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I have found myself providing quite fewer answers to Marketing Cloud questions compared to 3-4 months ago. I initially blamed it on my own laziness, but on the other hand, when going though the tagged questions, I have spotted the questions to be posted with quite lower frequency than earlier. This applies specifically to good questions from established users, where providing a valuable answer is potentially rewarded with some upvotes. This obviously has some impact on the reputation growth, which can be seen on the reputation league page.

An interesting fact, when looking at that page, is seeing not only me, but also Gortonington and Adam take an even bigger drop in their yearly reputation rank.

Do we have some stats, which might confirm whether Marketing Cloud tag indeed is seeing less good questions per week? Or does anyone else have good theories on this downwards trend in reputations?

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  • There has been a great decrease, and I think the majority are more along the lines of Integration, Implementation or other very niche knowledge needs. The majority of good solid development questions have disappeared from what used to be an every day thing.
    – Gortonington
    May 20, 2021 at 15:01
  • Just from my point of view: I tend to ask less questions and also answer less questions. I ask less because i tend to try to solve them on my own (since i edeveloped a basic understanding from the MC with the help of Lukas, Adam, Gortononigton etc) and answer less because it became a race who can answer simple ampscript questions or similar. That's why my reputation stagnated i guess. I just don't like to ask people for help very fast.
    – Johannes Schapdick
    Jun 4, 2021 at 6:14

1 Answer 1

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All of that data is available for query in the Data Explorer.

Here's a query I found, forked and updated for SFMC.

Questions counts appear to be declining since mid-2019. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Questions by Tag Over Time

It's anecdotal, but I think questions have decreased due to the rise in SFMC developer groups and blogs.

Right or wrong, I think SFSE has gotten the reputation of being cold and developer-centric for casual question-askers. Which we all know that SFMC is always walking a fine line between "clicks, not code" and 100% technical solutions.

EDIT: Also, folks that ask questions and never accept reduce the quality and visibility of good content. I try not to look at the Unsung Heros data too often, but it is a little demoralizing for question-answerers.

EDIT 20221024: Refreshed the chart data.

EDIT 20230503: Refreshed the chart data.

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  • I think your assessment is 100%. I have heard a lot of people say they would rather go to other places for their questions because its very hit or miss on SFSE. They either get great help right away, or get no response or told they are not asking the question right (which I would say on the majority, they likely were).
    – Gortonington
    May 20, 2021 at 15:00
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    I wish it wasn't that way, tbh. Community groups (Slack, FB, etc.) do not make sources for reference. Say what you want about the friendliness of SFSE, you can't beat it for finding specifics.
    – Adam Spriggs
    May 20, 2021 at 19:51
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    I agree, that sometimes I might be too trigger happy on the close button, on posts from new members. Especially where absolutely no research has been done beforehand. One might argue, if keeping those posts would: a: benefit the community by extending the reference, b: result in these new members in improving over time and eventually contributing with more valuable content (preferably both Qs and As)
    – Lukas Lunow
    May 20, 2021 at 20:09
  • I really don't see that much should change in general of our behavior - maybe more just around being less black and white and more informative then definitive. What I think is that we are currently in a 'low' part of a curve. There seems to be continual ebbs and flows on quality/quantity of questions on SFSE and I am sure at some point we will start moving upwards again.
    – Gortonington
    May 20, 2021 at 20:34
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    For my part, I ignore MC questions, because I'm not a SME for MC. Maybe we just don't have enough MC-specific users here to help.
    – sfdcfox
    May 20, 2021 at 22:41

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