The New SCN: What’s in it For Your Reputation

May 2013 update:
SCN is now enhanced with extensive game mechanics! This is fun, this is driving engagement in the community!

The blog below contains outdated information, but we wanted to keep it on SCN for our avid readers who bookmarked it.

Please read the updated Reputation Program Overview and the Frequently Asked Questions documents, as well as Chip Rodgers’ blog to learn more about the reputation program now enhanced with gamification.

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I hope you’re already liking the new SAP Community Network! More social, with communities orchestrated around your areas of interest and expertise, SCN offers great networking opportunities as well as innovative learning and knowledge sharing. It is the place where everyone goes to find quality content on SAP products and services. You engage on SCN and contribute content that will build and grow your reputation as an SAP Professional. Contribute quality content, connect with your peers, help others on SCN and the rest will follow.

I manage the SCN reputation program and because of all the recent changes with the introduction of the new SCN, I want to explain how they affect reputation aspects such as points and recognition, and how you can build and grow your reputation in the community (you may want to watch Jason Cao‘s video that summarizes key points).

Powerful networking

To me this is the strongest asset of the new SCN. If you are new to the community, what I’m going to say may convey nostalgia about how things used to be, but long-time members of the community know what I mean. We used to pick “favourite members” – British English in the text 😉 – to access their profiles easily.

That’s nothing compared to what the new site offers now: The ability to people and places (a place is a topic space, a group, etc.), an improved user profile with a consolidation of all the contributions, the option to browse for people, content and places. Direct message your friends, mention them using “@” anywhere, check out the Activity – Communications – Actions streams every time you log in to make sure you are on top of everything!

You could spend a lot of time on SCN if you wanted to, but don’t forget to also have a  life 😉

Connect with the right people to make your engagement on SCN a fruitful one. Who are the right people? The Top Participants in your space, the Mentors who are active in your space, the people you admire and want to connect with to learn from them and share knowledge with them. Also follow the members of the SCN Team to be informed of what is going on.

New User Profile and Reputation Tab:

The new SCN user profile rocks. Period. It’s really the place to see someone’s contributions, connections, and achievements.

Your profile is your window to the community, so make sure you pick a good picture (see Patrick Flanders‘s blog with good tips) and display as much information as possible so that people get to know you better. Go to “Edit Profile & Privacy” and select “everyone” in the tab “Privacy Settings” to show your information to your peers.

The reputation tab of your profile is your own Hall of Fame. It shows your status, your points and badges. My goal for 2012 is to make it nicer, and to show more achievements –  not just in terms of points.

Points & Active Contributor status:

Old SCN: Lifetime points. Points in the last 12 months rolling. Active Contributor status.

New SCN:

All your  SCN points were migrated to the new platform: your lifetime points remain, as well as your points in the last 12 months. You keep your Active Contributor status if you have 250 points and more in the last 12 months.

Note: Migrated points show without many details in the reputation tab. This is normal, more details will show as you accrue new points for content in the new spaces.

Your lifetime points show in your user profile (reputation tab):

You can also browse by people depending on their lifetime points:

Your points in the last 12 months rolling show in the masthead…

… in your user profile (reputation tab)…

… and when you hover over a name:

Point assignment is  different in the new SCN: Points are assigned automatically for all new contributions and apart from wiki contributions, there are no points for edits. In addition to the points you get automatically, you get additional “feedback points” given by the community. The community is the best judge in deciding what content is valuable, therefore it has a stronger voice now via the “like”, “share” and “rating” buttons.

All previous content of a user can be seen in the Content tab of the user profile. But the point history is currently 10 lines in the user profile’s reputation tab. We are reviewing options to display more in the future.

Each space consists of a point category. This is great news for you because you get to accrue points in a category that really reflects your level of expertise. You now have an opportunity to shine.

Badges:

The Active Contributor badge (bronze, silver, gold, platinum) lives on. SAP employees and SCN Moderators continue to show their respective badges. We are working to add more badges to the SCN.

Leaderboards:

Previous leaderboards such as the “Find the Expert” page, the list of contributors and the list of contributing companies are no longer to be found in the new SCN. We are looking at ways to share detailed leaderboards that will present the right information to you. Because of the drastically new structure of SCN, we need to think about all the options and design the best leaderboards for such a large community with 2+ million members and over 2,000 active contributors each year.

Recognition:

Active Contributors get an e-mail each time they reach a certain level (bronze, silver, gold or platinum). And a badge.

Content gets to be recognized by the Community itself: by liking and rating blogs, documents, discussion threads, the community helps feature quality content prominently. Use your voting power responsibly!

The brand new Top Participant widget gives visibility to the 5 people who have contributed the most (last 12 months points) in each community. The list can be extended to 10 names.  This widget gives well deserved recognition, and everyone can get an idea of the top contributors to follow in the space.

Example:

The Member of the Month recognition is also a new addition. Every month, SCN Space Editors and Moderators can nominate someone and a decision is then made by the SCN Team. The Member of the Month is an active member of SCN who shows exemplary behavior and provides quality content. We want the whole community to know what they should aspire to, and to get to know the person who is honored each month on the SCN Home Page. Read Jeanne Carboni‘s blog announcing the initiative.

We used to recognize SCN Topic Leaders each year in August and at SAP TechEd in the Fall. Topic Leaders were the top 3 contributors in each of the 43 point categories over a 12-month period. Now that each space consists of a point category, we have roughly 400 point categories. The Topic Leader recognition needs to change since we can’t have 1,200 topic leaders, that would be way too much and wouldn’t make sense. I’m thinking of ways to group categories together and highlight the best contributors in an intelligent way. Suggestions are welcome!

Are you excited about the new opportunities? Please share your thoughts and feedback by commenting!

Laure Cetin is a member of the SCN Collaboration Team and is responsible for the SCN Reputation Program.