I think it is safe to say, everyone wants improvements.
We (or more specifically, I) just don’t wish to see the experience of one subset improved to the detriment of another subset.
The aim is to improve things for as many people as possible 
(I accept we will never please everyone, no matter what 
)
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Has Plex done a survey or can that info be gathered from our accounts?
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That is based on anonymous metrics we have gathered (https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/privacy-preferences/#sld)
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Are the stats published?
I find it interesting. 
No, they’re not published, but you can read more about how it’s used in the privacy policy https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/
Would having a simple setting to enable the classic recently added behaviour server wide be a difficult thing to implement given your other planned changes? It seems this is all that’s needed to satisfy most people here.
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Where is that statistic from? No offense, but I don’t know anyone who has only one Movie & 1 TV library. I used to, back when I mostly used Plex just to rip DVDs so they could be watched in rooms without DVD players, but even when I had only a couple TV Shows & like 20 movies I had people think it weird that I didn’t split the movies from the cartoons. So sure, there are definitely some who do it that way, but you’re gonna have a tough time convincing most of us that that’s more common without evidence to support it.
I don’t see anywhere there that says most people have only one of each library, in fact there is no information about that at all. If that information is average not just an example set the average person lives in Pittsburg, PA & has 2 accounts per server with an English Movie library averaging 57 items using the IMDB Agent (I wonder which Agent that is…) with videos in H264 with & AC3 audio in an MKV wrapper. Nothing in that data set says anything about the average, median, mean or, most importantly in this case, mode number of libraries. But that information, number of libraries, does not even appear to be in the data set.
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That statistic is from the data we have collected, as I mentioned previously. The information displayed there is purely for example purposes of the data we collect, and is not an average or presentation of the data. The column is literally titled “sample”.
Right, but if that is a sample that does not even matter, I said as much in my reply, the list of data collected is either A.) False or B.) Does not contain any information regarding number of libraries
Collecting information about each library implicitly provides the # of libraries.
It also says on that page: We store the basic information about the libraries you’ve created on your Plex Media Server.
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I mean statistically it does not, because the data about each library is separate, unless the data is combined per user, which could be bad for statistics depending, it’d just be comparing libraries for statistics & 1 person with 12 libraries & 6 people with 2 each would be considered the same statistically
But none of that even matters, the point is that of the 20 or so people I know in person who use Plex none I know have 1 of each, I have never heard anything from anyone in the forums that suggested they had a single of each, & the only person I know who did was me, but with only 20 movies back then. When you have 20 it’s fine, but even then when I split them it made things better.
The point being that saying
Is contrary to the evidence in front of us. Saying it’s true because you said so with nothing to back it up is meaningless. Sure the evidence suggesting otherwise is by no means empirical, it’s completely anecdotal, but there’s a whole bunch of it, where there’s no evidence, neither anecdotal nor empirical, to support your statement, simply your word. Nothing against you, but that sounds to me like when employees at AT&T tell me how cell phones work. They aren’t lying, they believe what they say, but knowing more on the technical side all I hear is the things they say that I know to be false. Not saying that you are lying to us, there’d be no point to that, but the information cannot be believed with zero evidence to support it
If you look at “what percentage of people have X number of libraries”, then it’s rather different. I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at here, or why you think I would share false information? Everything I’ve shared has been true and accurate.
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I’m trying to figure out how having fewer libraries is better than having more.
My server has few different libraries and having the names of them lined up on the lefthand sidebar of the Plex TV app is more convenient than using filters or collections.
For example, I have a library called Hitchcock Films with about 45-50 of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies in it. I’ve been replacing the older DVD based files with blu ray ones as the studios release them.
Without having the Hitchcock library available on the sidebar with one click, I’d have to go into the Movies library, set the filters for Directors and then find Hitchcock in the list of 100’s of directors and then sort by release year each time I want to scan through them.
Is there a way to save this filtered view of the library on the lefthand sidebar of Plex TV app so I wouldn’t have to do this every time I wanted to look through these particular movies?
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Or you just create a Hitchcock collection and go to that. Collections by default are sorted by release year. There is a collection tab within your library.
Sure, it’s not your “1” click step of going to a library, but it allows you to use one library but have different movies combined.
I personally only have 1 movie library and 2 TV libraries (one is TV and the other is anime). I had 4 TV libraries (Foreign and Children) but ended up deciding to combine them. None of my users have complained and I use collections heavily in my movie library. Though, and I mentioned this in another thread so I’m not going to bring it up other than to just mention it, I am hoping collections get improved so you could have movies in multiple collections but still have the movie hidden. Quick example to understand, I have a Jaws collection and an AFI Top 100 movies collection. Jaws is in both but because of that and my settings, Jaws appears as it’s own movie outside of the collections but I would prefer it to only be shown in each collection.
Of course every one is different, but that’s how I handle it.
I also make use of the alphabet jumper on the right and I don’t actually really use filters very frequently as I find them kind of cumbersome with current implementation.
-Shark2k
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As people have stated before eacvhuser need is different and could we not just have a grouping type for the home screen - Either by library or by library type (the old way) as this should satisfy everyone.
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While I agree that the casual user with fewer collections may be the largest group, they are the least affected by the changes you make. The rest of us, which is still a very large percentage, are your hardcore, most loyal, and most vocal users that have really maximized Plex. If these new features aren’t beneficial to your most hardcore users, then they don’t seem like important features, because the casual users aren’t that impacted (and frankly don’t like changes that create new learning curves).
Assuming you provide something that makes us feel better about fewer libraries, how would we go about combining libraries without losing customization? For example, in the past when I’ve tried to link multiple folders together under one library (without yet deleting the old library with the now-duplicate series), customization for the imported series (artwork, collections, edits to episodes) did not transfer over with the series. They connected like brand new library additions and did fresh metadata pulls from the TVDB (or whichever agent).
I currently have 790 TV series spread over 7 genre libraries and 98 collections for shared universes. And that’s not even addressing film libraries and collections. Losing customization is not an option, but neither is having 10 separate Recently Added lines on my homepage if I choose to keep multiple libraries.
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As I have stated numerous times throughout this thread, we’re working towards solutions that benefit users with both a large number of libraries, and those with only a few, and this is an interim step, and what we’re working on will allow more curation than has ever been possible before, and will give our power users features they have never had before. As for combining different libraries and maintaining edits, I’ll admit I’m not well versed on how to do that (as I’ve personally never tried it), though I know others have done it successfully.
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I was just trying to give you practical examples, so your tone of exasperation was unnecessary. You HAVE said numerous times that new features will benefit everyone. You also said that we can continue to use multiple libraries, BUT that the new features are geared toward not doing that. I’m just trying to explain to you why combining libraries is not always practical (unlike you, I DO know how to do it. I also know what a nightmare mess it makes of my customization when I do it).
I’m also trying to emphasize that you’re focusing on your least loyal customers when you keep trying shiny new ways of forcing “Recommended” on us (why is that?) and gearing new features toward people with fewer and smaller libraries. Your more loyal users would like a little more consideration of them before you do things that don’t function well for them. The cross-referencing of actors across libraries sounds FANTASTIC, but we are tired of constant layout changes determined to push “Recommended” or “Recently Added” to the forefront instead of practical usage features. That’s what exasperates US. If Plex developers are determined to tell us what to watch, how about an option to resume a playlist where we left off?
I’m sure we’re all looking forward to this glitch being fixed, as well as a way to manage this change away on our SmartTVs. Until then, I won’t bother you with concerns that are obviously annoying to you. Thank you.
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I have 1 movie and 1 tv library with all my content. I have a fair amount of content with 2500 movies and 350 shows.
Years ago I used multiple libraries but once I found that cast members are stored at the library level I could not live with multiple libraries due to plex not being able to search across libraries when viewing casts. I hate this design with cast scoped per library, its one of my top 5 issues with plex, it really should be shared and is a basic design flaw.
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