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When did coffee corner stop being a points-free space?

steverumsby
Active Contributor
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I know it has been like this for a while but I missed the change. What was the reason? In my opinion it seems to be encouraging content that is maybe best posted elsewhere. The Coffee Corner used to be a good place to hangout. Now, between all the song lyrics and poetry it is hard to find the interesting content (unless you like song lyrics or poetry, I guess). I can't help feeling this stuff is being posted just to earn points, but I also don't feel able to report it for "points gaming" abuse as the Coffee Corner is "The official space where you can share and discuss any topic that is on your mind."

It seems to me that an "anything goes" space shouldn't be a points-earning space.

Or maybe I'm just in a grumpy mood today.

Steve.


Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

JL23
Active Contributor
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With the introduction of gamification to SCN it was not possible to a have a points-free space

The question was to either to close the coffee corner or allowing points.

As the place is still there......

But this decision was based on the experience and content that was posted until that time .

steverumsby
Active Contributor
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We can't have points-free spaces now? Seriously? Is a fix for this being pursued?

JL23
Active Contributor
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I cannot answer this, and have to forward the question to and her team

If it would be possible to restrict blogs and documents  and only  allow discussions which are by default (and unchangable) not marked as question, then it could probably become points free. But I have no idea if this can be customized.

ThomasZloch
Active Contributor
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Well, I would not want to restrict blogs and documents altogether, just remove any gamification incentive. In other spaces, authors at least need to meet certain quality criteria when posting.

I'm not claiming that I'm the one to define this criteria around here, but removing the incentives might take care of a few things automatically. Thanks for forwarding this little uprising

Thomas

Former Member
0 Kudos

Spot on, but complaining does not really help.

It is just a little customizing switch to turn the idiotic points frenzy off (someone tried it once, incase anyone remembers the points-ice-age in ABAP General back in 2008...) but the points got to dope the SCN's KPI's and delete the memory of those wonderful few days before any action was taken.

You might as well go and talk to the junkies at the train station about the sense in turning any points related things off. You will get more action from them (a hickup or falling over wins hands-down against what you will see happening here...)...

Cheers,

Julius

Answers (9)

Answers (9)

former_member46
Advisor
Advisor
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I have opened a poll on this topic, please vote.

former_member181931
Contributor
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Just want to let you guys know that wiki points will slowly be reduced to be more aligned with blogs and documents. can provide more information if necessary.

And I voiced my opinion about points in the coffee corner in this other thread.

Laure

moshenaveh
Community Manager
Community Manager
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Hi,

I totaly understand your concerns and this is the reason why we announced the expected change in wiki points allocation.

Regards,

Moshe

former_member46
Advisor
Advisor
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Thanks for bringing up this important topic. As Laure shared its currently not possible to turn off the points, therefore I think its a valid question if we wish to allow poems and songs to be created here. Also what about jokes? We've traditionally had them on Friday (although I personally need them on Thursday since that is the last day of my week )

I will raise this topic in our team call but would love to hear more members opinions here, after all the coffee corner is the community's space

Gali

Steffi_Warnecke
Active Contributor
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Hello Gali,

I guess it isn't possible to deactivate the liking/rating for just this space either, is it? ^^ That would be another way to stop the points and one can still post a "I liked it!" etc.

JasonLax
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
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Here are some opinions:

steverumsby
Active Contributor
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The problem as I see it isn't the content but that the content earns points and there are no ground-rules here - anything goes. This devalues the point system, at least in so far as people see it as a professional reputation system. If it is intended to be that, then points for poems/songs/jokes makes no sense.

I don't care about the content. I can unfollow the Coffee Corner space and never see it. That would be fine, except that I care about the integrity of the points system. If I shouldn't, just say so and the problem instantly goes away.

Steve.

Steffi_Warnecke
Active Contributor
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Thank you for bringing this up, Steve!

I'm absolutly for stopping the gamification for this space, as the copy-paste-poetry and -lyrics are flushing the whole thing. It is a place to share stuff, but I, too, have the feeling, that mosts blogs aren't about sharing, but about getting.

I like the idea of having one thread, where everyone can post those things (if they still like to then ^^).

wrote, we should voice our wish to stop the points in the Coffee Corner here (if I understood it correctly), but wouldn't a poll or a idea in Idea Place easier to follow the votes? But maybe I understood it wrong and the moderator-thread was meant.

Regards,

Steffi.

Jelena
Active Contributor
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I motion to amend the Coffee Corner rules as "no songs or poetry unless they're funny". Or just create a single discussion thread for those and let anyone post there to their heart content - there should be no points given just for that.

Also does SAP have copyright for the content posted on SCN? If so, perhaps that would cool off our local lyricists.

For the record - I have nothing against poetry per se, but only as long as it's good.

former_member42743
Active Contributor
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So if the coffee corner is part of the SCN "all or nothing" gamification, would it be possible to set up the coffee corner in its own Jive platform using the SSL like the Idea place is?  Could it be set up in the idea place, ( I don't think there are points there), and then simply linked to from SCN? In that manner it would look like part of SCN but still be outside of it.

FF

Jitendra_Kansal
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
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I also feel what Steve Rumsby has mentioned in above post. Although i have earned few points on the same Coffee Corner but now i guess it should be points free space.

Rgrds,

Jitendra

Former Member
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About 2 years ago there used to be a Top Contributors forum, for the folks with the most points. We took a vote in there about getting rid of the points system in itself. If I remember correctly it was 160k points in favour : 0 against.

But noooo.... the silly points remained and no one ever did anything about it, so the forum died a slow apathetic death as well.

Cheers,

Julius

former_member181931
Contributor
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Hi everyone,

Juergen is right (as usual!), it is currently impossible to disable points in a specific space, this is a feature not available in the gamification platform. This is an issue documented in the Gamification Known Issues document. 

When we found out about this we changed the Coffee Corner to a read-only space because we wanted to check with our moderators if they thought it would be acceptable that people accrue points and progress towards missions in that space as well. See the discussion (restricted access: moderators and space editors only) that started at the time in March 2013 as we were preparing for the gamification launch.

If you think we should reconsider this decision, please let us know in this thread.

I agree that it's a pity we can't turn off points in spaces where it doesn't make sense to earn points and be recognized as an "expert", e.g. I think the same about the Events spaces although not everyone agrees with me, I know.

Anyway, I know that Jive and Bunchball are working on this, and the functionality may be available in Q4 this year or early 2014, they are doing some metadata work that would help with this business need.

Laure

steverumsby
Active Contributor
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Thanks Laure. It is very helpful to understand the background.

Honestly, it seems to me that the Coffee Corner is now just a place to earn points cheaply, and that devalues the whole points system in my mind. I guess your "read only" option is a way to disable it without deleting the existing content? My vote would be to do just that until it can be made points-free. Earning points there makes no sense to me.

I'd love to suggest also deleting all the songs and poetry that's accumulated there too, to undo the points gaming, but since they don't contravene the existing rules of the space I guess there's no grounds for doing that.

Steve.

anshu_lilhori
Active Contributor
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Even i pasted one article in coffee corner than Mr.Jurgen pointed out another copied content.Though i did not paste it from the blog which he mentioned but still it was not original content anyways.

I deleted my blog soon after that and after reading other blogs in coffee corner i realized most of them are just copy paste and already available on net.Moreover this space is becoming dumping ground where just for the sake of points people are posting the content.

I feel its a matter of pride to earn points in technical forums rather than getting them through copy paste content.

Regards,

AL

former_member186498
Active Contributor
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Hi Steve,

Steve Rumsby wrote:

Honestly, it seems to me that the Coffee Corner is now just a place to earn points cheaply, and that devalues the whole points system in my mind.

I agree that coffe corner should be free of points but I saw that there are better place to earn easy points, I saw people that every day, also on saturday and sunday, earns more then 100-150 points per day with wiki, without having feedback from others and without other kind of activities: 3-5 new wiki page created every day it's a big effort if you have something intelligent, new and substantial to write.

So I think that it's only one of several things to be reviewed in the actual point system in the next months.

Regards

     Roberto

steverumsby
Active Contributor
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Yes, I'm very jealous of the folks over in wiki-land. If only I had some ideas for wikis to create. Maybe it is time for a poetry wiki?

Steve.

ThomasZloch
Active Contributor
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There is also an inflation of totally trivial blog/documents comments recently:

- fan: "informative, thanks" (replace by "useful", "nice", "well written", etc.)

- author: "thank you"

- fan's comment liked by author

- author's "thank you" re-liked by fan

- optional: both comments liked by excited bystanders

I have seen at least two or three "fans", there are probably more, who have obviously chosen this as their main points accumulation scheme. Quite a pain in the neck, maybe I should learn to not care as much anymore.


Thomas

steverumsby
Active Contributor
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It may even be that these are all one person with multiple accounts. I flip between not caring and wearing out the "report abuse" button. I don't like not caring, but I don't have the time or energy to report all the points gaming.

Steve.

Jelena
Active Contributor
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There was a blog by Jason Lax, I think, few months ago regarding changes in the Wiki points. The points were way over-inflated (which I pointed out in the comments to that blog), but I believe that is (was?) going away.

Based on what I've seen in ABAP wikis you don't really need to have an idea to create one - just copy-paste a code sample from ABAP Help. Honestly, can any ABAPer tell me what value does this wiki page have, for example? Other than author (multiple authors, actually!) getting the points for it.

More than anything Wiki should be a point-free zone, really. There seems to be no moderation or control whatsoever.

JL23
Active Contributor
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it was not Jason, it was Moshe who wrote the blog

Jelena
Active Contributor
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Thomas Zloch wrote:

- optional: both comments liked by excited bystanders

...or rather other members of the same "point ring".

It's twice as annoying when someone makes a comment on some ancient blog that you forgot you're involuntarily "following" (by posting a more meaningful comment earlier) and all it says is "good". WTF, dude? Are you aware there are dozens of people getting an email when you do that?

I can only guess that some people might still not realize that there is 'Like' button (it is a bit removed from the comment area though) that serves the same exact purpose and (sic!) gives points to the author. Maybe someone should write a blog on this. Or a wiki.

Jelena
Active Contributor
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Ah, my mistake. Thank you, Jurgen!

former_member186498
Active Contributor
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I saw people that doesn't have any kind of feedback at all, they gains a lot of points creating and updating their own wiki. On history there aren't link to this pages and also to the related forum, so you can't see where it's written and also "search" with his name doesn't give results but in 2-3 month they earned 5000 points, incredible.

former_member186498
Active Contributor
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Jelena Perfiljeva wrote:

More than anything Wiki should be a point-free zone, really. There seems to be no moderation or control whatsoever.

Yes these was my feeling, areas without control! I don't have much time to investigate but in the last month several rockets fly over me, I was astonished to see so much points in a day and in history I've seen that every days is the same, but you can't see where they publish because you didn't find links to the pages. And these people doesn't give quite other contributes... hmmm very strange!

JL23
Active Contributor
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Just copy and paste the user name to the normal SCN search on top right, and you can find all wikis of him by setting the filter to asset type wiki

former_member42743
Active Contributor
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Doesn't always work.  I tried with Manish Kumar.  Do you know how many Manish Kumar are in SCN?  Pages of them!!!!  There are about 40 Manish Kumar's and 1400 other variations, (i.e. an initial added, another name added).

FF

former_member42743
Active Contributor
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I also tried John Smith and got about 1000 hits.  (just people mind you). 427 John Does! 

SAP really needs a way to purge out these useless and the older accounts.  Anyway not having logged in for over a year should have their account marked as deactivated and removed from the searches, rankings, or at least listed last in any searches.

FF

JL23
Active Contributor
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I understand what you mean, it is hard to find the right one (same with direct messages and sharing content)  and it is quite impossible to link the wiki profile with the SCN profile.

but if you search with the name, then you can already see the numbers of wikis created with that name. of course it is possible that many with the same name could have created wikis, but in this case not. filter on the wikis, click one, In the wiki click then again the user name to see all what was touched. you can then compare the dates with the dates in the reputation history to be certain.

Former Member
0 Kudos

Yes, Manish Kumar is a very generic name.

former_member186498
Active Contributor
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Jürgen L wrote:

Just copy and paste the user name to the normal SCN search on top right, and you can find all wikis of him by setting the filter to asset type wiki

when I tried before I obtain no result, now I see only 12 wiki page (recently updated) to less for quite 10.000 points (in july it has minus then my points), probably he create and delete the same wiki and the points remains...

Note that it's a new entry, he started in april after the new SCN start and if he doesn't stop in one year he will gain points like you in your life .

I see one wiki and the half of the wiki page was a simple copy of the note contained above (genius) ... I had the suspect that 3-4 wiki page every day shouldn't be very new and fresh .

Also wikis from other users seems very poor and simple (1 instruction) but they gain for this 40 points = 4 correct answers and you know that normally (you're an exception ) you need several days for this not only 5 minutes.

As Jelena wrote it seems that wiki is out of control, rules of engagement (don't copy) isn't valid there.

Regards

     Roberto

Jelena
Active Contributor
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I saw one user (didn't capture the name, unfortunately) that simply updated the formatting in at least 20 ABAP wikis. That would be fine, but most of the content he/she updated shouldn't even be there due to the poor quality. Not much of a "community service", in my opinion.

While we're throwing flames about the Coffee Corner here, Wikis is where I'd be if I was a serious "point hunter". Maybe something to look into. (Sorry for the off-topic!)

anshu_lilhori
Active Contributor
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Hi,

Completely agree with you..I have seen lately that people have earned points in Wiki like anything..Moreover where all the content which can be put into one wiki is splitted into many wikis so that they can earn more points.

So the sole intention behind is to earn points..Withing few days they cross 1000 points without much efforts.May be same type of content is already available in other places and it not useful as well..

We should think on it seriously.

former_member42743
Active Contributor
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So maybe you can show two separate point totals?  One for SCN and one for Wiki?  I don't think I've ever put anything in the Wiki.  Maybe years ago.

FF

anshu_lilhori
Active Contributor
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Yes i liked that idea..May be we can put this is idea place and have a poll on the same.

Regards,

AL

derek_klobucher
Active Contributor
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+1 for the idea of separate point totals. But is it practical?

Former Member
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That would have been me.

I like updating formatting of ABAP wikis.

former_member186498
Active Contributor
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or maybe 40 points are too much for a couple of cut&paste screenshots and a couple of abap instruction even if they are useful!

+2 points every time I enter to change a comma or correct a word, in the forums you're able to edit your answer and correct this if there are mistakes but you doesn't earn point.

Regards

     Roberto

ThomasZloch
Active Contributor
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Grumpy mood or not, I think you are totally right, and kudos for having the guts to start this discussion. I was thinking about it too, but was probably too afraid of stepping on some overly sensitive toes.

Get rid of the points in

Thomas