What do you think about our new Q&A platform?

sebastian_wolf · ‎10-08-2016

ricardojasso · ‎10-11-2016

Tags are a good thing for social networks like tweeter where you have millions and millions of users. But on a more closed community like this we need more structured group topics or what used to be spaces. I still don't know how to search for questions using tags. The quick start guide tells you how to Register, how to Write a blog post, and how to Ask a question but not how to Search for questions.

Also the lack of notification subscriptions is a minus. I normally contribute with answers to questions about a topic I have some experience with and that I feel I can be of some help. But I cannot login constantly to see what new questions have been posted.

From a design point of view I'm not a fan of flat, minimalistic, responsive web sites. I normally work on a desktop computer with a large monitor and I don't see the meaning of having to endlessly scroll down to view content I could previously see on one page. I understand there is a lot of mobile users now days but I can't imagine writing a long post or answering a question using a smartphone. I believe the majority of this community users still use desktop computers.

And it's difficult to distinguish action elements from static elements due to the simplistic design. I don't want skeumorphism back but I just feel it takes more time to do the same work with the new site designs which are hard on the eye due to their all white nature and few contrast characteristics. I'm not alone on this as Office 2016 users feel the same about this kind of design...

https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/322590-outlook-2016-for-windows/suggestions/11640570-multiple-c...

Johan_H · ‎10-10-2016

Due to missing functionality, inadequately realized tag navigation, and the many bugs, I fear that we will see a huge drop in user activity, and that it will take a long time for the SCN to recover from this.

A lot will depend on how fast SAP can develop the useability of the platform.

Former Member · ‎10-12-2016

Can we go back to the old version?

It was so much better!

amitrathi239 · ‎10-11-2016

I really don’t like new SCN. In couple of blogs it was mentioned focus on the quality rather than quantity. I could not see any quality with releasing new SCN. Best example is in last two days questions are more raised about the issues/defect in new SCN rather to actual issues or problems.

Purpose of introducing Karma is to focus on quality but KARMA itself is not working properly.

SAP is releasing same time new products and talking about performance but here we have a excel file to find out the TAGS. This is not justifying the SAP Products. Sorry to say but it’s true.

I don’t understand if new SCN is not ready with the expected functionality then why it is released. You can still continue with the old one for time being.

It’s very difficult to me to understand when I am active user since 2010 then how new users are going to be understand.

Regards,

Amit

Tomas_Buryanek · ‎10-12-2016

Things which are IMHO worse now:

SCN "Spaces" were simple better than tags
Mix of comments and answers in topics (for example this one)
Default sort of answers by date is not possible?
LOT of unused white space without content everywhere
It is hard to follow topics that I participate in. In SCN it was automatic? and we also got visible notifications in upper bar
...

LutzR · ‎10-11-2016

Hi Sebastian, in general I like the new design.

But I am already struggling to decide if I should write a comment or an answer. I see that I am not allowed to comment (I don't know why), so I will write an answer.
I am quite shure that this answer will not be seen by many people because answers are sorted by votes. Since my answer is new it will have no votes and therefore probably be quite down the list immediately.
The use of screen space is not optimal. The interesting content of a QA list makes use of less than 20% of my 22" 1680x1050 screen and initially shows only 2,5 items:
I am really very much missing the two stages kind of subscription. In old SCN I was able to follow so things would show up in my activity stream. But I could also flag stuff so I would get notifications about changes. Now I am afraid that special important content will be hiding in my overwhelmingly huge activity stream (you only have to follow one single fashionable subject like fiori to get a huge activity stream).

----------

Update to number 2.:

Yes this answer is last initially and even sorted behind the -10 votes at the end of the second page. So this completely takes away the motivation to answer to a longer thread where the correct answer was not yet bublished.

Hoping for better wheather.

Regards, Lutz

michael_simon4 · ‎10-12-2016

Most of the downsides are already posted here (confusing, waste of space, no email notification, etc.) and in my opinion the new layout is a huge setback compared to the old SCN.

The worst thing is, that old SCN articles are not completely available anymore (see

https://answers.sap.com/questions/30197/what-happend-with-one-old-documents-from-scn-nothi.html). User spent hours in order to create helpful documents for others, which hold also years after the creation still valid information for others. The SCN was a network for professionals to exchange ideas and to help others. The old and new posted information needs to be available completely and permanent. All in all I won't participate in the new "SCN" any more until the major drawbacks are solved.

Best regards,

Michael

andrey_ryzhkov · ‎10-10-2016

Hi!

I think that the background of http://go.sap.com/community/about/using-tags.html has controversial design. It seems that this man has an "About Tags" plate as a head. And the woman on the right is shocked by this.

ptrck · ‎10-13-2016

IMHO: Take thousands of secret Tags, add features from Stack Overflow and let it look like Twitter. Guess what you get.

former_member231424 · ‎10-11-2016

Where are the forums ?

former_member182649 · ‎10-19-2016

Sebastian,

The new platform seems to actively dissuade people from responding and helping our colleagues. By separating the archive from the current you have destroyed continuity. The products and the discussions have not stopped and restarted just because the platform has changed. Now if I am looking for an answer to a question that has already been encountered I have to look in two places - the archive and the new questions and answers area. It also seems to be harder to get to the 'right place' quickly. People asking a question are typically asking that question about a specific product. Previously we could go directly to the section on that product. Now it appears that we have to come to the questions and answers section and then filter for the product before we can get anywhere.

Also there is no credit given to users who over many years have willingly contributed their knowledge to assist colleagues. What incentive is there to continue doing this if it is invisible. The strength of the Community is that contributions are recognised, now there is no way of telling whether a response is from someone who has worked with the product for 5 minutes or 15 years.

Johan_H · ‎10-10-2016

If you start from any other locale than USA, the bulk of all top navigation links do not work, and part of the language switch links do not work:

ricardojasso · ‎10-28-2016

It is clear by now the new platform has not been well received by the community in general despite what might be said about “embracing change” for the sake of it. So here are five points I consider important to change to bring back the liveliness of the previous (I don’t like to use the word “old” which is most times interpreted as worse) platform.

Put a selection box where we can select our tag of interest and see questions related to that tag only. Not a search box, a selection box with all available topics (official tags) visible. This is paramount and must be implemented ASAP. It is totally worthless to see 4,500+ questions on the queue as of now about subjects we don’t have any connection to. There are too many subjects in the SAP universe. I know that I can search for a question using the product of interest as the search criteria in hope to find a question with the corresponding tag of interest; then click on that tag and have the desired list displayed, but this is not practical. I feel like I was handed a new car and discovered that it doesn’t have a rearview mirror and the salesman tells me “Oh, we didn’t find it necessary anymore since you can lower the window, stick your head out and look back to see if there is a car behind you.” (!) And the Excel solution is, well, just embarrassing.
Put the Question Status filter to Unanswered Questions by default so as to limit the queue to what’s important at the moment. (I understand Unanswered Questions are Open questions and Answered Questions are Closed questions, not just questions that have at least one answer). Answered questions are for people doing searches so they have low priority in the queue.
Eliminate the sorting of replies by Votes. This is counterproductive to the desired agility of the question solving process because it makes it difficult to follow a thread and understand what is going on while it is being answered. This might be useful for people searching for answers but not for people answering questions. Sorting by Newest is also unnecessary. It should always be by Oldest. Chronology is, again, paramount. (The sort control can be left as is so long it is set to Oldest by default).
Eliminate the ability to place comments directly on questions. This is so disturbing. Each time I review a question I have to scroll down past these comments to locate the start of the replies (answers). The replies list should start immediately after the question. If anyone has something to say about the question they just need to reply to the question as an answer. It should not matter if it is actually an answer or not. The important thing is to contribute.
Eliminate the difference between comments and answers. And what about questions about the original question? Any reply should be treated the same and should have the ability to be set as the correct answer.

-

The first four points can be implemented in a couple of days and will certainly boost community participation overnight. The last one might take a week or two to implement but equally as important.

Then the team can work on making more efficient use of screen real state. Right now it is such a waste of space especially on large monitors which have horizontal aspect vs the vertical aspect of smartphones. A survey is in place here about how many members use smartphones to answer questions (not just to view them). The new platform design clearly favors mobile devices at the expense of desktop users.

My two (actually five :)) cents.

Alexandre · ‎10-19-2016

First, I think this new SCN wastes a lot of screen space as was suggested by other users.

Also too many scrooling!! And in the end of scrooling a paging control?!? Could not be a "Click here to continue scrooling"??

Twice a month I used to access some old SCN pages (about 15 between PO. HANA, Lumira, BI, S&OP, etc.) to know what is happening in these initiaves, and I got what I want at a glance.

With the new SCN.. sorry, but it brings nothing at a glance and even after some searching the results are not good as well.

I believe you have a lot of work to do to make this a good platform again.

Good luck.

PS: no RSS?! Do anyone know how I can follow SCN using feedly now?

JuergenPitz · ‎10-13-2016

Believe me... you don't wanna know.

Juergen

former_member186444 · ‎10-10-2016

I like the look of it but I really have no idea how to find the ABAP for HANA Forum.....or any other forum for that matter.

Former Member · ‎10-10-2016

This is not particularly helpful. With no indication why search terms are repeated (Tags? Titles? Comments?) what's the purpose of listing them multiple times.

This should be clarified, since the link is actually to Questions and Answers about the "Questions and Answers" (am I not already on the Questions & Answers Page)?

former_member231926 · ‎10-10-2016

I really like the new UI. And I really like that you may rate answers.

However, there are some things I feel that should be improved:

- My locale is german. Hence, I have a mix of different languages in these communities, such as in my activities stream it says "Aktivitäten" and "Benachrichtigungen". However, everything else seems to be english.

- What are the notifications for? I could not figure out yet what the difference between notifications and activities is.

- I have followed some tags and see that there is information on these tags in my activities stream. I really like this stream. However, from my point of view there is too much information. I do not need to know that certain answers to questions were upvoted or that someone liked a comment. Can I somehow configure this?

- I am missing the e-mail notification and RSS feed abonnement features from the old community. Is there anything like this?

- Whenever I am opening a community I can see a language flag in the upper right corner which seems to vanish, whenever I am somewhere else. Why? Whenever I change it, I go back to the main page of go.sap.com. Why?

- When using the sort by option different numbers of questions can be seen in the "Find Questions & Answers" section.Such as "Hottest" vs. "Updated"

- In the very same dialog a sorting for relevance does not seem to work.

- ...

So from my point of view there are many minor things to fix and improve.

Former Member · ‎11-01-2016

It is horrible. Way too much white space. There is no way to sort search results which seem to be listed in random order or perhaps oldest first which would be the worst choice possible.

What if I come here solely to answer questions? How am I supposed to find questions if I don't know what they are beforehand?

former_member197914 · ‎10-11-2016

Hi

I loved it 🙂

TomCenens · ‎10-10-2016

It seems simple so I hope it is in fact simple and it will work out well. I'm just wondering about how well community members will do on tagging their content and how much variation I'll need to fetch questions in the area where I usually answer them.

It just failed on me (once) while I was trying to search for "basis". Nevertheless, could be of interest to check why.

bertrand_delvallee · ‎11-01-2016

Can we have an access to our "Waiting for moderation" messages? And to our Questions in general?

Moreover that's very confusing that we can see in home page that someone answered but, if we open the question, we can't see it (while waiting for moderation I guess)

former_member244603 · ‎11-01-2016

I would like it better if I could find the questions I have asked or anyhing else for that matter.

Hope there is a recovery option somewhere.

former_member182766 · ‎11-01-2016

Why can't I reply or comment? Why are replies in archive are not available? What kind of new update is this?

http://i.imgur.com/G2eTyKc.png

GeorgeMcGeachie · ‎11-01-2016

I raised a PowerDesigner question yesterday, which I thought hadn't been approved. Looking at my activities, I see that it has been approved, though it's not showing up in the PowerDesigner community. Realistically, that means that no-one will see it, so the question will not get answered. I expect that the average PowerDesigner community member who is feeling helpful will NOT search for questions, they will just look at the latest content on the community.

Former Member · ‎10-19-2016

I'm struggling to find a way to set up email notifications of new activities and notifications. I rely totally upon email notifications for me to manage all the forums that I work with. Currently I get none relating to the PowerBuilder developers so cannot help people. So far it is a backwards step!

Jelena · ‎10-13-2016

The "comment" vs. "answer" concept is very confusing (and this question is a great example): https://answers.sap.com/articles/32244/what-to-do-about-the-commentanswer-distinction.html

raghug · ‎10-13-2016

Being able to filter by tag on the Questions & Answers page would be awesome. The activity stream appears to show a lot of activity that I did not filter for unless I specifically select Q&A there -> but I think the main Q&A page is much easier to go through than the activity stream in order to monitor for questions that need to be answered.

Also, there is no primary tag for Logistics Execution or Warehouse Management - that was a place I was starting to get active in the old system. I am not sure where those questions are being asked now. The old system had about 5-10 questions a day and I haven't seen a single question so far in that space in the last 3 days.

kaus19d · ‎10-12-2016

I know that the SCN platform is going to get improvised later on, but if we look at the present scenario & if it goes on for a longer duration, then maybe some people will start thinking that they can come back after some days which any-one ask by asking Do you feel uncomfortable using the current SCN? I wonder there is going to be a lot Yes. But My friends, we together can only make the existing better for the future> Hardly can argue by saying that its a typical time where we should think of giving something more to SCN in place of always having something from SCN. We can help by pin-pointing the dark-spots & have it rectified, I guess, its about time, we are speaking.

Thanks,

Kaushik

LutzR · ‎10-11-2016

Hi Sebastian, one more thing:

Links from the Activity Stream lead somwhere into the thread but not to the item that was added.

Links from the general list should get an extra link added that navigates to the last added entry.

Regards,

Lutz

What do you think about our new Q&A platform?

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