Can I ask what is the reasoning around this change ? Seems like another step in the wrong direction
EDIT: For context here is the use case I’m worried about losing.
For years now, when I rip a DVD series for a show I’ve already watched I then marked it as watched in plex. I then adjust the “viewed_at” field directly in the db to be the same as “originally_available_at” field. This then gives me accurate viewed history counts for stuff I’ve watched. If I then watch the series again it adds to this counter.
My dashboard history has “67,750” items in it, 3,000 movies, 22,000 tv episodes and the rest being music tracks.
I’m interested in this as well. I’d like to assume it’s just for items being “marked as played” but not effectively played at the time - meaning, if you go to your entire collection and mark them all as played, it will not create a view history entry for all of them at that time - which is correct, because they weren’t viewed at that time.
This has been something we’ve wanted to address for years now (the original internal issue is from 2019).
Basically we don’t want to create watch history for views that are not organic, with the addition of the Discover activities this just became more important as most of the time you’re not manually marking something as watched on your server because you’ve just watched it, so that history would be inaccurate.
I’m going to have to hard disagree on this (changing the meaning and function of marking as unwatched). How can something have a watch history if it is unwatched? In my mind, marking something as unwatched should delete its play history (perhaps with a large “Achtung, is this really what you want?” beforehand.
Folks have been (in my opinion, incorrectly) relying on marking something unwatched as a means to indicate a sort of “watch intent.” As in, “Hey, I’ve watched this, but I want you to consider it unwatched for i.e. continue watching purposes.” If a means of saying “queue this up again for continue watching” is needed then that should be a new feature request.
I truly feel the current behavior is correct; marking it unwatched means that it hasn’t be watched, with all the implications of that. Some of us rely on the current behavior.
Changes like this have consequences for how the server is used. There needs to be a really good reason to modify the existing functionality.
Regarding the idea of marking something as watched, I don’t see a problem either way. I don’t see a compelling reason to change the current behavior, but it really doesn’t affect me. I can rationalize a difference between marking as watched vs. unwatched, inasmuch as marking as watched is somewhat indeterminate, in that there is no way to assign anything other than the current date/time for the play history. However, “unwatched” is a concrete concept.
Simple, its previous watch history. Your watch HISTORY and the record of it should NEVER be destroyed/deleted just because you reverted the flag from played to un-played.
As a real world example, we watched the movie home alone this week. This is our 3rd watch of this movie over the past 10 years and we can check via dashboard exactly when we watched it last. If however, we used the played/unplayed flag ALL this would have been lost.
While I understand what plex are doing here in relation to view history and the creation of its events with this change its not something I like but I can easily workaround. Have marked the topic as solved as my question is answered.
It’s not simple. Having a history implies that something has been done to begin with. If we’re talking about a watch history, then it has to have been watched. If you mark it as unwatched, that history, logically, cannot exist. I understand technically that “I did a thing.” But if you tell the software explicitly that you did not do that thing, I feel it should be undone. I think it’s being abused to express a different concept: I want to, notionally, treat this as unwatched, but sssshhhh, just kidding, here’s the watch history.
I’d prefer the two concepts to be expressed separately, but I feel that the current unwatched behavior is correct. The new concept should be a flag to say “Add to continue watching.” And that should be requested separately (and actually may have been at some point; I vaguely remember an “add to continue watching” feature request).
There should be a different means to express the idea of “I want this to be available in my continue watching” other than marking as unwatched. Because that creates a logical fallacy in my mind.
Our opinions differ on this, which is fine. I won’t be getting into a back and forth on it. You will not change my opinion and I’ll not alter yours so enough said.
For the record, I never said it should. What I strongly disagree with it is that if the something had previously been watched and if then later they decided flip the flag to mark it was unwatched that ALL previous dashboard history for that item is deleted. This is wrong IMO.
I strongly disagree. The past implementation in Plex was, let’s say, very unfortunate IMHO.
There are certain occasions where marking as “unwatched” is not supposed to eradicate the watch history.
Not least for using the advanced filters for “last viewed” or “number of playbacks”.
I often set a whole tv show to unwatched, to be able to watch it again as intended, by airing date. But I don’t want it to lose its watching history by doing that.
Deleting the history is certainly desirable, but it should be a separate thing.
I do think they should be separate things. However, I believe the current behavior is more desirable. The “new thing” should be a way to say “treat this as something new from a watch perspective.”
I’m not arguing that watch history shouldn’t be preserved. I’m suggesting that marking something as unwatched should have certain implications. Specifically, it should honor the meaning of the word, logically. Again, if something is unwatched, how can it have a history of its being watched? Different concepts are being conflated in a way which does not make sense, at least to me.
To set something as unwatched should, in my mind, do what the word implies and make it unwatched from the server’s perspective, with all that it implies.
If what you really want is to preserve all that history and just say “Hey, allow this to be queued up for viewing again,” then express that concept more logically. Don’t rely on some mental gymnastics for interpreting “what does unwatched mean in this context?”
What does marking as unwatched mean in the end? If it’s not to mark an item as “new” from a view standpoint" and it’s not to flip the “watch again” flag, what’s its purpose?
If folks want play history to be immutable, that should be a separate feature. Unwatched should do what it says on the tin. With a warning.
But that’s what people are using (abusing) the unwatched feature to indicate - “I want to watch again”. “Unwatched” should be “unwatched”, and “I want to watch again” should be a different feature. Both the examples/use cases that you and Otto provided would be solved with a different “I want to watch again” feature. Maybe our efforts are better used to brainstorm what this “I want to watch again” feature would look like instead. It would require a behavioural change so people stop using unwatched for watch again.
A “Watch Again” indicator would be awsome! Especially if it could be used for filters. I’d love a Watch Again Smart Collection pinned to the Home page.
I’m done now and running for the hills.