Is it really the Encyclopedia Britannica as we might of thought?
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Ted Weis said:Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
Here are your options:
- If you're happy to have access to Compton's now and wait for Encyclopedia Britannica to be delivered later this year or early next year, you don't need to do anything. Enjoy access to Compton's now and wait patiently as we build Encyclopedia Britannica. You're paid in full and won't be charged for anything else.
- If you'd like to wait to pay until the full product is finished, you can return the product and place a pre-order for the new one. You'll get both encyclopedias when they're finished and won't be charged until then. We'll honor the Pre-Pub price you had when you pre-ordered the original product.
- If you'd like a refund, we'd be happy take care of that for you.
I'm considering the second option. How would I proceed? I'm looking at my order under my profile and don't see any way to electronically undo the purchase. Do I need to call or send an email to a sales rep?
You would need to call our customer service team at 800-875-6467. They'd be happy to help you with this.
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Bruce Roth said:
Phil,
I would like to thank Faithlife for its diligence and quick turn around in addressing this issue that was brought up with regards to the Britannica. It was great to see a solution and communication within 24 hours. I for one will hang onto the resource and eagerly await the next release of the more robust EB.
A suggestion that maybe could mitigate some of this in the future might be to bring in beta testers to look at major resources like this and get their feedback. I would think that there were a subset of beta testers that signed up for the pre-pub deal and their eyes might of caught some of the concerns prior to the release to everyone.
Keep up the good work.
This is a good idea. I'll discuss it with the team. Thanks!
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David Bailey said:Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:Mark Barnes said:
There may be some number of people who pre-ordered at $99 before the prepub price went up to $199, but have since asked for a refund. If the next pre-pub price is going to be more than $99 you may want to add some provision so that they can still get the new bundle for $99.
We will honor the original Pre-Pub price for those who have canceled already.
So those who cancelled the original pre-pub prior to it going into production can purchase the new pre-pub for $99? If this is correct, I would place my order for the new pre-pub. Thanks.
You'd be able to pre-order the new Pre-Pub for whatever price you pre-ordered the first Pre-Pub.
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I've updated my original post with additional information, so I can send people to one post instead of asking them to read the following pages of discussion.
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
There's likely a middle category where we can strategically include some articles that are key for our audience.
Personally, for my studies, I would find most value in articles based around middle-eastern/Graeco-Roman geography and history, and other religions. I'd expect content outside of that, of course, but if you had to make a choice between choosing an article on "Celiac Disease" or Caligula, I'd much rather you chose the latter.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:Greg Masone said:
how about getting The Great Books of the Western World and The Great Ideas Today sets in Noet?
Keep an eye on Pre-Pub.
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
The largest articles are off limits. They're happy for us to choose from all the articles under the certain word limit.
I wonder if that means we'll get the Micropædia but not the Macropædia? If that's the case, it would be a very good idea to make that clear from the outset, and perhaps ensure the product name reflects that. (Although I'd be disappointed not to get any Macropaedia articles.)
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Well it is a bit of a disappointing turn knowing this is not a true partnership with Brittanica to bring us the full encyclopedia but I am sure Faithlfe will do what it can to give us the most useful resource it can. That said we were promised not 80,000 plus articles but 19,000. For those who did a little research would have realized it was not going to be full edition. Since we are told Brittanica will not allow some of the largest articles to be included we will just have to trust Faithlife will do its best to get all articles it can to make sure the articles related to religious and humanities can be included.
-Dan
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Dan Francis said:
we were promised not 80,000 plus articles but 19,000. For those who did a little research would have realized it was not going to be full edition
Good reminder Dan
Dan Francis said:Since we are told Brittanica will not allow some of the largest articles to be included we will just have to trust Faithlife will do its best to get all articles it can to make sure the articles related to religious and humanities can be included.
My hopes are up that after the dust settles, though it's not the full Britannica database, it will carefully selected based on what's allowed to be included, and what's likely to be most useful for us in our studies. And as Phil pointed out, Comptons will at least give shorter discussions on some of the disallowed longer articles.
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
We've discussed this internally and with the Encyclopaedia Britannica team, and we figured out what happened and have a good plan in place for how to make it right.
What Happened
Encyclopaedia Britannica (the company) has three different encyclopedia databases:
- Encyclopedia Britannica: contains ~80,000 articles and has over 40,000,000 words; aimed at the scholarly market
- Compton's Encyclopedia: contains ~19,000 articles and has over 8,000,000 words; aimed at the family market
- Encyclopedia Britannica, Student Edition: contains ~5,000 articles and has ~2,000,000 words; aimed at the student market
What we received from Encyclopaedia Britannica and delivered to you was #2.
All three of these are considered part of the Encyclopaedia Britannica family of encyclopedias. Compton's has been updated and expanded by the Encyclopaedia Britannica team beyond the edition that used to be in print, so there was a desire on the part of some to distance our product from the Compton's most people are familiar with. Ours is bigger, better, and more up to date.
(There's also a concise edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, 24,973 short articles and ~2,800,000 words, which they no longer sell.)
Encyclopaedia Britannica (the company) has several different encyclopedia products, which contain one or more of their three databases:
- Britannica.com: includes a subset of the main Encyclopedia Britannica database. They rotate which articles appear online from time to time.
- Britannica Kids: includes the full database of both Compton's and the Student Edition.
- Britannica School: has the full database for all three products.
- Britannica Academic: has the full Encyclopedia Britannica database.
They also license their various databases to third parties; these databases show up in products of various names. So its normal for these databases to be delivered under different names.
There was some confusion between our teams regarding what exactly we were getting. Some thought we were simply getting a portion of the full Encyclopedia Britannica rather than a completely distinct set of content. We're really sorry for this confusion and miscommunication. This should have been named and advertised as Compton's Encyclopedia, or at the very least described as an updated version of what used to be called Compton's Encyclopedia.
What We're Going to Do
Here's what we plan to do.
Encyclopaedia Britannica (the company) has kindly agreed to give us access to a large portion (exact amount TBD) of their full Encyclopedia Britannica database, with the corresponding media. We plan to build that out as a completely separate resource and bundle it in a collection along with the full Compton's Encyclopedia, which you already received. So you'll get both, for the price you already paid. (We're going to rename the current resource Compton's Encyclopedia. The new resource will be named Encyclopedia Britannica.) Consider Compton's a bonus, "we're sorry" gift. We're also going to deliver substantially more content that we originally described. We already delivered the full Compton's with its ~19,000 articles. We're going to deliver on top of that a substantial portion of the full Encyclopedia Britannica database of articles and corresponding media—at no additional charge to you.
We'll be putting the product back on Pre-Pub to give everyone who missed out the first time a second chance to take advantage of what's now an even better deal. We'll ship it as soon as we've built Encyclopedia Britannica. We're going to give it top priority and push it through the system as quickly as we can. It's a large amount of content, so it's going to take several weeks at minimum. Those of you who got in on the first pre-order (and don't request a refund) can simply ignore the new Pre-Pub.
What You Can Do
Since the product is changing and expanding and you've already been billed, we want to make sure you're 100% happy.
Here are your options:
- Keep Compton's and wait for Encyclopedia Britannica. If you're happy to have access to Compton's now and wait for Encyclopedia Britannica to be delivered later this year or early next year, you don't need to do anything. Enjoy access to Compton's now and wait patiently as we build Encyclopedia Britannica. You're paid in full and won't be charged for anything else.
- Return Compton's and pre-order the new Pre-Pub. If you'd like to wait to pay until the full product is finished, you can return the product and place a pre-order for the new one. You'll get both encyclopedias when they're finished and won't be charged until then. We'll honor the Pre-Pub price you had when you pre-ordered the original product. To take advantage of this, just call us at 800-875-6467 or send an email to cs@logos.com.
- Request a refund. If you'd like a refund, we'd be happy take care of that for you. The 30-day return window won't start until we've delivered the full product, so feel free to take the full time to evaluate whether the product is right for you.
On behalf of the team, please accept our sincerest apologies. We're really sorry for this mix-up and confusion, and we're eager to make it right.
I am a big fan of Logos. I am still troubled by the borderline deceptive marketing, even after reading the apology from Phil Gon. (I hope you are not wearing of the 'I can get it cheaper...Logos is greedy" argument).You see...the acquisition/copyright team knew what they were getting from Britannica. They have to! They always read the fine prints when entering a legal contract. The acquisition team is not confused. Their job is to (1) negotiate, (2) draft the contract, (3) acquire copyrights.
Phil Gons admitted this, but he stated that "there was a desire on the part of some to distance our product from the Compton's most people are familiar with". And of course that desire was conceived and gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death (James 1:15).
I am upset by this borderline deceptive marketing move. I am upset that others like the uninformed customers, not the forum regs, were misled. Logos is a great company. But I am not sure about some within the organization. I speculate that others from Logos probably knew about this borderline deceptive move, but were reluctant to comment. Yes, you will always find that dynamic in a big company (marketing vs R&D). I hope the good guys win. I am rooting for you. Thank you Phil.
Lastly, let us thank God for the file-naming team from the silo of India? That team never got the desire nor the memo to distance the filename from COMPTONSENCY.logos4...[:|]
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
What Happened
Encyclopaedia Britannica (the company) has three different encyclopedia databases:
- Encyclopedia Britannica: contains ~80,000 articles and has over 40,000,000 words; aimed at the scholarly market
- Compton's Encyclopedia: contains ~19,000 articles and has over 8,000,000 words; aimed at the family market
- Encyclopedia Britannica, Student Edition: contains ~5,000 articles and has ~2,000,000 words; aimed at the student market
What we received from Encyclopaedia Britannica and delivered to you was #2.
Even with this explanation something seems odd.
On your product webpage, it says that there should be:
- more than 20,000 photos
- over 2,000 art images
- 1,567 maps
- 279 flags
- 689 videos
- (EBNE) includes more than 25,000 images
But a search of what i received as EBNE shows: (search done with the Logos6 Search tool using Media search)
- 682 Photos
- 750 Maps
- 249 Videos
- All images combined = 2,234 (search for All images in EBNE)
It should have been obvious something was wrong during the creation of the EBNE when there was such a vast difference in the number of image which were built into EBNE (you actually added only 2,234 images out of 25,000 images). Even with your company's silo structure, the builders would have noticed the discrepancy in the image count.
So i am still puzzled on what really happened at FL when this product was built and released. i cannot imagine someone at FL didn't notice the vast differences in images before the release. (some 22,000+ images missing)
Edit:
i am also disappointed at the resolution of images that came with EBNE. They are really low resolution images (see example below) and many are blurry and unreadable. Even when printing these images they are still low resolution. i was hoping that the images would be a higher resolution so that they may be viewed in Factbook or at least printed and viewed at full (higher) resolution.
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Steve,
That presupposes that the team that built the product actually read the marketing information. I don't think that happened in this case.
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steve clark said:Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
What Happened
Encyclopaedia Britannica (the company) has three different encyclopedia databases:
- Encyclopedia Britannica: contains ~80,000 articles and has over 40,000,000 words; aimed at the scholarly market
- Compton's Encyclopedia: contains ~19,000 articles and has over 8,000,000 words; aimed at the family market
- Encyclopedia Britannica, Student Edition: contains ~5,000 articles and has ~2,000,000 words; aimed at the student market
What we received from Encyclopaedia Britannica and delivered to you was #2.
It should have been obvious something was wrong during the creation of the EBNE when there was such a vast difference in the number of image which were built into EBNE (you actually added only 2,234 images out of 25,000 images). Even with your company's silo structure, the builders would have noticed the discrepancy in the image count.
Indeed. This resource can perhaps serve as a case study for FL internal evaluation of the marketing and build processes. Potential users need more (and more accurate) pre-shipment information than we had in this case, and Faithlife needs to exercise more oversight and quality control pre-release than exercised in this case. The shipped Compton's (with its relative lack of tagging, even TOC items) was essentially a Vryso ebook; this was certainly not the original intention. We're with you, FL - but please do not settle for incomplete development of the features that make these resources useful!
Grace and peace. <><
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Bobby Terhune said:
That presupposes that the team that built the product actually read the marketing information. I don't think that happened in this case.
No one builds a product without details on what they are building (i.e. plan). They may have done the articles & text without noticing the difference, but to have such a vast difference in images would have popped up quickly. The builders have to handle & tag images in the product.
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It looks to me there is a disconnect between product acquisition and product development. There is no way Faithlife would think they could "get away with" passing off a children's encyclopedia for an adult one. I think the worker bees just did the grunt work without stopping to count the number of articles, maps, videos and such.steve clark said:It should have been obvious something was wrong during the creation of the EBNE when there was such a vast difference in the number of image which were built into EBNE (you actually added only 2,234 images out of 25,000 images). Even with your company's silo structure, the builders would have noticed the discrepancy in the image count.
So i am still puzzled on what really happened at FL when this product was built and released. i cannot imagine someone at FL didn't notice the vast differences in images before the release.
Communication breakdowns are common in large companies. I can see how this snafu was a result of Faithlife's rapid growth. I think it will serve as a learning experience. I am happy Faithlife is responding pro-actively with a generous solution.
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Super.Tramp said:
It looks to me there is a disconnect between product acquisition and product development. There is no way Faithlife would think they could "get away with" passing off a children's encyclopedia for an adult one. I think the worker bees just did the grunt work without stopping to count the number of articles, maps, videos and such.
Communication breakdowns are common in large companies. I can see how this snafu was a result of Faithlife's rapid growth. I think it will serve as a learning experience. I am happy Faithlife is responding pro-actively with a generous solution.
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I am kicking myself (now) for canceling my order.
Going to email Rusty, hopefully he can re-institute that for me.L2 lvl4 (...) WORDsearch, all the way through L10,
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I am a big fan of Logos. I am still troubled by the borderline deceptive marketing, even after reading the apology from Phil Gon. (I hope you are not wearing of the 'I can get it cheaper...Logos is greedy" argument).SEOWiz said:Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
Encyclopaedia Britannica (the company) has three different encyclopedia databases:
- Encyclopedia Britannica: contains ~80,000 articles and has over 40,000,000 words; aimed at the scholarly market
- Compton's Encyclopedia: contains ~19,000 articles and has over 8,000,000 words; aimed at the family market
- Encyclopedia Britannica, Student Edition: contains ~5,000 articles and has ~2,000,000 words; aimed at the student market
What we received from Encyclopaedia Britannica and delivered to you was #2.
All three of these are considered part of the Encyclopaedia Britannica family of encyclopedias. Compton's has been updated and expanded by the Encyclopaedia Britannica team beyond the edition that used to be in print, so there was a desire on the part of some to distance our product from the Compton's most people are familiar with. Ours is bigger, better, and more up to date.
You see...the acquisition/copyright team knew what they were getting from Britannica. They have to! They always read the fine prints when entering a legal contract. The acquisition team is not confused. Their job is to (1) negotiate, (2) draft the contract, (3) acquire copyrights.
Phil Gons admitted this, but he stated that "there was a desire on the part of some to distance our product from the Compton's most people are familiar with". And of course that desire was conceived and gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death (James 1:15).
I am upset by this borderline deceptive marketing move. I am upset that others like the uninformed customers, not the forum regs, were misled. Logos is a great company. But I am not sure about some within the organization. I speculate that others from Logos probably knew about this borderline deceptive move, but were reluctant to comment. Yes, you will always find that dynamic in a big company (marketing vs R&D). I hope the good guys win. I am rooting for you. Thank you Phil.
Lastly, let us thank God for the file-naming team from the silo of India? That team never got the desire nor the memo to distance the filename from COMPTONSENCY.logos4...
I see no deception here... Since Compton's is own now by Brittanica. It has been updated and published as part of Brittanica Kids. A good example is Understanding the Bible commentary series. This series underwent two name changes. When UTBC changed it's name from New International Biblical Commentary there were no changes but the name and publisher, however when it's name was changed to NIBC from the Good News Commentary there was a significant number of changes. One might say Baker books was trying to be deceptive (more likely than not the taking over of the project by them may have demanded the name change to distance itself from the Hendrickson edition). When the GNC was taken over from Harper and Row, there was a significant amount of changes that demanded a new title even though possibly over 90% of the work was identical. My point is Brittanica is likely the ones with the "desire on the part of some to distance our product from the Compton's most people are familiar with". Like Hendrickson in the example above no longer wanted a work once known as GNC to be be called NIBC because they had acquired it and updated it. If it was a Faithlife decision perhaps then deception might be a fair charge, but if you are a cook and given hamburger and told it is for the steak meal, the best you can do is make salisbury steak. If FL received files files from Brittanica for a product labeled Brittanica they had to do what they had to do. Now it is very true someone at Faithlife dropped the ball in negotiations (this may have even been some fast moves on Brittanica's part, I do not know). Needless to say this was a horrible blunder that Faithlife seems to be doing their best to make right, and who knows they may even end up a secondary product out of it, although I am not 100% sure of the desire for a children's encyclopedia in academic software.
-Dan
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It is no surprise to me that FL is going the extra mile to satisfy its customers with the newly announced EBNE!
This has been a trademark of their high integrity.But i have some very real concerns going into this endeavor.
The product that we have already received was sub-standard in more ways than was caught by the users and Not mentioned in their announcement:
- Images & videos were vastly missing
(more than 22,000 images were missing, plus only about 1/3 of the videos were present)
- the quality of the images was very sub-standard for a FL book
The images are a very low resolution!
- the way images in the book (EBNE) are handled when viewing the book at different window sizes (see example below)
They are NOT dynamically sized when the resource pane changes sizes.
For instance when viewing images in the ESV Study Bible (ESVSB) the images are dynamically sized when the book pane is sized (see images below and notice the size of the ESVSB's image changing for the resource pane size. you can click on an image below to have your browser show you the image full size). The images in the EBNE don't behave in the same way (they are VERY low resolution images and as such are set at a fixed small size in the EBNE).
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:We're going to give it top priority and push it through the system as quickly as we can. It's a large amount of content, so it's going to take several weeks at minimum.
With this quick push to create a new version (in addition to the one we have), i am concerned that these other problems will Not be addressed. An encyclopedia without good quality images is of little use to me.
Plus i was very surprised that Bob did not comment on this thread. i see him as a man of high integrity and he usually posts when a huge error has occurred.
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steve clark said:
Plus i was very surprised that Bob did not comment on this thread. i see him as a man of high integrity and he usually posts when a huge error has occurred.
I am not sure what else Bob could have added to the conversation that Phil has not addressed. It seems to me this has been handled quickly and in a professional manner that we have come to expect from Faithlife. With a free bonus Encyclopedia I am happy. As Phil has indicated lessons will be learnt.
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The remedies described sound reasonable to me. But when the new pre-publication is listed, would you please specifically compare / contrast what is being offered with the version still being offered on community pricing at https://www.logos.com/product/33266/encyclopedia-britannica. I was told when the Noet edition was first offered that it was the same as that on community pricing but I am not sure that this is the case. Thanks.
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SEOWiz said:
You see...the acquisition/copyright team knew what they were getting from Britannica. They have to! They always read the fine prints when entering a legal contract. The acquisition team is not confused. Their job is to (1) negotiate, (2) draft the contract, (3) acquire copyrights.
This seems like a reasonable explanation, but it's simply not an accurate representation of what happened. We knew we were getting the mid-level database, but what wasn't clear was how this database related to the large one. I know it's difficult to understand from the outside, but I assure you that real confusion did exist. As I indicated already, the siloing and communication breakdown between departments was also a factor.
SEOWiz said:Phil Gons admitted this, but he stated that "there was a desire on the part of some to distance our product from the Compton's most people are familiar with". And of course that desire was conceived and gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death (James 1:15).
I am upset by this borderline deceptive marketing move. I am upset that others like the uninformed customers, not the forum regs, were misled. Logos is a great company. But I am not sure about some within the organization. I speculate that others from Logos probably knew about this borderline deceptive move, but were reluctant to comment. Yes, you will always find that dynamic in a big company (marketing vs R&D). I hope the good guys win. I am rooting for you. Thank you Phil.
I don't think this is accurate or fair. You're reading between the lines in ways I didn't intend. I was trying to be sufficiently vague so as not to throw anyone under the bus. EB doesn't really use the Compton's name anymore. They rightfully don't want people associating the updated and expanded encyclopedia with the one that used to be in print. It's a bigger and better work, and it was acquired by EB to be part of their family of encyclopedias. Best I can tell, no one was motivated by a sinful desire to deceive or present things in a better light than was actually true. It was genuine misunderstanding.
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
It was genuine misunderstanding.
And as we've all misunderstood others and been misunderstood by others, we should all be able to find it in our hearts to forgive as we've been forgiven :-)
Thanks again for all your hard work on this Phil!
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Sorry for the speculation. Grateful for the clarification! Thank you for your work!Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:SEOWiz said:You see...the acquisition/copyright team knew what they were getting from Britannica. They have to! They always read the fine prints when entering a legal contract. The acquisition team is not confused. Their job is to (1) negotiate, (2) draft the contract, (3) acquire copyrights.
This seems like a reasonable explanation, but it's simply not an accurate representation of what happened. We knew we were getting the mid-level database, but what wasn't clear was how this database related to the large one. I know it's difficult to understand from the outside, but I assure you that real confusion did exist. As I indicated already, the siloing and communication breakdown between departments was also a factor.
SEOWiz said:Phil Gons admitted this, but he stated that "there was a desire on the part of some to distance our product from the Compton's most people are familiar with". And of course that desire was conceived and gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death (James 1:15).
I am upset by this borderline deceptive marketing move. I am upset that others like the uninformed customers, not the forum regs, were misled. Logos is a great company. But I am not sure about some within the organization. I speculate that others from Logos probably knew about this borderline deceptive move, but were reluctant to comment. Yes, you will always find that dynamic in a big company (marketing vs R&D). I hope the good guys win. I am rooting for you. Thank you Phil.
I don't think this is accurate or fair. You're reading between the lines in ways I didn't intend. I was trying to be sufficiently vague so as not to throw anyone under the bus. EB doesn't really use the Compton's name anymore. They rightfully don't want people associating the updated and expanded encyclopedia with the one that used to be in print. It's a bigger and better work, and it was acquired by EB to be part of their family of encyclopedias. Best I can tell, no one was motivated by a sinful desire to deceive or present things in a better light than was actually true. It was genuine misunderstanding.
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steve clark said:
Plus i was very surprised that Bob did not comment on this thread. i see him as a man of high integrity and he usually posts when a huge error has occurred.
I learned about the concerns just as I was heading into a meeting where our team discussed a plan to 1) find out what happened, and 2) get back to you with good answers. By the time I got out of meetings (I have too many -- part of growing as large as we have!) I saw that Phil and others were already addressing the issue well, and I decided it was a great success in delegation. :-)
And I think it demonstrated that we all share the same desire to do the right thing, to take care of our customers, and to respond quickly. It's a good thing that I don't have to jump in on every issue... but I'm always available if you want me to. (bob@faithlife.com.)
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Is there a link to the new pre pub?
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Bob Pritchett said:
we all share the same desire to do the right thing, to take care of our customers, and to respond quickly. It's a good thing that I don't have to jump in on every issue... but I'm always available if you want me to
Excellence in leadership :-)
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James Taylor said:Bob Pritchett said:
we all share the same desire to do the right thing, to take care of our customers, and to respond quickly. It's a good thing that I don't have to jump in on every issue... but I'm always available if you want me to
Excellence in leadership :-)
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James Taylor said:
Excellence in leadership :-)
Really? I was expecting something somewhat more apologetic than self-congratulatory.
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Greg F said:
expecting something somewhat more apologetic
He mentioned that his team had handled it appropriately, which included an apology and a very generous contribution towards making it right.
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James Taylor said:
a very generous contribution towards making it right.
which I'm sure Phil had to clear with the boss, if it wasn't the bosses initiative in the first place to offer the new edition for no extra charge.
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Dale Cunningham said:
But when the new pre-publication is listed, would you please specifically compare / contrast what is being offered with the version still being offered on community pricing at https://www.logos.com/product/33266/encyclopedia-britannica. I was told when the Noet edition was first offered that it was the same as that on community pricing but I am not sure that this is the case.
You are confusing two pre-pubs. The one you link to is an OLD resource. Notice the date of 1910-1922. The NOET EDITION was always a NEW edition. Both were in pre-pub, but the Noet edition is the one being discussed in the numerous posts here and was released this week. It will go BACK into pre-pub based on the conversation in this thread.
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Let's remember what happened: Faithlife took several (tens of?) thousands of dollars from its customers for a children's encyclopedia dressed up as a major contribution to science and human learning. There may indeed have been internal miscommunication, but it was pretty clear to me be before the product shipped that we weren't being provided with all the necessary information, almost deliberately so. The discrepancy between what was being marketed and what was being sold was so glaring that the employees in charge of the product should have stopped the roll-out before this mess happened in the first place.
Since then there has indeed been a justification qua apology, with the promise to eventually provide us with the product we were expecting in the first place.
I would have hoped that this incident would lead the CEO to consider that there is a serious problem with FL's approach to how it markets its products in general, but this doesn't seem to be the case. More back slapping for Faithlife's "integrity" post factum isn't going to help either.
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Greg F said:
almost deliberately so
I will leave it to the leadership to decide where and by whom the real errors were made and trust that they will internally deal with it appropriately.
Greg F said:provide us with the product we were expecting in the first place.
As for what has now been promised to those who purchased, I feel it will overcompensate for the harm done. Now those of us with children will have access to an encyclopedia that the family can all use :-) As well as a more academic version for our own studies. And all this for $100. I'm satisfied. You call that back slapping, I call it gratitude.
Logos 10 | Dell Inspiron 7373 | Windows 11 Pro 64, i7, 16GB, SSD | iPhone 13 Pro Max
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Let's appreciate this by spending another $200-300 into Logos.
Logos worked hard for us. Let them know that their effort is never unappreciated.
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James Taylor said:
Excellence in leadership :-)
As I've followed this issue and the ensuring conversation, what started out as something that could have reasonably been regarded as FL's biggest snafu is really proving to be one of the best demonstrations of customer centered leadership I've seen.
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Bob Pritchett said:
I saw that Phil and others were already addressing the issue well, and I decided it was a great success in delegation. :-)
I, and I'm sure many others, shared this perception. I think better of the situation knowing that your team can act as needed, without the CEO micromanaging, yet it is always good to read from you.
"The Christian mind is the prerequisite of Christian thinking. And Christian thinking is the prerequisite of Christian action." - Harry Blamires, 1963
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Indeed - I'm sure you're already planning to sort for things that will benefit study of scripture vs things that wont, but its a good point.Mark Barnes said:if you had to make a choice between choosing an article on "Celiac Disease" or Caligula, I'd much rather you chose the latter.
I'd prefer Jewish culture circa 0 AD to "Johns Hopkins" or "Jon Kerry".L2 lvl4 (...) WORDsearch, all the way through L10,
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I couldn't agree more. It has shaken my confidence in FL.
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steve clark said:
Even with this explanation something seems odd.
On your product webpage, it says that there should be:
- more than 20,000 photos
- over 2,000 art images
- 1,567 maps
- 279 flags
- 689 videos
- (EBNE) includes more than 25,000 images
But a search of what i received as EBNE shows: (search done with the Logos6 Search tool using Media search)
- 682 Photos
- 750 Maps
- 249 Videos
- All images combined = 2,234 (search for All images in EBNE)
It should have been obvious something was wrong during the creation of the EBNE when there was such a vast difference in the number of image which were built into EBNE (you actually added only 2,234 images out of 25,000 images). Even with your company's silo structure, the builders would have noticed the discrepancy in the image count.
So i am still puzzled on what really happened at FL when this product was built and released. i cannot imagine someone at FL didn't notice the vast differences in images before the release. (some 22,000+ images missing)
The best I can tell from talking to their team and reading back through past email correspondence, someone from there team gave us the 25,000 number. Our team trusted that it was accurate and didn't verify it with the team that produced the product. What seems to have happened—and I'm speculating—is that this individual neglected to take into consideration that EB doesn't have sub-licensing rights on all their media and was able to include only the media owned by them. So we got 100% of the media that they can give us, but not 100% of the media they have. We'll do our best to include as much media as we can from Encyclopedia Britannica, along with the media we delivered with Compton's. We'll make sure the updated page has accurate counts of articles, media, etc. I'm sorry for this inaccuracy.
steve clark said:i am also disappointed at the resolution of images that came with EBNE. They are really low resolution images (see example below) and many are blurry and unreadable. Even when printing these images they are still low resolution. i was hoping that the images would be a higher resolution so that they may be viewed in Factbook or at least printed and viewed at full (higher) resolution.
We'll check to see if they have higher resolution images that we can use.
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Hi, I purchased and returned immediately. I have been a Logos customer for about 10 years and have spent tens of thousands of pounds on various products and schemes offered by Faithlife. I use Logos 6 everyday and for the most part enjoy. This smacks of a great lack of integrity on the part of Faithlife in wanting to obtain money, not just for old rope (again), but for a seriously flawed and sub standard product. To say miscommunication is a lie. What am I buying? How much for? are the two basic questions in any business. Please admit your scam and go a long way to repent and put it right. I am seriously considering whether to withdraw my custom and all my support of Logos and their products. Faithlife must set a higher standard as professed followers of Jesus. You have let your customer base down and up your game.
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I appreciate the frustration and anger you feel over this issue, but I think you need to be very careful about the use of words like "scam" and "lie". I agree that this is a major foul-up, but also see that FL is doing its level best to sort it out and do the right thing by its customers, within the constraints that the licensing arrangements with EB will allow it to.
My experience with FL over the years has consistently been that they try to do the right thing, and when there is a snafu like this, they generally try to put it right. Flinging unsubstantiated accusations of dishonesty does nothing constructive to resolve the situation, and certainly won't help those in FL like Phil who are trying to sort this out when they see their integrity being impugned on the forums. I am always disappointed on these forums by the way that some posters immediately jump to conclusions that assume the worst motives in FL.
Should it have happened? No. Is it bad? Yes. As someone who has managed at senior level in large organisations I know that things happen at times that you regret, knew nothing about, but then end up having to sort out. Please let Phil and Bob sort this out before thinking the worst of their motives. All the time they have to spend responding here (and getting disheartened by such comments on here) takes away from time spent sorting things out.
Running Logos 6 Platinum and Logos Now on Surface Pro 4, 8 GB RAM, 256GB SSD, i5
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David Walsh said:
Please admit your scam and go a long way to repent and put it right.
It sounds very much that you didn't bother to read the thread and see the official Logos response: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/117294/770418.aspx#770418
You've made some serious allegations that conflict significantly with what Faithlife have said since these problems came to light. I suggest you either back those allegations with evidence, you admit you are wrong and go a long way to repent and put your false allegations right.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Mark Barnes said:David Walsh said:
Please admit your scam and go a long way to repent and put it right.
It sounds very much that you didn't bother to read the thread and see the official Logos response: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/117294/770418.aspx#770418
You've made some serious allegations that conflict significantly with what Faithlife have said since these problems came to light. I suggest you either back those allegations with evidence, you admit you are wrong and go a long way to repent and put your false allegations right.
Agreed [Y]. This is one serious charge! I hope David takes the time to read the various responses from Faithlife on this thread.
David simply put - you are wrong!
Dell, studio XPS 7100, Ram 8GB, 64 - bit Operating System, AMD Phenom(mt) IIX6 1055T Processor 2.80 GHZ
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GregW said:
I appreciate the frustration and anger you feel over this issue, but I think you need to be very careful about the use of words like "scam" and "lie".
GregW said:Should it have happened? No. Is it bad? Yes.
GregW said:Flinging unsubstantiated accusations of dishonesty does nothing constructive to resolve the situation...
Exactly. Thanks GregW
"The Christian mind is the prerequisite of Christian thinking. And Christian thinking is the prerequisite of Christian action." - Harry Blamires, 1963
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I'm confused by the communication - I thought it was an old Britannica and let the deal pass me by. If I'd known that the Noet edition was different then I'd have bought in... The communication is critical!
גַּם־חֹשֶׁךְ֮ לֹֽא־יַחְשִׁ֪יךְ מִ֫מֶּ֥ךָ וְ֭לַיְלָה כַּיּ֣וֹם יָאִ֑יר כַּ֝חֲשֵׁיכָ֗ה כָּאוֹרָֽה
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Greg F said:
almost deliberately so
They have clearly said that this was not deliberate but was a mistake. Saying "deliberately" speaks to motive and I don't think any of us are able to properly assess that. Nor should we.
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
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