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Competitiveness in Community

WillM
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

I saw a tweet by @jamielaird today (link) that brought up what I think is a really interesting point. He mentioned that it can feel like some in the Alteryx community are competitively chasing likes and solutions, and that incentivizing quantity of solutions can potentially have a detrimental impact on the quality of posts being shared.

 

I'd love to hear your feedback and experience as members. If you agree with Jamie's point of view, how do you think we could remedy the situation? If you don't, I'd love to hear why (and also know if you think there are still improvements to be made). There are no wrong answers here, and I expect that we'll hear from a lot of people from both sides. My main goals here are to open up the conversation with everyone and identify opportunities to improve your shared experience both now and in the future.

 

Looking forward to the dialogue around this aspect of the community, and how we might be able to refine things to better serve everyone!

Will Machin
Community Management Team Lead
Alteryx
27 REPLIES 27
atcodedog05
22 - Nova
22 - Nova

Hi Everyone,

 

This is an interesting discussion

 

I pretty much want to respond, have few things on my mind to say. Really piled with work. 

I will come tomorrow(weekend) to respond.

 

Just few liners what i would like to say

 

I honestly wouldn't want to turn down a person who is asking for help. If i can i will do it. 

 

And whenever someone asks me for a solution simple or complex i dont want to throw multiple videos/interactive links at them

If its simple ones by seeing our workflow they usually tend to learn like the formula issues thats faced. Complex one, trust me it will be too complex for them to understand and too complex for us to us explain. And the best regex trust me links can never help much you need someone to teach and lot of them are too complex to understand

 

If a person is hungry and asks me for a fish will give it to him then teaching him how to fish. And in reality learning things takes time. But the person may not be ok with learning to fish then you giving the fish right away since he is hungry.

 

We all are in a hurry we have immediate requirements we need to fix. Too late is either a time wasted or opportunity lost especially in work environment. Lets say i need to know meaning of a word but my helper throw me a whole dictionary. I know right why the whole dictionary for a single word😅

 

And i definitely dont want to be rude, there are things everyone struggle with, I dont want to say to a person it was soo easy why didnt you think of it.

I would always prefer to be a friendly person who can help you solve things easily.

 

Besides the Alteryx Community tag line is "Together we solve"

 

I personally i have learnt from a lot of people and i constantly do appreciate when someone post a helpful easy to follow solution

 

With or without leaderboard, with or without likes or marks

But I will definitely help people for a simple thanks 🙂

 

Likes and marks just adds a little booster to it

 

Man i spoke a lot, i donno what i am gonna text later😅

These are just my thought, nonway meant to be against anyone

 

And i have bunch of people to thanks on the community 🙂

 

Happy to help 🙂

 

Cheers and Happy Analyzing 😀

 

Feel free to reach out if you face any issues 🙂

atcodedog05
22 - Nova
22 - Nova

Hi @AngelosPachis 

 

The solution is quite simple do what you feel is right to do.

 

If you feel we need to give a detailed procedure documentation or multiple links each time a person asks a question and thats right go with it.

If you feel that we need to help at layman level and thats right go with it.

 

If a person is hungry and asks me for a fish will give it to him then teaching him how to fish. And in reality learning things takes time. But the person may not be ok with learning to fish then you giving the fish right away since he is hungry😅

 

We all are in a hurry we have immediate requirements we need to fix. Too late is either a time wasted or opportunity lost especially in work environment. Lets say i need to know meaning of a word but my helper throw me a whole dictionary. I know right why the whole dictionary for a single word.

 

Just do what you feel is right to do, be your own judge.

 

I definitely don't know will this answer convince you or solves your problem😅

 

Hope this helps 🙂


If this post helps you please mark it as solution. And give a like if you dont mind 😀👍

TuvyL
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Thank you for bringing this hot topic to the community, @jamielaird!

 

I can definitely see both sides of the coin. Ideally, answers/solutions to questions will be well thought out and used to not only solve said question, but also allow the original poster to learn for future related instances. @T_Willins once said that answering today's questions is great, but using today's answers to solve tomorrow's questions is even better. (I'm paraphrasing, he was much more eloquent!) 🙂

 

However, I can also appreciate that not everyone has the time to fully explain their answers in detail and sometimes, sharing a quick solution or workflow might feel more useful/to the point. Whatever someone's motivation is, if they're helping even one person in the community, then it feels like fair game. There will always be a mix of "good" and "better" types of solutions, which can differ based on who you're asking. One thing I would suggest is to lead by example, exhibit the behavior you wish to see and keep having these conversations openly in the community.

 

@hanykowska, regarding your point on the ACE Program criteria, I'd like to clarify that this is only the minimum and does not guarantee ACEhood. As a community super user program, we do expect a level of activity in the community, but it can go beyond the criteria listed.

Tuvy Le
Manager, Community ACE Program
hanykowska
11 - Bolide

Thanks, @TuvyL !

Perhaps I should add to my previous comment about ACE program...
I was expecting (hoping) that the criteria for becoming an ACE can be more complex than the minimum requirements. However, when the minimum is listed as specific numbers, I would expect people to go for numbers (especially that the prerequisites don't mention anything else on what an active community user means).


I'm not sure how to fix this, but maybe encouraging people to share their knowledge in another form too would help (blogs, use cases, or mentoring)? (although I appreciate that the latter is rather recent, I think, and those activities are highly encouraged as part of alteryx innovator program)

Or maybe just stating 'active community member' with a list of activities available and skipping numbers? I assume you have some sort of board that discusses who becomes an ACE and it's to their discretion what an active member means.

 

I can see the risk of diverting this conversation into one about ACE requirements, but I think if the ACEhood (love the name btw!) is based on numbers you get from the community, it might add to the issue initially raised

jamielaird
14 - Magnetar

Having slept on this, and catching up on all the responses, I just wanted to add a couple of additional thoughts/clarifications.

 

I think it's useful to discuss the pros and cons of different types of answers (showing vs teaching) but I don't want anyone to come away thinking that was my main point or that I have particularly strong views on either side. It's more that when the "here's a workflow" solutions seem like an attempt to reply first for the sake of being first, that they give me that sense of it feeling like a race.

 

But I do completely accept that competition can be a positive thing, and the competition that does occur undoubtedly leads to some very good outcomes for users, in that every question gets an answer and every user with a question gets helped.

 

This is all very subjective and like I said, it feels a bit strange to have plonked myself into the middle of a debate, but I am getting a lot from reading all the replies whether or not they agree with me.

 

Being more practical, I really like the idea of there being a way to promote/surface the more detailed solutions that are most relevant for people who arrive at the forum from a search rather than having posted a question themselves. Perhaps there could be a way of certain solutons being endorsed as Top Answers and these then feeding into a crowd-sourced knowledge base? 

 

WillM
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

I'm so thrilled that this thread has taken off so far, and I think there are a lot of really great points from everyone.  I want to first thank everyone for sharing their thoughts on the subject.  As some of you have mentioned, it can be a little stressful throwing your thoughts out in a public forum like this, but I think it can go a long way to bring these conversations to the forefront and working towards improvements together.

 

I think that there is indeed room for refinements in any system, and the ranking/gamification of accepted solutions is no exception.  I also like to believe that most people are trying to help with specific questions, but agree that sometimes more context could be helpful as well.

 

I'll be keeping a close eye on this thread in the coming days, and responding where I can.  I think this provides a great opportunity for us to "level up" our systems and potentially offer a bit more nuance (figuring out how to do this can be the tough part, so if you have specific ideas, let me know). Keep the responses coming, as I want to hear as many thoughts as possible.  Chances are this won't be the end of the discussion, but it's a great first step!

Will Machin
Community Management Team Lead
Alteryx
atcodedog05
22 - Nova
22 - Nova

Hi @jamielaird 

 

I like your idea of Top/Best/Easiest/Optimized solution. If you posted it as a idea i would definitely vote for it.

The reason it could be a great/awesome learning curve 😎 like how the best solution is solved it will give ideas on more smart approaches.

 

It kind of relates to one of my old ideas. Picking/showing Best/optimized solution for the weekly challenges like easiest way to hack it with less tools possible. Apparently that doesnt exist 😅 if it does please let me know. I have a plan on creating a blog for it.

 

Sorry for getting side lined, coming back to the Top/Best/Easiest/Optimized solution. Then again for this task how can this be moderated who is exactly going look at the solution as say/mark/like this is the best solution.

 

Or would you suggest every solution author should search for possible answer and share the links. What would be suggested.

For best solutions to be selected whats way forward. PS: the user selects the first post which solved as solution.

And if you say lets make blogs PS: a lot of helpful blogs exits in alteryx community itself and lot of solution authors do suggest it. One of my favorite and commonly shared one http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/The-Ultimate-Input-Data-Flowchart/ta-p/20480

 

So where are we exactly falling. If you say every solution should be detailed, thats not possible (time constraint)

 

How to make Best solutions surface i have no idea except someone is ok with moderating.

 

I currently am one of the active solution authors.

 

@jamielaird and others please do give suggestions and feedbacks if there a feasible way which is possible that we can improve i will definitely go for it.

 

Cheers and Happy Analyzing 😀

MinaGO3
8 - Asteroid

@WillM I think even just have this discussion out in the open, may influence the way some of us in the community are providing solutions even without Alteryx having changed any of their incentives or guidelines. Even so, especially for the long run I still think it would be nice for the Alteryx community team to have a think if they are able to improve the incentives/programs/messaging or anything to help promote/manage this (so I am glad that @WillM has mentioned this in his latest post). In addition to what ideas our community comes up with on the thread, I think having a look at how a few other platforms have tried to manage this would not be a bad idea.

Thanks again @WillM for providing a platform for this conversation and for listening to everyone's points. I also am looking forward to reading any other ideas/thoughts people from the community have about the forums.

JosephSerpis
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Hi All I thought add my feedback I agree with @T_Willins point that it does seem recently there is the occurrence of posting a similar solution sometime after a valid response is given. I don’t think this benefits the community overall.

 

I’ve also seen in some rare occurrences solution authors have provided solutions/workflows, to the practical questions from the Advanced Certification that people have posted on the community. I know these posts are removed but I hope that anyone who posted a solution, is also advised against this as well.

 

I also noticed that community members are being asked to justify or evaluate, other posts if they have not marked a solution author post as a marked solution. I think there is a balance here as sometimes it is appropriate to ask community members to mark as post as the solution, such as when they clearly say thank you and express gratitude for resolving their issue. However I don’t feel they should have to justify their choice as it’s up to their discretion.

 

Another point I would make is sometimes I see solution authors debate or critique over solutions that have been posted.  I can see the point that competition and discourse breeds better solutions. However I have had feedback that some users do find this off putting, when they first start answering posts on the community. Ultimately anyone who posts a reply is doing so out of their own time and I feel this should be celebrated and encouraged.

I think @TuvyL summed up my feelings regarding this conversation “ exhibit the behaviour you wish to see”.

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