Most of the users don't use comments

[former_member186338]

The are using answer instead of comment - as a result the whole discussion become unreadable!

[LutzR · Accepted solution]

Well just to give my 2-cents:

I still cannot distinguish between comment and answer when using it here. And I am not willing to do some mental chin-ups about it every time I contribute something because it will nearly never really fit.

Throw away the COMMENT!

Throw away the ANSWER!

Give me a REPLY!

[VeselinaPeykova]

It is the comments, which make the thread unreadable - normally people read in chronological order to understand what is going on. No matter how you sort the answers - the comments go where the answers are positioned. I'd rather have all in flat view as in the old platform.

Comparing the annoyance when something, which should be a comment, is accepted as best answer to hunting where the last comment is in a multi-paged thread - I prefer the first.

Of course, if there was an option to display everything in chronological order and if people used the answer/comment correctly, and if there were no additional complications occurred like some options not available when adding comments to comments and if... (add a lot more ifs), then it would be great to have both options available. Now - I don't think that the developers and the community are ready to introduce the functionality.

P.S. And I love it when I have to retype everything at least once or edit duplicated posts.

[waldo]

Agree.

And, talking about "comments", how could I search all my comments here in the "new" SCN ?

[Steffi_Warnecke]

You can't (yet?). At least I have not found a way. I have created an idea for this, let's see what comes of it. 🙂

Regards,

Steffi.

[jcgood25]

An additional point worth mentioning (as a comment 🙂 of course) --> the same problem reading a disjointed view has been mentioned a few times also relating to the Activities feed. This discussion is a perfect example where I see all the traffic because I am following the 'Using SAP.com' tag (and a few members also shown here).

Like Veselina, I also prefer the more chronological view, since there may be several activities in my feed before I even start my working day, and having them clustered around the discussion thread makes it much easier to follow. If a single activity (comment / answer) happens when I am caught up with my activities feed, but I cannot do this in real-time, but more in a small block of time.

[SimoneMilesi]

Do be honest, there is a workaround for search the comments (suggested by Jelena): check the following link https://blogs.sap.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php

[mrapp]

Thanks for this interesting link. However it seems to work only for comments on blogs and not for comments on q&a.

Kr

Martin

[Gustavo_Vazquez]

You've got a button "Comment" and a big box "Your answer".Instinctively, which one will you choose ? 🙂

Kind Regards

PS: i could have use "comment" but I've just answered to make things more difficult 😉

[former_member186338]

I understand the reason, but without proper selection of comment/answer the discussions will be unreadable! There are 2 options:

- To change the UI to help people to correctly select answer/comment (not sure it will work anyway)

- Or simply return to the old style without difference between answers and comments 🙂

[Gustavo_Vazquez]

Hi,

what's the idea of having comments if you can't see in your profile ?

Comments are part of the answer if that helps you find a solution to your question. If you want to maintain a history of it or you create new answers which in case it is unreadable. Also:, you can not mark comments as best answer. I had to convert Comment to answer and lost history of the comment or evolution of it.

Can someone explain the difference between comments and answer ?

How to manage the scenario where a comment becomes the answer and not to loose the history ?

Kind Regards

[former_member186338]

To my mind the idea with separate answers and comments will not work and will create only confusion!

But I think that the concept of answers/comments is highly integrated into new community design and it will be practically impossible to revert to the old discussion style.

[Jelena]

There is a related discussion in Coffee Corner: https://answers.sap.com/articles/32244/what-to-do-about-the-commentanswer-distinction.html

Unless this can be sorted out I'd gladly vote for removing comments (we still don't have polls? aawww). They're either not used when they should be (e.g. asking for a clarification) or even when they're used properly the whole flow is confusing because comments/answers can't be sorted together chronologically.

[former_member186338]

The question is: Is it possible to remove comments and to make answers to act like comments (hierarchy etc...) without the whole project restart?

[Private_Member_7726]

Wouldn't simply disabling the blue [Comment] button under the question solve the problem? Or are the comments on answers problematic as well (apart from not taking being picked up by sort)?

[former_member186338]

"Wouldn't simply disabling the blue [Comment] button under the question solve the problem?" - No!

"Or are the comments on answers problematic as well" - Yes! People are currently using answers instead of comments and will continue doing the same things. Answers do not support hierarchy! Comments can't be marked as correct answer!

We need to go back to "Reply" instead of Answer/Comment!

[ricardojasso]

Ironically, your question is not a question. It is a comment. 🙂 And you know what? It doesn't matter. If it is a question or a comment or a concern or an observation it is ok to post it as a question.

On the same token, it shouldn't matter if our replies are answers, comments, or questions to the original question aimed at clarifying it or aimed at requesting the OP to apply a possible solution ("Have you tried doing this or doing that?").

The ability to post comments over questions apart from posting answers which themselves can have comments makes everything so confusing. So I'm with Janis here: Not only disable the blue Comment button but make it disappear completely. We only need REPLIES whether they are answers, comments or questions.

And it is very, very, very, very important to sort replies by OLDEST by default.

IMO these two sole changes would make the site usable again.

[kaus19d]

in my opinion, to provide an exact answer to a query, one might require some more details/info from the person who started the query. So, that required additional info can be asked in comments. And when you get the proper details, such as logs or print-screen of the error & now you can answer properly to the question, then you are suppossed to put your answer in the Answer Box.

Thanks,

Kaushik

[former_member186338]

And the sequence of the replies will be lost! The final answer will be out of sequence.

Sample:

Q: How to...

A: First attempt to answer.

. C: But I have ...

. C: And what do you mean by....

. C: I use...

. C: Then you have to ... - final answer!

The last comment is a final answer. But if we take it out of the sequence the discussion will be unreadable!

[Tomas_Buryanek]

This is good example of mixture of comments and answers:

https://answers.sap.com/questions/41779/bal-log-msg-add-not-displaying-complete-message.html

It is hard to follow topic/discussion.

[Jelena]

I take it and I raise you this one: https://answers.sap.com/questions/45130/has-the-new-sap-community-killed-the-community.html

Bonus: try finding Sort button and search by newest/oldest. Happy fun times.

[VolkerBarth]

FWIW, the SAP-run SAP SQL Anywhere Forum has used nested comments like here for years, and IMHO they have usually been helpful. Users do commonly use comments to

• ask for details on a question ("What have you already tried? What version"...)
• give hints when we do not know whether they are real answers (in case that proves right, they are usually promoted to answers)
• make some funny remarks.

New users sometimes do not get the notion of comments and just use answers for everything, and then moderators may "correct" those to comments (and hopefully leave a hint how to use that feature).

So I'm confident these differences between answers and comments are helpful here as well. Even in this thread, I feel both kind of responses are helpful.

See, NNTP had only (nested) comments, and that made it difficult to distinguish "answers" and comments, either.

[former_member186338]

I think it's not a correct comparison between very small SAP SQL Anywhere Forum and SCN (only 4097 questions total and about 1700 users).

[VeselinaPeykova]

I couldn't find a thread in this forum with a lot of comments and answers to form an opinion, but in the old platform we had threads with a lot of replies. I don't mind to have some distinction between an answer and a comment (likes vs up/down-votes, different background color or font), in a few years some people might learn to use them properly. Still, considering that a lot of forum members struggle with basic navigation, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Nesting - I don't think that this will ever work well for big threads (people often post screenshots to explain better a specific issue). Nesting implies some shrinking. We already use about half of the screen estate for answers, for nested comments it drops to 25%. A screenshot in such comment will result in horizontal scroll, and the content is hard to read.

If I wanted to ask for clarifications, I'd rather use quote functionality (which is non-existent here). With a proper design it looks better than what I saw in the SAP-managed site:

[VolkerBarth]

Of course there is a bug difference in scale between that forum and SCN. Nevertheless I don't think this is basically a question of scalability but of different types of contributions.

See this current thread with its different sub-threads. I guess we both agree that your reply and my current one are not "answers" in the same sense as my answer above.