What is the purpose of "SAP ERP" tag?

[Jelena]

What exactly is the purpose of "SAP ERP" tag? It seems too generic and, naturally, the questions posted under it are all over the place: https://answers.sap.com/tags/01200615320800000659

Unless OP adds a secondary tag, no one seems to be answering those questions (for obvious reasons), so why does this tag exist?

[brianbernard]

Our strategy in the community is to consume the product taxonomy as a whole. I agree that certain tags are so broad that they almost have no practical meaning in the community, but we (in the community) start making adjustments to this particular class of tags (the products), we would create even more of a mess.

When the tag picker capabilities were enhanced a while back, it was a major step forward. The type-ahead and recognition of synonyms and tag relationships were huge improvements, but it needs to go further. For example, we still need to include the relationships between the modules and the product.

Down the road I want to have an auto-classification capability, so that tags are suggested in real time based on context. Removing the high level tags would have some detrimental consequences to the experience, but if we can add these functional improvements - associative relationships between tags, plus auto-classification - it would eliminate the problem of the "SAP ERP" tag.

[Jelena]

I still disagree, sorry. How could possibly a bigger mess be created than already exists? Just remove a tag or change it so that no questions can be posted using it. Or at minimum put a warning that no one answers questions in that tag (add "DO NOT USE" to the tag name 🙂 ).

And speaking about the product taxonomy, what kind of a product is "SAP ERP"? AFAIK, SAP does not sell licenses for a generic ERP system. So how does it even make sense?

Auto-classification - will have to see it to believe it. Back in 2016 we've been told that existing questions will be auto-suggested when typing new ones. The functionality is there but it has not been useful at all, unfortunately, since it's not good at all at finding truly relevant questions. (And SCN members are not great with their titles either, I don't see this changing any time soon.)

IMHO for SCN purposes a simpler tag structure, with descriptive texts, like on MSDN, would make more sense. But when SCN tags are supposed to align with a mysterious "product" classification, which exists only in the twisted minds of marketing department, the problems like this one surface, unfortunately.

Thank you.

[Jelena]

Funny thing, there is also "SAP R/3" tag of equal "value": https://answers.sap.com/tags/01200245450800000002

[brianbernard]

The product tags you see in community come from another source - where the product taxonomy is managed - so we take them in pretty much wholesale.

However, knowing that more granularity is required in the community, we developed a set of product function tags. There are many such tags related to ERP, such as SD, MM, HCM, FIN, etc.

Evidently the problem is that people are not using these more specific tags.

[former_member186338]

"Evidently the problem is that people are not using these more specific tags" - to my mind, the problem is that people are able to use this tag as primary tag 🙂

[Jelena]

Sorry but that doesn't answer the question. Yes, there are tags for ERP modules (we had module-specific forums since SDN times and it makes sense). But why is there a generic SAP ERP tag? What purpose does it serve? I can't imagine what kind of question would have to fall into such a broad category. As pointed out, it appears that none of the questions in this tag belong there and they all can be posted under more specific tags.

I agree with vadim.kalinin that the real problem here is that the tag exists. Let's not blame the user.

Another problem I guess is that "taxonomy people" dictate how the SCN Q&A needs to be structured while they have no clue about SCN and never participate in Q&A themselves. Perhaps show them the "question graveyard" in this tag and ask what value is SAP gaining from it?

Thank you.