A Suggestion for 8.1 Homepage
I'm not nuts about the new homepage but I can live with it. However, please, when you make it customizable, please bring back the "excerpts from your resources." That has consistently been my favorite thing on the homepage as I'd sit there and go, "Wow, that's a cool resource I didn't even know I had."
Cynthia
Romans 8:28-38
Comments
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please bring back the "excerpts from you resources." That has consistently been my favorite thing on the homepage as I'd sit there and go, "Wow, that's a cool resource I didn't even know I had."
I completely agree!
Myke Harbuck
Lead Pastor, www.ByronCity.Church
Adjunct Professor, Georgia Military College0 -
Agree
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A pretty yes please from me too!
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A pretty yes please from me too!
[:D]
Cynthia
Romans 8:28-38
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please bring back the "excerpts from you resources." That has consistently been my favorite thing on the homepage as I'd sit there and go, "Wow, that's a cool resource I didn't even know I had."
I completely agree!
[Y]
Thanks to FL for including Carta and a Hebrew audio bible in Logos 9!
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[Y]
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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bring back the "excerpts from your resources." That has consistently been my favorite thing on the homepage as I'd sit there and go, "Wow, that's a cool resource I didn't even know I had."
👍🏽
MBPro'12 / i5 / 8GB // 3.0 Scholars (Purple) / L6 & L7 Platinum, M&E Platinum, Anglican Bronze, P&C Silver / L8 Platinum, Academic Pro
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Yes! [H]
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I'm seeing a lot of [Y]s in this thread! Does somebody need a ride?
Dream with me a little bit here. We removed excerpts because we did hear from many users that our content seemed random and unhelpful to them.
What if we brought it back... but smarter.
One thing we'd like to explore is introducing excerpts of content that are bubbled up by things like "commonly cited", "most highlighted", popular topics, commonly used media or Popular Canvases and Workflows.
What kinds of content would you like to see? How would you like us to organize it? When did you find yourself looking for content to read and in what contexts?
Also, some other random Qs for you: did you fire up the app with the sole purpose of reading excerpts-- or did you just come across it while doing Bible study?
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I'm seeing a lot of
s in this thread! Does somebody need a ride? Dream with me a little bit here. We removed experts because we did hear from many users that our content seemed random and unhelpful to them.
What if we brought it back... but smarter.
One thing we'd like to explore is introducing excerpts of content that are bubbled up by things like "commonly cited", "most highlighted", popular topics, commonly used media or Popular Canvases and Workflows.
What kinds of content would you like to see? How would you like us to organize it? When did you find yourself looking for content to read?
Also, some other random Qs for you: did you fire up the app with the sole purpose of reading excerpts-- or did you just come across it while doing Bible study?
Daniel: I do like the idea of excerpts of content as commonly cited, etc. , but the thing for me personally was that I felt like although excerpts was random, it exposed me to things in my library that I needed to explore. Excerpts of commonly cited, most highlighted, etc., means I’m regularly exploring them already. Excerpts allowed me to become exposed to items I already own and may have not realized was in my library, thus it was like opening a gift at Christmas! It was my favorite thing about the L7 homepage. As the homepage is now (and I’m only saying this because you asked), I would actually skip it and just set it to go straight to my workspace.
For me, I didn’t fire up the app with the sole purpose of reading excerpts, but it was the sole reason I looked at the homepage.
Thanks for asking and more important, listening and wanting to know our views. You guys rock!
Cynthia
Romans 8:28-38
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did you fire up the app with the sole purpose of reading excerpts-- or did you just come across it while doing Bible study?
Not exactly. I always had other purposes (ie: Bible study), but often was caught by those excerpts and then wound up reading a resource just because the excerpt caught my interest...or I would Favorite the resource until a later time.
Myke Harbuck
Lead Pastor, www.ByronCity.Church
Adjunct Professor, Georgia Military College0 -
did you fire up the app with the sole purpose of reading excerpts-- or did you just come across it while doing Bible study?
Not exactly. I always had other purposes (ie: Bible study), but often was caught by those excerpts and then wound up reading a resource just because the excerpt caught my interest...or I would Favorite the resource until a later time.
Myke Harbuck
Lead Pastor, www.ByronCity.Church
Adjunct Professor, Georgia Military College0 -
Daniel,
While I often didn't do more than glance at the excerpts (on the few occasions I visited the Home Page) the idea behind it was a good one - try to introduce users to resources in their Libraries that they haven't really explored (at least I assume that was the goal).
My suggestion is not to get creative, just let people toggle excerpts on or off. It seems they were fine as they were for those who liked them.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
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I'm not nuts about the new homepage but I can live with it. However, please, when you make it customizable, please bring back the "excerpts from your resources." That has consistently been my favorite thing on the homepage as I'd sit there and go, "Wow, that's a cool resource I didn't even know I had."
This says it pretty well.
1. Fix the Reading Plan, Prayers, Saints.
2. Don't surprise us by closing down our current layout.
3. Like Cynthia says, bring back "excerpts from your resources."
4. "What if we brought it back... but smarter." Wonderful idea.
5. "excerpts of content that are bubbled up by things like "commonly cited", "most highlighted", popular topics, commonly used media or Popular Canvases and Workflows." Well worth a try. Maybe. Keep an eye out in case people strongly dislike it. My opinion is to Keep Logos Proper a Bible study software and not a social media showcase.
6. Help Videos are always good.
7. Ads aren't all bad, but make them smart. I never bought anything and probably never pursued anything from the Home Page--buying is not my intent or mood when I go there and it isn't a good store. Online is a much better store. Advert marketing that works for me is special sales and resources to fill out courses, I wonder if an algorithm could be smart enough to look at my wishlist, maybe my courses in progress or lined up to go and guess what I might soon want to buy and tell me why I might want to buy it?
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I'm seeing a lot of
s in this thread! Does somebody need a ride? Dream with me a little bit here. We removed experts because we did hear from many users that our content seemed random and unhelpful to them.
What if we brought it back... but smarter.
One thing we'd like to explore is introducing excerpts of content that are bubbled up by things like "commonly cited", "most highlighted", popular topics, commonly used media or Popular Canvases and Workflows.
What kinds of content would you like to see? How would you like us to organize it? When did you find yourself looking for content to read?
Also, some other random Qs for you: did you fire up the app with the sole purpose of reading excerpts-- or did you just come across it while doing Bible study?
Daniel: I do like the idea of excerpts of content as commonly cited, etc. , but the thing for me personally was that I felt like although excerpts was random, it exposed me to things in my library that I needed to explore. Excerpts of commonly cited, most highlighted, etc., means I’m regularly exploring them already. Excerpts allowed me to become exposed to items I already own and may have not realized was in my library, thus it was like opening a gift at Christmas! It was my favorite thing about the L7 homepage. As the homepage is now (and I’m only saying this because you asked), I would actually skip it and just set it to go straight to my workspace.
For me, I didn’t fire up the app with the sole purpose of reading excerpts, but it was the sole reason I looked at the homepage.
Thanks for asking and more importantly, listening and wanting to know our views. You guys rock!
Cynthia
Romans 8:28-38
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I'm still trying to figure out if there's an organizational structure to the Explore section, and if so, what it is. It seems very haphazard to me. [:|]
Am I missing something obvious???
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I'm still trying to figure out if there's an organizational structure to the Explore section, and if so, what it is. It seems very haphazard to me.
Right now it is just random feeds from various Faithlife channels.
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Thanks David. I hope they put some order/structure to it. I really don't find it helpful and not at all conducive in terms of effective browsing through as it is now.I'm still trying to figure out if there's an organizational structure to the Explore section, and if so, what it is. It seems very haphazard to me.
Right now it is just random feeds from various Faithlife channels.
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Thanks David. I hope they put some order/structure to it. I really don't find it helpful and not at all conducive in terms of effective browsing through as it is now.I'm still trying to figure out if there's an organizational structure to the Explore section, and if so, what it is. It seems very haphazard to me.
Right now it is just random feeds from various Faithlife channels.
I know they are working on customizing your feeds. I don't think the homepage has ever had any "structure" per se. It has always been random articles like a newspaper. I expect the update will be the same in that respect.
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Thanks David. I hope they put some order/structure to it. I really don't find it helpful and not at all conducive in terms of effective browsing through as it is now.I'm still trying to figure out if there's an organizational structure to the Explore section, and if so, what it is. It seems very haphazard to me.
Right now it is just random feeds from various Faithlife channels.
I know they are working on customizing your feeds. I don't think the homepage has ever had any "structure" per se. It has always been random articles like a newspaper. I expect the update will be the same in that respect.
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My suggestion is not to get creative, just let people toggle excerpts on or off. It seems they were fine as they were for those who liked them.
I agree
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Ahhh, a sense of humor. Cool. Now whether its a good sense or not, well, thats completely differemt. [:P] But it's similar to mine, so, back at me.
Ok, so here's my dream concept:
I dont really care.
Ok. now, there are some things I do care about. So, in meetings, PLEASE stress the importance of ditching the ads. Oh, wait, some people like the evil disgusting things in their Bible. Some do not. So, there's a way to please just about everyone. The wonderful kill switch. Personally, I love Off by default. Unfortunately, there are those I might call wackos who prefer them On by default. And no matter how blaringly loud it is broadcast from the mountain tops, a nonillion people a day will call/email/chat asking how to enable or disable the ads. So, for that, I do not envy anyone. But, for the rest of us, PLEASE just do SOMETHING to make as many of us loonies happy by being able to disable or enable the deplorable things,
As far as the Excerpts go, I'd say the same thing should apply, The more we can customize things, by flipping switches, ticking boxes, the better. Because it will always be SWSWSWN (some will, some won't, so what, next). But, to avoid that awful sales attitude, and make things more workable for all, cuztomization works best. [:D][H]Now I did say I don't care. And really, I don't. Just let it be clean, and customizeable, and this Bat will be happy. ^v^ ^v^ ^v^
I'm seeing a lot of
s in this thread! Does somebody need a ride? Dream with me a little bit here. We removed excerpts because we did hear from many users that our content seemed random and unhelpful to them.
What if we brought it back... but smarter.
One thing we'd like to explore is introducing excerpts of content that are bubbled up by things like "commonly cited", "most highlighted", popular topics, commonly used media or Popular Canvases and Workflows.
What kinds of content would you like to see? How would you like us to organize it? When did you find yourself looking for content to read and in what contexts?
Also, some other random Qs for you: did you fire up the app with the sole purpose of reading excerpts-- or did you just come across it while doing Bible study?
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We removed excerpts because we did hear from many users that our content seemed random and unhelpful to them.
Then you hear from many users who appreciated them and found it unhelpful that excerpts were removed.
Perhaps excerpts could become customizable, please, so users can choose what they find helpful. It might help to eliminate the cycle of users reacting to FL's reaction to user reactions.
did you fire up the app with the sole purpose of reading excerpts
No, but in the process of reading the Home page to catch up with blog posts and so on, excerpts are enjoyable discoveries that make us curious and lead us to explore what we happen to already own.
Even Morris Proctor specifically mentions "serendipity" in his videos, how the Home page helps users get into Logos when we don't know what to study.
Thanks to FL for including Carta and a Hebrew audio bible in Logos 9!
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What if we brought it back... but smarter
I like the idea.
One thing we'd like to explore is introducing excerpts of content that are bubbled up by things like "commonly cited", "most highlighted", popular topics, commonly used media or Popular Canvases and Workflows.
This would be a good start. I would personally like to see the ability to select which resource TYPES and SUBJECTS I'm interested in. If I could have excerpts focus on the things I'm most interested in, they'd catch my attention much quicker. Having a ton of excerpts from content I'm not interested in (on a normal day) results in all of them being less valuable to me. Hey, I might even choose to open the program to the homepage! 🤪
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I'm seeing a lot of
s in this thread! Does somebody need a ride? Dream with me a little bit here. We removed excerpts because we did hear from many users that our content seemed random and unhelpful to them.
What if we brought it back... but smarter.
One thing we'd like to explore is introducing excerpts of content that are bubbled up by things like "commonly cited", "most highlighted", popular topics, commonly used media or Popular Canvases and Workflows.
What kinds of content would you like to see? How would you like us to organize it? When did you find yourself looking for content to read and in what contexts?
Also, some other random Qs for you: did you fire up the app with the sole purpose of reading excerpts-- or did you just come across it while doing Bible study?
Faithlife is overthinking things again, what defines 'many users', its a statement FL uses a lot to justify changing things not broken but they never quantify what 'many users' actually is against the total user base. You are not going to hear from the 'many users' who are happy with the way things and so simply going off the one number of 'many users' who say they are not happy is meaningless if you are not prepared to openly quantify that number.
Personally, It was fine the way it was so I was not dreaming of any change to it, it was not broken, to me commonly cited, most highlighted, etc are still random, possibly even more random. Just because they are most highlighted by others doesn't mean it's going to be of interest of me. The way we were told it worked previously was the extract were supposed to relate to what we had been recently studying, i.e passage or topic and to me that makes the extract more relevant that something commonly highlighted by other people but might not be a passage or topic of interest to me. Just stick to what we had previously because it was not broken and didn't need fixing or changing.
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Dream with me a little bit here. We removed excerpts because we did hear from many users that our content seemed random and unhelpful to them.
What if we brought it back... but smarter.
One thing we'd like to explore is introducing excerpts of content that are bubbled up by things like "commonly cited", "most highlighted", popular topics, commonly used media or Popular Canvases and Workflows.
I would appreciate the ability to customize the kinds of books that excerpts appear from--for example, to only have Logos editions to show, or perhaps control via MyTags.
What kinds of content would you like to see? How would you like us to organize it? When did you find yourself looking for content to read and in what contexts?
I'd like to see pieces of art/pictures from resources in my library... but I want to be able to curate which resources they're drawn from (via MyTags would be fine for this, but not the only way). In the past, I've actually hidden certain resources so that pictures from them wouldn't appear on my homepage.
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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Faithlife is overthinking things again, what defines 'many users', its a statement FL uses a lot to justify changing things not broken but they never quantify what 'many users' actually is against the total user base.
If we gave a percentage, would that make people happy? I'm guessing it would not. Everyone would have a different view on what % was an acceptable "threshold" to make the change. Talking about specific numbers around a product decision is generally unhelpful. The people who want the feature would say "that's not a high enough #, please bring it back.", or even "But what about that OTHER feature. It has less % use and you kept that!". Just trying to give some insight into why we generally don't discuss numbers.
The reality is that there are many factors that go into making a change, not just the % of users who tell us they like something or don't.
I'm trying to learn how we can make excerpts better in our new homepage.
Personally, It was fine the way it was so I was not dreaming of any change to it, it was not broken, to me commonly cited, most highlighted, etc are still random, possibly even more random. Just because they are most highlighted by others doesn't mean it's going to be of interest of me. The way we were told it worked previously was the extract were supposed to relate to what we had been recently studying, i.e passage or topic and to me that makes the extract more relevant that something commonly highlighted by other people but might not be a passage or topic of interest to me. Just stick to what we had previously because it was not broken and didn't need fixing or changing.
Thank you for this specific feedback. I think you make some good points about curation-- if we only showed you content based on "most popular", rather than a subject-- you'd definitely see some things you aren't interested in.
I really like the idea of "topic" or "subject" having a heavy hand in what content we suggest to you.
Thanks again, happy to continue to dialogue.
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Seems that all of these are good ideas, the original excerpts and feeds, and the new ideas. I'd say do them all but let us switch them on or off, or prioritize, etc, a la Google News customization page.
Caveat, as Cynthia pointed out, if you implement excerpts by highly cited or frequently highlighted, over time those might become stale, as some books will become so popularly read that other books in our library may never have a chance to bubble to the top, no matter what cutoff threshold you use.
But then the old excerpts (I believe they were hand-curated since Logos 4 or 5) have become stale for a long time already, so good that we will get something new and different soon.
In general I like this "serendipity discovery" idea, although I rarely have time to browse my Home Page before jumping into a sermon prep.
Thanks,
Peter
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Daniel so what you are saying is FL wants to continue behind a generalisation as to why they took away this feature, along with others, none of which were broken and instead gave as a home page that is broken, we can not customise it the way we use to be able to do so and are told we have to wait for a future release. FL called this downgrade, an upgrade, a major upgrade, charged us money to get this upgrade without disclosing this information beforehand to customers that they were taking away features that were not broken and releasing it to us with broken features.
If you aren’t prepared to back yourself and not hide behind generalisations then I can’t see how your truly prepared to dialogue.
Faithlife is overthinking things again, what defines 'many users', its a statement FL uses a lot to justify changing things not broken but they never quantify what 'many users' actually is against the total user base.
If we gave a percentage, would that make people happy? I'm guessing it would not. Everyone would have a different view on what % was an acceptable "threshold" to make the change. Talking about specific numbers around a product decision is generally unhelpful. The people who want the feature would say "that's not a high enough #, please bring it back.", or even "But what about that OTHER feature. It has less % use and you kept that!". Just trying to give some insight into why we generally don't discuss numbers.
The reality is that there are many factors that go into making a change, not just the % of users who tell us they like something or don't.
I'm trying to learn how we can make excerpts better in our new homepage.
Personally, It was fine the way it was so I was not dreaming of any change to it, it was not broken, to me commonly cited, most highlighted, etc are still random, possibly even more random. Just because they are most highlighted by others doesn't mean it's going to be of interest of me. The way we were told it worked previously was the extract were supposed to relate to what we had been recently studying, i.e passage or topic and to me that makes the extract more relevant that something commonly highlighted by other people but might not be a passage or topic of interest to me. Just stick to what we had previously because it was not broken and didn't need fixing or changing.
Thank you for this specific feedback. I think you make some good points about curation-- if we only showed you content based on "most popular", rather than a subject-- you'd definitely see some things you aren't interested in.
I really like the idea of "topic" or "subject" having a heavy hand in what content we suggest to you.
Thanks again, happy to continue to dialogue.
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