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How to make a lot of friends on the SCN in just one hour as a fresher

January 16, 2014 | 13 Views |
 collaborationdiscussionseffective questions
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Are you relatively new in SAP and asking a lot of questions on the SCN?

Excellent! That’s what I believe the SCN is for.

Now, many of you will be missing an easy opportunity to make friends here (and therefore being more likely to get good answers fast).

Just follow these steps:

1) Click on your oen name at the top of the screen to get to your profile, click “comtent”, click “Authored”, click “discussions”

2) Have a quick glance at your discussion posts. The more of them have a blue rather than a green icon to the left, the better the chances for you to make new friends quickly.

3) Now check your authored discussion posts:

  3a) Have those still on the blue icon (“not answered”) really not been resolved yet? If they are resolved, mark the correct answer as such, so others will also know, what the correct solution was. If none of the answers was correct, but it’s still solved (or become obsolete) click “mark as assumed answered” and elaborate. Closing questions helps others to pick the right (unanswered) questions to contribute to. Thanks to Steffi Warnecke  for pointing out to me that I missed the “mark as correct” option in the firts version of this post.

  3b) If they are not yet answered: has another user offered a solution you haven’t tried yet or asked for some further clarification of the problem, so he can help you? Well, you should follow up on this! Leaving it “unanswered” indicates you are still looking for a solution. Not picking up on another user’s suggestion (if serious), is basically saying: “I’m still desparate for a solution, but as you are asking me to contribute to the solution of my own problem, I can’t be bothered and anyway: I don’t trust your solution, because I think you don’t know your stuff.”. How do you think this impacts your chances of getting help next time round.

  3c) This, which have been resolved: give feedback to contributors and let everybody know, what did the trick in the end. It’s nice for those, who contributed, and others can learn from it as well. If you decide not to use a certain solution, say why (“Thanks for this suggestion. Unfortunately I’m not good enough at schema config to implement that, but we found this workaround XYZ and users are happy enough with it.”)

4) Now, hopefully most of your discussions should have the green “answered” status, those unanswered are followed up on with any further information required, so the respective experts are probably figuring out your solution already and all contributors feel they have been dealing with a polite, respectful human being they would happily work with again.

Note: most people here help, because they like helping others. But to get a positive feeling out of the process, they need some kind of feedback. Even, if it’s “This solution didn’t work – it just brought this new error…”, it still doesn’t feel like they talk into a black hole.

Hence, if you are collaborative and polite, you’ll be liked, even, if you are mostly asking questions and not yet answering many due to your level of experience. You’ll still be respected as someone easy to work with and make friends along the way.

❗ still here? go to step one from above now 😉

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27 Comments

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  1. Andy Silvey

    Hi Sven,

    excellent blog.

    We’ve all seen those threads for a problem we have where it ends with…

    I solved it myself

    and we need to get everybody into the practice as you rightly say of closing threads and documenting the solutions.

    Best regards,

    Andy.

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  5. Thomas Zloch

    One of several criteria where the original poster can show some respect for the valuable spare time of those who he/she is expecting help from, and for the community and the resource SCN as a whole.

    • searching for existing answers first, and if not successful:
    • choosing a meaningful subject line
    • providing sufficient information in the initial problem description (technical context, what has been tried so far, …)
    • following-up quickly
    • closing the question properly, providing the solution if self-solved (your topic)

    Sadly I keep seeing a huge deficit of such respect whereever I look.

    Thomas

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    1. Sudhir S.V

      Hi Thomas,

      Nice value added point. Everyone should consider these things from starting a discussion to till the end of discussion.

      Regards

      Sudhir Sadhu

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    2. Sven Ringling Post author

      Oh yes. Excellent point on the subject line.

      A good subject line also makes it much more likely to attract the right people and therefore a good answer, so most definitely in the interest of the person, who asks.

      (0) 
  6. Steffi Warnecke

    Hello Sven,

      3a) Have those still on the blue icon (“not answered”) really not been resolved yet? If they are resolved, click “mark as assumed answered”. This helps others ti pick the right (unanswered) questions to contribute to.

    I think this is a little missleading. This option should only be used, if none of the suggested solutions in the thread are the solution for the issue. If the solution is one of the posts (even if it’s one by the OP itself, that posted it), then that post should be marked as correct to close the discussion this way.

    Having users close their discussions via “Assumed answered” IMO always leaves a question mark for those finding the thread, if the posted information there is really helpful or not (because it’s just assumed, not made clear, that it actually helped).

    I hope, you know what I mean to say and I guess, you think along the same lines. 🙂 It would be great, if you could rephrase that part a bit. Just to be sure, that readers don’t start closing their threads just by marking them “Assumed answered”. ^^

    Great blog and summary btw. 😀

    Regards,

    Steffi.

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    1. Sven Ringling Post author

      You are right, of course!

      I didn’t emphasise the “mark answer as correct” option as I don’t care about points too much (though it’s nice to see some “formal” recognition), but it’s definitely making it easier to find teh right answer. Will amend it accordingly.

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  7. Roberto Vidotti

    Hi Sven,

    I fully agreed with Steffy, “assumed answered” isn’t a good choise, very often you see only “Solved” and assumed answered, this means nothing it’s just noise.

    If solved you have to write the solution or mark the Correct Answer, this helps the other users when they have a similar issue and they search on forum for a solution.

    When I have issues  I usually to find several threads about it but the most are “assumed answered” without any “helpful answer”, very bad. 🙁 😡

    Regards

         Roberto

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  8. Midhun VP

    Hi Sven,

    I liked the way you concluded the blog, giving a positive feeling by closing a thread or giving a feedback makes large difference. It can really make friends.

    – Midhun VP

    (0) 
  9. Limbadri Sabbani

    Hi Sven,

    I liked the subject line, it attracts most of us to look at the content to see Whats in for me. ( Of course to get very good response for their published content from the members )

    Thanks for the tips very clear to follow and get benefited !

    Thanks,

    LS

    (0) 
  10. Antony Jerald J

    Hi Sven,

    Nicely explained.  Will get more friends here after 🙂

    I had seen in many places discussions kept open so had a thinking of this couldn’t suit to my problem 🙁

         Even I do close tickets if I found to resolve my problem and I’ll provide answers and then i’ll choose my answer as correct answer 🙂  The same has to be followed by everyone so that we can have more community friends getting helped 🙂

    Regards,

    Antony Jerald.

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  12. Robin Janke

    What I started doing now is liking posts that are in my opinion helpful to the problem raised (or even the solution).

    At least the one that posted the message gets some recognition from fellow SCNers even if the topic starter doesn’t bother to follow up.

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  15. Suseelan Hari

    Hi Sven,

    As you said, suggestions & feedback is always necessary in SCN. This will help us to improve our writing & thinking skills. I need to involve more in discussuions too. I will try to spend more time in discussion in SCN Forum. Thanks for sharing this exciting blog. Keep up the good work. All the best!

    Regards,

    Hari Suseelan

    (0) 
  16. Mitasha Gupta

    Hi Sven,

    I fully agree with you, just being a fresher i’m finding difficulty like how to mark a discussion as correctly answered or helpful answer or any other option like that. Could you please guide me how to do it?

    Thanks

    Mitasha

    (0) 
  18. Srikanth Naidu Akula

    Hi Sven Ringling

    Good idea, this will definitely make a huge impact I hope.

    I have gone through many of previous threads (Authored) and found many a silly & idiotic questions I posed to members as a starter in SCN.

    A Few of them made me laugh because the Question itself was stupid

    A Few of them showed me thoughts maturity between my past & present

    Once again thank you for a nice blog.

    (0) 

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