topic Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines in Water Cooler

Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

stevedark — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 14:55:21 GMT

It's good to see that there are now some published Usage Guidelines for Qlik Community , thank you Sara Leslie for adding these to the site. I had been thinking this was something that was required and drafted my thoughts on what should go into some guidelines. Some of these items have been addressed in the official guidelines, others have not. I would welcome the thoughts of others as to whether any of these should be incorporated into the official site guidelines.

1. Please search for answers before asking your question, some common questions have been asked (and answered) many times already.

2. Please mark answers as correct or helpful when they are either of these things - this helps other users find answers to their questions and assists those looking to give advice to find where their input can be useful.

3. Do not post the same question into many groups - pick the one that is most appropriate. This reduces duplication of threads and means that thoughts on resolutions to issues are all in one place.

4. Please use the Community to increase your knowledge to solve your own problems - you should however not expect other contributors to necessarily provide fully working applications in response to your queries. No one has a specific duty to do your job for you!

5. Posts that simply state that you agree with another contributor add little to a thread and can often simply add clutter. If you think a response is a good one please use the Like button to acknowledge this - future readers can then see that a much Liked response may be worth extra consideration.

6. Do not upload other peoples work without proper attribution - or better still post a link to the other material so that it can be viewed in context. Under no circumstances post copyrighted material to the Community.

7. Be careful when uploading data to the Community - an example of an issue can be helpful but please ensure you are not sharing sensitive information.

8. Get involved and enjoy! Qlik Community is a great resource and you will get out of it what you put in.

Those are just my thoughts, I'm sure others in the Community will have their own thoughts. Feel free to share your comments below.

Steve

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:04:33 GMT

7b. Please reduce your applications before uploading!
(Speaking for myself - I'm not downloading any MB-sized applications)

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

Peter_Cammaert — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:17:02 GMT

7c. Switch off Section Access before uploading! Threads tend to get bulky when visitors that are eager to solve a problem (and earn some points) discover an inaccessible upload.

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

Peter_Cammaert — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:21:02 GMT

5b. Read the entire thread before replying to a question. Someone may have posted the same solution before you.

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:27:00 GMT

Steve,

Completely agree with all your remarks.

I would say

1 thread = 1 question (not 5, not 10)

1 question answered = 1 closed theread (if another question, another thread)

read the docs that other people recommend you to read to get your question answered

(many times, I see people that ask new questions wihout reading the appropriate docs that were recommended)

Fabrice

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:31:26 GMT

For myslef:

7d Upload script also into text files (qvw and txt): some people (like me) have Personal Edition. the community is a perfect place where I learn much. And I am often frustrated by solutions that I cannot open ...

Fabrice

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

puttemans — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:35:32 GMT

In addition to it, I'd make a strong claim to think not once, twice or 3x over your title for the question, but 10x. Things like 'urgent help needed' are actually helping no-one, and make the reader lose time if he/she finds out the topic is not in his/her area of knowledge. Try to define the topic as specific as possible, which will make you get an answer much faster, and, referring to number 1 in the list, will help someone searching as well.

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

stevedark — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 16:20:54 GMT

Hi Aunez - yes! Too often I will respond with a solution and someone will reply, "great, that's answered my original question - but what I really want to do is...". The thread then remains open and gets confusing very quickly.

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

stevedark — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 16:22:38 GMT

Hi Johan. I now tend to ignore the threads with URGENT!!!! in the title - as those tend to be the ones that you get little thanks for your efforts with.

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 16:25:33 GMT

When I see "urgent", I think that the person should call QT Support, or better hire someone to help...

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

Peter_Cammaert — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 16:43:53 GMT

Very useful in this list would be some guidance on how to use the "Delete post" link as a sort of cleanup feature. I have my own policy (drop doubles, drop misinterpretations & mistakes, drop seriously off-topic stuff) but it seems not everyone agrees on whether the Delete function should be used at all...

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 21:20:02 GMT

Wow these are all such valuable best practices! Great to hear from all of you on this topic and I completely agree. I will talk with the team on co-creation of a user best practices doc. I think this will be beneficial for all members but especially the newer ones!.

Best Regards, Sara

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

tresB — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 05:43:53 GMT

In addition to all very significant points mentioned by all experts above, I would like to highlight another:

Some of the members are very very frequent in the community with their questions. Sometimes it seems that they are almost fully dependent on the community for their project. It's a sincere request to them: 'Please try yourself harder to solve the issue first, if you can't get it done even after honest try - you are always welcome here and people would be more than happy to help. This approach would help you learn. You remember the one for ever that you get to discover yourself and tend to forget the one that you just get it done by others.

It is understandable that people new to qv would come up with some basic questions, but if you are not that newbie and have to visit community frequently with basic queries, better to introspect that something is not right; may be learning/improvement is not there as expected.

Note: This is by no means to hurt anybody but to share my view-point that I thought some people might find helpful.

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

stevedark — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 23:27:03 GMT

Hi Tresesco - I completely agree with you on this one. If it is your job to deliver QlikView solutions and you have to ask questions on the community every step of the way then you probably need to pay get a consultant in or to get some decent training. Many of the people (myself included) giving advice on these forums will offer these services - or you can look on the list of partners on the Qlik website.

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

Peter_Cammaert — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 17:21:48 GMT

I thought some of these serial kilposters were busy writting QlikView books (good thing!) and launching chapter titles to the community for others to fill the body text

Seriously, a few mass posters shouldn't spoil the fun indeed, but how would you translate things like that into guidelines without starting a long list of Don't Do This-items? Isn't that something that belongs more to the self-regulating nature of a forum where highly-experienced members like yourselves point out their unsympathetic behavior?

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

stevedark — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 10:50:04 GMT

People who post a lot are not a problem at all - it is great to have a vibrant thriving community. It's when this is coupled with the expectation that the Community owes them a completed working solution it can grow tiresome.

The ideal is (I believe) that people use the Community to grow their knowledge so that in time they can give back to the Community by solving problems for others.

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

Peter_Cammaert — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 11:47:48 GMT

You're right of course on both counts (#4 and #8 in your list). But what shall/can we do about this? Growing a long list of guidelines may not be the most effective method to manage a community as diverse as ours.

How about a list of common sense-principles that we agree upon and that guide us and others in giving feedback to various (sometimes annoying) situations in a tolerant but efficient way? You already have a backbone in you OP and everyone in this thread has added to range and quality. All of this only applies if you believe in the concept of self-regulation.

For me at least, it's refreshing to hear that many other members I respect are thinking along the same lines as I am. Thanks for that.

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

rustyfishbones — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 08:31:09 GMT

Hi Steve,

I agree with everything you have said regarding the guidelines, however, it is worth pointing out, a lot of people asking questions are not Qlikview Consultants, they are individuals in organisations that have stumbled across Qlikview and have realized it's potential, they generally tend to be motivated individuals in small to medium organisations trying to demonstrate to the senior management teams that Qlikview is a product they should be using.

In these cases, (and I know many people doing this) a training budget is just not there, in fact most would be using the Qlikview Personal Edition, this community is the only support they have, and in the long term may well require consultancy in the future, once their enthusiasm for Qlikview spreads through their own organisation.

Having said that, following the guidelines you have mentioned above whether they be experts or novices, consultants or not, is good advice.

Thanks for the post! I need to try follow these too!

Kind Regards

Alan

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

Peter_Cammaert — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 08:55:42 GMT

Got another one that pops-up once in a while. I fell into this trap quite a few times.

5c. Look at the date on the initital post. You may be wasting your time when replying to a question that is years old.

Of course, this would not be needed if original posters would comply with guideline 2 and Fabrice's 1b.

Re: Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines

stevedark — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 10:32:09 GMT

Hi Peter, I will often respond to old posts if I can give a very quick answer. I'm often led to old posts by the More Like This links after posting a response to a newer question. Sometimes posting a link back to the question I have just answered then provides an answer to the old thread.

This is unlikely to resolve the issue for the person who raised the initial question (they probably solved it ages ago - perhaps by getting a response to the same question in another thread (see point 3)) or gain me any points. What it does do though is leave more threads with valid answers (or pointers to them) which means that people could just possibly be more inclined to follow point one (and it was 1 for a reason) and search for answers before asking a new question.