It seems to be a never ending story. Despite several forum posts by various other people, as well as remarks from yours truly, people think that SDN is a large kindergarten. Not that people have to listen to me, which would be giving me too much credit. The only thing I can dare to hope is that people will reflect upon their childish behaviour. That’s the only term I can give to people that see the need to hide themselves behind (dubious) aliases. I might be getting old and not ‘open’ to new things, but I still don’t see any reason to justify this behaviour. As Gali mentioned in one of the forums threads, SDN is a professional site and I would like to see some members of this community having a more mature attitude. Professionalism is, in my eyes, not a synonym for boring and lacking in fun, but that doesn’t need to happen anonymously while showing a white feather.
Why hide? Is the quality of your contribution so low or the content so questionable that you don’t want to link your name to it? Are you ashamed to be an SDN member or to contribute? Why are you a member/contributor in the first place? Doesn’t your boss (or whomever) allow you to contribute (during business hours)? Well then do it outside these hours. I also write my weblogs in my private time. There’s no reason to hide though.
Part of the problem is the registration process. All that one needs to do is to fill in a name, first name, e-mail, password and password hint in order to become an SDN member. All of these could be false. No verification at all - with direct access as bonus.
I prefer the idea used at the Service Marketplace where registration is more fraud proof since you need to provide a customer or installation number, and generation of an userid might take up to 2 hours. Hit and run (anonymous) users are therefore less likely. The argument is that only SAP customers and Partners can create SDN users then and others can’t reach the information. Well that’s only true if you want to contribute. I did the test and logged off. I could access any info I wanted.
It has been said before, but why isn’t SDN adopting a Service Marketplace type of registration process? My idea is that only people with proven identity should receive a userid, although I know that this request might be a bit too expensive. At the very least one should make more contact info mandatory. One can indicate if one wants to share data or not, for privacy reasons. The fact that one doesn’t need to reregister on the SDN world map is certainly a benefit.
Sure the hurdle might seem a bit steeper with possibly fewer members as a result. But is the focus of SDN to make converts? And is quantity more important than quality? What’s the point of having X (non traceable) users, other than bragging of it, or of that figure being used by the afore-mentioned others?
