7.7 Beta 3 BUG: Search for Topic Burning Bush

Dave Hooton said:

Philana R. Crouch said:

but turning this setting on will also search for <Thing Burning Bush>.

And get results that the user will think came from <Topic Burning Bush> (as in the source thread).

Are you really advocating that the solution to having no results is to turn on the setting  "Match equivalent references"?

Is the distinction between <Topic Burning Bush> and <Thing Burning Bush> significant to you? If so, why?

In my opinion, Match equivalent references should really be on unless you have specialized needs for differentiating between the datasets. By design, the search engine requires you to be specific about the data you are searching for, but "Match equivalent references" is a way to direct the search engine to take advantage of the additional dataset that was created that ties the separate datasets together and says "these are all talking about the same thing".

Factbook has been moving more and more towards combining these datasets into a single entry, and eliminating the duplicates where they are found, and generally the rest of the application should be moving in that direction as well.

It's likely that the best solution for these types of searches that are generated would be to generate a search that turns on "Match equivalent references" for just that search. Unfortunately, this is not supported, because that option is a global option, and changing it would affect all searches. Making a search link cause a change to your global setting would definitely qualify as unexpected behavior. The alternative solution for now may be to alter the search to be appropriately more inclusive. This will require reviewing the intended purpose of the search to determine whether or not it should be inclusive of other terms. I can't remember where off the top of my head, but there are other places in the application where we do generate more inclusive searches.

I agree with you that the search suggestions are not entirely consistent, and we are aware of the manifold feedback on this issue.

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

Andrew Batishko (Faithlife) said:

Is the distinction between <Topic Burning Bush> and <Thing Burning Bush> significant to you? If so, why?

Search returning no results: e.g. => https://community.logos.com/forums/p/143686/904735.aspx#904735

Armin said:

I know that Logos does a superb job on very precise searches for experts. This is great and needed. But since I am not an expert, I find that Logos lacks intuitiveness. In this case, let me point out two things:

 

1) As mentioned earlier, Logos has the great feature of suggesting a search term. This has helped me many times. However, in this case the suggested search term was misleading.

 

2) To do the fuzzy Bible search, I need to go to "Basic", not "Bible". Then I need to search "Everything", not "Bible". My intuition would say: To search for something in the Bible, I select the Bible search, and then search the Bible.

If Match Equivalent References is not checked, then distinction is significant.

Right. That's why I said that "Match equivalent references" should really be on unless you have a specialized need for differentiating. From what I can see, there isn't a need for that here, so the setting should just be left on.

Let's back up a whole bunch of steps and go back to basics. I'm going to try and assume you know nothing at all, so have patience if I'm covering something you already know. It's possible there is some fundamental piece that's missing among the other things you already know. I actually learned some things myself in the process of working through this. This was part of the delay in getting a response back to you.

Let me also say in advance that this information explains what currently IS. We recognize that this information is not always surfaced to users in an easily understandable way. We recognize that there are many potential improvements for how search and auto-complete allow users to interact with this information. I'm considering those subjects outside the scope of this thread.

Faithlife has created a number of collections of hand-curated information that have different purposes and are meant to fulfill different needs. These collections of information are called datasets. Different datasets may contain some similar or overlapping data, but are generally taking different approaches to organizing information.

For the example searches below, make sure "Match equivalent references" is turned off.

The Biblical Things dataset is intended to provide a unique reference for each Thing in the Bible (generally nouns that aren't People, Places, or Events). It contains a list of all the words in the Bible where each Thing is mentioned.
You can find these entries (and tagged images) using: <Thing Money>

The LCV dataset is intended to provide a very large (and open-ended) vocabulary for identifying and organizing reference content (such as Bible dictionaries). It contains information about each article that talks about each entry. It also contains some key references for each topic. Entries in this dataset are called Topics.
You can find articles tagged with these entries using: {Milestone <Topic Money>}
You can also find images that have been tagged with this topic using: <Topic Money>
The key references are not currently searchable because they are not exhaustive. Therefore the search results would be misleading.

The Preaching Themes dataset is similar to LCV, but is intended to provide a smaller (closed) vocabulary for identifying and organizing sermon themes. It contains information about locations in resources that speak to each theme, as well as a list of Bible verses that are related to the theme.
You can find articles tagged with these entries using: <PreachingTheme Money>
You can find references in your Bible that speak to the theme using: {Section <PreachingTheme Money>}

The UAV dataset was created as a way to bridge the gap between the different datasets. It contains information about which pieces of information in one dataset correspond to information in other datasets.

The "Match equivalent references" option in the search menu is a global option. Changing it in one place affects all search panels and inline searches. If it is turned off, then the search will only look for exactly the references as listed in the search string. If it is turned on, then the search is invisibly expanded to include other references that the UAV dataset has defined as being equivalent.

For example, turn off "Match equivalent references" and search for <Topic Money>. Note the number of results. These will generally be dictionary entries that talk about money. Now search for <PreachingTheme Money> and note the number of results. These will generally be illustrations, devotionals, and similar sermon information type results. Both of these searches are about money, but one uses the Topics (LCV) dataset and the other uses the Preaching Themes dataset. If you wanted to find all the results about money, you can turn on "Match equivalent references" and rerun either search. Your results should equal both of the other two searches.

Note however that neither of those search returns results from your Bible like you would get if you searched for <Thing Money>. That's because the UAV dataset has not included <Thing Money> in the set of data that are considered equivalent with <Topic Money> and <PreachingTheme Money>.

Factbook is meant to be the collection of all the information about each subject. Therefore, it takes advantage of the UAV dataset to display information across all of the different datasets. A Topic Guide is specifically focused on Topics, and so generally its information is presented specifically from the Topics (LCV) dataset. There are some places in the Topic Guide where some information is pulled in from other datasets as well via the UAV bridge.

When the application provides a link that creates a new search, it should ideally create a search string that gives back results that are the same as what is being viewed at that point. It's not always possible to represent the retrieved information exactly, so sometimes the provided search string results in additional false positives. Sometimes the search requires the use of the "Match equivalent references" setting to replicate the results, but since changing that setting would affect the global setting, instead a more complex search is built that combines all the different searches from the equivalency information provided by the UAV dataset. Places where the provided search string doesn't seem to adhere to this information might be a bug, or might be due to other considerations.

Dave Hooton said:

Andrew Batishko (Faithlife) said:

Note however that neither of those search returns results from your Bible like you would get if you searched for <Thing Money>. That's because the UAV dataset has not included <Thing Money> in the set of data that are considered equivalent with <Topic Money> and <PreachingTheme Money>.

I've known about the UAV dataset, but users don't know what to expect from its application.  Search is already regarded as non-intuitive as with <Topic Presence of God> and "Match equivalent" does not make a difference.

That's because <Topic Presence of God> and <PreachingTheme God: Presence> are not marked in the UAV dataset as being equivalent. It seems like these maybe should be considered equivalent, and I've submitted a request to consider this. Other similar problems can be emailed to data@logos.com. Reporting on the forums should work, but it may not always get noticed by the right people. Using a title that clearly indicates the problem may help ("Lack of intuitiveness in Logos" most likely did not capture the attention of people who care about curating the data), but even a good title isn't always a guarantee in attracting attention from the right people, so the email address is usually better.

Dave Hooton said:

Talking about LCV:

Andrew Batishko (Faithlife) said:

You can also find images that have been tagged with this topic using: <Topic Money>
The key references are not currently searchable because they are not exhaustive. Therefore the search results would be misleading.

<Topic Presence of God> returns very different results to Topic Guide. {Milestone <Topic Presence of God>} gets closer to Topic Guide results but omits the results of the <Topic> search. This is why it is my contention that the <Topic> search should be fixed or dumped, because I agree that Factbook is more comprehensive and Topic Guide is more satisfying whilst "Match Equivalent" is unpredictable.

Since you haven't stated otherwise, I'm going to assume you are comparing the results of the suggested search in the Topic section in the Topic guide: <Topic Presence of God> OR "Presence of God" OR "Divine Presence" OR "God’s Presence".

The reason for the difference here is that the LCV (Topics) dataset includes both articles with Topic references as milestones and with headwords as milestones. The search engine supports searching for reference milestones using {Milestone <Topic Presence of God>}, however, the search engine does not support searching for headword milestones (yes, we are aware of customer requests for this feature).

That's why the search that is generated from the link at the bottom of the Topic section looks like it does. It's an attempt to retrieve most of the pertinent locations despite the fact that an exact search can not be recreated.

Dave Hooton said:

To summarise:-

• fix or dump the user <Topic> Search as Factbook, Topic Guide and Bible Browser are more productive
• also fix the Search format for <Event> --->  {Section <Event ...>}
• fix/enhance the UAV
• dump the global setting and introduce a [match equivalent-refs] command (mainly for app generted searches)

• From a data perspective, <Topic> search is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. What is needed is an improvement that allows users to search for what they want without having to worry about how to get the syntax right. We have put thought into a solution for this, but I have no information about when or if this will be implemented.
• We do have an open case for fixing the Event search in the context menu.
• UAV fixes can be suggested via email or forum post as above.
• We do have an open case for a match equivalent flag to be used directly in the search string.