Göttingen Septuagint "Shipping Date" ... Changed Again
Perhaps less time should be spent in the forum debating at length whether or not Logos is theologically biased, and more time spent complaining about Logos' annoying tendency to toy with product shipping dates.
Take the indispensable Göttingen Septuagint. It has been pre-pub for over a year, and was scheduled for downloading Nov. 8. Hallelujah! But a few days ago the date was moved up to Nov. 18. On Nov. 17 will it be changed again, after somebody in Logos apparently pushes an arbitrary "add ten days to the shipping date" button? Please stop doing this. Why not set a shipping date, meet it, or not set a date at all, estimated or otherwise? Is this too much to ask for?
Comments
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It's a balancing act. We've experimented with never putting out release dates until projects were basically done, and we got a lot of complaints from people about the lack of warning time to make sure they are ready for the charges to be processed. On the other hand, when we predict out too far, the accuracy of the predictions takes a hit. We could finish projects, then announce a date a month out, but that defeats the purpose of the prepub program a bit, since it adds a delay to recovering the cost of keying/processing these texts and would slow down our ability to process more books (and it doesn't serve the needs of folk who'd prefer to get their books right when they are ready).
In the case of the Göttingen Septuagint, it needed a new Bible data type, as it isn't organized/versified quite like any other Bible you've ever seen. The data type has to ship with Logos 4.2, and so the release date for the Göttingen Septuagint is in part dependent on the release date of 4.2. That may not be the only thing going on - it's a massive project. But it puts a hard limit on how soon we can ship. Though from an insider's perspective, putting a ship date on this particular project lit a fire under it, so even though it won't be going out on Nov. 8 like we hoped, it was a force for good that we set a deadline and tried to reach it. Not that this is much of a consolation. In any event, sorry for the frustration on this one and the Anchor-Yale books (I can't recall any other ship dates that have been moved recently, though you may be aware of others).
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Thanks, Vincent, for at least responding and giving some explanation for all these chronic delays. Yes, other books have been repeatedly delayed, the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha for one (new shipping date: Nov. 5).
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Right, that set is among the Anchor-Yale books I mentioned.tfjern said:the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha for one
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Thank you for your explanation about the cause of the delay to the Goettingen LXX.
Vincent Setterholm said:sorry for the frustration on this one and the Anchor-Yale books (I can't recall any other ship dates that have been moved recently, though you may be aware of others).
EGT was delayed several days,and delay not announced till at least next day. I think at least 3 prepubs I had ordered this month arrived late. The page doesn't always tell us the shipping date has been delayed.
Explanations and warnings of delays, particularly to big projects like Anchor Yale and EGT, would do much to reduce at least my frustration. I would then feel people at Logos know and care about our frustration. I never received a reply to my email to CS over a week ago. You invite us to contact CS if we feel unable to give unqualified recommendations to Logos service. I did, and just got an automated email to say my letter had been received. This is the only time CS has failed to contact me quickly, apart from once when the person I had mailed had gone to Haiti during the emergency. She apologised when she returned, tho in those circumstances I didn't feel an apology was necessary.
I feel maybe Logos would have done better to put more time and energy into trying to get prepubs ready in time, or at least warning us when they couldn't do it, and less into getting the (IMHO very unsatisfactory) new website out before it was ready. I realise that maybe the people working on the website are not those working on the prepubs.
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