Feedback: "Quick Outline" and "Outlines" in Sermon Starter Guide

Quick Outline is currently showing in passage-based SSGs, but surely it's designed for topic-based SSGs (where it doesn't show). It's an excellent section though - even if it's unsuited to passage-based SSGs in my view.

If it is destined for passage-based SSGs, it needs to be renamed, and probably eventually merged with the Topics section.

The "Outlines" section, which also works is also very useful, although there's obviously lots of commentary sets that are missing at the moment.

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Comments

Sean Boisen

The plan is to show it both for theme input to the SSG (where it will match on titles) and for passage input (where it will match on references within the outline).

The intention for passage input is to provide sermon outlines that cover a given passage (typically, among others).

Many of these sections will continue to grow as we curate more content around our Preaching Themes (the bold-face items at the top of the drop-down list).

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404005#Comment_404005

From my perspective the theme/topic/article et.al. oriented base package resources and databases carry a great deal of noise that threatens to overwhelm the useful information. Unfortunately, I know there is no consensus on which entries are noise and which are useful. I really hope there is some plan to allow us to label entries "put on the bottom of the heap ... or ignore them unless I say otherwise." We can already do this to some extent on commentary entries.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404005#Comment_404005

and for passage input (where it will match on references within the outline)

With passage-based SSGs there are two major problems with the "Quick Outline":

The heading is completely wrong. "Quick Outline" suggests an outline of the passage, not a list of outlines of themes that may be in the passage.
As Martha says, there's far too much noise. Let's take Exodus 4:18-31 as an example (it's the passage where Moses returns to Egypt and circumcises his son). The quick outline suggests no less than 27 themes, most of which I have no interest at all in incorporating into my sermon. I might be interested in knowing that Ex 4:20 is an example of a donkey being used for personal transport if I'm preaching a sermon about donkeys(!), but I have no interest in donkeys if I'm preaching a sermon on Exodus 4:18-31.

It also raises the issue of multiple, conflicting datasets. In a passage-based SSG, there are no less than three entirely different lists of themes:

In the 'theme' section
In the 'quick outline' section
In the 'topics' section

I understand (I think) that these sections have all been created by different data, and they all have slightly different purposes. But it's just confusing to the user. The only one that is of any real use is the new 'theme' section, and that's useful because it's the shortest, most relevant list with the best signal/noise ratio, and it's horizontal format means I can keep it open without wasting space.

In my opinion, there are much more use useful sections that could be added here without needing additional data sets, which I would use if I was preparing a sermon:

a Biblical people section — not as it shows in the PG at the moment (why would I be interested in media items or even genealogies?), but using the Biblical people data to show the very short description of the person, together with links to important Bible dictionaries. That would be great where there's an obscure person in the passage I'm preaching on.
a Biblical places section — as above, though with the addition of a map

Of course, if you were creating additional datasets, the possibilities are unlimited...

Sean Boisen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404046#Comment_404046

I'm still on Alpha 4, so i can't see all that you're seeing. But I'd have to say the current SSG design and data are better suited to running on themes, rather than passages. There's more we want to do with showing outlines of a passage, or outlines of sermons for which a passage is particularly apt, but we don't have that data yet.

When running on a passage:

the Theme section shows all the themes we thought were appropriate for that passage.
the Quick Outline section shows "thematic outlines" (currently all drawn from the Dictionary of Bible Themes) that mention this passage
the Topics section shows just what the Passage Guide shows, topics that are associated with this passage in our dictionary content

I don't see those as conflicting: they're just different analytical lenses. But i can appreciate that this can be confusing.

If you supply a passage as input, Biblical People/Places/Things/Events are all available under Add, they're just not shown by default. (again, just like Passage Guide, repeated in SSG for user convenience)

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404168#Comment_404168

I don't see those as conflicting: they're just different analytical lenses.

I recognize that they are different lenses and suspect that people will eventually learn what works for what purposes although I suspect there will be a group that uses none. Why? Because many of the themes are interpretative rather than explicitly in the text ... For my own purposes, I think of them as directly and indirectly related to the text. For example Gen 4:1-16 I have a little trouble with Marriage, Music and Creativity as themes except indirectly but am surprised not to see God's Protection which I would expect to be a direct theme.

Sean Boisen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404194#Comment_404194

We made a deliberate tradeoff in developing the Preaching Themes data that's behind the SSG. There are only 230of them: so they are very general, in part so that users could use them in annotating their own materials (like sermons), and could easily navigate the space. This is in strong contrast to the Logos Controlled Vocabulary concepts, which number more than 11k: these concepts can be much more specific, but it's much harder to know how to get around in them and use them as metadata for content.

We do have a theme "God: Protection", and you could argue that this theme belongs on this pericope. But with a general inventory of themes, there will always be a limit to how much we can usefully assign without being more specific, and that's not the job of preaching themes. We don't have a curated topical analysis (most of the references in the Topic Guide are extracted from dictionary content, though some key references are done manually): that's a future project.