Purpose of SAP-WUG forum - and request for feedback

[Keohan, Susan]

Good morning all,

It's come to my attention that a few troubling things have been happening on the SAP-WUG list lately.

1)      Some folks contact other members outside of the forum for 'private' consulting
2)      Social Networking requests continue to be created - although for the most part, we are successful in blocking these from being distributed to the many forum members
3)      A number of posters will just send back responses saying 'issue solved' without reciprocating the generosity of the community by sharing *how* the issue was resolved

Re: #1 - I know there are many knowledgeable people on this forum who generously and *publicly* share their expertise.  For this, we lesser mortals are extremely grateful.
But if anyone thinks that a response on the forum from one of our experts is license to contact them personally, outside of the forum, for additional consulting, it shows a complete lack of understanding of two things: the purpose of the forum as a whole, and respect for the experts' time and effort     While I am certainly not requesting that nobody ever contact anybody outside of the forum - you may very well be forming a *mutually* beneficial relationship with another forum member - I think anyone who is asked for private consulting should feel free to contact me, and I will remove repeat offenders from the list.
Experts who receive this type of contact should also feel free to forward the private consulting request back to the list - with some gentle words to the effect that 'We should share this problem with the community'.

Re: #2 - This is a Forum - this is not a Giant Address Book.  Again, if you form a mutually beneficial personal relationship with someone, that's great.  We are all about networking.  But please *do use* due caution when building your Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.  There are over 1000 members on this list; can you really claim that you have a personal relationship with all of them?

Re: #3 - This is also pretty high on my list of NO-NOs.  Honestly, if you think enough of this group to post a question, and then you solve the problem yourself, or one of the other members has helped show you the light, the very least that can be done is to share *back* to the group the details on *how* the issue was resolved, and what was helpful.  Again, it's a simple matter of respect and reciprocity.

Another question which has been raised is to change the SAP-WUG settings so that email addresses will be hidden.  I am on the fence on this one.  On one hand, it would prohibit those who seek to use email addresses for private consulting - they'd have no way to get those email addresses going forward.  On the other hand, it is a huge shift in the way this forum 'does business'.  So unless I hear strong voices from you, the members I seek to serve, I will be leaving email addresses on the posts for the time being.

Thanks for listening, absorbing, and applying these messages to your SAP-WUG life.
Lowly List Administrator,
Sue

----
Susan R. Keohan
SAP Workflow Specialist
Enterprise Applications
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street, LI-200
Lexington, MA. 02420
781-981-3561
keohan at LL.MIT.EDU


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