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Has my post been deleted, and if so, why?

former_member188493
Contributor
0 Kudos

Perhaps it's just hard to find; this website is unusually difficult to navigate compared to others.

Yesterday I posted a message beginning "Please drop the CURRENTLY BEING MODERATED delay from the SQL Anywhere community." at...

   Contact Us - Visit SCN Support - System and Error Messages

There already was a posting there, congratulating Jason on a job well done with the doc, so I assumed it was ok to post there. I know there are strict rules about where to post what kind of messages... I've been yelled at before ("no questions on blogs!") and I'm trying hard not to be a troublemaker.

Today, however, neither the original post nor my new post is there... has discussion of SCN policies been suppressed? Is SCN an actual internet community, or is innovation not welcome at SAP?

I really don't know the answers to those questions... although I have 30+ years of experience as a software development professional, I'm a newbie at SCN. I find HANA very interesting, and I am actively working on using MobiLink between SQL Anywhere and HANA on CloudShare... BUT, situations like this are discouraging.

Today, in apparent response to my posting, I received an email from "Jason Lax noreply at sapnetworkmail dot com" which contained no body, just a copy-and-paste of the "Common System Messages" page on SCN.

In the world of professional consulting that activity is known as "Reading the Help to the Client"... yes, it is an insult, but it is usually repeated behind closed doors, not thrown in the face of the client.

Anyway, for the record, I am pasting the disappeared posting below.

Breck

[originally posted 2013-05-26]

Please drop the CURRENTLY BEING MODERATED delay from the SQL Anywhere community. It is extremely insulting to both experienced and novice users... a novice user of this community may (and often is) a SQL Anywhere computing professional with more years of experience than most moderators, and to have to wait to see a reply posted is exasperating.

In the case of a critical question, artificially delaying an answer because of a rule like this is just terrible, and possibly damaging... certainly damaging to SAP's reputation in the world of professional developers.

For many years, members of the SQL Anywhere online community have prided themselves on quick responses to questions, and now there is an artificial delay destroying that reputation. THIS IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE MODERATOR... he has better things to do than be a bureaucratic box-checker.

I don't care what you do with other communities, I will let their members speak for themselves... but as an active contributor to the SQL Anywhere online community for many years, and the founder of the original SQL Anywhere Q&A website (which migrated to http://sqlanywhere-forum.sybase.com/) I can say without doubt that the CURRENTLY BEING MODERATED delay is a complete waste of time for both the victims and for the moderators.

We have lived for decades without pro-active moderation of the CompuServe forums, the NNTP newsgroups and now the HTTP website. Very occasionally a posting and even a user must be removed, but only after-the fact.

There never has been, and there is not now, any need for pro-active moderation of the SQL Anywhere community... but there are very real reasons to stop it, so please... do that... stop it now.

Thanks!

Breck

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Answers (2)

Answers (2)

JL23
Active Contributor
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SCN is not unique with this moderation, other forums do that too.

It is the good work of the moderators and some techncial measures that people do not see the garbage that is posted through the day.

Just ask your mail admin in your company what the percentage of the filtered spam mails is, this is not a minor issue in the web.

Forum access is not as easy as sending spam by mail, it is in most cases a manual activity, nevertheless it needs some hurdles today which was not needed a few years ago.

Just an evidence from another forum where I moderate:

What would be your opinion if every second post in a forum had this character? Would you still enjoy beeing there?

former_member188493
Contributor
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Jurgen: Spam is a straw-man argument for pro-active moderation. Of course no one wants spam, and it is rather insulting for you (and Jason Lax) to imply otherwise.

As a founding member of Team PowerSoft and then Team Sybase, I have been an active invited participant in free online customer support forums for PowerSoft on Compuserve since 1993, on NNTP for Sybase since it purchased PowerSoft, and on HTTP for Sybase for several years. At no time was pro-active moderation ever required or even considered and yes, spam was always a problem.

Pro-active moderation is NOT an appropriate solution to spam in a properly managed online community... there are other techniques available (contact your nearest network expert for assistance).

If you like pro-active moderation in your SCN community then fine, that's your right and privilege. But it is MY right and privilege to object to the fact that customers are prevented from effectively using the SQL Anywhere community. The majority of users of ANY online community will never rise very far in a gamification scheme, that's just a measured and observed fact. With the strict point system here at SCN, "majority" probably rises to 99%. We in the SQL Anywhere community are here to serve developer customers, not form a private discussion group.

There are many online communities outside SAP, perhaps you should have a look. In particular, there is the extremely successful stackoverflow.com which does not pro-actively moderate, and does not require any points to post or reply, yet they are one of the originators of what is now called "gamification".

The StackOverflow website design is the basis for the Sybase SQL Anywhere forum at sqlanywhere-forum.sybase.com/. That is the official Question and Answer forum for SQL Anywhere, not the SCN community. However, some customers have started asking questions on SCN, and we are willing to help customers wherever they go, so we are TRYING to make the most of a bad situation.

However, when a response to an urgent question goes un-posted for hours because the moderator has a day job (very busy doing SAP things), it is more than a bad situation, it is TERRIBLE.

Then, if that (by definition "new") customer posts another reply, it is not immediately posted. The effect? An unhappy customer, now twice dissatisfied with the low level of support.

We don't want somewhat-less-slow moderation times, we want SUB-SECOND RESPONSE TIME on posts and replies. That's what we get now, on sqlanywhere-forum.sybase.com. That's what everyone OUTSIDE SAP gets on their question-and-answer forums.

This is the HANA company, right? The one that talks about super-fast response time on complex queries?

Did I miss something on the course, does HANA have moderation of end-user queries?

Am I in the right place?

I am beginning to think that SCN, from a customer support point of view, just doesn't get it. That's OK, SCN is SAP's property to do with what they want... perhaps SCN is not intended for use by customers.

What do I know? I'm just a newbie 🙂

JasonLax
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
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Hi Breck,

I removed the comments function from the document after realizing that users will start leveraging the comments as a discussion forum, which is not how they are meant to be used. This will also encourage users to search previous answered discussions related to moderation and other system messages.

That's why I sent the original text of your comment with an explanation on why to create it as a new discussion thread. I also see parallel discussion on the same here:

Regarding the need for pro-active moderation on SCN, SCN was under attack over the past few months and was at first flooded with thousands of spam posts by fake users--who still try regularly to create and publish more spam.  The solution is to moderate of content created by users who have not yet completed some beginner missions to prove their intent on SCN.  This solution protects both the privacy of users and running of SCN. 

After completing these, users are able to post without moderation (a few exceptions may apply). In the meantime, SCN moderators, who are volunteers, are working around the clock to review and approve legitimate content.  There's no commitment to how long this should take but it will be done in a timely manner across the 410+ SCN spaces.

Thank you,

Jason