Community Content: New Details About Content That Will Not Be Migrated

[audreystevenson]

On December 13, we shared that during the migration to our new community platform, we intend to streamline the site, by removing some blogs, comments, questions, and answers that align with certain criteria. 

After the announcement, we received feedback about the proposed deletions, including the lack of a way for members to retain a full backup of of their blog content (for example, including images). The JSON method listed in the original blog post is not adequate for this purpose, and members were struggling to figure out how to keep a full copy of their blog posts that were targeted for removal. Members also wanted a way to identify for migration some blog posts that were important to keep despite the low view numbers, for targeted purposes.

The community spoke, and we heard you! The feedback and concerns led us to re-evaluate certain aspects of the plan. As a result, we now plan to migrate ALL published blog posts, regardless of view numbers and subject matter.

We do still intend to leave behind questions and answers that meet the criteria originally listed (see below). That part of the plan remains intact. And after migration, we will continue to investigate longevity of content on the site and how to better incorporate content review and removal into our ongoing operations.

We all agree that what makes this community shine is its content, the contributions of our incredible experts. We hope this change in plans will better serve our contributors and keep the content flowing in the community.

Below is an updated version of the original blog post, with the change in plan reflected.

If you have further questions, please email the team at sapcommunity@sap.com.

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As we announced earlier this year, we are moving to A New Home in the New Year for the SAP Community. As a professional community that has been running for 20 years, we have accumulated hundreds of thousands of content items. After analyzing the user-generated content and conducting numerous technical migration tests, we have decided that this migration is the best time to remove some content, to ensure a positive impact on the site’s overall performance.

When identifying which content to leave behind during the migration, we first tackled the question of publication date. We are not removing any content that was posted in 2022 or 2023 (and now 2024); all of that content will migrate to the new platform.

For content posted prior to 2022, the next focus is on content type. We have decided to concentrate on removing only Q&A; we will not remove any published blog posts (posts that are in draft status or in status "needs more work" will be deleted, however).

For identifying which questions not to migrate, we focused on three main criteria: number of views, accepted answers, and whether the question was related to a previous migration or community platform. Below is a more detailed look at the guidelines.

Published questions to be removed:

• If the question had zero answers, and it had 3 views or fewer in 2022, it will not be migrated.
• If the question had an answer, but that answer was not accepted, and the question had zero views in 2022, it will not be migrated.
• If the question had “SAP Community” as its primary managed tag, and it was published before March 2023, it will not be migrated.

Note that if we delete a question with comments and/or answers, the replies will be deleted as well, as these threads can't exist without the parent content.

We know that published content plays a large role in every member’s reputation in the community, and we can assure you that any missions or badges that you earned with that content will not be lost—you will keep all of those missions and badges, even if the content they were based on is not migrated.

Next Steps

If you are among the users who have content that will be deleted, you will be notified via email by the end of January 12 (the email header is titled: SAP COMMUNITY MIGRATION: content that will not migrate to the new platform). If you have a question about your content, you can send an email to sapcommunity@sap.com ; the team is working diligently to reply within 48 hours. 

If you wish to keep a text copy of your content, you can request an export file using functionality available in the profile:

1. Log in to the SAP Community.
2. Click on the avatar at the top right and select “My Account.”
   
3. Open Account & Settings on the left and select “Privacy.”
   
4. Select the “Privacy Settings” tab.
   
5. In the “Download your information” section, click on the Request button.
   The system will automatically generate a file of your content, which will be available in that section for you to download. (Please note that if you have a lot of content, the file generation may take some time.)

We look forward to relaunching after migration with a community that is responsive and vibrant, and ready for more of your excellent content.

[qmacro]

Thanks Audrey, this is great news!

[joachimrees1]

Very good that you decided to keep all the blog posts.

Couldn't you just do the same for all the other content?!

Lots of knowledge is kept and published in questions, too!
Just one example: https://answers.sap.com/questions/425130/how-to-get-contracted-developers-to-read-accept-an.html .

[BaerbelWinkler]

@joachimrees1 

Hi Joachim,

thanks for using my question as an example, but I think that it will survive as it doesn't tick any of these reasons for deletion as far as I can tell:

Published questions to be removed:

• If the question had zero answers, and it had 3 views or fewer in 2022, it will not be migrated.
• If the question had an answer, but that answer was not accepted, and the question had zero views in 2022, it will not be migrated.
• If the question had “SAP Community” as its managed tag, and it was published before March 2023, it will not be migrated.

These criteria for not moving questions seem quite sensible to me. How much use are questions without (accepted) answers and no views/activities? And questions tagged as SAP Community will most likely relate to issues phased in the "old" community so will not really have a bearing on what we'll have on Khoros.

Cheers

Bärbel

[joachimrees1]

@BaerbelWinkler 

Hey Bärbel,
thanks for your feedback!

Oh yes, that question will be kept, according to the criteria;
It was not meant as a "this good content will be lost"-example;
but as a "there is good content not only in blogs, but also in questions"-example.

[joachimrees1]

I deliberately looked @BaerbelWinkler s questions, as I remember you do write long, thoughtful ("blog-style") questions.

So I found one "WILL be lost" and some "MIGHT be lost". In all cases, I think its valuable content, that I would not want to miss.

As per
> If the question had “SAP Community” as its managed tag, and it was published before March 2023, it will not be migrated.
this will be lost:

https://answers.sap.com/questions/745144/could-there-be-abap-beginner-level-tutorials-using.html

as per
> If the question had an answer, but that answer was not accepted, and the question had zero views in 2022, it will not be migrated.
those MIGHT be lost:
(If they didn't have any views in 2022 - no way to tell if they had any...)

https://answers.sap.com/questions/12699023/how-to-find-standard-routines-to-update-sap-tables.html

https://answers.sap.com/questions/253046/what-options-exist-to-quickly-clean-up-inactive-ob.html

https://answers.sap.com/questions/11660936/why-is-an-optional-import-parameter-passed-with-va.html

@audreystevenson maybe the "deletion"-rules need to be reconsidered again ? 

[joachimrees1]

Also gave a quick look at my on question-content;

@audreystevenson  with regards to this example:

https://answers.sap.com/questions/101748/se21---what-happend-to-packtype-.html

-> I will NOW accept the answer given.
This will make sure it's migrated, even in case it didn't have any views in 2022. Right ?

[BaerbelWinkler]

Thanks, Joachim!

Perhaps questions from anybody with a specific role like SAP Champion, SAP Mentor, SAP ... could stll be migrated or https://answers.sap.com/questions stays available as a read only archive?

A move like this is a good chance to get rid of no longer relevant "stuff" - but it's obviously a challenge to define "no longer relevant"!

Cheers

Bärbel

[audreystevenson]

Hi @joachimrees1 @BaerbelWinkler ,
The blog post was not entirely clear on this point: by saying one criteria is whether the question had “SAP Community” as a managed tag we were implying only the SAP Community tag and no other valid managed tag. I've updated the blog post to reflect the correct criteria more explicitly.
We appreciate and thank you for all of your feedback and insights. We have taken and will continue to take it into consideration as we move forward.

[Florian]

Just to make a point that deletion of questions with the criteria is a good thing..

Most of the questions I checked are valid (to be deleted) and will shift the process to find a valuable answer.

@joachimrees1got your point, but do not get why you named your question. Of course there might be one or the other 701 system out there.. didn't we spoke about the concept at that time..

~Florian

oh, yes, we did https://blogs.sap.com/2017/01/11/whats-to-know-about-abap-package-concepts-se21-today/

and that will be kept for sure I think

[joachimrees1]

Hey all,

I cant go into deep, just a few thoughts:

@BaerbelWinkler @audreystevenson 
- Keeping (for now) all content of certain users is a good idea. Pleas also include all (whatever user status/rank is) that actively say "please keep mine, too!".

- I do agree that getting rid of stuff is a way to improve quality. In fact I had that thought myself, back in 2018 : https://blogs.sap.com/2018/04/05/another-way-to-improve-quality-clean-out-the-closet/

Just: is now realy the right time? Changing platforms is big trouble anyways;
why ad "fear of losing content" (I have it!) to the mix now?

@Florian 
It was not so much the question, but the answer given to it: Had I not hit "accept" , and assuming it had now views in 2022 , that content would have been deleted.
-> I think it's not fair to put the power to keep/delete OTHER peoples content (here: a long answer) in MY (question creator's) hand.  What's your thoughts in that @audreystevenson  ?

[Rodrigo-Giner]

The may reason why I didn't like the move from SDN to SAP Community was because instead of focusing in the Knowledge Base part if was on the Social part.

In my beginnings in 2005 whatever I encountered a problem or I had a specific questions. I knew I could reach SDN and either someone had the same problem and their question answered or I could ask it and I would get an answer pretty fast.

Which each new "evolution" this was fading away and sadly today there is way better information and better formatted scatter around the web. So the BIG community turned into a Small Club. Where you have a question and you will see the few same repeated names over and over ( and don't take me wrong thank god for that, if not this place would be dead regarding Q&A).

I never care the social part, I was all in on Knowledge, and the way you needed to look for things with spaces was simply awful, besides some wiki weren't migrated, content lost, dead links, etc hopefully the history won't repeat (finger cross)

IMO you should only not migrate unanswered question anything else should be migrated because if not things WILL be lost. I lot of time I found my ansnwer in an old answered question without any activity in years or perhaps like someone mentioned before an answered question that wasn't never marked as answered.

Peace!

PLEASE don't migrate just what was "trending" only last year !