only get one of these per post, but perhaps after receiving a few, they'll develop a better understanding of what the community's expectations are. That a poster need to invest some effort on their end too.

Perhaps this is unrealistic. We have carrots to work with on SDN, but no stick. Sometimes a stick is needed with some folks. Am I being too hard? Perhaps. You certainly don't want to alienate new/propsective members, but at some point, the sheer weight of "Tell me how SAP works...." type of questions may overwhelm SDN.

Bhanu strikes me as patient individual, and far more tolerant than I guess I am.

Really, perhaps a simple EULA type of prompt either at the time of joining or posting, that would requires the member to read the "Rules of Engagement" and click on an<b> I Agree</b> button.

[eddy_declercq]

Hi,

I've been elaborating on things in

/people/eddy.declercq/blog/2006/11/08/from-the-grumpy-old-man-wikid-little-things

Maybe it helps, maybe not.

Eddy

[Former Member]

Hi John

As I wrote in Eddy's blog, my solution is as follows.

When posting a question, the person posting would be required to accept an "I have done a search already before posting" check box. If someone else replies that "it's been answered in the Wiki", then that person gets some points and anyone else who has already answered has their points removed.

This removes the incentive for people to paste previous answers, as they get no points, and adds an incentive to add content to the Wiki, so that they can get the "already there" points.

Cheers

[Former Member]

OK – maybe the problem is that many forum users are about as sophisticated as I am about WIKI (which is to say not at all sophisticated). When I saw the WIKI FAQ, I thought it was a FAQ about WIKI not a general FAQ about information in the forums. So yes, I think that addresses my concerns.

However, the same questions are still asked so the problem is not really solved.

Maybe the problem is that the link to the WIKI is buried in the “Welcome and Rules of Engagement”. Might it be better to put it above the list of threads and instead of calling it WIKI FAQ, call it something like “Answers to commonly asked questions in this forum”? And instead of pointing to the top of the WIKI page, point directly to the sub area of the particular forum.

Rob

[Former Member]

I think it is very difficult to really control duplicate posts as the onus is more on the user than rest. I feel one way to reduce it is having a basic question structure . Basically, instead of just topic and empty space for question, it can be structured to enter the area(more useful in ABAP development as people just raise it any forum), related objects, keywords, attachement for code etc and on clicking the submit button you can have a search engine running on the defined keywords on WIKI/FAQ etc and popup a list for the user for 5 best results ..or even display the link to WIKI/FAQ on the related forum.

If there exists some related topics the user can select not to post the question or otherwise. I think it would atleast make people have a look at the same before submitting it.

Regards

Anurag