Analysis on Marian Zeis Blog

Engagement in Free-Fall: Why SAP Community Blogs Struggle to Be Seen

Tue, 13 May 2025 09:30:00 +0200

This post is a mirrored copy of my LinkedIn article, kept here so it remains searchable and independent from external platforms. You can still find the original on LinkedIn: LinkedIn Pulse article.

Back in April 2024 I opened this little series with From Open Exchange to Corporate Monologue, followed in August by SAP Community in Decline and, just before Christmas, the GPT-assisted look at question quality.

Twelve months, two platform releases and several batch-downloads later it is time for round four - this time with a split focus:

Who is writing the blog posts today?
Does anybody still read them?

“Nothing has changed” was my gut feeling - and the long-range chart confirms it. Since the second half of 2023 the SAP share hovers stubbornly between 60% and 70%; no new record highs, but also no real retreat.

Share and absolute numbers of all blog posts, 2003-05 to 2025-05

Does the plateau invalidate my earlier alarm?

Not really. The community never bounced back to the sub-40% employee share we enjoyed a decade ago - the status-quo is simply frozen at a two-thirds “corporate voice”.

Assumption check: My earlier claim of “no further change” holds for percentages, but the green bars (absolute SAP posts) are still inching up. The non-SAP bars are mostly flat. So the balance only stays constant because both lines move in parallel.

2 | Tech-Blog Boards - A Very Different Story

Drill down to the two technology boards (technology-blog-sap, technology-blog-members) and you get a much livelier picture.

Figure 2 - Share and absolute numbers in the tech blogs, entire history

Figure 3 - Same data, last 12 months

Key observations:

Member posts are growing - up by ~25% year-on-year.
SAP posts are shrinking - down by ~15% in the same period (especially 2025-01 to 2025-03).

Assumption: The main reason for this change is the lower number of SAP blog posts. One possible explanation is that the personal target number of blog posts required to achieve a possible bonus has been reached. This also explains the high number of SAP blog posts in December.

There was also an increase in blog posts from non-SAP members and new members of the SAP community (see next point).

3 | Who Are Those Members? - Rank Distribution

Figure 4 - Experienced vs. inexperienced share in the tech blogs, last 12 months

The green bars (Participant+) show a drop to barely 40% in February before recovering to the mid-40s. Net-net the fresh content boom is fuelled primarily by new contributors.

Additional assumption: A steady inflow of first-time authors is great - if their pieces are curated and converted into repeat contributions. Otherwise we risk a “drive-by blogging” pattern that never matures (see next point about views).

4 | Views - The Elephant in the Room

When SAP switched the platform to Khoros I planned to ignore the view counter - until the time-series smacked me in the face:

Figure 5 - Mean and median views and engagement quality

The trajectory is crystal-clear:

Sharp decline since 2020, long before the migration.
Mean > median: a few viral posts keep the average alive; the typical post is doing much worse.

Are the counters reliable?

I have already written that I do not consider the view parameters to be reliable. However, I cannot ignore this chart because the trend is quite clear. I trust the trend because it reflects my personal feeling.

I strongly suspect that the curve is not so extreme in real numbers, but only SAP itself can answer this question with its own analytics data.

But if you look at the number of posts here, there is no downward trend. This confirms my impression that a lot of blog posts are written by non-SAP members and that SAP employees are encouraged to write blog posts.

This combination automatically leads to a decline in quality and therefore in engagement, which confirms my impression that blog posts that are really worth reading are becoming rarer.

6 | What Could SAP (and We) Do?

This is a difficult question to answer because there is no simple answer. Platform migration is only part of the answer, because engagement was already declining before that, but it definitely plays a big role.

If you look at the latest ‘What’s New’ post from the SAP community, the bug fixes are ones that shouldn’t have been there in the first place and are just minor cosmetic changes. It doesn’t change the big picture. And now, years after the migration, I don’t see any quick changes and we have to deal with the current situation.

As a community, there’s nothing we can do about it, because you can’t build a community of this size overnight. There are legal requirements that can’t be met with a small team.

Björn Schulz is doing a great job with his website and excellent content: https://software-heroes.com/

As Twitter is dying and Bluesky can’t take its place, the only alternative so far is (unfortunately) LinkedIn. There’s a lot of (at best) bad content there, but also a lot of untruths, and it’s also flooded with AI content.

At the moment, my optimism about the SAP community has faded a bit. If anyone has any suggestions on how to reunite the community, I’m all ears!

Has the Quality of SAP Community Questions Gotten Worse? A Data-Driven Perspective

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 09:30:00 +0100

This post is a mirrored copy of my LinkedIn article, kept here so it remains searchable and independent from external platforms. You can still find the original on LinkedIn: LinkedIn Pulse article.

The SAP Community is and will remain the central point of entry for all issues and discussions relating to SAP.

Over the past few years (and since the migration at the beginning of the year) I have had a feeling that the quality of questions in the technology area (the area I follow most closely) has gradually declined.

I wanted to see if I could somehow verify or disprove this feeling.

This blog post describes my approach and the results.

Methodology

The analysis was based on historical question data, including:

Question metadata (timestamps, authors, conversation details)
Quality scores (rated by GPT-4o, ranging from 1 to 10)
Additional metrics, such as the number of messages per conversation and whether the question was solved

Since the prices for tokens at OpenAI have fallen, I have simply decided to analyse the questions from the last six years in the technology section with an LLM.

To do this, I downloaded all the questions and packed them into a prompt that looks like this:

You are an expert who will rate the quality of a question from an online forum. The quality of a question depends on:
- How well the user describes the problem
- How much contextual detail is given
- How well-formatted the question is (images, code formatting, clarity)
- Length (but not too long just for fluff)
- Overall clarity

Please return a single integer between 0 and 10 (no text, no explanation), where 10 means it's an extremely well-asked, clear question with all necessary details, and 0 means it's very poor, unclear, and low quality.

Thanks to the Batch API from OpenAI, we got another 50% discount for the prompt and paid $6.82 for the analysis of approximately 200,000 questions.

Data was processed using Python, and visualizations were created using Matplotlib and Seaborn.

Key Findings

1. Monthly Quality Scores: Trends Over Time

The chart shows a notable dip in average quality around 2018-2019, followed by a gradual recovery. Interestingly, the quality scores have stabilized since 2020, with improvements starting end of 2023.

Insight: The dip could coincide with community policy changes, increased user activity, or other external factors. A deeper look into this period might reveal actionable insights.

2. Monthly Question Volume

The number of questions peaked between 2019 and 2021, followed by a steady decline. The recent decline might reflect a shift in community activity or a move to alternative platforms for technical discussions.

Insight: High activity in earlier years might have diluted quality, as seen in the overlapping periods of low scores and high question counts.

3. Quality Score Heatmap

The heatmap visualizes average quality scores by year and month. It confirms the dip in 2018 and highlights gradual improvements over time. Notably, 2024 have seen some of the highest average scores.

Insight: Certain months, such as mid-2018, had consistently lower scores. Investigating these periods could help address specific quality issues.

4. Messages in Conversations vs. Quality

The scatterplot shows no strong correlation between the number of messages in a conversation and the question’s quality score. However, higher-quality questions tend to lead to slightly longer discussions.

Insight: High-quality questions often attract deeper engagement, which benefits the community overall.

5. Combined Trends: Questions and Quality

Overlaying question volume and quality scores highlights the inverse relationship: as the number of questions surged, quality declined. This pattern reversed as activity decreased.

Insight: Moderating activity levels and encouraging thoughtful participation could help sustain or improve quality.

Conclusions

What the Data Tells Us

I can’t explain the dip in 2018 to myself, and I don’t have the time to investigate it further.

But at least the LLM rates that the quality has not dropped. That means there have always been very good and very bad questions. The average of the questions was always the same.

According to the LLM, the quality in 2024 even increased while the number of questions decreased, which did not feel like my experience.

What do you think about these insights? Are there specific periods or trends that resonate with your experience in the SAP Community?

More stats

Here is a snippet of the data results:

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/marianfoo/9512f43ec4c536189906d35e6e023605/raw/c1a4ed715f7c56b348f0915820b7e5a4cffecebd/gistfile1.txt

Quality Score Distribution:

quality_score
1.0        42
2.0      2661
3.0     11843
4.0     37171
5.0     34140
6.0     54559
7.0     45242
8.0     30511
9.0      1278
10.0        2

Here are the two 10 rated questions:

Monthly Statistics (all months):

 mean    std  min  max  count
year_month                               
2018-01     5.758  1.468  1.0  9.0   1430
2018-02     5.789  1.513  1.0  8.0    696
2018-03     5.866  1.431  2.0  9.0    666
2018-04     5.231  1.549  2.0  9.0    571
2018-05     5.287  1.478  2.0  8.0    550
2018-06     5.293  1.423  2.0  9.0    752
2018-07     5.221  1.441  2.0  8.0   1948
2018-08     5.325  1.512  2.0  9.0   1802
2018-09     5.301  1.507  2.0  9.0   1738
2018-10     5.262  1.483  2.0  9.0   1971
2018-11     5.659  1.495  2.0  9.0   1884
2018-12     5.761  1.489  2.0  9.0   1437
2019-01     5.731  1.465  2.0  9.0   1888
2019-02     5.821  1.473  2.0  9.0   1773
2019-03     5.754  1.433  2.0  9.0   3024
2019-04     5.794  1.475  2.0  9.0   3599
2019-05     5.781  1.492  2.0  9.0   3558
2019-06     5.746  1.453  2.0  9.0   3451
2019-07     5.860  1.462  2.0  9.0   3579
2019-08     5.803  1.468  1.0  9.0   3460
2019-09     5.760  1.500  2.0  9.0   3423
2019-10     5.725  1.481  2.0  9.0   3660
2019-11     5.777  1.492  1.0  9.0   3461
2019-12     5.755  1.523  1.0  9.0   2946
2020-01     5.773  1.497  2.0  9.0   3814
2020-02     5.669  1.514  2.0  9.0   3732
2020-03     5.830  1.495  2.0  9.0   3579
2020-04     5.823  1.470  2.0  9.0   3972
2020-05     5.822  1.474  2.0  9.0   3855
2020-06     5.770  1.430  2.0  9.0   4121
2020-07     5.816  1.459  2.0  9.0   4208
2020-08     5.761  1.494  2.0  9.0   3540
2020-09     5.775  1.479  2.0  9.0   3894
2020-10     5.843  1.489  2.0  9.0   3519
2020-11     5.858  1.495  2.0  9.0   3286
2020-12     5.746  1.513  1.0  9.0   3097
2021-01     5.866  1.515  1.0  9.0   3429
2021-02     5.872  1.514  2.0  9.0   3657
2021-03     5.849  1.492  2.0  9.0   3934
2021-04     5.953  1.513  1.0  9.0   3422
2021-05     5.798  1.544  2.0  9.0   3338
2021-06     5.801  1.535  2.0  9.0   3695
2021-07     5.855  1.544  1.0  9.0         3320
2021-08     5.838  1.514  2.0  9.0         3215
2021-09     5.879  1.518  2.0  9.0         3082
2021-10     5.805  1.492  2.0  9.0         3004
2021-11     5.802  1.510  2.0  9.0         2908
2021-12     5.800  1.536  2.0  9.0         2737
2022-01     5.827  1.479  1.0  9.0         3170
2022-02     5.913  1.485  2.0  9.0         3063
2022-03     5.875  1.494  2.0  9.0         3373
2022-04     5.766  1.534  2.0  9.0         3022
2022-05     5.757  1.511  2.0  9.0         3094
2022-06     5.816  1.503  2.0  9.0         3284
2022-07     5.715  1.560  2.0  9.0         2842
2022-08     5.800  1.510  2.0  9.0         3013
2022-09     5.859  1.507  2.0  9.0         3124
2022-10     5.765  1.566  1.0  9.0         3096
2022-11     5.937  1.498  1.0  9.0         3320
2022-12     5.748  1.571  1.0  9.0         2484
2023-01     5.851  1.543  2.0  9.0         3080
2023-02     5.728  1.579  1.0  9.0         3447
2023-03     5.707  1.558  1.0  9.0         3546
2023-04     5.761  1.594  2.0  9.0         2874
2023-05     5.719  1.530  2.0  9.0         2985
2023-06     5.772  1.575  1.0  9.0         1642
2023-07     5.846  1.585  2.0  9.0         1711
2023-08     5.763  1.566  1.0  9.0         1805
2023-09     5.813  1.560  1.0  9.0         1529
2023-10     5.894  1.564  2.0  9.0         1523
2023-11     5.871  1.576  1.0  9.0         1624
2023-12     5.871  1.534  2.0  9.0         1237
2024-01     5.910  1.502  1.0   9.0    964
2024-02     5.877  1.627  2.0   9.0   1448
2024-03     5.887  1.644  1.0   9.0   2409
2024-04     5.986  1.589  2.0   9.0   2035
2024-05     6.088  1.595  1.0  10.0   1144
2024-06     6.097  1.572  1.0   9.0   1096
2024-07     5.961  1.693  2.0   9.0   1241
2024-08     6.137  1.595  1.0  10.0   1227
2024-09     6.090  1.639  2.0   9.0   1305
2024-10     6.077  1.587  1.0   9.0   1283
2024-11     6.092  1.624  2.0   9.0   1148
2024-12     6.097  1.719  2.0   9.0    636

SAP Community in Decline: Engagement Continues to Fall with Little Investment

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 09:30:00 +0200

This post is a mirrored copy of my LinkedIn article, kept here so it remains searchable and independent from external platforms. You can still find the original on LinkedIn: LinkedIn Pulse article.

Half a year after the major migration, it’s time to publish the latest figures and uncover any hidden insights in the data.

So, what’s new? The trend from the past few months (or even years) has continued. More significant members of the community are moving away from Twitter, which was once a vital medium of exchange (and where I got my start).

Even on the SAP Community site, good posts from non-SAP employees are rare. I wanted to link to a good blog post, but since they are not sorted by publication date, I couldn’t find it. However, there are quite a few LLM-generated posts: The Future of Application Lifecycle Management in SAP After 2027

Meanwhile, some community members are trying to bridge the gap by offering their own search: Software Heroes - SAP Technology Blog It’s disappointing that SAP hasn’t addressed this issue after six months.

After six months, there’s an update with some fixes, but the results are underwhelming: Update about Enhancements to SAP Community

Views are displayed again for blog posts (though their accuracy is questionable), replies are automatically expanded, notifications have slightly more information, you can see if you’ve created a post or question, and a rotating carousel has been added to the homepage. These are the highlights of the update after six months.

SAP has clearly invested neither time nor money into the main page of the SAP Community to retain and attract users. This will have consequences that will be evident in the following evaluations.

Here is the update of the latest major graphic. The absolute number of blog posts in green (SAP) and red (non-SAP) and the percentage in blue (SAP) and yellow (non-SAP).

Blog Posts

Share in percent and absolute of SAP and Non-SAP Blog Post over time

For better representation, here is the development over the last twelve months. Both metrics are moving in the wrong direction. The number of blog posts is falling, mainly due to the decline in non-SAP blog posts, which automatically increases the share of SAP blog posts to 70%.

Share in percent and absolute of SAP and Non-SAP Blog Post over the last 12 months

Question and Answers

In addition to blog posts, the exchange of questions and answers is crucial. This is where community members help each other, and unfortunately, SAP has been too inactive here in recent years. On the other hand, many individuals have contributed significantly and well. It is not surprising that the same trend observed with blog posts is occurring here.

Here is a look at the entire timeline of the last few years in the Q&A section. Overall, there is an increase that has remained steady, with SAP making a very small contribution. As above, the chart shows the absolute figures in green (SAP) and red (non-SAP) and the relative figures as a percentage in blue (SAP) and yellow (non-SAP).

Share in percent and absolute of SAP and Non-SAP Q&A Post over time

It gets more interesting when you look at the last seven years. The greater participation of SAP employees in the discourse is encouraging, as seen from the large absolute figures and the increasing relative share. However, it is clear that there has been a drop from around 4,000 posts per month to around 2,500 posts per month in 2024.

Share in percent and absolute of SAP and Non-SAP Q&A Post over the last 12 months

I suspected such a decline, but I didn’t expect it to be so sharp. Personally, I haven’t answered any questions since the migration because I haven’t found a good way to filter and sort as I could with the old platform.

User Activity

Fortunately, there is also a way to read user activity. While this is just a snapshot and not a development, it still provides good insight. As always, the figures should be taken with a pinch of salt, but they still provide an insight into user activity.

Graphic Metric for User Participation

Logins: Two SAP employees have never logged in. 60% of users have never logged in.

Minutes Online: 75% of users have no minutes online. This metric likely came later, hence the discrepancy.

Posts: 70% of users have never made a post (including Q&A, blog posts, etc.). It’s amazing that 30% of users have written a post, totaling over 236,000.

Private Messages: Interestingly, this statistic still exists. It’s not surprising that only 2,723 users (0.32% of total users) use this feature.

Full data is at the end of the post

Views

Since the last update, views on blog posts are displayed again. I did a small sample to see how reliable these views are. Here is a small overview of the results: Total number of views:

10.04.2024: 2,615,955,557

03.06.2024: 3,318,366,233

02.08.2024: 4,062,134,925

That’s a sharp increase in just four months. Let’s see how the views of blog posts behave. One post that gained the most views is this one: List of Object Types SAP Business One.

It received 480,408 views within two months. While it’s an important post with a good overview, that’s much more than the second post with the most views gained: ABAP 7.40 Quick Reference

This one gained 47,892 views in the same time. How can this be explained? I suspect an automatic fetch. But why repeatedly, when the post does not change as seen in the history: Post History

Or why does this question have more than 5 million views? SAP Crystal Reports Developer Version for Microsoft Visual Studio Updates

I wouldn’t put much faith in these view numbers, even though most of them are probably correct, use them as a reference point.

Conclusion

Now what? What I observe is the widespread use of LinkedIn articles (which I use a lot too). I often shared SAP Community blog posts on LinkedIn and received more feedback there. Why not write directly on LinkedIn, also because the UX is very good? Social media diversification is definitely progressing, and the SAP Community page should actually be the bedrock.

For me personally, the exchange on Twitter is still the most important, as there are still many active people, including SAP employees. LinkedIn is more important for a broader exchange, even if gems are rarer, but the audience is definitely larger. After that, there’s a long gap, and then Mastodon, unfortunately.

I don’t see any increased investment from SAP for the SAP Community page. This is why it is increasingly becoming a marketing tool for SAP in terms of blog posts and is being used less and less.

In which direction do you see the SAP community heading? Where will the discourse take place? Could something be done for the community?

You can comment your reason why are you not using the SAP Community site anymore? Is it the lack of content? The missing functions? Universal ID?

Here is the full data of user metrics:

Statistics for metrics_logins:
  Overall:
    Average: 6.35
    Total: 5,156,904.00
  Sap_employees:
    Average: 21.25
    Total: 678,326.00
  Non_sap_employees:
    Average: 5.74
    Total: 4,478,578.00

Statistics for metrics_minutes_online:
  Overall:
    Average: 124.68
    Total: 101,224,309.00
  Sap_employees:
    Average: 875.17
    Total: 27,930,276.00
  Non_sap_employees:
    Average: 93.97
    Total: 73,294,033.00

Statistics for metrics_posts:
  Overall:
    Average: 7.07
    Total: 5,743,538.00
  Sap_employees:
    Average: 22.22
    Total: 709,070.00
  Non_sap_employees:
    Average: 6.45
    Total: 5,034,468.00

Statistics for metrics_private_messages_received:
  Overall:
    Average: 0.03
    Total: 22,019.00
  Sap_employees:
    Average: 0.15
    Total: 4,685.00
  Non_sap_employees:
    Average: 0.02
    Total: 17,334.00

Statistics for metrics_private_messages_sent:
  Overall:
    Average: 0.01
    Total: 6,533.00
  Sap_employees:
    Average: 0.06
    Total: 1,785.00
  Non_sap_employees:
    Average: 0.01
    Total: 4,748.00

Statistics for metrics_page_views:
  Overall:
    Average: 14.54
    Total: 11,801,736.00
  Sap_employees:
    Average: 81.73
    Total: 2,608,425.00
  Non_sap_employees:
    Average: 11.79
    Total: 9,193,311.00

Additional statistics for metrics_logins:
  Total users: 811,878
  Users with metrics_logins == 0:
    Overall: 486,940
    SAP Employees: 2 (0.00%)
    Non-SAP Employees: 486,938 (59.98%)
  Users with metrics_logins > 0:
    Overall: 324,938
    SAP Employees: 31,912 (3.93%)
    Non-SAP Employees: 293,026 (36.09%)

Additional statistics for metrics_minutes_online:
  Total users: 811,878
  Users with metrics_minutes_online == 0:
    Overall: 619,061
    SAP Employees: 7,700 (0.95%)
    Non-SAP Employees: 611,361 (75.30%)
  Users with metrics_minutes_online > 0:
    Overall: 192,817
    SAP Employees: 24,214 (2.98%)
    Non-SAP Employees: 168,603 (20.77%)

Additional statistics for metrics_posts:
  Total users: 811,878
  Users with metrics_posts == 0:
    Overall: 574,782
    SAP Employees: 17,342 (2.14%)
    Non-SAP Employees: 557,440 (68.66%)
  Users with metrics_posts > 0:
    Overall: 237,096
    SAP Employees: 14,572 (1.79%)
    Non-SAP Employees: 222,524 (27.41%)

Additional statistics for metrics_private_messages_received:
  Total users: 811,878
  Users with metrics_private_messages_received == 0:
    Overall: 810,309
    SAP Employees: 31,608 (3.89%)
    Non-SAP Employees: 778,701 (95.91%)
  Users with metrics_private_messages_received > 0:
    Overall: 1,569
    SAP Employees: 306 (0.04%)
    Non-SAP Employees: 1,263 (0.16%)

Additional statistics for metrics_private_messages_sent:
  Total users: 811,878
  Users with metrics_private_messages_sent == 0:
    Overall: 809,155
    SAP Employees: 31,481 (3.88%)
    Non-SAP Employees: 777,674 (95.79%)
  Users with metrics_private_messages_sent > 0:
    Overall: 2,723
    SAP Employees: 433 (0.05%)
    Non-SAP Employees: 2,290 (0.28%)

Additional statistics for metrics_page_views:
  Total users: 811,878
  Users with metrics_page_views == 0:
    Overall: 550,345
    SAP Employees: 40 (0.00%)
    Non-SAP Employees: 550,305 (67.78%)
  Users with metrics_page_views > 0:
    Overall: 261,533
    SAP Employees: 31,874 (3.93%)

From Open Exchange to Corporate Monologue: The Transformation of SAP’s Community

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 09:30:00 +0200

This post is a mirrored copy of my LinkedIn article, kept here so it remains searchable and independent from external platforms. You can still find the original on LinkedIn: LinkedIn Pulse article.

The SAP community has had to overcome many challenges recently. The central exchange, especially for developers, Twitter has become an increasingly toxic platform and many long-time members have stopped using it or have switched to alternatives. Twitter was also one of my first ports of call and helped me a lot. There are still some, but it’s getting noticeably less.

Most important was the change of platform for the SAP Community Network for Q&A and blog posts. They now use Khoros, which has fundamentally changed a lot of things. There are still a lot of criticisms of the platform. However, as with so many changes, this one is particularly difficult.

If the company switches from SAP GUI to Fiori, then ideally this is accompanied by support and training and you have time to get used to it. In the SAP Community Network, non-SAP users are usually active in their free time to answer questions or write helpful blog posts. If fundamental things change here, you have to invest your valuable time to adapt your own workflow. If the change is too big, these valuable members may no longer be active.

The valuable blog posts from the community become rarer and marketing posts from SAP become more frequent.

Thanks to Khoros’ API, I can now support this feeling with data.

I analyzed 150,000 blog posts dating back to 2005 and the status of over 720,000 users.

First, the percentage of blog posts written by SAP employees.

The graph clearly shows that the proportion has risen sharply, especially in recent years towards SAP blog posts.

Share of SAP vs. non-SAP blog posts over time (share and absolute numbers)

About 10 years ago, less than a third of blog posts were written by SAP employees. Today, two-thirds of blog posts are written by SAP employees.

Especially in the last year, this distribution has shifted strongly towards SAP.

Here is a detailed overview of the last 12 months.

Share of SAP vs. non-SAP blog posts over the last 12 months

The sad peak was reached when over 70 percent of all blog posts in February 2024 were written by SAP employees.

Proportion of blog posts from non-SAP by experience

Another point I have noticed is that it feels like fewer and fewer veteran non-SAP employees are publishing blog posts.

Thanks to the rankings that have been introduced, it is also possible to investigate this.

The more active a community member was, the higher the rank. Jerry has explained this in this blog post: Let the gamification begin

There are the following rankings for non-SAP employees:

Member, Newcomer, Discoverer, Explorer, Participant, Active Participant, Contributor, Active Contributor, Collaborator, Active Collaborator, Advocate

I have classified Member, Newcomer, Discoverer, Explorer as inexperienced and all others as experienced.

Even if the rank does not necessarily say anything about the quality of the blog post, there is a strong causality according to my observations.

Share of blog posts by experience over time

Here, too, we have seen a significant decline in “Experienced” blog posts over the years since 2014.

Share of blog posts by experience in the last 12 months

Also in the last 12 months, less than a third of blog posts came from community members with the rank Participant or higher.

This analysis confirms the feeling in the SAP community as a whole. Even if SAP cannot be blamed for everything, the large proportion of support must come from SAP. A strong community benefits all sides and has a very good ROI.

The community is more important than ever, especially in today’s world where you have to be happy for every person who works with SAP after their studies.

SAP can only be successful with a strong community!

Update: I removed the blog posts written by former_member and updated the graphics. In total 153.655 posts. There are 421.213 members where the login name starts with former_member.

Analysis on Marian Zeis Blog

Engagement in Free-Fall: Why SAP Community Blogs Struggle to Be Seen

1 | Share of SAP vs. Non-SAP Blog Posts - Little News on the Macro Level

Does the plateau invalidate my earlier alarm?

2 | Tech-Blog Boards - A Very Different Story

3 | Who Are Those Members? - Rank Distribution

4 | Views - The Elephant in the Room

Are the counters reliable?

6 | What Could SAP (and We) Do?

Has the Quality of SAP Community Questions Gotten Worse? A Data-Driven Perspective

Methodology

Key Findings

1. Monthly Quality Scores: Trends Over Time

2. Monthly Question Volume

3. Quality Score Heatmap

4. Messages in Conversations vs. Quality

5. Combined Trends: Questions and Quality

Conclusions

What the Data Tells Us

More stats

SAP Community in Decline: Engagement Continues to Fall with Little Investment

Blog Posts

Question and Answers

User Activity

Views

Conclusion

From Open Exchange to Corporate Monologue: The Transformation of SAP’s Community

Share of SAP vs. Non-SAP blog posts over time in the SCN

Proportion of blog posts from non-SAP by experience