Example of information "overload" - information only

Because I've expressed concern about the flood of information, I thought I would try to quantify it. This is a single example with arbitrary 2nd tier counts but it does give a starting point for thinking (but not for statistics)

Passage Matthew 1:18-25 (7 verses)

24 themes to select from
- example angel
  - 6 Key Passages
  - approximately 175 pericopes
just under 50 quick outline items
- example angels, and praise of God
  - 8 main passages
  - 10 secondary passages
articles (empty)
roughly 10 parallel passages
circa 800 cross-references
circa 80 commentaries in a relatively small library (default all commentary section)
?? monographs if I add the section

That's 1163 pieces of information to sort through to find gems and ignore the rest - assuming one takes only one item to explore further in themes and quick outlines. See why I'm concerned with managing the information flow?

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Comments

Bob Pritchett

We are working to organize all of the data, and to prioritize things to make it easier to manage. Some of this will be ongoing; we'll ship Logos 5 and continue to refine the data sets, slipping out continual updates, as well as the ranking and prioritization algorithms.

But ultimately, what Logos Bible Software is for is helping you see the possibilities and follow them.

We understand that it's helpful to have fewer options to explore sometimes. We've even taken that to an extreme: the Faithlife Study Bible notes for Mat 1:18-25 are much more concise and filter out more than 1000 of the 1163 pieces of information. :-)

And if that's too much filtering, you could use a commentary -- it's contextual, involves a lot of filtering/prioritizing, etc.

FWIW, "Key Passages" is an example of our attempts to cut things down, and we plan to go through the Quick Outlines with a human editor, too (just hasn't happened yet). But then the risk is that you won't like the perspective/decisions/edits the human editor makes. That's the continual struggle/tradeoff for us -- if we give all the raw data it's overwhelming, and if it's too edited (FSB) it's not enough, and if it's partially edited (a commentary, or our choice of themes, etc.) then someone will think it was edited wrong.

I really would love to hear more ideas on how we can strike a perfect balance...

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404268#Comment_404268

slipping out continual updates, as well as the ranking and prioritization algorithms.

I'm glad to know that the algorithms are still being improved - they are the 2 ton monster behind the feature. This is a case where, with a few exceptions, I suspect that others have better ideas than mine. This is how I would approach the problem, assuming no direct user rating.

Parallel Passages section contains (or should contain) unrelated sections which I would makes expand/contract separately. Giving me finer control allow me to more easily select the detail I see. Within each of the sections, I would depend on Prioritization to put the resources in order:
- Harmony type parallel passages (the largest group)
- Deuterographs from Deuterographs : duplicate passages in the Old
  Testament, their bearing on the text and compilation of the Hebrew
  scriptures (1894). Author: Girdlestone, Robert
- Quotation/Allusion
- Parallels (e.g.Jude-2nd Peter, Hannah's Prayer, Mary's Magnificat, 10 Commandments, multiple accounts of Paul's conversion etc.) - Logos could pull it from resources in much the same way they are pulling up outlines (which I love).
Theme to me implies a primary topic not just a casual mention. I would divide them into 3 categories - I would usually stop at the first category but at times work further down the list.
- Explicit primary theme
- Explicit secondary theme
- Implicit themes
Passages works quite nicely as it stands although I'm sure I'm obligated to make a canon related comment.[;)] I suspect that the Pericope section isn't used frequently but there are times it would be extremely useful.
Quick outline to me should be organized in a manner that parallels Theme. When one expands a quick outline, the organization nicely parallels that of Passages tagged as (main)-"see also". I like the detail organization; it's just the upper level that presents difficulties.
Articles is not currently populating on my computer so I can't comment meaningfully.
Cross-references are a major problem simply because of the volume of data. But they need some sort of organization - same information, expansion on topic, prophecy-fulfillment, types, rhetorical parallel, apparent contradiction, same word, same grammatical issue ... I've been working for several months trying to sort out the relationships and still don't feel that I'm comfortable with my lists.
Getting the Commentary and Collection sections pared down is a user task not a Logos problem. We have the tools we just need to use them.[:)]
Topics has some oddities but I think that we as users have learned to work with its quirks - I would not expect immediate work as it will not have much effect on how Logos 5 is received.
Interesting Words has matured into a very useable section.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404268#Comment_404268

I really would love to hear more ideas on how we can strike a perfect balance...

It can be managed by what the user wishes to expose at the time. Out of Theme, Quick Outline, Interesting Words & Topics I would have the first two in my template and choose the others as needed (rarely!). Or one would have different templates for different projects.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404268#Comment_404268

I really would love to hear more ideas on how we can strike a perfect balance...

Personally, I feel this is one of the biggest problems with Logos for newbies, and I'm surprised we haven't seen any improvement in L5. It's fine for me - I know nearly all the 'tricks' for getting the best out of search results, but most users don't know them, and therefore get confused.

I would suggest that search ranking must improve. I'm aware that ranking is a complex business, but at the moment, the only factor in Logos seems to be keyword density. As a minimum, I would suggest also factoring in:

Heading text (perhaps 100% boost if article heading matches the search request, 20%-50% boost if it partially matches)
Proximity (results where multiple terms appear close together should rank higher than when they are separated).
Resource rating (something like giving a 50% boost to 5-star, 20% to 4-star, -20% to 2-star, and -50% to 5-star).

Whilst there are obviously other factors you could add, these are the basics, it seems to me.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404268#Comment_404268

I really would love to hear more ideas on how we can strike a perfect balance...

I agree with Martha. One example: the new passage-based Sermon Starter Guide has three separate lists of themes. They don't match, they lead to different places. And most of the themes are noise, not signal. If I'm preparing a sermon, I don't want to have to wade through three lists of 40-50 possible themes in a passage. I do want links to five or six major themes.

Another example (still in SSGs). The Biblical Facts section is disabled by default, but could be much more useful. Currently it returns pictures, relational diagrams and maps. It looks pretty, but it's not that useful. But the underlying data is useful, because it's manually tagged in the Bibles. So why not return a simple list of Biblical People/Places in the text, which you can click on to get more data.

Another example. In the PG/SSG, it would be useful to search Systematic Theologies or Bible Dictionaries for Bible references, to get an idea of which doctrines/themes would be most relevant. I can add a collection search to this, but when I do that I get more noise than signal again. Here's an example from Numbers 2:

I think you'll agree that's very little use. But what if you created a new section which did the following:

Run the search in the same way, but examine the headword rather than the text-heading (that gets rid of the 'Content' problem, which stems from 'Context' being a sub-heading).
Use your excellent Controlled Vocabulary to match each headword to an entry in the LCV.
Count the number of results for each entry of the LCV, and rank in that order (ideally you would count how many references to that passage are in each LCV entry, but that might be harder).
Display the results as a simple horizontal list, where if you clicked on an item in the list it would display the dictionary articles for that item (ideally with references to the relevant Bible text highlighted in the Search Results filter).

The results of that would be something like this:

Book of Numbers, Banner, Encampment, Army, Naphtali, Netophah, Elisaph… and so on.

You could do exactly the same for theological dictionaries to look for theological themes. That would return:

Numbers, Worship, Judah, Warfare, Moses, Tabernacle, Law, Jews/Judaism

That still doesn't provide 'devotional' themes, but I think you've got your data for that already, from whatever source you use for the themes section. All you'd need to do would be to tie the LCV to those themes, so that you could de-duplicate biblical and theological topics, and not display them if they've already appeared in an earlier section.

Bob Pritchett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404415#Comment_404415

I think you'll agree that's very little use. But what if you created a new section which did the following:

This is definitely the direction we'd like to go; in order to do what you're suggesting, though, we need to have all of the Bible dictionaries linked to the LCV topics. (Or ignore un-linked dictionaries.)

This is something we hope to do, and in Logos 5 you're starting to see good interconnection between our various data sets, and much more detailed annotation of textual resources in ways that connect them to the data sets. As we roll this tagging and annotation through the library we'll be able to make the features/reports/guides "smarter" without sacrificing the presentation of some (or now, most) of the resources.

So I'm agreeing, but it's going to take some time.

(One other point: most of our users don't have your large library, so they don't get such an overwhelming list. And the people who do have large libraries -- like you -- are better at customizing/tuning to generate just what they want. Not an excuse -- we need to tag and organize better -- but an explanation of why the problem isn't quite to bad for most users at this point as it would appear from these examples.)

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404899#Comment_404899

As we roll this tagging and annotation

Bob, I appreciate the direction L5 is going despite it feeling more Evangelical and less general Bible study. That is not a complaint, BTW. However, having watched the roll-out of the Topics search in L4, I think expectations need to be managed carefully. One way to do that would be for Logos to provide us with some information for us to put in the wiki:

Guide section intended purpose
Source of data for section - generally classes of resources or Logos curated db's
Possibly some way in the metadata of resource to tell the status of tagging - this would allow one to build collections of resources (dictionaries, for example, that have not yet been integrated and search only them.

As it currently stands in alpha is that we get a huge amount of data but it's incomplete so we may need to run our own searches to get an even larger pile with duplicates and we have no way to mark where we are is sorting through the usefulness of the data. Of course, one can copy the whole pile into Word, sort if, create a note and create you own sort-of status feature.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404899#Comment_404899

This is definitely the direction we'd like to go; in order to do what you're suggesting, though, we need to have all of the Bible dictionaries linked to the LCV topics. (Or ignore un-linked dictionaries.)

This is good news. Personally, I think the LCV has reached the point where we could afford to only include LCV-enabled dictionaries in this section. Even if we lose a little signal, we'll gain by losing significantly more noise.

(One other point: most of our users don't have your large library, so they don't get such an overwhelming list. And the people who do have large libraries -- like you -- are better at customizing/tuning to generate just what they want. Not an excuse -- we need to tag and organize better -- but an explanation of why the problem isn't quite to bad for most users at this point as it would appear from these examples.)

A fair point.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404963#Comment_404963

Personally, I think the LCV has reached the point

The LCV has not been expanded to handle the deuterocanonicals, Jewish or Catholic terminology, etc. That does not directly affect your suggestion - I'd need to see a list of the dictionaries not LCV-enabled to know that.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/404967#Comment_404967

A LOT of Bible dictionaries have now been enabled. Note that they are all Bible dictionaries, not theological or historical dictionaries. I'm aware of:

Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary
Baker Encylopedia of the Bible
Dictionary of Biblical Imagery
Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible
Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels
Dictionary of the Later New Testament and its Developments
Dictionary of New Testament Background
Dictionary of the Old Testament: Historical Books
Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch
Dictionary of Paul and His Letters
Easton's Bible Dictionary
Eerdmans Bible Dictionary
Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible
Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology
Harper's Bible Dictionary
Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Revised
Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Dictionary
Nelson's Topical Bible Index
New Bible Dictionary
New Dictionary of Biblical Theology
New International Encyclopedia of Bible Characters
New Nave's Topical Bible
New Topical Textbook
Tyndale Bible Dictionary
Where to Find it in the Bible
Zondervan Encylopedia of the Bible