Summary of users’ comments on Forums New Platform
Status of reported issues (06/11/12):
Features which were available on old platform and would be very useful on the new one
a) ability so see if the thread is locked from the list of the issues unsolved
b) ability to see if the thread was read by you unsolved
c) clear distinction between locked, open and answered threads (now, the small icon of the same colour is not visible enough) unsolved
d) ability to see who was the person who made the last feedback (it’s available only with the preview, but not in the working list for discussions) unsolved
e) ability to see if the remark was made by the user who has ‘Moderator’ badge unsolved
f) ability to see the whole reputation (score) of the user and not only this for the last 12 months unsolved
g) ability to lock the thread, so no points will be given (now, even after the lock, granting points and ‘likes’ is still available) workaround found
h) ability to see topic leaders (top 5 leading contributors) in each domain i) ability to move to ‘points-free’ space; actually, lack of ‘Test & Playground’ forum unsolved
i) ability to see right away the number of posts made by the user, thus understanding whether he(she) is a novice on SCN or not unsolved
j) ability to have a ‘sticky’ thread unsolved
k) ability to search within one Forum, with period as a parameter partially solved
l) locking a user after 10 unanswered threads unsolved
Bugs, glitches and minor issues
a) when you reject content as a moderator, you also receive a notification about this saying that the content is rejected solved
b) ability to anyone post a document or a blog; it creates a confusion among the users and put an extra burden on moderators unsolved
c) deletion/modification of a thread causes an error (Unexpected error has occurred), though the action is registered solved
d) sometimes does not show correct person in the ‘content’ replies solved
e) when looking at moderator’s list, there is no possibility to view the flagged thread without going out from the list solved
f) if a remark was made to an ‘old’ thread (putting it on top of the threads list); deleting this remark is supposed to put the thread back in the queue (remove it from recently updated threads), but the thread remains on top unsolved
g) no instant refresh of deleted content; even affter the deletion of a thread/document it continues to show up for some time in the ‘Content’ partially solved
h) thread’s titles lengh; it’s apparently set now to 255, which is too long – gives an ability to post a lot of text in the titles (like this http://scn.sap.com/thread/3152986), while it should be short and essential unsolved
i) user can mark his/her own response as ‘helpful’ in his/her thread: it doesn’t make sense unsolved
Ideas / nice to have
a) restrict number of ‘Likes’ or at least the points given by this action; maybe, even don’t grant points for ‘Like’ at all unsolved
b) ability to add remarks, when locking the message, in a way that this remark would appear in the body of the message unsolved
c) more sophisticated search engine with multiple parameters partially solved
Hi Eli, there are a lot of great comments about new forum's design here:
And Patrick F. explains why they decided to migrate to this new platform here: 😏
Regards,
Osvaldo.
Thanks, Osvaldo. I'm aware of these threads 😉 As for migration, I believe, all of us have to accept it as a fact. I mean, there is no way there will be a roll-back on this one. I do hope that users comments will be considered by SCN team and, at least, the missing functionalities will be restored.
There is a whole Idea place dedicated to the new SCN, where all SCN users can demonstrate how they feel by voting ideas up or down. I hope the development team is aware of its existence. So far the only evidence of any interest by SAP whatsoever, is a single idea bugfix that has been marked as Delivered.
This Idea place will be closed by March 31st, according to its description. I hope that only means that no new ideas can be added, but we will have certainty on Monday.
Let us hope they are not saying the same about other members of the team...
Now I admit I sometimes tend to lean toward the cynical, but it would be my guess that only bugfixes will be implemented, and anything else will be conveniently deleted and forgotten. Please, please, please, people of the development team, make me eat my words!
Regards,
Johan
Hi Johan,
I hope we can provide ketchup. Some words can be pretty difficult to swallow. 😉
I sure hope they also change their mind on the Idea place. Most folks right now are concentrating on reporting bugs, not coming up with new ideas. More new ideas are likely to get generated after the SCN is working properly without all these bugs getting in the way. I added a new idea in the hope that it would get missing functionality restored. Have not given much thought to other new ideas at this point. Once missing features have been restored, implemented, or re-enabled, I can then figure out what new features we should add.
Thanks, Mike
Hi Mike,
I don't like ketchup.
I completely agree with your comment. Our focus now is on getting back features that were stripped off (like Browse search) in iorder to deal with the immediate performance issues after launch.
In addition, we have a whole raft of IT requests, which are not necessarily new ideas, but features that we need to operate efficiently as a community. These are items like moderation tools, reporting, UI improvements, etc.
After this train gets rolling along smoothly, Idea Place will be a valuable resource of ideas future development of SCN,
Hi Keith,
Thank you (as a member of the development team ?) for posting a reply on this thread. It is already giving me back a lot of hope.
Now I did not mean to imply that you and your team are not working hard. My point is, that outside your team, nobody knows what is going on. So while you and your colleagues are working hard in the background, here in the foreground nothing seems to be happening.
Right after the go live, users were encouraged to report bugs and missing features on Idea place, as apparently not enough people did so on the bug report forumblogorwhateveritwas. You are probably right that most "ideas" are probably really only requests for reinstating missing functionality. So you may want to check it out before you consider the train to be rolling.
You and your team may know that certain missing features have only been temporarily disabled, but we commoners do not. We can only assume that they were never implemented. Hence they show up as "new" ideas on Idea place.
May I request that you or someone from your team take a look at the Idea place, and mark all those "ideas" that you know to be temporarily stripped features, or consider to be IT requests, as Under review, Accepted and Delivered ? Who knows, you might even get alerted to some bug or missing feature, that the Facebook / Twitter community has not commented on.
(I say this because I have noticed that most "ideas" on Idea place come from former SDN forum users. Most of those requests and comments that I have seen elsewhere on SCN , and that you are apparently focused on (?), are mostly related to blogging and social networking.)
I do not know if it is a lot to ask, but just letting people know what is going on, will put a lot of minds at ease. At the very least it will keep Idea place from being flooded with unnecessary bug reports.
Regards,
Johan
Hi Johan,
I fully understand you being inpatient and that you want to have everything back ASAP, but we have to do it one step after the other. Please keep in mind that we have a couple of urgent issues to fix from a performance and stability perspective and we just had a week to get back into fixing the most urgent bugs. The latest deployment in about 15 minutes will deliver some of them.
You may have not noticed my blog posts that I've published recently, where I tried to give some transparency into our ongoing efforts, but I encourage you to have a look at them now:
Everything Is (Mostly) Under Control
Anatomy of a Go-Live
I hope that gives you some insight on what we are currently doing. Follow up blog post is in the works.
Oliver
Dear Oliver,
Thank you for the reference to your blogs. I've read the most recent one, but I didn't notice anything regarding the issues mentioned above. Do you have a schedule or, at least, an estimation for bringing the forums' features back? Is it planned at all or is it referred as minor and not urgent issue?
Thanks in advance,
Eli
Hi Oliver,
I am afraid you are misunderstanding me. I understand that these kinds of projects take time. I understand that unexpected problems may come up, especially so with an undertaking of this scale. And I never used the term ASAP or so much as implied impatience.
This is exactly my point. I don't want everything back, because I don't know which of all the requests and ideas that have been made (not just by me), are existing features that have been temporarily turned off, which are bugs that you are working on, and which are ideas that have never even been considered.
Your blogs are certainly a step in the right direction, but the fact that you needed to tell us about their existence, and give us a link to them, should in itself tell you something.
Again, most requests, bug reports, questions, and ideas can be found on Idea place. The people posting them, look at Idea place. Few if any have the time and the will to search through the SCN jungle for a blog that they do not even know exists.
If you do not have time for anything elaborate, how about one single additional sentence to the description of the Idea place: "Some features have been temporarily disabled, and will be reactivated later. Please be patient." ?
Regards,
Johan
Hi Johan,
my face and the links to both blog posts and the release notes have now been featured on the SCN home page for over a week. Not sure how we can make it even more prominent. Any better idea?
I'm not happy either with the treatment of the user requests in Idea Place, but I hope this is going to get changed soon.
Btw. one issue that was complained about in the comments of the poll got fixed with the Monday release. All the migrated forums are now properly formatted and we removed additional white spaces.
Best,
Oliver
Hi Oliver,
And such a handsome devil you are 😉 .
You are right though, I suppose there is little more you can do to make it more prominent. The only thing I can think of is featuring the same (or a smaller version) banner (for the time being) also on all the forum start / home (?) pages, and possibly on the "New SCN" Idea place ? The point being that many users (especially of the technical forums) have already created bookmarks to their page of choice, and therefore do not really ever visit the home page.
On a positive note, on the whole, I think you guys are doing a great job. Keep it up.
Best Regards,
Johan
P.S. Do you notice a small problem with this comment section ? 😀
So narrowed
Interesting width. 🙂
Maybe SCN team should adjust it. Only "replay" mode for level 3 in comments. 😛
Regards
You can toggle the comment and discussions view styles between threaded and flat, and separately:
These are options found in your preferences, just below where you can control eMails.
I knew about that option, but... is it correct the current view ?
Why Jive's support doesn't fix this? Is it a bug?
I think this has more to do with too much space taken up by the right column that leaves the center area, where the content appears, narrower than needed.
Hi Eli,
It is a shame we don't see more of the polls universally. It would probably help if we could create polls to assign priority to maybe the top 9 bugs and then also allow the Other category for comments on bugs not listed.
Good summarization of many of the key bugs driving many of us nuts.
Thanks, Mike
Some great comments and feedback! Keith Elliott , Christina Bryant , Audrey Stevenson and the rest of the team should be all over this.
Thanks a lot for the effort.
Best,
Oliver
PS: I just figured that we screwed up the line breaks. Will get fixed soon.
Thanks, Oliver! Oops, I already got used to line breaks 🙂
I agree. Linebreaks are trivial.
You have no idea 😉
The filter tags for "searching" the sdk forum are worthless. Can't find anything with them. Incredibly frustrating!
Hi John,
If he means what you mean, there is hope 🙂
Regards,
Johan
Yes there is! Filter by text in the browse view will be back soon.
Hi Eli, can I help to edit the format of this document ?
Do you mean you have other remarks, that are not mentioned there? Sure, be my guest... Every comment is welcome!
Thanks Eli, just some document designs changes for now 😉
Regard,
Osvaldo
I realize certain 'features' 😉 are being ironed out. Overall, I LOVE the new look and feel. Nice job!
Well, these features were (and still are) very important. It's not the matter of feelings, but rather a funcitonality and efficiency of the new platform, which in Forums domain is still limping.
And the one good foot has a sore toe. 😉
The mos essential thing for users: The ability to control who or what the user is 'following' is missing completely.
All mail sent out as result of a 'follow' request M U S T have a link to terminate this - as any mailing list has since ever.
Best regards
Clemens
Hi Clemens,
This is a known bug reported over a month ago. Not sure why it is taking so long to fix, but I have not heard that it it has been. And I am pretty sure I would have seen something as it is close to the most common complaint I have seen.
Development: Anything new to report here?
Regards, Mike
Hi Eli,
I was thinking in how to solve the situation of unaware questioners in marking the usefulness of threads responses.
we could suggest to display a window with the responses given by the contributor as well user came into the page of the question. Could be a window like the logom community. As responses be marking new windows popping up with other answers. this would encouraging the answers marking and avoid the worst, which is to give a right answer without any evaluation.
regards
Hi,
I'm not sure I agree on the concept, where the 'worst' is leaving the answer without a mark. For me, it's much more important the quality of the questions/answers, rather than their evaluation. Of course, for good management of the forum, threads should be closed if the answer is given: nothing to argue about that. But, I find, that in general, that's what is happening, apart from some exceptions. Also, keep in mind, that moderators are entitled to close the thread (with or without evaluation) if they find the question being answered.
There is, though, a place of SCN where you can post your idea for improvement of the forums' platform.
Regards,
Eli
The quality is more important without question but unmarked threads doesn't follow the Gamification actions of SCN and difficults the search tools.
Thank you for indicate the correct place to post ideas.
regards