Problems with Multiple Administrators Editing

CFFrost

I've spent the last couple of days experimenting with multiples administrators of my Zotero Group (ZG), and there are many problems. What I'd like to be able to do is to give multiple people the power to add and edit entries (mostly "tags," but also basic stuff under "info"). When I granted administrator status to another person and he made changes (which he was able to do), everything got all janky, quickly.

An example: he added the tag "liturgy" to an entry which already had the tags: "Orthodox," "early church," and "Syriac." Once he synced, his newly synced version of the Group Library (GL) had only "liturgy" and "early church" as tags. And when I synced some time later, my GL had only the tags: "early church" and "Syriac." AND, both of us lost tags entirely on other books in our GL, ones which neither of us had edited any time recently: some of these books had all their tags lost, some had half, some were intact. This situation was repeated over and over (of course I had my library backed up, so I did not lose anything), and the results were always seemingly random.

Zotero is working great for our project for read-only users, with me as the single administrator. I’d like to be able to get to the point where others can administrate/edit as well. Any advice?

Tjowens

I am not entirely sure how this sort of thing would happen. Are you sure their weren't multiple copies of the items in question with different tags? Also are you looking at the items in your personal library or the copies of the items in the group library. Note that when you drag an item into a group library it is completely severed from the copy in your personal library. So, for example, if you drag an item from your personal library to the group and then add a tag to the copy in your personal library that tag will not be added to the item in your group library.

If the problem is not related to any of those issues, could you try replicating it and reporting on the individual steps so that we can try to replicate the issue?

CFFrost

I am clear on the concept of personal versus group libraries, and I also know there were not multiple copies of the entry in question. What was happening was truly bizarre.

I will try to replicate and record steps & get back to you -- thanks.

few

I just noticed that contrary to what is indicated in the Groups support info linked below, only admins can add content into group libraries and collections. I'm using a private group, with 2 people added, me (as admin) and a collaborator (as member). When my collaborator tried to drag & drop from his personal library to the group, it simply wouldn't highlight the group library or collection folders, and the items would not copy over. Once I made him admin, it worked fine. Based on the above posts, I'm a bit worried that this might not be a good workaround.

http://www.zotero.org/support/groups

fcheslack

You can change whether members or admins can edit under the group settings.

few

Very helpful! I hadn't seen that options pane, that's resolved.

Thanks again.