Can you inculde this feature ??

For a every user how many poinst he has given to others ?

This is to understand if a particular user is awarding poinst or not!!

Regards,

Manohar

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Maybe also a feature to award points for an answer to a post by somone else / recommend rating for posts.

I have found some extremely helpful answers for my doubts - Unfortunately I have not posted any questions as yet since most of my questions have already been answere ( Thanks SDN..)

Or atleast how helpful people found the answer - the answer may actually be the answer someone has been looking for for the past week and the question is in some other post .. something like that.

More like a star grading system 5 stars and if needed you can select the star rating and the owner of the post will know this and that might lead him to award points in a better way and also reflect the gratitude the other users have for the same.

my 0.02

Arun

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Hi Arun,

Busy week this week it seems.

Not a bad idea you have but remember most of us are happy with just the simple thank you note appened to the thread. Once the information is here and a person searches to find it then ok. If they search and can't find it then start the thread.

The idea is to build a huge repository where all your development questions can be found quickly just by a simple search

I believe that the reward system needs a natural feedback system.

I think we need a survey at the side of every forum answer: "Do you think this post fully answers the question? please rate as: 1. Not helpful 2. Partially helpful 3. Helpful 4. Very helpful 5. Solved the Problem".

Of course all posters in a given thread (asker+those who tried to answer) will not be eligible to participate in the survey for that specific thread.

The survey shall begin at about 20 days after the original post. SDN members who answered the survey shall be blocked from participating in the thread.

Anyway, as a result of having surveys, SDN forums could display the user's acknowledge ratio. For example:

Mrs Kind (Ack.ratio: 90%)

Mr Evil (Ack.ratio: 10%)

Just to explain my example, a ration of 10% means that "Mr Evil" has asked 10 questions that SDN members marked between 4-5 in average ("answered" to "fully answered"), but he marked only one topic as "fully answers the questions"

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Isn't that taking things to the extreme? I mean there are alot of users on here that are active in other ways and rarely even come into the forums.

Such an overall rating would show those people as basically "Mr Evil" the whole time even though they positively amazing with their help in the other areas of the site that also receive points.

Sure it would be nice to have such a feature, but that would also distract users in two ways from using SDN:

*) Worrying about which questions to answer does not need to be enforced by such a feature - almost no one of us has the time to read, let alone answer all questions, so we are choosing all the time. If another rating would come up some might start to not even look at questions because of the rating - although the question behind it might be very interesting. Think about it, even the "Mr. Evils" sometimes really have questions that are hard, but very fun and challenging to solve (and that is why we are here after all, getting fun from challenging questions and helping others).

*) The other side, thinking of who would rate these answers. I wouldn't like to spend more time rating hundreds of answers just to get some additional statistic out of it. I think the community is rating its members quite good by giving comments, or adding a message like "Nice one", "Good answer" to a thread they have not been involved yet.

If an answer is wrong it will get corrected, if an answer is incomplete and someone has the solution, it will get completed. So all SDN member will soon learn if an answer is satisfying to themselves - after all we might have different ideas of a good answer, because a problem that has not been solved could have nevertheless brought forth some other interesting aspects or knowledge, which aren't getting rewarded by points or statistics. (But they get rewarded with the most valuable thing here, respect from other developers).

So, after finally stopping myself from brabbling ... I wouldn't need a feature like this, nor would I be happy using it.

Hi Craig,

I just wrote "20 days" as a place holder for "a predetermined period of time as agreed by the system administrators". It can be 3 months or more.

Users that rarely use the forum system are unlikely to post many questions, but if they do post a question surely they should care enough to read the answers?! Don't you agree?

Almost any web forum on the planet have had this discussion before, and I demonstrate by quoting two such phrases (usually written in the forum rules):

1. If you lack to time to read the answers, don't post the question in the first place.

2. If you're too busy to read our answers, we're too busy to read your question, let alone answering it.

Don't get me wrong I agree with that 100%, my point was onyl that there are several contributors on SDN that do not even use the forum, they write weblogs, articles and tutorials and code samples which is the nice thing about SDN you can contribute without being a forum poster and that should be considered when seeking some way of getting users to respond and reward points in the forums.

I've been in many a online community and the discussions are the same the difference again is that SDN allows for contributing outside of the forums.

Hi Ofer,

I think your idea is not that bad, but only if you switch your pre-requisites.

If only user not participating in a thread would be eligible to vote for these threads answers, then what would be the result:

*) User that have no relation to this topic at all ...

*) User that don't have that particular knowledge (or the time to test a sample solution themselves) ...

... would have to vote - which imho does not make sense at all.

Also, in order to vote for something, you would have to read the whole thread to be able to be a fair judge - do you have the time to read all the threads with all their posts, even if their topic is of no interest to you, just in order to participate in a survey? (even if it was in just one forum, try to imagine ABAP or BSP forum ...)

Your two quotes sure have their point, but you can only apply them to threads the user participated in, because otherwise you would create some kind of commitment, a debt.

Voting for others answers is OK, but it should be not be mandatory at all. And imo users will only rate answers in threads they would have read anyway.

My conclusion: A rating system similar to the current point rewarding system would be nice, then maybe users who don't want to write a text reply could easily share their opinion by rating answers.

Hi Maximilian,

Thanks for your input. I agree that my idea has flaws. Especially when few experts exist on a given subject.

When I read forum messages, very often I see an open question which in my opinion was perfectly answered.

Then, and only then, I might agree to waste my time on rating the answers. When I think "why isn't this person rewarding the SDN members who worked hard to provide him/her with an answer?"

You see, I think that a scheme like that is open for exploitation. For example, people might think "how about if I only reward people from my company? wouldn't that be cool?

Ìn those case the community quickly realizes this and slowly pushes those people out by not responding to their questions.

The reward system works only as good as the people want it to and therefore those using it and want will support it those wanting the answer and nothing more will not and not much can be done easily to control that other than community memebers trying to encourage the use of the system.

The key of course is to find a way to encourage it without annoying all those who are using it but I think the overwhelming postive energy from those supporting it will eventually win out and motivate others to use it as well.

Hi Ofer,

This part is interesting:

> When I read forum messages, very often I see an open

> question which in my opinion was perfectly answered.

> Then, and only then, I might agree to waste my time

> on rating the answers. When I think "why isn't this

> person rewarding the SDN members who worked hard to

> provide him/her with an answer?"

So the real problem is you see anwers that you would like to give points to, but can't.

This problem could be solved by giving more SDN Members moderator rights (they can give points to all answers but their own), so you would be able to fix the missing points right there.

If you are a good standing SDN Member, can be defined via points or via other SDN Members recommendations, you could get the privilege to give points. May be this should be given per forum.

It should be somehow made transparent who gave which points.

But otherwise this could work, Mark.

mark,

i like this idea... how about giving the top N members in the forum (points? posts?) more moderator rights so that they can help the work of the moderators - something like co-moderatorship (if there is such a word)?

ryan.

Interesting idea, this could work Mark perhaps even random or "roaming" in which case each month was not always the same SDN memeber - sort of spreading the load so that no one was overwhelmed?

Whats happening?

Read the comments from Anand about awarding points:

Has the idea about moderators awarding points been given the green light?

Shouldn't there be some notice of this? Or did I miss something?

Just to reiterate, I think that this is not such a good idea (happy to discuss why if anyone is listening).

Brad

Of course we are listening

So what part don't you think is a good idea?

There are a number of reasons why I feel, that on balance, this is not really a good direction to head:

1. Helpful?

How can a 3rd party make an assessment on whether a response posted to a question is helpful to the person who asked the question? The intervention by Anand in the thread in my last post is a perfect case in point. Someone posted a response which in fact was not at all helpful in solving the problem (ok the question could have been asked better, but its not a perfect world), and Anand awarded 6 points to the response. Of course the person can adjust the score, but when an "expert" tells you what you should do, you are generally disinclined to disagree with them, so we have a non helpful response being rewarded (note that this is the case in that thread). This may be stretching it, but imagine voting in an election and having an "expert" filling in your voting card for you, because you did not realise that you had to vote. Best that the vote is not cast at all in my opinion.

2. Point of forums (ouch, terrible pun)

In my opinion, the forums are for helping people solve their problems, not for the people who answer them to accumulate points (this is just a happy by-product). What feels good, and what keeps me coming back, is when you get some feedback from the person asking the question, saying "That really helped me, 10 points to you". They acknowledge that the response was helpful, and give you some points to show gratitude. Its not the same when a moderator "nudges" the orignial poster and says "show some gratitude". Much better to educate the orignial poster before they post a question, here is how the forum works, and leave it up to them as to how they respond. I know the sticky posts issue requires some upgrading of the software, but I have suggested a workaround to this (in another ), and in any case I'd prefer to wait rather than have moderators intervening in the process in the meantime.

3. Competition

I think it would be naive to say that competition is not a driving force in SDN. Why else have to top contributors pages? You can tell that you, Craig, are enjoying a nice (friendly) tussle with Thomas at the top of the list for top billing. So, if we have moderators who are part of this competitive process (as with Anand for example), there is definitely a conflict of interest if they can assign points. Ok, they cannot assign points to themselves, but might they be inclined not to assign points to people who are vying with them for positions at the top of the table? I know that in general you can rely on people to do the right thing, but as the intervention is completely at their discretion the temptation is surely there (and in the case where people are close to them, I imagine quite strong) to "overlook" some posts.

4. 24 hour posts

SDN is a 24/7 system. People are posting to it all the time, from all around the world. There were 250 posts on the ABAP forum yesterday (Friday). As it cannot be expected a moderator to sift through all of these every day, I would expect that they would only really be able to monitor those posts that occurred whilst they were logged on. This means that with one moderator we would only get partial coverage. So, in the case of the ABAP forum with Anand, if you post during Indian hours you have more chance to accumulate points than if you post during other hours. So, if moderation is be applied at all, it would need to ensure 24/7 coverage to be fair to all participants (assuming that people who don't award points are evenly distributed across question time zones). I'm not sure that this is really feasible with volunteer moderators, and I can't imagine a moderator position becoming a professional appointment, so we are left with an unfair system.

5. "Code fix" posts

Whilst many questions posted on the forums are simple, "how do I..."? style questions, many are also questions that include sections of code and requests to point out where the problems are with the code. The only real way of determining whether a response to this type of question is helpful or not is to implement the recommended code fix. It is not realistic to expect that moderators would do this (they might not even have the same SAP system available for their use). So these "code fix" posts would have to be ignored by moderators. Again, this produces an unfair solution, as people who respond to these posts would be disadvanted when it comes to the rewarding of points (assuming that people who don't award points are evenly distributed across question types). It might even reduce the incentive for people to respond to these questions.

So, I think the case against using moderators is quite strong. Its unfair, is distorted by competition, and has a big brother feel to it. If the focus is turned instead towards educating people and leaving the choice to them, we get the benefits of a fair and open system where posts are rewarded according to the desires of the person posing the question, without unattractive interventionism (this is starting to sound like a tirade against the european constitution :-). There are simple means of educating posters and I think that these should be pursued before continuing with the moderator experiment.

Brad

Message was edited by: Brad Williams (small adjustment to point 1)

I agree with you on this subject Brad. The moderators cannot do a just job, its always going to be questionable.

But consider a scenario, where you give the 100% correct answer (something like can you expand ABAP and you give answer as Advanced Business Application Programming [hope this is the right answer]) and the poster gives you a point as helpful answer!(2 points), I think somebody need to interfer at this point.

The worst case scenario, where i feel really bad is when you answer something and the person who asked the question dosent event write back few words but just give some 2 or 6 points.

Overall i feel having the moderator to give points is not going to be accepted by all!

The better solution would be to educate the users, and make the system more userfriendly.

For. e.g why would there be a option to make a post as not a question - even if there is a reason thats a very small negligble percentage.

Regards

Raja

Oh.. so it's big issue and the problem is with everyone.

In lighter vein..

To me it seems to be a cultural problem. Like in my country, India, generally people don't say 'thanks' after getting help from someone. it's understood actually.

In UK they are not really confident of sounding genuine so they say it 2-3 times. Points 2, 6 and 10 all distributed.

In that sense, I think if someone has received 10 points from an Indian, it should be counted as 20.

And similarly in other cases, points should be deducted.

Basically, a normalisation procedure as per the cultural and people's behaviour should be put in place

SAP should come up with an Industry Specific solution for Forums industry (SAP IS-F). The solution should have a powerful point calculation system that can take in to account the cultural and behavioural science of different geographical locations.

The data accumulated in SDN till date can be used for analysis using BiW and then further intelligence tools ( not sure about APO's use here !! ) can be used to generate rules for point awarding system.

These rules will be implemented to calculate points like it is done in standard costing & variable costing ( not sure of the exact name ).

So basically though standard point for one geographical area will remain same for one fiscal year but settlement (adjustment) can be done as per variances in community behaviour, every period run.

In order to make it global, other forums can also implement this SAP IS-F and data can be exchanged between forums to get a near perfect idea of community behaviour.

SAP XI or EDI/IDoc can be used to handle the exchange of data. If forums insists that forum co-ordinators should have authority to authorise or reject the data then in that case approval workflows can be used.

Reward information system will become a lot more powerful and contributors can generate graphs and schedule lines in order to achieve a certain rank on their thought delivery date.

This system will take into account all other factors like contributor's and questioner's behaviour.

The system will somewhat work like MRP and APO of ERP systems.

Does it sound complex to you??

If not then I will try to bring my idea to the next level in my further posts.

Cheers,

Ram

Goodness ..will they consider it as racial remarks??

I was just trying to use technology..

It backfired every time I did though..

Last time there was a problem in SAP IS-U ( Utilities ) and after solving I sent a mail to my manager and started something like the sentence below..

<<You know, the problem with SAP IS U....>>

The guy was a manager ( off course ) and not really a technical person. He read it differently and now I am working for another company.

OK moderators, please give me a chance to say goodbye once..at least...

Message was edited by: Ram Manohar Tiwari

I am perfectly fine with the way forum works. I haven't been rewarded numerous time for my post but it doesn't bother me. People eventually learn through other posts that they should reward points.

<--Basically, a normalisation procedure as per the cultural and people's behaviour should be put in place --->

Ram Manohar Tiwari, Wow!.. I can't believe you have suggested the above idea. In US you would be sued for racial discrimination. I think you have over analyzed the problem.

Prakash,

That's what I wanted to hear from you guys so I thought let me try in a different way

And then I've the advantage of not being sued for it !!

Cheers,

Ram

Well i really never thought this post will attarct so much of attention, i was realy upset when i realy spent some time

to answer some one they did n't bother to reward.

There are many forums to answer queries, but for me SDN forums are interting as there is a element of

challenge to get some points. I am happy to se some one rewarding me points and pushes me answer more and better.

Enjoy SUN!!

Tchuss

The hazards and pitfalls of a pointing system.

OK, so I think both Thomas and I are enjoying the competition but not so much that everyone might think. Many times I have taken great inspiration from Thomas and it has resulted in a few weblogs

I agree with all of you on the thing, not that I am the end all be all voice or anything. There is a pitfall associated with a reward system you end up with 3 groups, those who participate, those who do not and those who abuse and we have all 3 here on SDN, sad as the last of those groups are.

I think the idea of a moderator would not be to reward points but instead to encourage and motivate those asking the questions to do so themselves. Most times you'll come across a post where somehow states "Don't forget to mark this one as solved so others can find it again quicker" in fact I've written that myself countless times and mostly for threads I have nothing to do with. Now, this doesn't mean I am an expert but what I do look for is the responses from the people saying it works but they forgot to simply mark the thread solved. In my opinion it is those cases where the moderator should find a way to motivate the original poster to come back and do that last bit of housekeeping.

What a is a moderator? A moderator is someone who moderates the activities of a group and encourages the fair play and mood of the group, this of course includes here on SDN the reward system.

The point system should not be this huge of priority but hey who are we all kidding, I like to get my points just as much as everyone else - although we all say that we just like the "thank you". I mean really the points are that unsaid "thank you" and that is just as nice. Therefore we all have to find ways to motivate our fellow SDNers to particpate to the fullest extent as we all do.

Hi Brad, et. al.,

Little did I imagine when I rewarded the points to that response that it would stir a hornet's nest. There are a few things that I would like to make clear -

1. If you have observed the post carefully, it was given a response within 3 minutes. And the guy who had asked the question (Satish) had not come back till after 9 hours. And that too, when I had "reminded" him about the response his question has got. (he had come back about 30 minutes after my post in the thread).

Now when a question is asked, it can get a few responses. And only some of the responses might prove to be helpful. Which of these answers is actually helpful can only be determined after the suggested response had been implemented.

In this case, had Satish really forgotten to check the required option, then 10 points should have been given to Judith's answer. And Brad, it is only in hindsight that you are able to say that the answer might not have been helpful. If it had been mentioned in the question that this option was already checked, then neither would Judith have given the response he did and nor would there have been any need for me to assign the points.

2. Of course the person can adjust the score, but when an "expert" tells you what you should do, you are generally disinclined to disagree with them.

Now, I would have to totally disagree with this statement for various reasons -

a. I have, to the best of my knowledge, never claimed that I'm an expert. And if someone thinks that I am, because of my score in the forum, then it is simply a case of prejudice. I think there are a lot of guys out there who have got far fewer points than I and who are far more knowledgeable.

b. You also seem to hvae made an assumption that it is generally believed that an expert never goes wrong. He/She is only human. For example, if an "EXPERT" tells me that ABAP stands for Advanced Businesses Applications and Processes, then I would certainly not believe him. And nor would I be disinclined to prove him wrong.

3. As you have rightly explained, it is not possible for a moderator to keep monitoring the forum full-time. We all have our jobs to do. And moderating on SDN is just an additional voluntary responsibility.

Now you have said that the posts that are awarded during my day time have a higher likelihood of getting rewarded. Unfortunately, you have made the wrong assumption again. If there's a post made when I'm logged on, but it concerns some topic that I have no clue whatsoever, then I would certainly not attempt to moderate that thread. For example, consider this thread on . Even if this post is made while I'm online, I would not be able to say anything about how helpful the answers have been.

So in summary, a moderator cannot take up the task of making sure that justice is done to every answer that has been posted on the forum. When time permits, s/he can only take up a few posts which fall into an area where s/he has got good knowledge and see if things are okay.

The aim is to make the forum a better place by encouraging more people to interact.

Regards,

Anand Mandalika.

<<<And if someone thinks that I am, because of my score in the forum, then it is simply a case of prejudice. I think there are a lot of guys out there who have got far fewer points than I and who are far more knowledgeable.

>>>

I completely agree with Anand here ..

I mean I could just manage 150 points

Guys, nothing serious. This is just to cool it down while it's getting too hot & serious.

BTW, is there any opening for sense of humour moderator in SDN...

Please find someone and in order to balance..

I am good @ nonsense of humour

Please carry on..This should be enough & I wouldn't disturb you in this particular discussion anymore.

Cheers,

Ram

Craig:

I think the idea of a moderator would not be to reward points but instead to encourage and motivate those asking the questions to do so themselves.

Agreed.

Mano:

Agree its frustrating when people don't reward, but many (not all, I know, but most) people who don't are just not aware of how it works. The best way is to educate them, and leave them to make the choice, rather than going for punishment or intervention.

Ram:

You consistently get laughs out of me. Keep up the good work. You walk close to the line though huh?

Anand:

Firstly, my post wasn't an attack on you personally, just on the the concept of moderators awarding points. I hope no offence was taken as none was intended. I am actually bloody impressed with your ABAP knowledge, especially as you have only 3 years experience with it. I have worked with people with double that who wouldn't come close to your breadth of knowledge.

In response to your points:

1. When you say it is only in hindsight that we know that the response was not helpful, thats exactly why moderators should not award points. A moderator really has no way of knowing what is helpful to the person asking the question and what is not.

2. I think it is naive to say that because you have not proclaimed yourself to be an expert that people will not assume you are one.

Firstly, as a moderator you are in a position of authority (whether you like it or not). You have power to do things which others do not. Thus, when you take an action, people with relatively less experience (when I talk about experience, I mean experience with SDN, not technical or ABAP experience) are going to be reluctant to override your actions.

Secondly, yes experts can be wrong, but we are reluctant to challenge them if we don't know any better. Again, people with limited experience with SDN are going to reluctant to override the actions of the moderator, until they are more familiar with the unwritten "rules" of the forum. Once they know these rules, people generally behave and assign points to responses anyway.

3. Your point here escapes me. Even if you only intervene in posts that you have knowledge of. You can still only cover a percentage of the posts.

So, not only will you have to ignore posts which you have no knowledge of, you will also ignore those which you don't have time to view. So people posting responses to CRM questions (bad example, as there is now a new forum for this, but you get my meaning) and people posting responses during times when you are not monitoring are going to be disadvantaged point wise if you are actively intervening and granting people points.

Conclusion

I say go with Craigs suggestion: Prompt, cajole, educate, and make lots of noise to get the original posters to assign points, but don't award points yourself.

How does that sound?

Brad

BTW Mano,

Any chance of assigning some points to my posts? They were pretty helpful, no?

Brad

Hi to all

It seems the discussion is deepened. After those long posts, I am not sure whether mine would be read.

I believe that challenge would be pretty if the whole system were ideal. Being somehow an idealist idea, I would prefer to utter the radical proposal to forget about the whole pointing system (forgive me Mark). I think nobody will think that I am writing this because of my incompetency as I have some sufficient points to write my name at top three somewhere.

Besides, my argument here is just to point out that senior SDNers i.e. Thomas, Craig, Benny Schaich, Roberto, Detlev, Eddy,... (stop me or I can count more) will still go on contributing even there were no pointing system. I do not think that Thomas or Craig or anyone spent his time to write all their stuff just to gather some poins. OK, pointing system is much more efficient at forums but I still believe that the total number of posts due to the encouragement of the pointing system is much less than the number of posts whose posters fundamentally do not think of getting more points.

Whoever may guarantee the convergence of the system to the ideal? Here are some anomalies:

- Firstly, the maximum point you get from the question "What does ABAP stand for?" and from the question, for instance, "How can I achieve parallel processing in ABAP?" are the same. I do not even feel good at this basic point. And when you as the one solving the second question cannot take your points whereas the other, your frustration doubles. But OK let's assume knowledge is knowledge and what we assess is whether the answer was helpful. I wonder if there is someone having two users, one asks and the other answers and gets the points

- There have been lots of threads such that you can see that some gives an answer and some other, although some time from the former post has passed so that he should have seen it, posts something so similar.

- I do not like answers giving lots of code lines (except some particular case), sometimes they write a full program to illustrate how a field catalog for ALV can be generated.

Voluntary actions will not comprise above anomalies; even they do, it is ignorable.

I think SDN will be on its natural flow by trusting the voluntary contributions where I never deny the requirement for management of all the stuff. I do not like the pointing system but never propagandized against it. I trust the guys managing SDN seeing the whole picture and because of this trust, I go on playing this game and if continues, I will, too.

As the starting point of this discussion, I do not know whether it is good that a moderator can reward points. There are two aspects in my mind. One is that, by this way, problems like unassigned points can be compansated and the other is that regardless of who the moderator is, it will be always a controversial point whether he can provide good control on the forum. Nevertheless, if there should be a moderator, he should be someone who is a volunteer, has high points and will often be online. The above two aspects forces me into the dilemma to accept or refute the idea of a moderator where I mean by a moderator who has the authorization to assign points, otherwise no one will be interested in arguing against a moderator who just encourages, educates, etc...

By the way, this discussion has been a good example for that we have been seized in the danger of the technology Heidegger talks about. Now that we seem to manage it, but it dominates us. We need a turning (awakening) to return to the natural flow, but I will not re-mention my radical proposal again :).

Regards

*--Serdar <a href="https://www.sdn.sap.com:443http://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.sdn.businesscard.sdnbusinesscard?u=qbk%2bsag%2bjiw%3d">[ BC ]</a>

That was kind of deep

I guess I can call myself a vetern here, I signed up when registration opened and I've been a little active online as well. I remember when there was no points system here and I remember when we changed over. In my personal opinion it was one of the best things to happen and so far we've managed to stay away from the dangers that some of the other forums out there have fallen into.

With that please remember that any new system requires time to evolve and expand. TechEd '05 will basically be the year anniversary of the Point System here as that was when the first big "prizes" were given away (TechEd '04). Let's see how things run up to that point and keep an open mind.

Now lately I've seen the "cultural" reasoning behind Points giving but everyone can say "thank you" in some way and in an online environment it's understand that it is with text or an action.

For those of you who think "What does ABAP stand for?" is harder than "How can I achieve parallel processing in ABAP?" great because I know about parallel processing but what in the world does ABAP stand for?

Has anyone realized that we all basically agree on what a moderator should and should not do? We all just say it in different ways. Personally I say we hold off now and give Mark a chance to finish enjoying his honeymoon and then give his input ?

Although that has been one of the most indepth conversations on here lately - so thank you for that!! Truely enjoyable!

Absolutely Brilliant And Perfect !!

No no.. I am not saying this about your posts...

I mean ABAP stands for ..

Cheers,

Ram

From earth to the planet where Ram lives

Ram, do you stage stand-up shows? Really funny you are (no irony).

Creig, it seems we will go on playing the game, you will pay for this, :). There are 7387 points between us by now and my calculations show that assuming you do not contribute any more, I should write ~37 tutorials or solve ~739 questions to beat you and I will, even I waste my whole life, feel my breath on your neck...

To be serious, thank you for all your contribution, I do not know whether this makes some sense but what strengthens my interaction with the SDN are the works of seniors like you, Thomas and etc... and the appreciable efforts Mark and other SDN architects give.

And it seems my nostalgia for the stone age will remain ... So what we can do is just to realize the illusion technology brings, I am so much in Heideggerian philosophy nowadays...

I think we should phone Mark to resolve all the problem, disturbing him in his honeymoon, I guess he will end up all the SDN project and we all will survive from being SDNed.

Regards

*--Serdar <a href="https://www.sdn.sap.com:443http://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.sdn.businesscard.sdnbusinesscard?u=qbk%2bsag%2bjiw%3d">[ BC ]</a>

So grasshopper you think you are ready? "Just Bring It", "Open your mind, feel the force" - ok enough tacky movie sayings...

Don't forget the weblogs now they are a min. 40 points provided it's content related to SAP

Oh and you don't have to give up your whole life just most of it

People like Thomas and I contribute what we can when we can and we both enjoy the contributions of everyone else just as well. In fact we both try to encourage more Thomas offered a "flickr" Pro account which no one took him up on, /people/thomas.jung3/blog/2005/04/20/asug-2005-spring-conference-sessions , I offered one as well /people/sap.user72/blog/2005/05/31/challenge-your-submissions-please so reading your comment there

"To be serious, thank you for all your contribution, I do not know whether this makes some sense but what strengthens my interaction with the SDN are the works of seniors like you, Thomas and etc... and the appreciable efforts Mark and other SDN architects give."

Well that just made going into work tomorrow that much nicer! Thank you! It's a nice thing to read and to know!!

But come on leave Mark and his honeymoon alone

I have the courage in my heart. You gave me the hint master, I will use your weapon: Weblogs! Oh... 185 weblogs. OK I will give a try.

I feel the ecosystem(!) you are in, but it is harder for me here to participate offline activities. Just looking at pictures and wish to be there (OK, I am dramatizing).

Now, I must turn to my term paper on Heidegger again, or I can tell you about him here, would you care?

And I guess, Mark should secretly be checking what's going on here in the SDN whenever his new wife turns her head.

Gute Nacht!

*--Serdar <a href="https://www.sdn.sap.com:443http://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.sdn.businesscard.sdnbusinesscard?u=qbk%2bsag%2bjiw%3d">[ BC ]</a>

Wow, my inbox got flooded with reply notifications to this thread this weekend - you guys really need to spend more time offline 😛

Great fun to read some of your posts, that's the way SDN should be, after all discussion about points and rewards it's enjoying being among like-minded people and share experiences that makes us hang around all day long (some were even caught posting with a marriage just round the corner g).

Max

> day long (some were even caught posting with a

> marriage just round the corner g).

I waited until she was not looking at least that counts right?

BTW Mano,

Any chance of assigning some points to my posts? They were pretty helpful, no?

Brad

Brad ,

Infact i closed this thread long back didnt want attaract too much of attention for a small issue, i dont know how it is opened again (thats why you will see problem solved star!!)

Thats my next question, Some one awared points wrongly (solved problem) before he could reliaze that thread was closed. La la la !!

Will soon click on those yellow Stars for alles!!

Cheers,

Mano Sri

Come on you didn't think this little issue would just get forgotten did you?

You Bet

Hi Brad,

I know that your concerns are not targeted at me personally. At least I hope they are not!!:-)

However, I can't help feeling responsible in some part for having triggerred off this huge discussion (which might comepete for The Longest Topic on SDN ).

So here's what I have to say.

1. When I say that finding out the true value of response is only possible only in hindsight, more than the moderators, I meant the person asking the question himself. If I ask a question and i get two responses for it, I might decide that both of them deserve 6 points. But after sometime I get another answer, which I think is equally good / better, then I will not be able to assign 6 points to that as well. I will have to make one of the other the responses a 2-pointer and then give 6 points to this new response. So rewarding points is hardly a one-time activity.

But how many people actually do this is a different issue. Most people award 6 points to the first two most helpful answers and then continue with giving away 2 points for every other answer they find to be good, even if it is more helpful than the ones that have already been given 6 points.

So to sum up this point, it is not just the moderator, the poster of the question himself has no idea of what is to come.

2. Whether it is my naivete or not, there's simply nothing that can be done about it if the user's prejudice is taking control of the situation. A moderator can only tell them that they have the liberty to change the points assignment. This is especially true in the case where the question gets better answers later on, after the moderator has assigned the points. Obviously, the moderator cannot, for reasons already mentioned, keep track of all the threads.

And one thing more, The moderator can actually write an email to the author of a post. So I never assign points without communicating to the user (explicitly thru' email) that I have done so and that he is free to change it as per his own judgment. In fact, in the case of the thread we were talking about, the author had actually come back to his thread only on receipt of that email. What else can be done ?

So, in summary, Prejudices simply cannot be helped.

3. Even if all the users have not got the points that they deserve, at least it is better than having none of them rewarded.

And it is not the case that a moderator choose to reward the answers only of a particular user all the time. It may happen incidentally, but never intentionally.

The good part is that the user is now better educated about rewarding the points and hopefully, the other responders can now get points (which they may have otherwise not have got) without any intervention.

And finally, I don't think I (or some other moderator) would find enough time to actively intervene in the point assignment system. It is a very small (infinitesimal) effort towards the bigger cause of educating the users.

Regards,

Anand Mandalika.

Hi Ram,

There was a post on the ABAP Forum where a few of the guys (including me) have agreed to have some occassional sprinkles of humor in the forum, to make things less serious. And you have reminded me of that.

So in an effort to try and pull your leg, when you quote me here, are you saying that even if you have got only 150 points you are far more knowledgeable than me? :-):-):-)

Let me know if my attempt to pull your leg has not been successful. I shall try again :-).

With a smile on his face,

Anand Mandalika.

P.S. It has been a long day and I couldn't think of something better. Nothing personal here.

> what in the world does ABAP stand for?

Well Allgemeiner Berichtsaufbereitungsprozessor of course. This was the original German name of ABAP back in the R/2 days which in English means generic report preparation processor.

The modern definition of ABAP is actually: Advanced Business Application Programming.

Even at the cost of disapproving my own theory, I say thanks, explicitly, to you guys for taking my comments in right spirit. ( REF TO cl_my_community_behaviour_theory )

BTW, exception are always there ..and that proves the rule

Now, who said that.. Where is the moderator !!

What if I don't define it in the interface. Will 'When Others' still be raised?

*---

And yes I am still not doing any stage shows!!

Actually my kind of sense ..sorry I mean nonsense of humour is only suitable for SAP consultants.

And 1/3rd of India still does not understand SAP, they are still into plain Java Applications or Agriculture .

*---

Nice to see that meeting is almost over and there is no blood on the floor. Though some conclusions were drawn unlike general managerial meetings.

*---

But don't you think that my 15 mins architecture of SAP IS-F was not at all that bad considering that it was originated from an absolute crap theory.

I mean, I deserve almost equal points as Brad does

Moderator, please see to it !!

Cheers,

Ram

<<So in an effort to try and pull your leg, when you quote me here, are you saying that even if you have got only 150 points you are far more knowledgeable than me? :-):-):-)

No I never meant that. I mean not the 'Far' bit

*----

Hi Anand,

Yours was good ..But I mean I just can't help myself !!

Enjoy the change,

Ram

Message was edited by: Ram Manohar Tiwari

Hi,

don't you think, that this information will provide others from answering that users questions? I think it's not a good idea.

Additionally you need to know how many questions a user posted and you need to know how difficult they were to find an answer.

regards

Siggi

Message was edited by: Siegfried Szameitat

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Comment

> don't you think, that this information will provide

> others from answering that users questions?

Scare tactics are sometimes useful

Interesting question ...

On the one side this would motivate users to reward points more reliably, to gain a high "rewarding percentage" ... but what about those hard questions that do not have an answer to it, would people be scared of by the thought of asking questions they think of as too difficult? (Which should not keep anyone from asking, it's the tough questions that really make us learn!)

Would be a nice feature, but I think it's not that necessary ... users that don't reward points more than one time will sure be reminded by others, and of course they will be known as being reward-lazy, so the motivation to answer their questions might be somewhat dampened

Good point Max, let the community "police" itself we have certainly done so in the weblogs on more than one occasion.

max,

i sure hope that's the attitude people will take with 'reminding' our fellow SDNers - i sometimes fear that the occasional reminder or two might trigger an impression of "i'm not really helping you guys - i'm only doing this for the points" or something to that effect.

ryan.

That's a chance you take with any community often times most hope that people will realize it's a give and take place and not just a take.

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