Starting to understand the Team's priorities

General Discussions
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Only once in my apx 4 years here have I ever responded to an @elan post.
Previously, it was in a humorous context.
Now, it’s in frustration.

@elan said:
Please stop spreading this sort of nonsense rhetoric. Don’t confuse “listening” with “doing everything I say”.

Indeed. Fine. Perhaps “ignoring” seems to be a better description for clarity of how many of us feel.
I’ve not read every single item of this thread, but what I have, I agree.
I don’t think Plex was ready for 1.0
If it were, it wouldn’t have had so many ‘releases’ since.
I don’t think Plex releases have good enough QA. (Sure, us PlexPass ‘power users’ can only test so much, but then versions with bugs I see and KNOW to exist due to posts in the PlexPass bug forum still get ‘released’???)
I feel Plex on a router or Shield is, well, fringe, as useless as my phone acting like a server is.

Sometimes lately it seems this koolaid just starts to taste sour.
It’s sad, but lately, I have a love hate relationship with this product.

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@JamminR said:
…
It’s sad, but lately, I have a love hate relationship with this product.

But do you “hate” to “love” it or do you “love” to “hate” it?

In my case it is more the former. I know of nothing better and I use Plex a lot and I love that it does most things I need involving my media quite well. But I hate the direction that it has taken and I hate that “power” users a regularly getting either ignored or dismissed as inconsequential.

“Power” users understand the way Plex is being used by others and they understand what “regular” users and wanting or missing. Often “regular” users do not know how to articulate what they want or need and “power” users act as either intermediaries or interpreters for them.

We, “power” users, (I include myself in that but I am not really sure if it is appropriate) should be listened to but more often than not we are dismissed as being a fringe set and therefore not worthy of being taken seriously. Just because we understand the way things work seems to mean to Plex that we cannot possibly understand what the average user needs. Plex, in their isolated environment knows better.

I am NOT an average user but neither is any of the Plex owners/developers/ninjas but Plex clearly, once one of the insiders makes a decision, never moves from that position or discusses alternatives outside of the Plex inner circle.

Plex is currently developing in what they believe is the most wanted direction and they use choice statistics to validate their decisions. But those statistics are gleaned from, I believe, tainted sources which are inherently invalid due to the source. I think that internet surveys are flawed even more than “regular” surveys or polls and we all know how good those are from the latest US presidential election.

Rather than relying on polls or surveys or tea leaves or goat entrails Plex needs to listen to their power users to find what users can really use and want. But that even has potential problems it just has less problems than the current way Plex determines what users want.

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@Elijah_Baley said:

We, “power” users, (I include myself in that but I am not really sure if it is appropriate) should be listened to but more often than not we are dismissed as being a fringe set and therefore not worthy of being taken seriously. Just because we understand the way things work seems to mean to Plex that we cannot possibly understand what the average user needs. Plex, in their isolated environment knows better.

That’s the thing tho… you so called power users are 1% in the whole PLEX company.

Otherwise we would have 1 million other people in these forums complaining about the same…

I suggest either adapting to the way plex chooses to run THEIR company or move on.

I’m surprised Elan even bothered to reply,
He could say 8/10 things on your want list and you guys would still complain about where’s the other 2…

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@cayars said:

@elan said:
As a wise person once said, you can’t please everyone all the time…

True but I bet if you were able to please @Elijah_Baley, @MikeG6.5 and myself you would by default please 99%+ of the users since we know the pulse of the users and work with them all the time and know what would work better and make life easier for them and ourselves.

That might seem conceited but I bet it’s pretty true.

This must be the stupidest comment I’ve ever seen on this forum. I almost laughed out loud when I read it. I think this comment sums up perfectly what is wrong with this thread in general.

I simply can’t believe that @elan entertains you people. Although, that alone says a lot more about Plex than you guys do.

1 Like
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@MikeG6.5

Well, I guess you told me, didn’t you…

I’m giving you my blunt and honest impression and opinions, as you are to me. If you feel like I’ve overstepped any bounds, I apolgize, but I was hoping we could be open with each other.

BORING WORLD?!?!?!?! WTF? Your USERS want these features, and you call it BORING?!?!

With all due respect, you’re missing my point.

Over the years, we’ve worked on many things which nobody ever asked us for. As one example, the client/server split (remember, we started life as a Kodi née XBMC fork). This wasn’t a requested feature, and at the time it wasn’t met with a universally positive reaction. Many people wondered why we didn’t spend our time just adding more features to OSXBMC. As another example, the On Deck feature (again, not a single person requested it). Or the agent/plugin model which allowed a community to spring up around exposing content inside Plex. Or thumbnail seeking. I could keep going…

I love that we’re able to be creative with our product, that we can come up with cool ideas, and work with other passionate and smart people. We just concluded an internal hackathon not too long ago, and the demos that people gave (some of which will turn into shipping features) were just awesome. And spoiler alert, one of them was a most-requested feature.

So my point is, yes, life would be very boring if we were limited to doing only the things which customers (or just power users) were asking for. And I feel like you see the world in very black and white terms where ANY SINGLE THING we do which doesn’t align with your own desires is (a) a waste of time and (b) taking time away from working on those things. I submit that neither of those two things is necessarily true.

YOU should make a poll in the General Free forums

This was what I was getting at with my link to this post. Please read it. I ran a few numbers, and looked at forum analytics. The number of active users on this forum is about 5% of the active users of Plex. Of those active forum users, about 16% are actually writing/commenting vs just reading (thanks, Vanilla!). If I’m doing my math correctly, that means that about 1% of Plex users are engaging in conversation here and voicing their opinions. Honest question: Do you think that 1% represents an accurate sample across all our different types of users and that we’d be well served to base our priorities solely upon their input?

Again, worth reiterating: Go look at the feature request forum, and note all the stuff we have done. It’s not nothing. But please, please, we have to move beyond the simplistic view that it only makes sense for us to work uniquely on that set of requests, without taking many other things into account.

@cayars said:

But at the same time the power users often have a better feel for how things are used in the real world then the designers

I have to beg to differ with you there :slight_smile:

@HitsVille said:

If we cant have full blown true collections then at least give us "Per Library Playlists "

Hey, actually, a bit of insider information: these are coming as part of our web redesign, last I looked, in that you’ll get playlists scoped to a library when you’re in that library.

@Elijah_Baley said:

I want, in the clients, to be able to say "show me all my movies that are (action or adventure) but not (science fiction or horror). That would include “The African Queen” but exclude “Aliens.”

I recall discussing this with you. The summary: our metrics indicate that virtually nobody uses this feature (multiple filters) inside our apps; this is why we’re moving toward a single-filter UI. However, there is lots of power under the hood which we haven’t even exposed as part of the multi-filter UI, and we’ll be exposing this as part of our advanced smart playlist builder. I call this win/win.

Plex has fooled me several times into believing that something was coming or something was being worked on

We’ve never lied to you, nor will we start to. If we told you something was being worked on, it was.

@Elijah_Baley said:

Rather than relying on polls or surveys or tea leaves or goat entrails Plex needs to listen to their power users to find what users can really use and want

Please, althought you might disagree, read this post for a different perspective.

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Just spent some time on the Facebook pages, tonight… (Actually, made my first account on Facebook just to look.) A lot of the same types of issues, requests and complaints there. I would guess that’s the same 1% taking the time on Facebook, too? Wish I could selectively ignore feedback at my job.

Waste of time for the user community to try to make the product better. If you aren’t going to use the Feature Requests to develop the features people ask for on that forum, close that forum and delete everything in it. No sense in giving anyone false hopes they might actually get something they want in Plex.

And I have read that post @elan. Nice way to justify ignoring the community’s desires.

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@elan said:
I love that we’re able to be creative with our product, that we can come up with cool ideas, and work with other passionate and smart people.

And I “love” how the forum is riddled with posts about small “quirks” that would take a single dev 10 minutes to fix.
All of this is ignored, argued to the ground. Many times, those discussions take waaaaay more time that it would take to fix those “quirks”. I’m starting to think some people here dedicate themselves to ensure nothing is done properly.

@elan said:
Honest question: Do you think that 1% represents an accurate sample across all our different types of users and that we’d be well served to base our priorities solely upon their input?

And I wonder, where are you getting the data for the 99% of users? Because it sure looks like a “crystal ball” type situation. And don’t tell me it’s “metrics” or “analytics”. Contrary to what some people believe, you can’t actually reduce the human being’s behavior to numbers.

The truth is, most people don’t give any input because they see how it is being treated.

@elan said:
I have to beg to differ with you there :slight_smile:

That answer is like yelling “Just because!” and storming out of the room. But without the laugh track.

@elan said:
our metrics indicate that virtually nobody uses this feature (multiple filters) inside our apps; this is why we’re moving toward a single-filter UI.

Did it occur to you that it’s not used because it’s too much hassle? Users tend to get frustrated with digging through menus. You had that pointed and counted out earlier.

@elan said:
We’ve never lied to you, nor will we start to. If we told you something was being worked on, it was.

And then what? You just bailed on it without an explanation to people waiting for results?
If so, You can’t complain about bitterness of some comments.

@elan said:
Please, althought you might disagree, read this post for a different perspective.

I am not a Plex veteran by any means. I started using it fairly recently, compared to most of people in this thread, yet I tend to agree with them. It’s not that my perpective is tainted by being a “power user”. I’ve spoken to some of my friends who do not use it like me and they agree too. There are a lot of unnecessary expansion coupled with unfinished features. A lot of times I find myself thinking that most of the features Plex is bragging (many of those features still need fixing) should’ve been done differently from the beginning.

Don’t rely on “metrics”. Talk to the people! Send a questionnare through the newsletter. You’ll see an entirely different picture.

As for the “feature requests” - forum posts is the worst idea ever.
It’s a complete mess. Take a look at feathub. Hard to find anything better than that . . .

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@elan said:

@HitsVille said:

If we cant have full blown true collections then at least give us "Per Library Playlists "

Hey, actually, a bit of insider information: these are coming as part of our web redesign, last I looked, in that you’ll get playlists scoped to a library when you’re in that library.

In that case I’m happy enough… Thanks so much for sharing the info as well.
I appreciate it’s not usually the Plex way.
:slight_smile:

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@elan said:
Just catching up on this thread, figured I’d give my two cents on a few things:

A new UI for PMP and clone platforms was promised months ago, before the summer I think

Yep, we realize we’re insanely late on this, and we’re not happy about it. There are a few reasons, but the most important is that the move to React, while fairly easy on the desktop, has proven to be a lot harder across all the platforms the big-screen UI is on (PS3/PS4/XB1/smart TVs) besides PMP. We’re making good progress, and we’ve hired more people for that team to speed things up.

The poor communication between the Plex team and their users

You’ve still got a co-founder (me) in the forums, chatting directly with you. I can’t name many companies where that’s the case. And we’re scheduling a new set of community roundtables.

projects.The “Shield” which has been much ballyhooed but has failed in that it cannot handle even moderately large libraries

I’m not exactly sure what a “moderately large library” is, but yeah, it’s an ARM-powered box, not for everyone. For people with reasonably-sized libraries, it’s a great one-stop solution.

I have rethought my involvement in the upcoming bogus conference because I do not want to be mislead or lied to

That wasn’t the intent, so I’m sorry you feel that way, and you definitely weren’t lied to. There’s likely nothing I can say which would change your mind, so I won’t bother.

I have a theory on that… FEAR.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s not fear. I just got pointed to this thread about 20 minutes ago.

I just want the DVR beta to be out of beta. Or at least up to date with all the additions the other clients have. This is NOT asking for a lot here. Last update was Sept 30th. Not sure why this client has not seen any traction.

I can explain this ~ during the DVR work, the server was “forked” (branched on git, if you want to be specific) to allow rapid progress to be made. We’re in the process of merging stuff back into the mainline, but it’s been going slower than expected, which is why there hasn’t been a unified release with the DVR feature included. We have a beta 4 ready, but we decided to re-sync it against upstream (to get the new photo tagging feature, bug-fixes, etc.) This work was completed over the holiday weekend and now it’s in testing.

I also want to see GPU transcoding.

Our work on this is progressing, it’s important to us too.

I bet they would jump a little higher in responding.

Again, I’m sorry we can’t be on top of every thread. We have a ton of forum users, and sometimes posts fall between the cracks. Feel free to PM me personally if you think this is happening and I’ll have a look myself or pass it along.

I honestly think a lot of the Team (including some ninjas) have me blacklisted

Nope :slight_smile:

I see so, plex is increasingly offering new features as an incentive to sign the plexpass, this for non-plexpass sounds like wonderful things, but it throws features that do not work, and forgets the old ones that do not work for months .

I do not think it’s fair every day that a new feature is launched in order to attract new plexpasses if these features do not work.

It is also not fair to wait more than 2 months to have a fix for a feature that you paid to have it working.

For me this will lead to a massive withdrawal of the plexpass signature, because it is no use attracting people with resources that you promise you will have if the subscription is paid, and these wonderful resources instead of enchantment, bring a headache and no solution, or A pessimistic support of the team, which is what we all have today

I really like the plex, and I’m plexpass for years, but when the company says, pay a monthly fee and you’ll get these amazing unique features.

At least these amazing features have to work do not think …

New features are great, as long as they work, launch feature over feature that does not work …

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@JamminR said:
It’s sad, but lately, I have a love hate relationship with this product.
Join the ever growing club.

@d2freak said:

@cayars said:

@elan said:
As a wise person once said, you can’t please everyone all the time…

True but I bet if you were able to please @Elijah_Baley, @MikeG6.5 and myself you would by default please 99%+ of the users since we know the pulse of the users and work with them all the time and know what would work better and make life easier for them and ourselves.

That might seem conceited but I bet it’s pretty true.

This must be the stupidest comment I’ve ever seen on this forum. I almost laughed out loud when I read it. I think this comment sums up perfectly what is wrong with this thread in general.

I simply can’t believe that @elan entertains you people. Although, that alone says a lot more about Plex than you guys do.

@d2freak, speaking purely from my own position.I believe this to be true. I’ve not seen you around before (I took a break) but would think if you knew me better you would have understood what I meant by that comment.

I was not saying that Plex should add every feature that Elijah, Mike or myself ask for. That is stupid in itself. Many of these requests would in fact be power user features that might only get used by 10% of the people if that. That is not what I was talking about by my post and I think most people understood what I meant. The three of us guys help a lot of users setup Plex and help them with ongoing issues, problems and work arounds. I still help a lot of people via TeamViewer and phone calls. I know first hand the issues NEW people experience and see their growing pains as their systems grow a bit.

What I was referring to by “please us” was the minimal set of features we know that would be useful to 90%+ of users. Not fringe things. Often times some of these things could have just been design issues before ever being programmed. In some cases it’s a bit of programming after the fact (small work, large gain) because they didn’t follow a feature set through or didn’t realize how people would use the feature.

BTW, I had a thread here that was basically my personal wish list. There are many fringe/power user features in it as well as many small items that would benefit the community at large. I put that together to give Plex ideas for the future and they have added some of them. But that is not the type of thing I was referring to here.

Hopefully you now better understand what was meant by my statement regardless of how arrogant it came across.

@elan said:
Honest question: Do you think that 1% represents an accurate sample across all our different types of users and that we’d be well served to base our priorities solely upon their input?

Loaded question there @elan. :slight_smile: But I’ll say Maybe. It depends on the sample people you choose from that 1% and what their objectives are. You get the right people who know the product, know the issues and willing to give you vital feedback that affects the masses then yes of course. You get people who are in it for themselves, then of course NOT. Ultimately as the developers it’s still your game plan of course.

@elan said:
our metrics indicate that virtually nobody uses this feature (multiple filters) inside our apps; this is why we’re moving toward a single-filter UI.

In part because they are hard to use and a bit wacky compared to many other software suits. The lack of negative filtering definitely affects it’s usefulness.

@Monsters_Grin said:

@elan said:
Please, althought you might disagree, read this post for a different perspective.

I am not a Plex veteran by any means. I started using it fairly recently, compared to most of people in this thread, yet I tend to agree with them. It’s not that my perpective is tainted by being a “power user”. I’ve spoken to some of my friends who do not use it like me and they agree too. There are a lot of unnecessary expansion coupled with unfinished features. A lot of times I find myself thinking that most of the features Plex is bragging (many of those features still need fixing) should’ve been done differently from the beginning.

This is what I was talking about earlier when I mentioned a few of us have the “pulse” of the new users. We see this a lot! @Monsters_Grin you are surely not alone in that feeling. But Plex got you 80% there so be happy what you have. :slight_smile: Sorry couldn’t resist a little poke. LOL

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Thanks @elan !! Keep up the good work.

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@cayars said:
This is what I was talking about earlier when I mentioned a few of us have the “pulse” of the new users. We see this a lot! @Monsters_Grin you are surely not alone in that feeling. But Plex got you 80% there so be happy what you have. :slight_smile: Sorry couldn’t resist a little poke. LOL

I don’t mind @cayars :slight_smile: . I get that I probably shouldn’t launch such a tirade, but it’s really frustrating, even for a “newcomer” to see such response from Plex Inc.
I know my issues are really minor and a few of you probably had a good laugh reading them, but logically - this issues shouldn’t even exist in the first place. I mean, why couldn’t they put “original” option in music sync?!?

See, I’m already getting triggered :smiley: .

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@elan said:
The summary: our metrics indicate that virtually nobody uses this feature (multiple filters) inside our apps; this is why we’re moving toward a single-filter UI.

Hold on a second: Are you saying that there are multiple filter features in Plex?? As far as I know, you can’t do what @Elijah_Baley described, "“show me all my movies that are (action or adventure) but not (science fiction or horror).”

There are multiple threads of people asking for exclusion filtering, as well as AND filtering (now, all you can do is OR filtering). If we’ve been mistaken about the presence of those features all this time, perhaps that’s why your metrics show that nobody uses it. That’s certainly why I don’t often use the filters in their current state - it is rarely useful.

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(I’m going to bow out of this thread after this, not least because I’m doing a bit of travelling for the rest of the week)

@Monsters_Grin said:

And I “love” how the forum is riddled with posts about small “quirks” that would take a single dev 10 minutes to fix.

If there are such things, please PM with them any time (tag them #tenminutefixes or something like that so they don’t get lost in the deluge of other PMs I receive). I realize that historically some of these things have fallen through the cracks, and it’s frustrating for us too. We started a “top ten” list internally to help manage these sorts of things better and it’s been pretty helpful.

And don’t tell me it’s “metrics” or “analytics”. Contrary to what some people believe, you can’t actually reduce the human being’s behavior to numbers.

We do a combination of metrics, A/B testing, and actual classical user testing (where we film people doing tasks and talking about loud as they do them). Nobody gets electrical shocks, I promise.

I mean, why couldn’t they put “original” option in music sync?!?

That’s being added to apps as we speak, I see it already in my (internal build) iOS app.

@beckfield said:

Are you saying that there are multiple filter features in Plex?? As far as I know, you can’t do what @Elijah_Baley described, ""show me all my movies that are (action or adventure) but not (science fiction or horror).

Right now there are only multiple “positive” filters allowed (e.g. “genre is fantasy or sci-fi or …”). When we allow advanced filter construction, more advanced things will be allowed. Probably not as complex as iTunes with the infinitely nested sub-clauses, but definitely more powerful than what’s avaialble now. (Internally, for those who care, we have a very general filter compiler and SQL query generator.)

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@beckfield said:

@elan said:
The summary: our metrics indicate that virtually nobody uses this feature (multiple filters) inside our apps; this is why we’re moving toward a single-filter UI.

Hold on a second: Are you saying that there are multiple filter features in Plex?? As far as I know, you can’t do what @Elijah_Baley described, "“show me all my movies that are (action or adventure) but not (science fiction or horror).”

There are multiple threads of people asking for exclusion filtering, as well as AND filtering (now, all you can do is OR filtering). If we’ve been mistaken about the presence of those features all this time, perhaps that’s why your metrics show that nobody uses it.

No. The only filters that are available in any client I know of is the “or.” That is I can say in the web app or Roku Classic or RARflix “show me all the movies that are Science Fiction or Horror” and I will get a listing of all my Science Fiction and all my Horror movies in one list. Note the similarity between the mathematical “or” and the English “and.”

I agree that is of limited use as it can only increase the number of movies shown for each genera and that may be the reason Plex does not see it used. They have only given users a single choice and that choice does not create a more focused result. That is they only give a “zoom out” choice after the initial filter.

That is another example of Mark Twain’s reflection of how “statistics” are usually used: “Most people use statistics the way a drunkard uses a lamp post, more for support than illumination.”

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Withdrawn as someone else has already pointed it out

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@elan said:

@beckfield said:

Are you saying that there are multiple filter features in Plex?? As far as I know, you can’t do what @Elijah_Baley described, ""show me all my movies that are (action or adventure) but not (science fiction or horror).

Right now there are only multiple “positive” filters allowed (e.g. “genre is fantasy or sci-fi or …”). When we allow advanced filter construction, more advanced things will be allowed. Probably not as complex as iTunes with the infinitely nested sub-clauses, but definitely more powerful than what’s avaialble now. (Internally, for those who care, we have a very general filter compiler and SQL query generator.)
@elan said earlier:
However, there is lots of power under the hood which we haven’t even exposed as part of the multi-filter UI, and we’ll be exposing this as part of our advanced smart playlist builder. I call this win/win.

Okay, but it sounds like you’re saying that this advanced filter construction will only be available in the Playlist builder, which I presume is only accessible via the web app. But @Elijah_Baley specifically said “…in the clients…”. If the filtering options in the clients don’t improve, there’s no “win” there that I can see.

I’ve never used iTunes, and I personally don’t need something of that apparent depth. But the simple nothing-but-OR filter options we have now in the clients is inadequate.

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I would just like to point out that there are many of us who read the forums but don’t post because the “Power Users” have already said it. I +1 the top comments about mods I am interested in. The main one is movie collections. If I didn’t have several Rokus and kids in college who stream from my server, I would scrap my Plex Pass account and uninstall the server and go pack to using Kodi and Raspberry Pi on all of my TVs at home.

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@beckfield said:

Okay, but it sounds like you’re saying that this advanced filter construction will only be available in the Playlist builder, which I presume is only accessible via the web app. But @Elijah_Baley specifically said “…in the clients…”. If the filtering options in the clients don’t improve, there’s no “win” there that I can see

Correct, we’re not looking to make the client filtering interface more complex than it already is (across N platforms). I can’t imagine how you’d have a user-friendly interface for a general expression builder, not least on a TV.

Using the playlist builder is something which I used for many years in iTunes, where you can build a complex filter like “Albums I’ve added in the last six months which I’ve listened to less than 10 times”, e.g. and it allows you quickly access (in all clients) that view into your library. Since you can’t build a complex filter right now at all, or view it “by type” in the client, it’s a win :slight_smile:

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But playlists cannot be built on any of the clients I use making them worthless to a LOT of people. Playlists are NOT a substitute for good genre filtering and it is quite disingenuous to try to say so.

I think that, as with many other things, Plex will use any means necessary to justify decisions already made. Once Plex decides something should work one way that is the way it will work and those of us that try to explain a better way are effectively banging our heads against a wall.

But there always is:
“Studies have shown that banging your head against a wall can burn up to 150 calories per hour.” So it is not all wasted.