Expert Forums flooded by newbie questions

[Rudi_Wiesmayr]

Hello moderators, if any!

The SDN forums are flooded by questions of obviously total newbies.

And they usually post their questions in wrong forums,

e.g. Windows when asking ORA questions.

It becomes more and more difficult to filter out the really interesting topics.

Which are: Experts have to answer questions which cannot be answered by reading the long text of the message posted in the question.

What can be done? Or is it already out of control?

Kind regards,

Rudi

[Former Member]

Hi Rudolf,

If some questions are posted in wrong forum, it should not matter, as we normally respond to the answers / suggestion known to us. I am sure that many of our forum members have multi module knowledge & they do respond to such questions. The solution provided if reffered by us can be a learning for us.

Regards,

Rajesh Banka

[Former Member]

Hi Rudolf,

I share your pain. I read over the questions in the ABAP development area and it is flooded with people asking for code handouts without any specific problem/issue and basic questions that could be answered easily if they bothered to read SAP help. Also many people seem to reply without even reading the question by cutting and pasting answers blindly. When a person actually uses the forum to look for an answer they need to wade through pages of junk.

I understand it is difficult to control/moderate such posts. The rules of engagement do ask people to search first, but it seems people are too lazy.

[Rudi_Wiesmayr]

Another possibility would be to raise the hurdle to come into SDN.

Restricting to S-Users (and higher of course) may be a little too high...

What do you think?

Rudi

[Former Member]

Hi Rudolf,

I'm afraid, that sometimes such the questions are posted intentionally. It's some kind of revenge.

For example, look at this questioner here:

-- click on his name and you'll see the list of his questions -- questions are posted every 1 - 2 minutes. I doubt that such person wants to learn BW. He simply is littering the forums and not going to reward any answers.

Best regards,

Eugene

[marilyn_pratt]

Thanks, Eugene. When you "catch" such inappropriate behavior and let the moderators know, the response usually is pretty clear. We lock those users. Sometimes reaction to such behavior though becomes "wacka mole": you clean one, another pops up. So it could be that best response can also be none, as in: ignore.

Marilyn

[Rudi_Wiesmayr]

Yes, one (but not the only) possibility is: Ignore the junk.

But what I miss (or do not know) is a function to "Ignore Thread",

i.e. marking it as "not interested" and hence not seeing it any more in the thread list.

Kind regards, Rudi

[marilyn_pratt]

That function is a manual (ie human one) and not technically supported presently.

[Former Member]

...looking for my motivations I have to know where is the value...

and...please... tolerance is important

[Rudi_Wiesmayr]

Hmmm.. "not presently"

That sounds like there could be such a function some time...

How can we tempt SAP SDN development to provide this function?

Is there some wish list or a procedure like development requests?

Are there people who have this wish too?

Kind regards, Rudi

[marilyn_pratt]

Hi Rudi,

We do have a development request mechanism and I see that a personalized "block" user function is a request that Mark F. and Craig made a while back. These are prioritized and handled by development. So the answer is: it's in the works but no promise when implemented.

Marilyn

[darren_hague]

Marilyn,

Perhaps you could copy a technique used very successfully by the forums over at Joel On Software (http://www.joelonsoftware.com) - when an abuser is blocked, they still see their own posts - it's just that their posts are invisible to other users. You do this by recording the IP address and the user name of the abuser, so it doesn't matter if they are logged in or anonymous when browsing the forums - if they are logged in or if they are on the same machine they posted from, they will still see their posts.

If abusers don't see that their post is deleted and they can still log in, they post happily away (to themselves) instead of creating a new account. Hey, you could even make it so that abusers' posts are seen by all other abusers, so they can just keep themselves happy without bothering the rest of us. They can even earn their own points - they would just be filtered out of the rankings shown to the rest of us.

Just a thought,

Darren

[marilyn_pratt]

Interesting concept. Sounds like the way some manage phone conferences. Its a kind of "mute" button that doesn't offend the speaker but saves others from superflous noise.

Maybe the community can think further of how such a mechanism would be technically implemented and whether it makes sense in our context.

Some have already requested such an ignore feature that is activated by the person who wishes to ignore. That feels more community driven.

Given the sad news I heard today about one of the outstanding bloggers in the external blogosphere and abusive comments in communities we might think of how to better manage noise.

Censorship is a dirty word to some but abusive posting is even less palatable.

[Former Member]

What if you had a group of moderators, folks active in the forum with an understanding of the community's goals based on their prior involvement, and if say 4 out of 5 flagged a post as being garbage, the pot would be hidden/deleted/locked.

If the same poster is flagged repeatedly, then the group could flag poster for review.

Some might call this censorship, but it would be a larger group making the decision rather than a single moderator making the call.

Bottomline, in order for SDN to maintain its street cred, it needs to keep SDN from getting full of garbage.

[marilyn_pratt]

In theory that sounds like a good idea and actually in practice, there are "moderator" discussions happening informally all the time through emails and non public means that somewhat resemble what you propose.

Censorship would be antithetical to our purposes here, but rating or flagging would be helpful. I believe there has been a request for some time now to review whether posts can be rated. The problem is, it would create two ranking mechanisms: the points allocated by the person that posts the question, and the opinions of the community/and or moderators.

Let's think this out further. Some moderators are taking the approach you suggest for behavior modification as well: locking, deleting after constant requests for improvement are ignored.

And when I think about it, almost no moderator acts entirely autonomously. We all do confer with one another and even if there isn't a full "trial by 5" as you suggest, there is often (especially within our own collaboration team) discussions and we come to an often agreement about response. So, what you read here as a Community Team response can often be the result of an intense off-line conversation.

Keep the proposals coming!

[Former Member]

Maybe we can do more to educate the community as well. For starters, make the process of becoming a member require the applicant (not sure that's the best word choice) acknowledge some of the main community guidelines, e.g. search before posting, don't post or request copyrighted material, don't take someone else's efforts and represent it as your own......

Sort of a Pledge to the Community.

Maybe this would be an annual for all members, or maybe miscreants can just be frequently required to go thru the process. It's not heavy handed censorship, just polite reminding to behave.

[marilyn_pratt]

You are full of proposals...on a roll

So what would the "Pledge" look like? Another pop-up and check-box before completing registration?

I think the idea of moving the "junior" bloggers to the wiki was, in a certain way reflecting a commitment to quality idea.

One reservation about having a pledge would be the additional registration requirement but by acknowledging you have read the agreement, would also resolve any doubts concerning whether a participant should receive punitive action if caught categorically breaking the pledge.

Let's suppose for a moment that there was no barrier to creating an additional step to the registration process. Exactly what would you like to see in these "commandments"?

[Former Member]

I don't have anything real fancy in mind, just sometjhing that, first, tries to educate new members as to the Rules of Engagement, and simultaneously puts them on notice that, although SDN

Some of the things that come to mind include: <i>

As a member of SDN, I will:

- search SDN for prior forum posts/Wiki entries that may already address my question.

- neither post, request, nor distribute copyrighted materials

- not represent the efforts of others as my own..

- respect the SDN community by maintaining civil and professional conduct in the community.

I understand that failure to do so may result in my removal from the community.</i>

I would like to think that making something like this require an acknowledgement rather than just hoping everyone reads a sticky post, may help improve the quality of forum qustions, and maybe help increase the development of the wiki content. If nothing else, I think it provides a moderator a far stronger position from which to take action when necessary.

Perhaps members could, when necessary, flag a forum post for failing to adhere to this pledge (certainly the last 2 items). A moderator might followup, and if there continues to be a problem with someone, they get suspended from posting to the forum.

While the goal is to have a community that is free from censorship, I think that really needs to be balanced against the higher purpose, that of serving it's members by maintaining a high level of quality and relevance.

[Rudi_Wiesmayr]

Hello again.

IMHO all your "pedagogical" approaches will not help. There are too many people out there who ignore all advices and keep posting SH**

And annoy serious users.

PLEASE SAP SDN DEVELOPMENT!

Implement functions to

- Mark a thread as "ignored" for the user who wants to ignore it permanently.

- Mark a user als "ignored" for the user who wants to ignore him permanently (seen only males posting s***)

- Tick a post to alert the moderators to look after this post(er)

Dear Collegues: Please vote with me to show SAP that I am not a lonely paranoic, but want to have a functional too for a living forum for the exchange of experiences and no kindergarten with nasty children making so much noise that you can 't hear your own voice!

[KKilhavn]

> - Mark a user als "ignored" for the user who wants to

> ignore him permanently (seen only males posting s***)

You must not have been looking in the right forums... I can of course not be certain, as the gender of names in India are as obvious to me as the gender of my name is to people in India.

Apart from that I completely agree with your plea! Although to be fair one should perhaps make the ignore function for users time-limited, so that it only worked for six months or so and then one would have to ignore again if there was no improvement. After all (most) people deserve a new chance after some time.

[Rudi_Wiesmayr]

OK, Kjetil is clear to all jazz fans because of Mr. Kjetil Björnstad... And I may be somewhat biased as I think to know to think right that women are less childish than men...

The "ignore user" is only my second wish.

My first wish and what IMHO is really needed is the "ignore thread" action to clean up my view of the thread list of a forum to see what 's of interest and what is litter.

And a filter function "Show/Hide ignored threads" and "Show/Hide ignored users" would be a perfect supplement.

Kind regards, Rudi

Message was edited by: myself to correct a typo

Rudolf Wiesmayr

[Former Member]

We make no distinction about the types of questions that can be asked as long as they are related they are allowed. Wrong forums - we move them to the right forum.

Now for repeated questions we ask everyone to help building the FAQ's in the Wiki area and to politely direct the users to them as well as the search first.