[OSM-talk] weeklyOSM #379 2017-10-17-2017-10-23

[Marcos Oliveira]

I will quote what Verdy_p relayed to me during one of our conversations:

Given that this is an ad nominem attack, compeltely unjustified by the fact
> that this single person completely ignores the lot of things for which I've
> received many thank-you on making the wiki internationalized, with many non
> working links fixed, helping many people having what they intended working,
> resolving many complex issues,



I prefer not reply there: such indirect attacks where I'm cited without
> even being informed, an on a mailing list space where I'm not involved,
> such thing is illusory. I've done many things for lot of other people and
> also contantly helped cleaning lots of spams on the wiki.


> He speaks about my supposed "errors", yes this may happen (like from
> everyone else), but I've fixed them as soon as they were discovered.


> He criticizes me only because he does not want to update its own website
> when he developed a broken wiki parser that is not even able to parse the
> basic standard wiki syntax correctly. I even managed to help him for his
> parser by making sure that the wiki syntax on a single page was using more
> strict rules, but he has argued that that page (the calendar) required only
> a city name and country name separated by a single comma, and thought that
> there was a fixed number of commas in the events description. Which has
> always been wrong.


> That calendar page since the beginning years ago was very open. Instead of
> fixing the result produced by its parser before publishing his external
> website (he really uses manual edit to integrate it on his German website),
> for just reviewing the content before publishing it there, he wants to add
> restrictions or complications on the wiki such as forcing users to type
> unreadable wiki code with %XX encoding (which has never been a goal), and
> removing/renaming pages that he can't parse or link correctly within his
> website, because of of its broken parser (which is just a helper used only
> by him, and completely not open, so no one else than him can help fixing
> it).


> He is arguing that this calendar is made for his site, which is wrong as
> the wiki has used the calendar for the wiki itself as a first goal, and
> then people wanted to use it to other sites: there's a standard for it, and
> it is the "microformat" which I have finally implemented (it was requested
> by others since long, even before he started his own blog site, which was
> also not working at all and unpublished in some long periods).


> I've offered him requests for improvements, but he refuses to get details
> about how to open this calendar (not just for his website, but for any
> other website that may want to republish these events announcement). I
> proposed to use templates, but as I know that his broken parser will not
> support it at all, I needed discussions with him so that we could agree on
> a format.


> I've demonstrated to him that Microformats were the solution, but it's
> true that we could go with more detailed microformats: but it would make
> the wiki editing even more complicate without custom templates to simplify
> the syntax in a way that does not require technical knowledge to make it
> work: so the Calendar page shows and details why things are done the
> current way, gives all info needed, with examples that are easy to
> reproduce: the document action initially was not there at all, and I've
> made all these documentation by taking into account his own needs.


> So I've been very tolerant about his needs and made very significant
> progresses in his direction. Still he denies that fact, as if I did nothing
> and rejected all he wanted. In fact he has made nothing to help fix the
> issues and maintain the wiki. I've documented everything I have done, and
> discussed with everyone. Also if I made some unexpected errors (often hard
> to track because this is most often an old undocumented behavior), not only
> I fixed it but also documented what was missing.


> Many things I've done are related to internationalization to make the wiki
> suitable for all languages (including those written RTL such as Arabic or
> Hebrew, or where there were assumptions about ASCII or English only when it
> was not necessary or wrong, so that the layout remains correct for
> everyone). Most of the times these are tricky cases that most wiki editors
> are unable to understand or locate in their written wikicode. I've not
> removed any content but made it accessible as much as possible to everyone.


> Without my progressive work the wiki would be like it was years ago, with
> a lot of unlinked pages, and almost no navigation, difficulties to locate
> the information. And many other tools would not even refer to the wiki as
> they do now (notably in OSM editors). And people can now really use the
> wiki in any language. Create translations when they want, find these
> translations were available, and have these translations used.


> So the "net value" is largely positive over years (when his own
> contributions on the wiki are almost zero: he is only interested on his own
> closed website where he is the only maintainer and reviewer and where he
> complains now that he cannot maintain it because he has no time for it but
> does not allow any one else to work collaboratively).


> In fact his attacks are unjustified: he does not show anything I really
> made wrong, and still hides his own errors: he does not want to prove
> anything in fact that would in fact show that he has made many more
> frequent errors than those I did unexpectedly (but fixed as soon as they
> were discovered). There are lots of problems still on the wiki, but I'm not
> alone to fix them. Many errors are very simple to fix. But the wiki lacks
> some tools (and has its own internal bugs for which some workaround had to
> be found).


> Various diagnostic tools are offered on the wiki, and they reveal problems
> and I've fixed many of them without ever breaking the existing content
> which is now back online and accessible to everyone. People continue to add
> contents, there are more topics covered than ever. And I do not work alone:
> I contact the relevant people where needed.


> I'm also involved in many other OSM projects, including critical ones
> (such as for HOT emergencies).


> Wiki tagging continues to be discusses in the places where they are. But
> seriously, if I ever made some temporary real mistake, did I ever refuse to
> correct it? And if someone else fixed it for me before I discovered it or
> someone signaled it to me, I've left all these corrections: this is how
> collaborative projects work: incrementally.


> You can republish my reply above. However I was never invited or informed
> that I was involved by someone trying to use a background channel. Wiki
> issues should be discussed and linked on the wiki itself. There are too
> many external talks outside and if they are not linked on the wiki, not
> everybody can see what is happening.


> I should then have not been silently cited in external talk list. This is
> completely unfair and does not respect the community rules.
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