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Matthew Billingham
Matthew Billingham
December 20, 2009 Less than a 1 minute read

I can’t log into the forums anymore!

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I can’t log in anymore!

I’ve lost my points!

I’m a moderator of the forums, and recently we’ve had to delete accounts from people who’ve been members for a few years and even accrued over 1000 points.

WHY? Simples!

The broke the forum rules.  But what has amazed me is that, as moderators, deleting an account is the last resort, not the first.  We try to communicate – sending emails, feedback to posts and rejections of post.  As a pre-ultimate resort, we even may deduct forum points! :-O

 So, why does this happen?

BECAUSE MODERATOR INSTRUCTIONS ARE IGNORED

PLEASE!  If one of your posts is rejected, READ the email.  And if you don’t understand why it was rejected – ask!  My email is on my business card – it’s easy to find. 

PLEASE! Set a watch on any post you respond to and READ all responses.  You may find a moderator has tried to give you guidance.

PLEASE! Read the emails on the account you registered with.  Moderators are able to send you emails as feedback to what you posted.  READ what they’ve said. 

I’m a nice guy!  I hate requesting users to be deleted!

EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES

Respond to moderator requests and you’ll find that we’re very forgiving.  All we want to do is help the community.

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      • Nathan Genez
        100% agree.  I’ll also add that you have to really really really be in violation to get deleted.  It’s not a cavalier process that we undergo.  It’s reserved for the most blatant abusers.

        -Nathan
        Moderator: ERP

        • Matthew Billingham Post author
          Consider people who answer frequently asked questions.  They probably feel that they’re just being helpful.  And to that one person, they are.

          But to the forums as a whole, they’re actually being harmful.  At least – that seems to be the general consensus. 

          So I’ve had to comment to a few people that even if you don’t agree with the rules, you still have to follow them (though free and open debate about the rules should be encouraged).  Someone, somewhere has to decide what’s acceptable and what isn’t. 

      • Neil Gardiner
        Nice post Matt!

        Reminds of the time we were both involved with in a forum post where the user was almost taunting you to delete his account!

        Cheers,
        Neil.

      • Former Member
        I must add that the vast majority of SDNers have a self-explanatory respect for the forum rules without even having read them.

        Almost everyone who has an encounter with the moderators immediately realizes what they have misunderstood or were not aware of, and stops.

        It is only a very small handfull of people who think they are invincible and invisible in the internet who ignore repeated requests and warnings to stop being a pain to all the others.

        Some folks seemed to take it as part of the risk (or fun) that they will loose half their posts to the Abuse Reports system (and keep moderators busy in the process).

        Well… if deleting their user ID is the last resort to get them to stop and this also catches their attention, then so be it.

        Cheers,
        Julius

        • Matthew Billingham Post author
          Thankfully, it is just a few.  But it’s the old 20/80 rule again.  Though in our case, I think its 0.01% of members who generate 99.99% of the violations!

          I guess it’s not generally known that moderators can check how many, and for what reason and individual’s posts have been rejected.

      • Trond Stroemme
        I recently got deleted as well. NOT because of any validations, but because my S-id for some reason was entangled with my previous employer, even though I registered for SDN independently (I even pre-registered for SDN, before it actually opened).

        The reply from the moderators, once i complained, was that my S* ID had been deleted by my former employer. Luckily, the same moderators managed to recreate my profile and re-instate my points (after a bit of bouncing back and forth between SAP and SCN support teams).

        Funny thing is I was never aware of that invisible connection between my employer and the old S* ID. What I do remember, though, was the huge issues I had way back when I tried to register my “certificate” on the SAP support site, which then got completely entangled with my SDN S* user, thus effectively preventing SSO on any of those two sites… 🙂

        • Matthew Billingham Post author
          There was also an occasion when an innocent got caught in the cross fire of a large point-gaming operation (i.e. asking questions specifically to award points to someone else in the network).  His account and points balance was also restored.

          I’ve registered with a “p” account, since as a freelancer, I’ve the potential to have my S id changing on a regular basis!

          • Trond Stroemme
            Funnily enough, it was SDN who attributed me the S-user when I signed up; not myself. I believed it was an “independent” S-user, not tied to any employer… which explains my surprise when it finally got pulled by said employer. Go figure… anyway I use my mail address to login now (at least that’s what I believe – touch wood…)
            • Former Member
              SDN did not attribute the S-account to you, but rather synchronizes the accounts between the SMP and SDN.

              The mail address has only been unique since about a year or so, so it is actually the correct matching password which is “logging you on” as far as I know.

              I suggest that you obtain the P-account number and logon with that.

              Another option is to do a certification: Here you also have an S-account and it is independent of an employer installation number.

              Cheers,
              Julius

              • Trond Stroemme
                My S* account was assigned by SDN, although I signed up “on my own” using my private mail address and not (to my knowledge) referring to my (then) employer. Not sure how SDN managed to tie my membership to my employer, or forge any link to SMP… from what I remember, the S* account that was attributed to me was “mine” and it was anyway never at any point communicated to me by my employer. So, again according to my recollection, the S* account should have been a personal account of mine, not linked to any company or even SMP.

                But maybe there was some fuzzy logic going on in the internal workings of SAP/SDN… 🙂

              • Former Member
                S-accounts from SMP are synchronized to SDN, and initially the email address did not have to be unique.

                If you use the same email address for your P-account and logon with the email address as “account” using the same password… then you make posts with an account which is not the one you think it is.

                This is not the first time it has happened. Real points-gamers have made this mistake before as well… 🙂

                Cheers,
                Julius

      • Former Member
        On the topic of asking a “frequent” question – one thing I notice when search the forums – the first result is always defaulted to posts from the last 90 days.

        I typically will search for something, then immediately change this parameter to “All”, then do the search over again.

        If we want people to find their answers quickly, this should default to searching “All” automatically, rather than waiting for the newbies to notice that their search did not include all the posts.

        Of course – there’s always Google – but I typically prefer the SDN content.

        Just a thought…

      • Former Member
        Suppose Mr.X registered using personal mail account and not of his employers and even managed to score some points (the way moderators want anybody else to score….the ethical way).

        Somebody (Mr.Y) from his organization cries foul over why he is not linking the points with those of the organization….unsatisfied Mr.Y mails to SDN to take action (delete account) against Mr.X.

        How will the Moderators respond to this?

        Thanks,
        Abhishek.