[BUG] Urgent! No "reply" button on comments with the new design!

[former_member186338]

To be corrected with the highest priority!

[agentry_src]

If this had been the first step to being able to segregate read questions from unread for each individual member, possibly a good step. Possibly...

But since no one in the community outside of the folks making the changes, it is rather difficult to see what benefits such a change is purported to bring. Perhaps craig.cmehil or oliver can explain what benefit this brings to the community. As a standalone change, I would also consider it a design mistake. As part of some grand master plan, perhaps there is some unexplained future benefit. Did I miss the roadmap/plan which has been shared with any of the members? Perhaps the new Community Advisory Board has been meeting and understands the logic. Anyone here part of the CAB?

Regards, Mike

[SimoneMilesi]

Well, given the design, i already stopped to try help more than a first answer: if i have to insert a comment half way of a strem of 5-6 comments, i just generate chaos.

[former_member186338]

Now I am answering like:

Q: ...

A: ...

...C: ...

A: ...

...C: ...

A: ...

...C: ...

Chaos!

[craigcmehil]

Sorry but this is not a bug, this is by design. We've removed threading in comments therefore no reply button.

[former_member186338]

Sorry, but how it's possible to have a discussion now???? This will kill Q&A

[craigcmehil]

vadim.kalinin Seems quite easy to reply to you and state that this is indeed possible.

[former_member186338]

Sorry, but you are not replying to me, you are replying to yourself!

Again - this will kill Q&A!

[VolkerBarth]

And that change has been asked for by anyone? I'm totally irritated.

[craigcmehil]

vadim.kalinin and yet you are responding so it works. volkerbarth sorry you are irritated.

[former_member186338]

I am not able to respond to the specific comment - as a result we have the list of unrelated statements! Who proposed this strange enhancement????

[BaerbelWinkler]

craig.cmehil - no longer having threaded responses will make long running discussions with multiple sub-threads with several participants very quickly unwieldy to follow. I therefore agree with vadim.kalinin and volkerbarth that this is not a change for the better.

[Jelena]

But what exactly does "design" say about this? What's the thought process here and what flow does this design support exactly?

Sorry but I feel this is similar to when you alert SAP Support that a DB record is being locked in display mode and they claim it's "design". But at the same time they cannot explain what exactly design is, why is this necessary or produce any kind of document in support of this "design". Then you reply that locking a record when it's not updated is sort of against any known software development guideline and somehow this gets forwarded to the development and miraculously the issue gets solved. Which leaves SAP customer wonder if "design" is just a brush-off.

What does this "design" say about the notification process? When "reply" button was there then the person you replied to would get a notification. This was very convenient and would let people know they need to go and respond to someone / take an action.

I've just answered a question and OP used a comment to reply to my answer (as they should). Now I need to reply to them. How do I do that? There is only "comment" button on the answer. If I use it then, unless notification process was also changed (which is not mentioned anywhere so far) then it would be me, not OP, who'll get notified. How is this helpful to anyone?What issue did this solve and what did this improve?

[VolkerBarth]

jelena.perfiljeva2 : Yes, the notifications do work that way now: For my answer above, I got separate notifications for all comments, although some were apparently meant as reply to other comments.

I consider this a clear design mistake.

[SimoneMilesi]

Well, maybe who is managing the community's changing should attend a course or two on OpenSap about how to design software and interfaces. wi
I have been involved in the last rush and all i could evaluate was the personal dashboard and there was no hint about this wonderful feature (i spoke for more than 1 hour sharing my opinions and thoughts).

If SAP thinks the community is more a burden than anything else, well, better say it clear and loud than doing all you (generic SAP ) can to make impossible to use.

It's fun because one of the easiest thing to do would be to remove the difference between answers and comments and a lot of people asked that.
And the solution found is? remove the best feature, nestled comments.

[Johan_H]

I have to agree with vadim.kalinin's comment, and I will let craig.cmehil decide which one.

[former_member186338]

Today I have answered a question with a long discussion: https://answers.sap.com/questions/654641/mdx-statement-error-system-error-in-program-cl-rsr.html

And without comments hierarchy it's absolutely unreadable!

[leeclemmer]

This is exactly how StackOverflow works, or?

[former_member186338]

Sorry, but SAP Community is NOT a StackOverflow community!

If you have no experience in SAP Community - please, spend some time answering a real SAP Community questions!

[Jelena]

How is this relevant?

[VolkerBarth]

Or a feature? Has the long lasting "Do we need comments and answers" discussion lead to an "Answers are sufficient" approach?

----

Aargh, whereas I tried to be ironic Craig has pointed to reality. I'm surprised, as usual.

[former_member186338]

Now it's impossible to to have a discussion thread! It will kill Q&A discussion... No way to ask for additional info and receive the information...

[VolkerBarth]

So Juergen L has clearly shown what to do next.

[VolkerBarth]

vadim.kalinin, yes, as can be seen here already. At least there is one level of comments, so you can ask once:)

[craigcmehil]

volkerbarth There is no irony here at all, there are comments and the ability to target a user with a comment so nothing lost except threaded comments.

[former_member186338]

And it's absolutely stupid idea! One level of comments... Come on! When i am answering questions I have 10-15 levels of comments!

[Jelena]

craig.cmehil - before you authorize some changes please make sure the suggested alternative actually works.

For example, I've just tried to mention Baerbel Winkler and because I don't have German keyboard I just typed "Barbel". I'm pretty sure this used to work at least at some point because I was able to ping Juergen in this way (when he was still on SCN) and was able to do that by using "Jurgen". But this is what I got:

So, to recap: I have to scroll up to find the "50 shades of grey" Comment button somewhere under the answer. Then I have to locate the name of the person who posted the comment. (And some folks post long comments, could go on for more than a whole screen on a laptop.) Then I have to type their name. And make sure I get the right profile (there are two Jelena's, by the way, so make sure you select Jelena 2 if you chose to reply). And the @ functionality should also work. It doesn't always work, by the way. Sometimes it just does nothing, so you might have to refresh the page or move cursor or perform a ceremonial dance. All this and for what? What was achieved?

Also - I actually know about the notification process and about @-mention. How would others know that's what they need to do to draw the attention of a person they reply to?

[craigcmehil]

jelena.perfiljeva2 I'll have them check on the @ mention in terms of different character codes, nothing changed with that part of the platform.

For reference though most keyboard setups over the popup choice when you hold down a vowel for a second or so.

Hopefully though they can get an answer in general to it though.

[oliver]

jelena.perfiljeva2 alternatively spell Bärbel with ae as being used in her username. works fine for me.

[Jelena]

craig.cmehil , I'm using a Lenovo laptop. It's not an iPad and if I hold down a vowel it does this:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Anyways, at-mention was just one of the issues. I'm not able to understand how would anyone take the new process with all the steps I've described and take it as an improvement over simply clicking Reply button.

I've just realized that all this comment exchange is spamming poor Volker's notifications, so I'm not going to reply further here. It's not because I have nothing more to say on the subject or agree with your position or given up on explaining my POV. Just want to make this clear.

oliver - using "ae" worked, thank you. I've checked the comments on the blog where at-mentions were announced and it seems that using a letter with an umlaut also brings up results for the regular letter but not the other way around. So that was probably a confusion on my part.

[SimoneMilesi]

craig.cmehil "most keyboard setups" doesn't mean everyone has it.
Most of people in the world are right handed.
Most of cars in the world have drive seat on the left.

Yours is not a solution, it's just a workaround working in some cases: there are users with Arab or Chinese names, how do you deal with that?
Are not they important since they are a minority?