Upgrade StorageQuestion on groups in zotero: what if a group is modified by multiple group members simultaneously?
Update:
After trying with my colleagues, we found the several facts:
1. other users can add/move/delete collections; add/move/delete/copy items/ tags/notes etc.
2. In terms of sync, for A GIVEN collection, if two persons move them without sync, then sync them one by one, the operation made by the one who sync later will be kept; the sync seems to work collection-wise, so if another collection is moved by only the first user, this operation is also kept.
In terms of items, if two persons copy/cut one item to two different locations, the item will appear in both target collections, but whether it is still in the source collection depends on whether there is at least one cut operation, regardless of the order.
Note: we didn't really test delete for collections or items, etc., because I think it may be a better idea to keep them in a user-defined collection called, eg "user_bin", and the deletion will always be made by one user, like the leader of the group.
Further thoughts: Since the operations by some other users could be potentially overwritten by others, and we have different members who will edit the group, I would suggest adding some features to let the members have a way to know from which some of the operations are made, e.g., who created the tags/notes/attachment/ added some lines in the notes/ created the collection, etc.
Original post:
I'm considering creating a group with several other colleagues, the objective is that everybody inside can create/delete/move collections/items/attachments/notes etc, just as what we can do for our own library.
From the description during creating the group, I'm not sure whether such kind of objective is feasible or not, and if not, what can be realized exactly? I didn't find much discussion on this topic, so I'd like to ask for some help.
Moreover, the bigger concern is, if this is at all possible, what if the group is modified by several other members simultaneously? how would it sync then? What would happen if multiple members modify the same collection/item, etc, such as delete/move/add notes etc., and what if they modify different collections/items etc?
And can we somehow distingush the operations of different member, for example, is it possible to see who created some note (or who types some lines in a note), or who added some tags, etc,
If the above procedure is troublesome, what would be the best routine one would suggest for group operations?
Since zotero seem to be a very powerful way to collect and organize info, if a proper routine for sharing and group work is feasible, it will really become a all-in-one research data organization software, and I'll be definitely willing to purchase the strorage plans in such kind of convenience.
Any comment on the relevant topic is welcome. Thanks in advance.
After trying with my colleagues, we found the several facts:
1. other users can add/move/delete collections; add/move/delete/copy items/ tags/notes etc.
2. In terms of sync, for A GIVEN collection, if two persons move them without sync, then sync them one by one, the operation made by the one who sync later will be kept; the sync seems to work collection-wise, so if another collection is moved by only the first user, this operation is also kept.
In terms of items, if two persons copy/cut one item to two different locations, the item will appear in both target collections, but whether it is still in the source collection depends on whether there is at least one cut operation, regardless of the order.
Note: we didn't really test delete for collections or items, etc., because I think it may be a better idea to keep them in a user-defined collection called, eg "user_bin", and the deletion will always be made by one user, like the leader of the group.
Further thoughts: Since the operations by some other users could be potentially overwritten by others, and we have different members who will edit the group, I would suggest adding some features to let the members have a way to know from which some of the operations are made, e.g., who created the tags/notes/attachment/ added some lines in the notes/ created the collection, etc.
Original post:
I'm considering creating a group with several other colleagues, the objective is that everybody inside can create/delete/move collections/items/attachments/notes etc, just as what we can do for our own library.
From the description during creating the group, I'm not sure whether such kind of objective is feasible or not, and if not, what can be realized exactly? I didn't find much discussion on this topic, so I'd like to ask for some help.
Moreover, the bigger concern is, if this is at all possible, what if the group is modified by several other members simultaneously? how would it sync then? What would happen if multiple members modify the same collection/item, etc, such as delete/move/add notes etc., and what if they modify different collections/items etc?
And can we somehow distingush the operations of different member, for example, is it possible to see who created some note (or who types some lines in a note), or who added some tags, etc,
If the above procedure is troublesome, what would be the best routine one would suggest for group operations?
Since zotero seem to be a very powerful way to collect and organize info, if a proper routine for sharing and group work is feasible, it will really become a all-in-one research data organization software, and I'll be definitely willing to purchase the strorage plans in such kind of convenience.
Any comment on the relevant topic is welcome. Thanks in advance.
Zotero will automatically resolve anything it can automatically resolve. If you delete a tag from an item and someone else adds a different tag to the item, and then you both sync, you'll both end up with each other's changes. Same if you change a field on an item and someone else changes another field. It's not that the sync works "collection-wise" — it's just that a collection can only exist in one location, so one has to win, and there's no way to resolve this automatically. We show a conflict resolution dialog for things like conflicting fields (e.g., "Title" changed on both sides), but it's not worth trying to present a coherent conflict resolution dialog for something involving an entire collection hierarchy. In the online library, you can see who last modified an item, and we'll be adding that to the desktop app in a future version. We hope to add other sorts of activity-log functionality in the future.
Now there are several other features that I would recommend:
1. Regarding sync of attachments:
I thought it would be a good idea that the attachments are synced by other users for all the items, so that once one user adds an attachment for one item, the other users won't need to download it again. However, a problem will occur if someone does not have a large storge for his device, for example, some users may want to use ipad to use zotero. In such case, it would be an issue for him to sync a large group of items, which may take up to several GB. So I believe that it would be a good idea if the user could choose whether to sync pdf when needed, for example, one can choose to disable fulltext sync for the group library, but if he select several items, and right click on the items, an option of "sync full_text (or attachments)" is available. Then, he does not have to download all the full text by themselves.
Since currently, if a given item has an attachment, there is an indicator of blue dot for the given item, I suggest it to be designed in such a way that when attachment is available from the cloud service, then the a dot of a different color (such as green, purple etc) is shown there, so other users know that there is an attchment that can be sync. If he does sync the attachment to local, then the dot becomes blue.
2. I would suggest more functionality regarding group cooperation, and ways for the users to trace what different users has done. Also somthing like version control is highly favorable, so that if someone changes the group mistakenly, it could be recovered by him or others. However, I'm not experienced with these things, so I don't know what is a good routine.
I'm actually not sure what it means by I can't sync zotero to an ipad, does it specifically mean groups or for both my groups and my library? And what one can do on ipad? I'll confirm with my colleague later and report what I find out if necessary.