Synchronizing can wipe out a collection's contents
I synchronize my database among three computers all using 2.0b6.3. Twice now, I have added a reference on one computer and forgotten to sync another computer before adding a reference on that second computer. When I sync Zotero on the second computer, a popup tells me something to the effect that there was a change to the database that needs to be added to my collection on the second computer. When I click OK, my collection contains only the reference from afar; all of the other members of the collection are no longer there, although they are still in the library and I can add them back to the collection. Is this the expected behavior?
Thanks for reporting this.
We know while using a beta we can only rely on backups, but it can mean quite a bit of lost work if you have have been digitising and reordering older references on one machine. When you find several large collections suddenly empty, There is no 'master' backup that will bring back everything. You are left with a choice of what you would rather lose (and repeat manually). This needs to be flagged more prominently, or the Sync feature put on hold until this is fixed.
You attach a unique tag to each collection. Then, if a collection gets "wiped out" during sync (which obviously shouldn't happen) you can just filter your library by that tag and drag all those files back to the collection.
Overall this is a minimal time commitment.
Note that the items haven't been lost. They are just not in the collection anymore.
Of-course, a tag 'abc' each for every collection 'ABC' is the kind of duplication that an interface should aim at avoiding. The workaround would be near the bottom on my list of non-core activities necessary at the end of a routine work day!
I agree this is a workaround, but a perfectly quick one.
And note that this happened for one update and will get fixed for the next one, so there wasn't really a lot of time to "warn" about this prominently.
We here on the forum always emphasize that it's the sync feature that keeps the beta a beta a this time, so if you don't want to deal with beta behavior - don't, but calling for disabling sync or the like is bit overblown...
Next, could you provide a bit more detail on what happened? The issue above was fixed, so if there's a bug here it's a separate issue.