A plea: Please don't change the meaning of the 'rating' field

Mark Barnes
Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭
edited November 2024 in Beta Forum Archive

As Dave has pointed out elsewhere, the meaning of the rating field (used in the Library and in Collections) has changed in L5, and myrating has taken it's place. This change will break existing collections. For example, I use the rating field a lot (and recommend to others to do the same), to create "My favourite ....." collections.

With L5, all those collections will change, without warning, and it would probably be many weeks or months before most users notice, and perhaps even longer before they are able to change it.

Moreover, users who maintain L4 and L5 installations (e.g. those who have XP on an old computer somewhere) will find that their collections will be different on the two machines.

Can I therefore suggest one of the following:


  • Ideally, leaving the 'rating' field as it is, i.e. meaning "my rating".
  • Failing that:
    • When upgrading to L5, have the software do a search and replace to change the 'rating' field to 'myrating' in all collections.
    • AND add support for the 'myrating' field in 4.6, so that synced collections will still work there.

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!

Comments

  • NetworkGeek
    NetworkGeek Member Posts: 3,789 ✭✭✭

    I agree 100% with Mark. I have EVERY resource in my Library rated, I use these in broad categorizations used with other refinements in Collections. I think I have about 70 Collections since use of collections is imperative in a decent-size library, you get way too many results back otherwise.

    IMHO it should be a RULE of Logos not to change anything that affects user data without automatically migrating the data to something else transparent to the user but without a loss of functionality, as Mark suggests in Suggestion #2.

  • spitzerpl
    spitzerpl Member Posts: 4,998 ✭✭✭

    [Y][Y][Y]

    Community Tags are welcome, Community Ratings that replace my ratings in my library are not.

    I won't pretend to know how this works but I can only guess that it is difficult to add a new column to the database (e.g. community rating column). What if you kept the synced database the same and just changed the meaning of the value. So instead of the value being 4.5 the value was 45.49. Then the program translated that value as two different values, 4.5 for my rating and 4.9 for community rating.

    I'm fishing, I know. But I really don't want you to change my ratings if that is in fact the course you are on. :-)

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    Community Ratings that replace my ratings in my library are not.

    I won't pretend to know how this works but I can only guess that it is difficult to add a new column to the database (e.g. community rating column).

    Community Ratings do not replace your ratings.

    In L4 there was one ratings field, called rating.

    In L5 this field has been renamed to myrating. The rating field has been taken over by a field which shows your rating if you have one, and the community rating if you have not (so Dominick wouldn't actually be affected). The change won't remove or hide any of your existing ratings, but it would have the effect of adding books that you haven't rated into your 'favourite' collections.

    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!

  • spitzerpl
    spitzerpl Member Posts: 4,998 ✭✭✭

    Community Ratings that replace my ratings in my library are not.

    I won't pretend to know how this works but I can only guess that it is difficult to add a new column to the database (e.g. community rating column).

    Community Ratings do not replace your ratings.

    In L4 there was one ratings field, called rating.

    In L5 this field has been renamed to myrating. The rating field has been taken over by a field which shows your rating if you have one, and the community rating if you have not (so Dominick wouldn't actually be affected). The change won't remove or hide any of your existing ratings, but it would have the effect of adding books that you haven't rated into your 'favourite' collections.

    Thanks for clarifying. I didn't have time to check to see how it worked but the thought of them overriding my own rating was kinda scary :-)

  • NetworkGeek
    NetworkGeek Member Posts: 3,789 ✭✭✭

    In L5 this field has been renamed to myrating. The rating field has been taken over by a field which shows your rating if you have one, and the community rating if you have not (so Dominick wouldn't actually be affected). The change won't remove or hide any of your existing ratings, but it would have the effect of adding books that you haven't rated into your 'favourite' collections.

     

    I would only be affected when I get new resources (which is frequently [:D]).....I bring up library and do a myrating:=0 to see what is new. That's far quicker and easier than organizing by last updated and sliding to the top. Not a huge issue, but vastly more important to me than being forced to see how the community rates resources.

  • Jack Caviness
    Jack Caviness MVP Posts: 13,620

    The change won't remove or hide any of your existing ratings, but it would have the effect of adding books that you haven't rated into your 'favourite' collections.

    That is a thoroughly unacceptable scenario. I have no interest in having someone else rate my resources. In fact, I really do not care that much how they rated the resource. If I already own it, I can rate it myself.

  • Todd Phillips
    Todd Phillips Member Posts: 6,736 ✭✭✭

    Ideally, leaving the 'rating' field as it is, i.e. meaning "my rating".
    Failing that:
    • When upgrading to L5, have the software do a search and replace to change the 'rating' field to 'myrating' in all collections.
    • AND add support for the 'myrating' field in 4.6, so that synced collections will still work there.

    [Y]

    I prefer that the community rating and my rating be completely distinct.  Having them displayed in the same column is annoying and confusing.  My tags and community tags are in separate columns and the two ratings should be separated as well.

    MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 55,118

    With L5, all those collections will change, without warning, and it would probably be many weeks or months before most users notice, and perhaps even longer before they are able to change it.

    BAD

    Can I therefore suggest one of the following:

     

    • Ideally, leaving the 'rating' field as it is, i.e. meaning "my rating".
    • Failing that:
      • When upgrading to L5, have the software do a search and replace to change the 'rating' field to 'myrating' in all collections.
      • AND add support for the 'myrating' field in 4.6, so that synced collections will still work there.

    GOOD

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Jacob Hantla
    Jacob Hantla MVP Posts: 3,877

    MJ. Smith said:

    With L5, all those collections will change, without warning, and it would probably be many weeks or months before most users notice, and perhaps even longer before they are able to change it.

    BAD

    Can I therefore suggest one of the following:

     

    • Ideally, leaving the 'rating' field as it is, i.e. meaning "my rating".
    • Failing that:
      • When upgrading to L5, have the software do a search and replace to change the 'rating' field to 'myrating' in all collections.
      • AND add support for the 'myrating' field in 4.6, so that synced collections will still work there.

    GOOD

    Agreed

    Jacob Hantla
    Pastor/Elder, Grace Bible Church
    gbcaz.org

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 36,206

    Thanks for chiming in, guys.

    Logos hadn't responded to two of my threads in which I show the change to myrating and the absurdity of having one column for two types of rating when they have THREE for Tags!  Get rid of the Tags column (it only reflects My Tags) and use it for one of the Ratings.

    This version is the only time I felt we were truly testing Alpha software!

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Rosie Perera
    Rosie Perera Member Posts: 26,194 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Yikes! Just noticed this. Bad decision! Never make changes in the software that will break users' hard-spent labor. If you need to add some new functionality, add a new field; don't overload an existing field.

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 55,118

    Get rid of the Tags column (it only reflects My Tags) and use it for one of the Ratings.

    No, No, No ... the Tags are of more use to me personally. I don't care about community ratings. However, when I consider the good of the community renamin an existing column in this way is NEVER a good idea.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 36,206

    MJ. Smith said:

    No, No, No ... the Tags are of more use to me personally.

    There are Community Tags, Tags and My Tags. Tags only reflects what I enter as My Tags. Community Tags is useful!

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Bradley Grainger (Logos)
    Bradley Grainger (Logos) Administrator, Logos Employee Posts: 12,141

    Get rid of the Tags column (it only reflects My Tags)

    It should show the union of My Tags and Community Tags in the next alpha.

  • Bradley Grainger (Logos)
    Bradley Grainger (Logos) Administrator, Logos Employee Posts: 12,141

    As Dave has pointed out elsewhere, the meaning of the rating field (used in the Library and in Collections) has changed in L5, and myrating has taken it's place. This change will break existing collections. For example, I use the rating field a lot (and recommend to others to do the same), to create "My favourite ....." collections.

    With L5, all those collections will change, without warning, and it would probably be many weeks or months before most users notice, and perhaps even longer before they are able to change it.

    Thanks for the feedback on this change.

    Alpha 4 caught a "snapshot" of a work-in-progress that was not well thought out, and exhibited this undesirable side effect. I'm reverting it for the next alpha until a fully-developed solution (that's backwards compatible) can be implemented.

  • NetworkGeek
    NetworkGeek Member Posts: 3,789 ✭✭✭

    Thanks Bradley. I know the Community functionality within Logos is important to the company, but I sure hope the "Community" functionality does not become too imposing to those that may not be interested in it - I think that would be a big mistake. There are still plenty of people who do NOT want to share Bible study in an online community, and if those hooks in the product made at-home or at-work Bible study difficult, people will move to another product. Any community functionality needs to be transparent, or configurable, or able to be easily removed/ignored.

  • Rosie Perera
    Rosie Perera Member Posts: 26,194 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Thanks Bradley. I know the Community functionality within Logos is important to the company, but I sure hope the "Community" functionality does not become too imposing to those that may not be interested in it - I think that would be a big mistake. There are still plenty of people who do NOT want to share Bible study in an online community, and if those hooks in the product made at-home or at-work Bible study difficult, people will move to another product. Any community functionality needs to be transparent, or configurable, or able to be easily removed/ignored.

    [Y]

    I'm one of the ones who is not at all interested in Community functionality and would be annoyed if it became too intrusive. I have signed on to Faithlife a couple of times just to see what it was all about, but I'm not likely to ever use it. I'm glad I can turn off community notes.

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 55,118

    transparent, or configurable, or able to be easily removed/ignored.

    By making the community pieces metadata, they are easily removed/ignored. I don't think the feature's basic design is flawed - merely the designation and perhaps placement of its elements. My fundamental concern is that a certain degree of homogeneity is necessary for the data to be meaningful. I'm not sure that is the image they wish to present to the world at large.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Jack Caviness
    Jack Caviness MVP Posts: 13,620

    I'm one of the ones who is not at all interested in Community functionality and would be annoyed if it became too intrusive

    I agree with Rosie [Y]

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 36,206

    Alpha 4 caught a "snapshot" of a work-in-progress that was not well thought out, and exhibited this undesirable side effect.

    In fairness, I thought it was a "snapshot" but feedback could have been faster.

    I wouldn't mind myrating for consistency with mytag if changes to our collections could be managed across L4 and L5.

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 36,206

    I'm one of the ones who is not at all interested in Community functionality and would be annoyed if it became too intrusive

    I agree with Rosie Yes

     

    [Y]

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Rosie Perera
    Rosie Perera Member Posts: 26,194 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm one of the ones who is not at all interested in Community functionality and would be annoyed if it became too intrusive

    I agree with Rosie Yes

    Yes

    Pretty funny that the two of us with the highest forum post counts aren't interested in a community feature...I guess maybe we've got all our social networking out of our system on the forums.

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 36,206

    Get rid of the Tags column (it only reflects My Tags)

    It should show the union of My Tags and Community Tags in the next alpha.

    That's really a waste. If interested, one could always test for the union (Mytag:x OR commtag:X)

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    Bradley,

    How will this effect the resources dropdown when searching etc. I'd hate it if I could no longer selected all the resources that I have tagged from the dropdown, and equally hate it if that dropdown was suddenly populated by a bunch of tags I don't use.

    Mark

    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!

  • Bradley Grainger (Logos)
    Bradley Grainger (Logos) Administrator, Logos Employee Posts: 12,141

    How will this effect the resources dropdown when searching etc.

    It shouldn't affect it; that should continue showing the "mytag:" implicit collections. (Please let us know if you do encounter problems.)


  • I'm one of the ones who is not at all interested in Community functionality and would be annoyed if it became too intrusive

    I agree with Rosie Yes

    Yes

    Pretty funny that the two of us with the highest forum post counts aren't interested in a community feature...I guess maybe we've got all our social networking out of our system on the forums.

    Add one more to pretty funny list; the top 3 forum posters have a lack of interest in community features.

    Appears community tagging has the top 5 user tags for a resource, which can be redundant: e.g. Vyrso for an edition:e resource.

    Displayed community tag column for a bit, looked at some values, then unchecked column for display.  Wish for program setting to turn off community tag metadata sync.  Personally not using community notes.  Hence would appreciate a program setting to Enable or Disable Community sharing items.

    Irony: would like to share Highlighting Palette and Logos Greek Morphology visual filters so others can copy and use.

    By the way, displaying Community Notes with only library open, then closing Community Notes can crash Logos 5 Beta 2 on OS X 10.8.2

    Keep Smiling [:)]

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 36,206

    " rel="nofollow">Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :) said:

    Personally not using community notes.  Hence would appreciate a program setting to Enable or Disable Community sharing items.

    I have asked for a way to disassociate myself from community sharing without success, so I continue to suffer Error messages like

      CommunityClient  Retrieving the list of groups for user ID 6xxxx failed.

    The fact I have a user Id is disturbing.

    " rel="nofollow">Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :) said:

    Displayed community tag column for a bit, looked at some values, then unchecked column for display.  Wish for program setting to turn off community tag metadata sync.

    Likewise!

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Jack Caviness
    Jack Caviness MVP Posts: 13,620

    " rel="nofollow">Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :) said:

    would appreciate a program setting to Enable or Disable Community sharing items.

    Thought I had posted an agreement with this suggestion, but don't see it now. If this is a duplicate, consider it strong support for this suggestion [8-|]

    Yes [Y]

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    The fact I have a user Id is disturbing.

    You've had a user ID for years - it's been used internally since the early days of L4, and in these community forums, but I suspect goes back even earlier than that, as those who have been using Logos for years seem to have lower numbers. It's a publicly accessible number - yours ends in a four - mine is 55595. I've periodically checked various of Logos' web-services to make sure that you can access unauthorised data, and every time I've been blocked.

    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!

  • Rich DeRuiter
    Rich DeRuiter MVP Posts: 6,729

    " rel="nofollow">Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :) said:

    would appreciate a program setting to Enable or Disable Community sharing items.

    Thought I had posted an agreement with this suggestion, but don't see it now. If this is a duplicate, consider it strong support for this suggestion Geeked

    Yes Yes

    If I can be assured that I don't have too see community ratings, I'll be content. If I can be assured that I don't have to download community ratings I'll be happy. I think the way community notes work, is via the cloud, so that if I don't check that option in my resource, no notes are downloaded (Is that correct?). A similar option in the Library would make me happy.

    I have no need or desire for community ratings. I suspect there are others, who for various reasons, would share that sentiment.Some are just paranoid about 'the cloud,' others have bandwidth issues, others just don't like not having total control of the universe. Me: I'm just not at all interested, and don't want a process running in the background that might slow things down.

    I generally don't use ratings, and have stopped rating new resources (don't see the point), so community ratings would have even less interest for me than for some.

     Help links: WIKI;  Logos 6 FAQ. (Phil. 2:14, NIV)