Scott W Fischer: - Now as far as groups, I wanted to find a "beginner's" group to see how the community aspect works. It's not obvious how to find groups, but it's VERY obvious on how to create groups. Eventually I found how to search for groups on the Help page. And then I started searching ... and searching ... and searching ... and finding THOUSANDS of groups, all of which had ZERO members. Ridiculous. So where am I? I have a subscription that I can't cancel. I have a study bible with unknown and questionable (from my perspective) content. And I have a non-existent study bible community. I'll play with it some more, but it hasn't been a good start so far.
- Now as far as groups, I wanted to find a "beginner's" group to see how the community aspect works. It's not obvious how to find groups, but it's VERY obvious on how to create groups. Eventually I found how to search for groups on the Help page. And then I started searching ... and searching ... and searching ... and finding THOUSANDS of groups, all of which had ZERO members. Ridiculous.
So where am I? I have a subscription that I can't cancel. I have a study bible with unknown and questionable (from my perspective) content. And I have a non-existent study bible community. I'll play with it some more, but it hasn't been a good start so far.
Peace to you, Scott! *smile* and ... Always Joy in the Lord!
Please don't worry about your "subsciption that you can't cancel." It's extremely (indeed!) unlikely that you'll be charged if you want out. I've been a customer of Logos for almost 19 years now, and Bob Pritchett and the Logos People are A-OK! They can be trusted!
I'm a recent begining user of FaithLife.com. Took me a while to get the hang of it! I'd love to invite you to join my group that I'm forming called: A Shepherd's Scrolling.
I'm retired now; but, still like to do a little sharing. As I send this out this evening, I'd love to invite you to join my new group. A Shepherd's Scrolling
I'm excited about the prospects of using FaithLife.com and I'd like you to be part of my group. You'd be the first member! Others are also welcome, of course!
*smile*
Although retired, I'm still pretty busy so would only promise to "tend" my grouip once or twice a day. Lynden Williams has permitted me to be part of his group -- Focus on the Word -- for a while and now I'm anxious to form my own group. So I've had my feet wet and am anxious to splash right in!
Philippians 4: 4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand..........
Milford, thanks for the welcome.
I'm a fairly trusting individual and truly I'm not worried about whether my credit card will be charged or not, or whether or not I'll be able to cancel my subscription. I was trying to relay a real perception problem based on my experience. For many people, not finding the ability to cancel a subscription will bring about an immediate call to the Better Business Bureau and that's the last thing anyone at Logos would want.
You've ALSO proven my point on the complete unusableness of the faithlife.com groups function. You invited me to join your group, not through FSB itself, or even through the faithlife.com website, but through a forum response (rather than a classified advertisement) on a COMPLETELY separate website (community.logos.com). That ability to "advertise" the existence of a group should be obvious, apparent and intergrated directly within faithlife.com.
I also wanted to reinforce another poster's comment about the difficulty of establishing a new REAL group. It IS asking a lot for a bible study leader to get all his/her members to 1) go to website and enter the FREE code for FSB, 2) sign up for Logos (have to do that to complete your $0 transaction), 3) download the app (or try to figure out whether or not Biblia.com is the same thing as the app), 4) set up their preferences on faithlife.com and 5) find and join their particular group. That process is not intuitive or feasible. I'm a VERY technically savvy individual; if I wasn't, I wouldn't have been able to figure out that process. You can't expect people to jump through those hoops.
Since my first posting I've spent another hour reviewing the study content of FSB. There's lots of interesting stuff, but I will re-iterate that it's still too fluffy for me. Here's one simple example: The comment on Isaiah 7:12 "not put Yahweh to the test: Ahaz’s refusal to ask for a sign is rebellious, not pious." is presented without explanation. Who's making this assertion? Why? What is the basis of this opinion? I'm not disputing it, I'm just looking for more.
There's a lot of cool "stuff" here, but it's not obvious what is integral, what is required, what is optional, or what is superflous. Case in point, I was irritated by the thousands of pre-populated zero-member groups. Those appear to have been pre-loaded from wiki.faithlife.com. A Wiki for faithlife.com??!?! Cool!! Use a recognized web community development tool to develop a bible study community. Good idea. POOR execution. They're using the wiki as an RDBMS of church records and nothing else. Wrong tool for the purpose; and wrong purpose for the tool.
I will say this, if the FSB had the fidelity to the Magisterium that I'm looking for, or cross-references to the basis of commentary (be they Matthew Henry, Haydock, Ignatius of Antioch, whomever) I don't think I'd have a problem paying $30 a year for it, especially if Logos exhibits success and continually updating the completeness of their notes.
The one thing that I have NOT figured out yet is whether or not the FSB is an integrated tool within Logos or not. It doesn't show up in my list of documents on Logos 4. It's a separate app than Logos is on my Android phone, and Kindle Fire. But it does appear to show up as a "document' on Biblia.com. But that inconsistency doesn't answer my question, or rather, flies in the face of an answer.
As an experiment, Milford, I'll join your group and see how the logistics work, but beyond that, I don't know.
Scott W Fischer:I also wanted to reinforce another poster's comment about the difficulty of establishing a new REAL group. It IS asking a lot for a bible study leader to get all his/her members to 1) go to website and enter the FREE code for FSB, 2) sign up for Logos (have to do that to complete your $0 transaction), 3) download the app (or try to figure out whether or not Biblia.com is the same thing as the app), 4) set up their preferences on faithlife.com and 5) find and join their particular group. That process is not intuitive or feasible. I'm a VERY technically savvy individual; if I wasn't, I wouldn't have been able to figure out that process. You can't expect people to jump through those hoops.
Very good point. I have always said that Logos has some good ideas, but their execution of their ideas has been very poor. It appears to me that they do very little research at times.
Scott,
Your comment regarding The passage in Isaiah and the word "fluffy" makes me wonder exactly what you want from this product. It almost sounds like you expect it to be a full commentary.
Lighten up a bit. You make some good points but to me it feels like you write with a clenched fist. Just so you know I am writing with a smile on my own face and have no intention of trying to pick a fight!
From my perspective I think UR right when u say that by asking someone to join a group is in reality invitin them to jump through a lot of hoops.
I think your descriptions still show a lot of the confusion around understanding FSB the resource package and faithlife.com the community website. That's not your fault - the threads in the FSB and the faithlife forums are to a large percentage wrong (moderated forums that care for consistency in this area would move maybe a third of them each to the respective other forum).
First of all, you are absolutely right that searching for groups on faithlife.com is a pain. To find out that the big input box searches somehow for groups is not too hard, but not intuitive either. The idea to prepopulate churches as zero-member groups may have been good or not, but it's ridiculous that you can't specify the type of groups you are looking for, exclude zero-member ones or limit to "active groups only". I don't understand why they didn't include any of the Logos search logic. Right now, FSB could be totally dead or there could be dozens of very active groups - there's no indication if there are and how to find them. (hint: one active group some weeks ago was "Logos page turners", don't know about current level of activity). It doesn't really help that church names and the like are often very very similar and the hit list is not really sorted nor sortable.
Second: Establishing a group and having others join is less complex than you think. Of course, the leader as well as potential members need to go to faithlife.com and they need to register. I'd assume that most people these days know how to do this. But unless you want to base the group discussions on the FSB, no one needs to worry about the coupon code, a download or anything. You can simply stay within faithlife.com - and when someone posts a bible reference, the site will automatically carry people to biblia.com.
From my link above you can see how easy it is for a group leader or anyone to show a group to others - often they can now read everything, but need to sign in to be able to join the group and post. That's all and it's not too unusual for community websites.
There's the slightly more complicated area of closed groups. From its direction, Logos4Catholics may be one for you - unfortunately it's rather dormant in terms of postings - there you need to apply for membership to be granted access.
Third: FSB is fully integrated into Logos
Scott W Fischer: I have NOT figured out yet is whether or not the FSB is an integrated tool within Logos or not. It doesn't show up in my list of documents on Logos 4.
Or type "open FSB" into the command field in L4.
Users may prioritize the FSB along with other bible notes resources they may own (such as e.g. the ESV SB). The FSB itself does link to a wide array of Logos resources that may or may not be part of your libray yet - it even shows this fact with the lock/book symbol you may have seen.
Scott W Fischer: There's lots of interesting stuff, but I will re-iterate that it's still too fluffy for me. Here's one simple example: The comment on Isaiah 7:12 "not put Yahweh to the test: Ahaz’s refusal to ask for a sign is rebellious, not pious." is presented without explanation. Who's making this assertion? Why? What is the basis of this opinion?
Well, IMHO this is the way study bibles present their explanations (as opposed to full-fledged commentaries). Maybe future updates to the FSB will flesh out such things - I'd expect this especially in the areas where opinions differ, whereas here the next vers suggests this explanation very strongly and I'm not aware of disputes to this. If so: the FSB editors are happy for suggestions where to deepen explanations.
Hope this helps,
Mick
Running Logos 9 latest (beta) version on Win 10
Scott W Fischer: The one thing that I have NOT figured out yet is whether or not the FSB is an integrated tool within Logos or not. It doesn't show up in my list of documents on Logos 4. It's a separate app than Logos is on my Android phone, and Kindle Fire. But it does appear to show up as a "document' on Biblia.com. But that inconsistency doesn't answer my question, or rather, flies in the face of an answer. As an experiment, Milford, I'll join your group and see how the logistics work, but beyond that, I don't know.
Scott, this is all new to me also. Am not quite sure I know what I'm doing. I sent you a welcome when you joined my group; however, it doesn't seem to show up? Will keep on looking.
Also, I made a couple of comments to this group using the right-click in Phil 4:4 - and again in 4:8 - both of which show up as comments in my L4.
Am going to have my second coffee here in Eastern Canada in a few minutes and see if some of this showed up on my iPad2 FaithLife app ...
I do enjoy coming across comments from groups like the FaithLife Beta and Focus on the Word as I read my various Bibles.
Anyway, if all of a sudden I don't see you continue as part of my experimental group, I will most certainly understand that "the grass is always greener" on the other side of the marker.. *smile* Peace!
Meanwhile, if you -- or others!! -- have any good ideas on how to maintain a good "group site," I'd be trulyl appreciative of any ideas!
I'll accept that maybe I have unreasonable expectations for what's included in a study bible, as opposed to a bible commentary, but there are no clenched fists here. These are perceptions from a brand new FSB user and an almost brand new Logos user. My last comment on this is that with all the different brand names here (Logos, Biblia, Faithlife, FSB), and technologies (windows client, web client, two different Android clients) it's very confusing what's what.
Scott W Fischer:These are perceptions from a brand new FSB user and an almost brand new Logos user.
This makes your comments especially valuable since FSB intends to bring in a new group of users.
Orthodox Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."
Bob,
Just noticed this thread. Life is crazier than usual so I've not had time to fully dig in. But there's one thing I'd encourage as far as the "forget everything you already know" concept.
Subscriptions is perhaps a bigger conceptual/marketing/etc deal than Logos leadership may realize. No, I'm not talking about the financial implications. I'm talking about the radical change in the product/service delivery model for your customer base.
Until now, Logos has been the Nikon of the eBooks marketplace. My father-in-law's investment in Nikon lenses back in the 1960's is still valuable today. My wife's pro-level DSLR supports her dad's old manual lenses better than the older cameras did!
Likewise, any resources purchased in the Logos environment have always been usable forever, and we your customers have had increasing confidence over time that you will eventually provide support for use of resources on whatever new platform comes out.
So now, along comes a radically different kind of resource, a time-limited subscription-based resource. There's not such thing as getting it "forever on all platforms." This is "might be free for now but you will eventually be paying a regular subscription fee."
Here's the bottom line: "Get this resource" means something ENTIRELY different in a very deep way for normal Logos resources vs these new subscription-based resources.
And that is why I strongly recommend changing the button from "Get It Free" to "Subscribe Free".
Think about it from a new subscriber's perspective: do you really want those who come into the fold on the basis of a time-limited subscription... to assume that ALL logos resources work the same way? They'll see $200 or $700 or whatever, and wonder "how much time does that buy me?"
Please keep the two payment distinctly different, from top to bottom. I recommend distinct wording, colors, separate invoice sections... anything you can imagine to keep them separate.
That's honest consumer marketing according to the principles espoused by Henry Parsons Crowell, the godly man who invented it 100 years ago. Serving the customer well by openly / honestly showing them what they are getting. Nothing hidden or hyped.
(BTW if you've not already absorbed it, I highly recommend "Made To Stick" which among other things discusses the "curse of knowledge" concept...)
Scott W Fischer: Case in point, I was irritated by the thousands of pre-populated zero-member groups. Those appear to have been pre-loaded from wiki.faithlife.com. A Wiki for faithlife.com??!?! Cool!! Use a recognized web community development tool to develop a bible study community. Good idea. POOR execution. They're using the wiki as an RDBMS of church records and nothing else. Wrong tool for the purpose; and wrong purpose for the tool.
Our expectation was the people wouldn't be browsing for random groups containing members, but would rather be looking for "my church." By pre-loading all the churches, we reduce the work of creating your church (and remembering to add the city, state, etc. that help other people know it's "my" First Baptist, and not the one in another town), and we reduce the incidence of duplicate new groups. (I went to a church that was easy to type wrong: "North Shore Community Church". Or "Northshore Community Church". Or "Northshore Church". All things people might type, or even create as a new group if what they typed didn't match.)
We also assumed (maybe incorrectly) that people would visit via Faithlife.com on the web; there it's easy to email invites to a group directly to users. And, of course, the FSB and Faithlife.com don't require each other -- you can invite people to join a group without their ever needing to get the FSB.
We're working on improving the discovery and sign-up process, and this feedback is helpful. Thanks!
-- Bob
Would there be any plans to make this a part of the base packages and not charge those of us who have already bought base packages extra?
Visit My Site: Reformed Truths
David Taylor Jr: Would there be any plans to make this a part of the base packages and not charge those of us who have already bought base packages extra?
While I am not Bob, he has stated that this product was not designed for or targeted for people with base packages.
tom collinge: Theological position (Way TOOOOOOOOOOOO conservative!!!!!!!!!) Do not know anything about the authors. (This could also be part of number 4 above.) Creditably of the authors NOTE: (This is just for me), authors MUST have a PhD after their name. None of the "Major Contributors" that I looked up have a PhD. Do not know who wrote what part of the study bible (author's name should be linked to what she/he wrote somehow). It is linked into yet another social media website - not going to use another social media site. I still do not trust Logos with my notes/personal data after (1) loosing so much of my notes from L3 to L4, (2) Being forced to upload my sermons in L3 (had to set the option every time I added a sermon, if I forgot - everything was again uploaded to Logos), and (3) having to tell Logos not to put my stuff on their website numerous times (sermons). (FYI...Because of #3 - I have more trust with Facebook and Google in keeping my personal information quite.) For the mobile device (Android) Why does a Study Bible need to where I am at (GPS) and also read and write to my contacts?
This may not be the place, but I must ask why must a major contrubutor have a PH D after their name? After all, the original writers of the Bible, for the most part, were just common people. God doesn't require a PH.D. for someone to have great insight, so why should we expect the same out of commentaries. I can guarantee you there are people with just as much, if not more, insight into the Bible and the the interpretation of it than people who have spent their whole lives in a classroom.
Hi Bob,
I just noticed this thread. Here's a few things that have kept me from talking too much about the Faithlife Study Bible.
Hope those things are helpful. I like where Logos is headed, and I do like the design and relative ease of use with the FLSB. There are a few app bugs to work out but overall it's pretty good. Thanks for asking!
Jeremy
"I can guarantee you there are people with just as much, if not more, insight into the Bible and the the interpretation of it than people who have spent their whole lives in a classroom."
Insight, maybe. But understanding of the original languages, culture, and history? Doubtful, and thus more likely to lead astray. Context is king when understanding, and without a knowledge of original language, culture, and history, you're missing the context.
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected."- G.K. Chesterton
Thanks for the feedback. Some links that may help:
John D. Barry: Thanks for the feedback. Some links that may help: The editor list and contributor sample list for Faithlife Study Bible is here: http://faithlifebible.com/contributors The editor and contributor list for Lexham Bible Dictionary, which comes with the Faithlife Study Bible, is here: http://lexhambibledictionary.com/contributors/ The Statement of Faith for Faithlife Study Bible is here: http://faithlifebible.com/details Logos' publishing philosophy is here: http://www.logos.com/about/publishing-philosophy For more about the editors, check out some of these links: Michael S. Heiser, Academic Editor: http://www.logos.com/academic/bio/heiser For Michael R. Grigoni (Theological Editor), Miles Custis, Douglas Mangum, and Matthew M. Whitehead (Contributing Editors), see their bios near the bottom of this page: http://www.logos.com/product/20888/abraham-following-gods-promise-complete-church-curriculum-for-leaders-and-pastors I serve as the General Editor--my bio info is here: http://www.logos.com/academic/bio/barry & here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johndbarry
Hello John,
Thanks for the links, and thanks for your effort on the content of the FSB along with the other contributors. I applaud the content (at least what I've seen so far ), and I encourage you to "stay by the stuff". Don't feel pressured to move away from your conservative, evangelical handling of the Scriptures. I expect there are many who appreciate it, though we might not be too vocal about it!
There are some things that could be improved with the mobile app and how the web site is set up, as communicated in other posts. Hopefully progress on those fronts will be made in due time!
Regards,
Paul
alabama24: Tim Bader:please note also my other comments which were that the Faithlife application has some features and improvements which are not in the Logos application : a situation which I find a little disappointing too. I am unsure of your "disappointment." Bob has said that the faithlife app will drive the development of the other apps in the near future. If you are upset because the app hasn't been updated presently, you need to remember that the development of apps takes time. Logos can't just snap their fingers and make all apps look and function the same.
Tim Bader:please note also my other comments which were that the Faithlife application has some features and improvements which are not in the Logos application : a situation which I find a little disappointing too.
I am unsure of your "disappointment." Bob has said that the faithlife app will drive the development of the other apps in the near future. If you are upset because the app hasn't been updated presently, you need to remember that the development of apps takes time. Logos can't just snap their fingers and make all apps look and function the same.
This is a late response to your comment, alabama24, but part of the disappointment on my part is that, as you said, "the development of apps takes time," but rather than spending the time to add basic functionality to the Logos app (that we've been asking for for a long time--e.g., offline search improvement, ability to set search ranges for the Bible searches, etc.) Logos has chosen to divert the precious time of its developers to a second app (Vyrso) and now a third app (FSB). So while we have perpetual innovation, it almost feels like we aren't quite getting out of beta-stage with these apps. (That's a bit of an exaggeration, but perhaps it serves to make the point.)
Hello John, I have seen the these pages before, and IMHO, it is not that impressive. For an example, you list a major contributor who does not even have a master's degree. You also do not list everyone who has wrote for this study bible. Why? What are you hidding?
David Taylor Jr: This may not be the place, but I must ask why must a major contrubutor have a PH D after their name? After all, the original writers of the Bible, for the most part, were just common people. God doesn't require a PH.D. for someone to have great insight, so why should we expect the same out of commentaries. I can guarantee you there are people with just as much, if not more, insight into the Bible and the the interpretation of it than people who have spent their whole lives in a classroom.
Here are the five items right off the top of my head.