Sharing Knowledge Is Not That Hard - Articles

former_member183750 · ‎08-28-2013

Purpose

This blog is a continuation of a series of wikis under the heading of Sharing Knowledge Is Not That Hard. The blog discusses Articles, which are one of the many tools available to us for sharing knowledge.

Overview

Articles can only be submitted by SAP employees and contractors by using the Content Submission page. Articles must adhere to a specific template and are reviewed by SAP reviewers before being published.

How to Article

Articles must be submitted via the Content Submission page. The submission process also provides a required template that must be adhered to when writing an article. Once the article is completed, it must be submitted for review. This may take several days and the article will either be accepted or rejected with suggestions for improvement. Once the article is submitted, it is published in a PDF format and an email with link to the PDF is sent out to the author. Currently, SCN links in to Articles via Jive Documents. For example the Article Troubleshooting the Load Report Failed Error is linked via a Jive Document of the same name.

Why to Article

Articles can only be modified by the author.
Articles can only be submitted by SAP employees and contractors.
Articles require the use a specific template, otherwise the article will be rejected.
Articles are searchable on SCN and SAP Market Place.
Articles are proof read and often you will receive great feedback on how to improve the content, structure, etc.
Articles can be metatagged to increase visibility and allow for easier searches.

Why not to Article

Articles can only be modified by the author.
Articles can only be submitted by SAP employees and contractors.
Articles are not part of SCN.
You must use a specific template, otherwise the article will be rejected.
Articles must be submitted for publishing. This may take several days.
Articles can only submitted in English.
It is a rather onerous process to modify your own Article as it necessitates you keeping a copy of your original article. The Article must be resubmitted for publication thus incurring another publishing delay.
There are no points assigned for Article creation (I don’t think).
No place to ask questions / get help (not that I know).

My Experiences

I have penned 14 Articles. But my last submission was in August of 2010. For the most part, the experience of writing Articles was great. The required use of a template made organization an easy process and the feedback I got from the proof readers was always professional and simply excellent. However as I explored other ways of sharing knowledge, my preferences shifted to tools such as Blogs, Wikis and Jive Documents. For the most part, this is because the submission system for these is essentially unguarded and there is no need to wait for approval. I suppose I am a bit schizophrenic in that I really like the feedback and template, yet sometimes I find the feedback hard to accept. I also don’t like to wait for my content to be published. And yeah, I do like the freedom of free formatting some of my content (Blogs are great for this).

Examples of Articles

I suppose the later Articles I have written are a bit better polished, so I am including links to two examples, not to show off, rather to show what an article looks like:

Troubleshooting the Load Report Failed Error

Troubleshooting guide to Crystal Reports database connectivity issues in Visual Studio .NET applicat...