How does Paratext handle conflicting changes to Biblical Terms renderings or to conflicting changes in the description field?

Question

Where might I look for a conflicting change note related to a Biblical Term rendering?

Answer 1

As anon848905 mentioned, you can see the history of changes to a biblical term rendering by double clicking on the rendering in the Biblical Terms Renderings window or the BibT tool. See the green arrows below:

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Conflict notes don’t get created when two different people make a change to the rendering of one biblical term. Only conflicting changes to verse text result in a conflict note.

I believe that in the case of competing changes to a biblical term rendering, the change from the most recent Send/Receive always “wins”. Meaning two people could each make a different change to the same rendering but whoever does Send/Receive last decides the “latest” rendering. (I may be wrong about that, hopefully someone will correct me if that’s not how it works.)

Answer 2

Could you clarify what you are asking for? I’m not sure what you mean by a conflicting change in a BT rendering. When users change the renderings of a Biblical Term, Paratext offers to allow for the history to be changed (manual process). Paratext does not keep history of how the description field changes. This would need to be agreed upon by the team. You can change who has rights to change terms under the User Permissions - Other Permissions.

Answer 3

And to repeat the obvious (?) - it is important to communicate as a team to identify who is doing what task. It is also important to do regular Send/Receive so that changes don’t have as much opportunity to conflict.

Answer 4

anon624286:

Where might I look for a conflicting change note related to a Biblical Term rendering?

Paratext does not create conflict notes for anything other than the Scripture text. In all other cases, it will choose a person to “win” and one to “lose”. The person that wins for rendering conflicts is usually the person who did the send/receive first.

Comments

Thank you. I think that answers my question. To summarize: if two people make conflicting changes to a rendering or make a change in the description field the first one to send/receive wins; the other one loses and any change they made is lost.
As a follow-up question:
I haven’t found a way to control permissions for editing the Description field - even if I turn off “Renderings” permissions, the user is still able to edit the Description field. Am I correct that the only way to prevent a user from editing the Description field is to verbally tell/convince them that it isn’t their role at this particular time?

Answer 5

You are correct - you can turn off the ability to edit renderings, but anyone can edit the description field. So, communication is important at this point.

Answer 6

We did a bit of testing on this and discovered that “everybody wins” when it comes to renderings. If two people make changes to the same rendering, Paratext keeps all of the renderings entered, whether or not they’re new renderings or people are editing existing renderings.

This is not the case for the description field. In the case of contesting changes, whoever first send/receives something different to what is in the description field wins. Is this expected or unexpected?

Comments

I’ve advised the team to use “Rendering Discussion Notes” for back and forth conversations that they want to preserve, and to designate just one person to be responsible for updating the description field with anything they want to record there.

I think it might be helpful if the “Renderings” permission also controlled the editing permissions for the “Description” field - that way, by controlling permissions, the potential for conflicting changes being made in the Description field could be eliminated (if only one person has Renderings permission) or at least reduced (if only a couple of people have permission).