Let me start by apologizing for a long post, but this is something I need to get off my chest!
As an OutSystems MVP and moderator, I actively try to help to keep the quality of replies correctly on the forum. For the top 10 most active community members, I use my own stats, that give me insights in the quality of replies that people give.
More frequently, especially the last year, it happens that I see patterns, that after validation by OutSystems DevRel team, confirm that people are gaming the community ranking.
I try to understand why there is a small group of people, trying to fool the community, but more even themselves? I came up with a few possible reasons:
But advancing your career in IT or OutSystems is not "fake it till you make it...", you are fooling yourself the community, your colleagues, and your boss.
I would like to encourage ethical behavior and help those who perform ranking manipulation to understand the negative consequences of their actions. Here are some advices I can offer:
In conclusion:
If you are unsure about what is considered ethical behavior on the community pages, I encourage you to seek advice by sending a private message to one of the OutSystems MVPs that are very active on the community pages, like Kilian, Dorine or myself.
Thank you for reading this long post, let us together keep this community awesome!
Kind regards,
Daniël
Hear hear! Well said.
I agree, but maybe the system (or moderation tools) needs to be updated in one way or another.Maybe some sort of warning system can be implemented in the forums to ensure negative consequences can be given whenever the code of conduct is being breached.Until no consequences are given, I fear it will continue.
Well in the past people already experienced the consequences, these are only not communicated on the forum as there is no need to shame people in public. But people are contacted by OutSytems, and if not change their game are penalized (temporarily) with either a ban or no means to participate on the community pages.
Daniel has a point here. Personal opinion is that if the system has any built-in gaming aspects, people who will (or are willing to) game the system will appear and available gains determine the magnitude. Long-term result is that ranking leads to ranting, rules are considered as "guidelines" and in this case, quality of discussion goes down when people are behaving in the ways Daniel has opened up above. Ideal community/group/organization will always have big personalities, but there really isn't room for big egos, otherwise things tend to slip towards unhealthy status.
Good thinkpiece. I'd like to see all of us adhering to these advices.
As outlined by Jordan Harbinger - "We raise by lifting others."
Unfortunately, there are many people willing to sacrifice the health of the community for their own benefits.
You can't just rely on people's common sense.
=/
I would not say many, luckily it's just a few.
Hi
thank you to bring this matters to our attention.
I suppose that if anyone asks you to join part off the team off our components/assets in the forge, and they do nothing to improvit or contribute to grow this asset, they are using this to get more ranking???
This a kind of cheating the system...
Regards, May the Force be with us
This is a reason yes. I get requests to join "my" components frequently and I always respond with a question first. "What are you going to contribute to the component?'. It would surprise you how few replies I get back. And the ones that I have allowed to join never made a publish. O well, It is how it is.
I don't see any real value in the number although I do have an internal (with me, myself and I) to see if gaining one place is a possibility. But this is more to motivate me doing better then by using this rank for any gains outside of that. I also don't how that works. "He Manager, I just ranked up in the OutSystems community. How about a payment raise?". I think you all could hear him laughing about that one 🤣
Agree with you. Literally nobody do any contribution who joined the team post publish. OutSystems should not allocate any points for such persons or there should be an option for Admin to choose points distributions. Admin or original poster should also have option to remove the team member any time.
It has already been discussed many times to not inherent the component points, but only be rewarded for the actual upload of a new version.
Its a perfect time for that post Daniel.
It seems we have many posts now that you feel its like a game someone post a question and get a completed well organized answer in seconds which if a human is trying to write this answer at least he may take like 3 to 5 minutes.
Same here as Caldeira said I getting request from some members to join my very few simple forge components and they never did anything or enhanced my component or may even they never used it.
Thank you for this post and your effort with MVP program members to keep forums productive providing solutions and knowledge.
I detect a different behavior. A question with an issue together with a request to change their "example of the issue" in such way that their requests is solved and upload it. I have no issue with helping, with pointing in the right direction or by suppling a set of steps to solve an issue. What I do have an issue with is by doing other peoples work. Especially when the poster has done nothing themselves to solve the issue. What am I, free labor? I will never supply such a solution if the poster has not shown that (s)he has made adequate attempts to solve the issue with the suggestions supplied.
I am totally agree with you Vincent, There are many posts now especially from new community members or new OutSystems developers who posting their question or requirements they want to implement and asking for OML implementing what they want so they fool their employer that they are super new / junior developer that did his tasks very quickly.
To be honest I did this sometimes at the beginning by providing OML but start realizing that its a behavior of some of new developers and they don't want to take training courses or search and read more about their problem to get knowledge behind this.
Well said Daniel. I guess when any community grows to a certain point, you start to have the kind of people you've mentioned.
Luckily there people like you - and many others - that put communities in the right track, acting as gate keepers.
I think that probably there is a healthy discussion here that can start with your post: how to evolve OutSystems community rules and rewarding system to ensure that negative manipulative behavior is discouraged.
Regards.
Very good Post Daniel
I was quite In-Active from past few days, not able to read the whole post,
Buy Yes I Strongly Agree With @Daniel , this needs to be stopped, Just to make themselves visible on the leaderboards, I mean this points manipulation should be avoided. Also I see lots of same answers on same post where there is no difference at all.
Even after almost a month since posting this, there are still individuals within the OutSystems community who seem to overlook the significance of honesty and integrity.
Fortunately, the dedicated team of MVPs, who diligently moderate the community pages, along with the great support of the OutSystems community team, continues to identify instances of ranking manipulation and addresses them with the community members involved.
A special shout-out to @Ricardo Sequeira at OutSystems, who consistently goes above and beyond to check and confirm any possible ranking manipulation that moderators spot. This commitment is crucial in maintaining the integrity of this vibrant OutSystems community.
Well Said.
Due to this reason i had stop using forum for both answering the question as well as for refrence.
I don't think the OutSystems Forum and the community are bad, the contrary, we have a great community with great collaboration. Luckily, it is only a handful of people that we need to address to improve their contribution to the community.
I think there is a lot of room for improvement. The amount of beginner questions asked is insanely high. And almost all of these questions can be answered by following a starting course. And I think that the completion of such a course should be a mandatory step before one can ask a question on the forums. Note that participating in open topics should be available to anyone.
But all in all the spirit in this community is great. Helpful and friendly. And that is a great thing to have :)
"I think there is a lot of room for improvement. The amount of beginner questions asked is insanely high. And almost all of these questions can be answered by following a starting course"
Agree, you should always point to the guided paths, as a starting point when you feel like people didn't follow a training at all but have the most basic questions. It is also a way better experience to learn coding in OutSystems by training, then by trail-and-error.
Well said and it's true..