Looking for your opinions: Should verbum get a forum of its own?

Harbey Santiago said:

Verbum is a "Catholic flavored" Logos package. With its own list of resources. Since it is clear Logos Co. is trying really hard to build a Catholic audience. What do you think should Verbum get its own forum group?

A clear answer from me: No

To put this into perspective, I'm an evangelical, not a Roman Catholic. Nevertheless I own the catholic Scholar's package and will probably upgrade to a Verbum package. But that's not the point. the Logos forum is not for theological discussion, as you pointed out yourself, but about usage of the software and the resources - which includes error reports, suggestions, beta testing and such. All these things are independent of the Set Verbum to yes/no switch.

I happen to think that Logos.com has too many subforums already and people constantly post general items into system specific subforums and vice versa, functionality and resource issues are often not really separatable etc. A new structure for Verbum would require users like me to check both forums constantly, to cross-link information to and fro etc. 

From what I see here, people are very diverse and many of those are interested in using Logos and buying resources all over the place. I think the catholic library builder packages and other such things sold to many evangelicals, Calvinists, Lutherans....  and we wouldn't want to miss when Logos publishes Benedict's "Jesus from Nazareth" Vol. 1 at last (and Vol 3!). We wouldn't want to deprive the Catholic users from the best help they could get with using Logos either.

My 2c

Mick

David J. Wilson said:

If there were reason enough to establish a different interface such as Verbum, then a seperate forum focussed on that interface is appropriate,

I think that the creation of the Verbum name was a business/marketing decision not a software decision. The preset options made be slightly different but they can be set to standard Logos settings. The difference are minor, things like:

• one may have the Verbum blog on your homepage
• one does not have the online sermons sections in the default Passage Guide
• the default canon is Catholic for the Old Testament
• you get three predefined collections: Catechism, Church Fathers, Church documents
• you get the command needed to toggle your application between Verbum and Logos 5 behavior
• by default a lectionary shows

I would personally have preferred if Logos had called the divide liturgical/non-liturgical including the Jewish side as liturgical.

David Ames said:

Or maybe if they just added the Verbum Blog to Logos 5 home page configure 

I had suggested that, as had others, before the Verbum name appeared on the software.

The magic words are:

Set Verbum to Yes

Set Verbum to No

Noel Fitzpatrick said:

I agree with the general thrust of this debate.

A separate huddle for Verbum users would not be of general advantage.

Noel,

lots of things have changed in the last two years since this thread was active. In the meantime Logos has generated denominational forums for lots of particular groups (Reformed, Lutheran, Pentecostal, SDA...) and has installed Product Managers for these and a dedicated line of Base Packages for each. Experience shows that especially the suggestion/discussion of resources works in a much more interactive way than in the large Suggestions forum. In addition to that, Verbum now has its own installers with a (slightly) different codebase and its own webshop (which links to the forum). 

Thus, from where we stand now, a Catholic forum would be seen by many Catholics not as a form of "segregation" and having none is felt as discrimination. That's what I read from other threads - in fact Bob has already promised a Catholic forum, it just hasn't materialized yet.  

Given our current situation, I would stand by the intentions of my post above, but have changed my opinion on the question of a separate catholic forum: when we have half a dozen other denominational forums, there should be a Catholic one, too (as one of the various subforums here, not a fully separate one on Verbum.com, of course)