Further thoughts on Qlik Community Guidelines - Page 2 - Qlik Community

stevedark · ‎2014-02-28

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

Peter_Cammaert · ‎2014-02-28

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...

Anonymous · ‎2014-02-28

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

tresesco · ‎2014-03-01

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.

stevedark · ‎2014-03-01

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.

Peter_Cammaert · ‎2014-03-02

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?

stevedark · ‎2014-03-03

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.

Peter_Cammaert · ‎2014-03-03

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.

rustyfishbones · ‎2014-03-04

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

Peter_Cammaert · ‎2014-03-07

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.

stevedark · ‎2014-03-07

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.