Why is place dying?

[Craig]

So why does it seem this place id dying a slow death?

The number of posts in the technical forums seem way down. I use to rememember that MM would have over a page of new posts every day. Now it can take a week to get a full page. How much longer will this place stay open?

Craig

[blueteeth]

I don't think SAPFANS per se is dying slow death....yes there is been a large reduction of posts in forums for variety of reasons:

The SAP Consulting world is maturing where wheat & chaff is getting separated (chaff being eliminated)

SAP Customer / Manager has become wise and knows how to deploy right people on their projects.

There is this general slowdown of SAP / IT investments. CFO's are back in power and are demanding explanations from CIO's on IT spend etc. Something to do with Enterprise IT Governance.

Cheers
BT

[rangachary]

Main reason is everyone has gone over to sdn. The HR forum there delivers a new page every 3 minutes. People who continue to use this site do not have any questions, as they have been around forever and know all the answers. No one even comes to the GD forum anymore.

[mike_ac]

The SAP Consulting world is maturing where wheat & chaff is getting separated (chaff being eliminated)

SAP Customer / Manager has become wise and knows how to deploy right people on their projects.

Oh, how I wish either of these were true. It seems to me the pool of available consultants is larger, but the quality mix is the same as it was 15 years ago. We go months or years between quality resumes/CVs here. And, Lord knows, management is just as shoddy as it ever was. There are a few really good managers, and a slew of incompetent ones grown out of the "chaff."

I think the other two reasons are more likely -- SDN is the primary source, and budgets for projects haven't recovered.

R/3 has also matured a bit, so many common solutions are becoming well documented.

[Snowy]

I'm seeing the same pattern in every forum.

ittoolbox is also losing its membership

SDN is alive and kicking, but I also see a drop in the number of active postings.

Maybe Twitter and blogs is killing forums?

[blueteeth]

SDN is alive and kicking, but I also see a drop in the number of active postings.

This is because the "suits" of large consulting organizations are pushing their employees to contribute to SDN for bragging rights with new customers.

[Craig]

SDN is alive and kicking, but I also see a drop in the number of active postings.

This is because the "suits" of large consulting organizations are pushing their employees to contribute to SDN for bragging rights with new customers.

Really? You think so? I don't see many big names cropping up on the big contributors business cards. In fact many contiributors don't even fill out their business cards at SDN. Those that do seem to be Indian based and I think are just looking to try to build their credibility up to get out.

What is frustrating with SDN is that almost everyone is posting early in the morning , (at least in the forums I post to). By the time the US is open for business almost all the posts have been posted and answered. And I see a lot of bad answers which is frustrating. Most of the questions seem to come during the Indian time zones and cease once their day is over.

Craig

[blueteeth]

See this:

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/topcompanycontributors#

[Craig]

Yeah but the highest of those is Infosys with only a bit over 4000 points in the past 30 days.

There are some indivduals with over 1000 points in the past thirty days that are not SAP employees.

You only need about 40 people answering ten correct questions in the past 30 days to get 4000 points. That shouldn't be hard for any company of any size to achieve. How many employees does Infosys have? Throw in a few blog posts which can net you 30 -90 points apiece and 4000 should child play to a large consulting firm with smart, expert subject matters.

What would really be interesting to see would be how many QUESTIONS the employees of these same companies asked!!!!

Craig

[Rich]

What would really be interesting to see would be how many QUESTIONS the employees of these same companies asked!!!!
Craig

Or more to the point how many answers were correct.

[Baz]

they probably have teams to set questions and colleagues next to them ready to answer them! lol!

[Snowy]

they probably have teams to set questions and colleagues next to them ready to answer them! lol!

yes, this happens. when people are caught, they are"Guestified" and they lose their points.

[bgamble]

I had assumed that is was becuse Rosey stopped posting, and Spartan Coder exploded when a black president was elected,

Or because there are not enough posts about vagina

[ilya]

I think that Sapfans went through several steps that brought down its popularity.

First, guest posts were eliminated. Quality went up but the number of posts (even valid ones) went down (I hate creating new accounts everywhere).

Then, GD turned from "general SAP discussion" to a hang around place. Worse, valid SAP related questions were not accepted seriously, scaring the people off. For example I could never understand why someone asking for career advice had to switch to job postings forum.

And finally in the last 3-4 years too many topics or replies in GD are kind of NSFW. Yes, we are all grown ups but... the place was originally professional! Sorry bgamble...

As is rightly said above, we rarely have questions that are easy to answer on the forum. I had a couple but they were too tricky, so I had to fight with debugger knowing no one can help me. Whenever I search, I go first to SDN, then to Sapfans. The volume wins, unfortunately for this place, and I am able to filter out useless answers on SDN.

[VLozano]

and I am able to filter out useless answers on SDN.

Nice to read you, Ilya...

How are you able to do it? I'm used to feel me disgusted every time I must search at SND