Missing Links: The Hermeneutical Spiral

I'm currently reading my way through Grant Osborne's The Hermeneutical Spiral. Osborne uses inline references rather than footnotes to refer to citations, which presumably means that the references can't be automatically picked up when tagging the book. I've been rather disappointed to find that hardly any of the citations actually link to other works, even to things like NICNT/NICOT volumes, or Fee & Stuart's How to Read the Bible for All its Worth which is extensively referenced. In a work such as this, it is all the more important for the links to be set up. The following example illustrates what I mean.

"Douglas Moo has an excellent discussion on the applicability of this passage to current issues (1996:881–83)." - p321

This then requires me to take a trip to the (very extensive) Bibliography, find out which of Moo's works it is referring to, then open up his NICNT commentary on Romans, and find the relevant page. This is where the value-add of Logos tagging comes into its own, but is sadly missing in this volume. The Bibliography itself has not even been properly tagged, so if I go to the Moo volume referred to above in the Bibliography I can't even click on a link to what is a very common book in users' libraries, and a very commonly-cited work.

I know others have suggested it, but I do wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea for Faithlife to set up some sort of crowdsourcing arrangement where users could create links which could then be validated by someone at Faithlife. I doubt anyone will ever go back and retag this volume, which is a standard work on the topic and widely used in seminaries. This lack of tagging means that the Logos version isn't a lot more use to me than the Kindle equivalent.

EDIT: To be fair, I notice that the product page I linked to above doesn't talk about the powerful features built into Logos editions, so Faithlife isn't making any special claims for the volume. I had just assumed that, because it was a Logos, as opposed to a Vyrso, edition, that it would be fully tagged.

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Joseph Turner

As a Logos resource, it should actually be fully tagged. Sometimes there may not be tags to works that come out after this one was produced, and they will go in from time to time to add those tags. I would expect that this work is on the list, but I don't know why it hasn't been accomplished yet.

Everett Headley

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831075#Comment_831075

Greg,

If you search elsewhere in the forums, you will see that there are many other resources where stuff like this happens. The standard refrain is to log it as a typo and move on. Personally, I have yet to see many (any?) of my links that I have reported get fixed.

Sean

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831127#Comment_831127

Yes. Over the weekend I got a small (as in price), somewhat obscure book--turns out it's still a Libronix edition file. I've read over 100 pages so far, and except for Bible verses, nothing is linked. With bigger, better selling resources suffering from linking problems, I doubt that this particular one will ever receive attention.

The crowdsourcing idea has been brought up before. It may potentially have some role in amending this major problem FaithLife seems reluctant to fix, but as for me, I'd be reluctant to do work for free that I've already paid FL to do.

GregW

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831151#Comment_831151

The crowdsourcing idea has been brought up before. It may potentially have some role in amending this major problem FaithLife seems reluctant to fix, but as for me, I'd be reluctant to do work for free that I've already paid FL to do.

... but I'd be happy to do it in return for credit against resources.

I do normally report them as typos, but rarely does that seem to result in an update.

GregW

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831151#Comment_831151

The crowdsourcing idea has been brought up before. It may potentially have some role in amending this major problem FaithLife seems reluctant to fix, but as for me, I'd be reluctant to do work for free that I've already paid FL to do.

... but I'd be happy to do it in return for credit against resources.

I do normally report them as typos, but rarely does that seem to result in an update.

Sean

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831226#Comment_831226

... but I'd be happy to do it in return for credit against resources.

That I would do as well.

One problem with the crowdsourcing idea, though, is that most of the time when I encounter problems, it's not just a wrong link or two. It's all cites of a particular work in a book, or all cites of all works. For users to manually report or fix those would take an enormous amount of time. Faithlife must surely have tools to automate, or at least speed up, the process. Those tools would have to be released in some form to keep it from being an exercise in utter frustration. I don't know if that would ever happen.

Kyle G. Anderson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831238#Comment_831238

Coincidentally this resource was recently approved to be updated. The update should be available late Fall.

I should also mention this resource was originally produced in 2006. In cases like this, most of the potential links simply weren't available to us at the time.

Everett Headley

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831249#Comment_831249

Glad to hear it Kyle. Are there others that are scheduled or a place to see what others are in the pipeline?

James Taylor

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831249#Comment_831249

this resource was recently approved to be updated. The update should be available late Fall.

When you say update, do you mean a free update to those who have it already. Or a new edition, that would have to be purchased (like several other Logos resources that are considered different resources)?

Richard Villanueva

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831249#Comment_831249

Coincidentally this resource was recently approved to be updated. The update should be available late Fall.

Interesting - so then I would assume that the typos we report are gathered until specific titles/series are approved for update, then the typos logged over time are then corrected en masse? Is this the process, as opposed to making typo corrections as they are reported?

Kyle G. Anderson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831268#Comment_831268

this resource was recently approved to be updated. The update should be available late Fall.

When you say update, do you mean a free update to those who have it already. Or a new edition, that would have to be purchased (like several other Logos resources that are considered different resources)?

Update to the existing resource. This will primarily involve 1) correcting typos and 2) providing links to resources that did not exist in our eco-system in 2006.

James Taylor

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831275#Comment_831275

Thanks Kyle

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831274#Comment_831274

Interesting - so then I would assume that the typos we report are gathered until specific titles/series are approved for update, then the typos logged over time are then corrected en masse? Is this the process, as opposed to making typo corrections as they are reported?

FL will have to give you an "official" answer, but for clarification:

There are different kinds of "typos." If a "typo" is in the original, it will stay until corrected by the publisher. Broken links (a part of the software / "value added") may be corrected here and there, or "all at once."

GregW

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831275#Comment_831275

Thank you Kyle - I'm glad to hear it. That will certainly enhance this volume greatly.

David Paul

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831275#Comment_831275

I suggested years ago that Logos SHOULD CREATE LINKS FOR ALL REFERENCES FOUND IN EVERY RESOURCE THAT IS IN THE LOGOS STABLE, INCLUDING THOSE POINTING TO RESOURCES THAT LOGOS DOES NOT CURRENTLY OFFER. The logic is pretty simple...if the resource isn't offered by Logos, it may be in the future, so creating the links in advance means that they will activate the day the product goes live. Given that I paid big money for this feature, as did many others, this should be POLICY...and since it isn't, IT SHOULD BE.

Sean

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831249#Comment_831249

I should also mention this resource was originally produced in 2006. In cases like this, most of the potential links simply weren't available to us at the time.

There are a few problems here:

Resource pages on logos.com simply list publication date; we don't know Faithlife's production date. A resource published in 2006 could have been produced by you in 2012 and thus perhaps have better linking.
Nothing on your website or in other marketing materials tells the user: "If we produced a resource before a certain date, the linking is likely to be terrible."
It shouldn't be the customer's burden, when contemplating a purchase, to figure all of that out anyway.

Despite Logos books being described as "high quality electronic books," when we buy one, it is a complete roll of the dice as to how good the links and tagging will be. As I posted earlier, I recently bought a book that has no links to anything other than the Bible--not even Augustine in Schaff's edition. It was cheap, I probably couldn't get it elsewhere, this isn't enough to make me want to return it, but it's always a disappointment when the roll turns out snake eyes.

Sean

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831345#Comment_831345

Like David Paul, I harp and will continue to harp on this issue because it is arguably the biggest defect in the Logos system as a whole. I recognize that fixing Logos's back catalog to bring it up to ideal standards would require an enormous amount of time, effort, and money and thus is, reasonably, unlikely to happen. This defect, however, must be addressed; the status quo isn't cutting it. Here are some suggestions:

Be transparent about the quality of a given resource: when I bought a $7 theology book from a small, somewhat obscure publisher, I was disappointed but not surprised that it lacked proper linking. I was not surprised because of a long history of disappointments; new customers will not yet have that wealth of experience. You should disclose in some way the quality issues on each individual resource page. If you're not comfortable with stating, "This resource's linking is terrible, and despite the Logos branding, is little different from a Vyrso edition"--well, then you need to do something about it.
Be transparent about what is going to be done about this problem: it is good that The Hermeneutical Spiral is in the queue for upgrading. It's a widely used resource and probably sells fairly well. What else is in the queue? You probably wouldn't want to disclose that, but we also deserve the courtesy of being informed, "Stopping reporting this one. It's not going to be revisited."
Come up with some work-arounds for the problem. a) Crowdsourcing has been repeatedly suggested, but it should not be launched without some user tools and some form of compensation, like credit, no matter how minor. b) Automate some of your revision process. For example, Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics has a very regular citation format that many authors use. It should be feasible to come up with a way of searching a resource for all references to it and then, after a human gives the list a quick lookover, creating the links almost completely automatically. c) Develop a tool, perhaps for Logos 7 or 8, where clicking on an unlinked citation starts a fuzzy search of the library to try to find it. There have been a few times when I have highlighted & copied a reference, typed "open" then pasted the reference into the command box, hit enter, and it's gone to the correct place in the correct resource. Find some way of automating this for us.

I acknowledge that some effort has been put into improving this situation, but quite a bit more still needs to be done.

Kyle G. Anderson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831345#Comment_831345

I should also mention this resource was originally produced in 2006. In cases like this, most of the potential links simply weren't available to us at the time.

Resource pages on logos.com simply list publication date; we don't know Faithlife's production date. A resource published in 2006 could have been produced by you in 2012 and thus perhaps have better linking.

Good idea. I had the the same one.

I created a spec yesterday that would update a product page on logos.com for a resource to include its Electronic Publication Date. The Electronic Publication Date would reflect the date or original publication by Logos.

We would update the Electronic Publication Date if a resource undergoes a full update. In this case The Hermenuetical Spiral's Electronic Publication Date would change from 2006 to 2016 upon publication.

GregW

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831449#Comment_831449

I created a spec yesterday that would update a product page on logos.com for a resource to include its Electronic Publication Date. The Electronic Publication Date would reflect the date or original publication by Logos.

We would update the Electronic Publication Date if a resource undergoes a full update. In this case The Hermenuetical Spiral's Electronic Publication Date would change from 2006 to 2016 upon publication.

[Y]

David Paul

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831449#Comment_831449

I created a spec yesterday that would update a product page on logos.com for a resource to include its Electronic Publication Date.

A Band-Aid on a massive hemorrhage (actually tantamount to a capitulation and admission that the issue isn't going away), but better than nothing. I understand that QC is probably a sticking point in the "crowd sourcing" solution. Having one or two people on this full-time would make a significant dent, especially with regard to highly-quoted works (i.e. Talmuudh). I would be willing to do it if Logos would hire me--I have enough original language knowledge to recognize errors in text. The backlog of typos and bad links must be MASSIVE. The sooner the better. My phone is in my pocket.

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831675#Comment_831675

with regard to highly-quoted works (i.e. Talmuudh). I would be willing to do it if Logos would hire me-

Nah. No one would recognize your esoteric transliterations. [:P] [;)]

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831449#Comment_831449

I created a spec yesterday that would update a product page on logos.com for a resource to include its Electronic Publication Date. The Electronic Publication Date would reflect the date or original publication by Logos.

We would update the Electronic Publication Date if a resource undergoes a full update. In this case The Hermenuetical Spiral's Electronic Publication Date would change from 2006 to 2016 upon publication.

That is a great idea!

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/831781#Comment_831781

It looks like the updated version of this downloaded today!

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/856152#Comment_856152

It looks like the updated version of this downloaded today!

I noticed that too. [Y]