User talk:Verdy p/Archive 2016 Jul-Dec

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Need your help again with a template

Hi, i created a new Telegram template, which i copied from the existing twitter template and just modified a little.
Like at the twitter page now i want to do the same at the new Telegram page and add the Telegram Icon for some additional shiny bling bling.
But at least here the tables are making a mess when i copy the template there. Could you have a look and try to insert the template in a table there? Where is mistake? Thanks in advanceǃ --Ziltoidium (talk) 07:21, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

It's simple! You've added newlines that are part of the included code, and that will break pages where the template is within within a table cell or within bulleted or ordered list, or within a definition list or block indented by ":". This template MUST remain inline, without any extra newline in the included part.

Note that there's no such restriction for the "noinclude" section containing the categories for the tempalte itself, but you must NOT add newlines in the category specified in the "includeonly" that will be used to autocategorize pages translate the template.

The code was correct in the template for Twitter, you just not copied the Twitter template by changing the doamin name, but you added those incorrect newlines that transform the content into an initial span not necessarily in the same block as what follows. In summary you broke it just because you though it was more readable like this, but the effect is different, notably when the template is used in tables !

20:16, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanksǃ I hope i understood your solution, will have a look again at this weekend. I created two more userboxes meanwhile, what do you think?
Template:User hails from europe
Template:User hails from germany
The first one breaks down continents to states, the second one states to its "sub states" (dont know the right word". I thought a more complex "all on one template" would brake too easy maybe, if i do this with more modifiers, like "user hails from europe/germany/Berlin". Do you think this is ok or would you do other way? Then i would create more in the future for Americas, Africa, Asia, France and so on.. would you seperate Americas into North- and Latin America? For this europe template i did not take "European Union" but the geographical europe from wikipedia which includes e.g. Russia and Turkey as well. Greets --Ziltoidium (talk) 03:46, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Updateǃǃ I just found this Template:Flagicon. Could this better be integrated into the "hails from" template? Maybe it would save a lot of work and cover the whole world already.

an

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Bing&diff=1309108&oldid=1309104&rcid=&curid=62597 what? Sorry, that is not really helpful. What did you why do? I mean, where is all the deleted content? 5000 bytes. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 21:06, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

The content is split, not deleted. Bing is larger than just Bing Maps. All links are to Bing Maps. Bing is a separate entry. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 05:16, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Seems unnecessary to me. "Bing" usually refers to Bing Maps (or even specifically the imagery) in OSM. See the countless source=Bing tags. And the page previously mentioned the distinction in the introduction, so there was hardly any confusion. --Tordanik 14:44, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

In map data of course it refers to Bing Maps. But Bing is larger than that. Even the Imagery is a limited scope, where we have data in OSM that are not related to its imagery, but used as references. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 14:46, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, but "ouch!"... even if this split would be good, what about the countless wrong links Special:WhatLinksHere/Bing now (do not "fix" them now)? Likely the links mostly mean not bing maps, but "bing maps aerial imagery which is usable by OSM". And in any way, please use the wiki edit summary! The edit https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Bing_Maps&diff=1309098&oldid=683849 is a copyright violation now. You just insert content which you did not write - but other wiki authors, who are not even partly mentioned by you. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 20:03, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Copy violation ? No. The same licence applies, this is the same site. Both continue to be linked together. Splitting a page is a normal activity on any wiki. And both histories are kept. This is not finished and the wiki will conttinue to have other restructurations. There's not been any deletion of content. And anyway this was the initial title of the page.

Yes there are other links they don't necessarily speak about Bing Maps. But no link is actually broken, they are just one click before Bing Maps. "countless links".... hmm not that many really.

If articles are saying "Bing", most often this is wrong, the abbreviation is unfair, they are not talking about "Bing" but one of its services. This must be corrected (precised) everywhere, because many things are forbidden in OSM about Bing, that are authorized only in a specific service of Bing, i.e. only its Arial Imagery (which is not directly reproducable but can be used only as a background layer for creating vector data imported in OSM. Other things (including textual data or information from Bing Maps is not even free for use by us). If you consider the copyright issue this is MUCH more important to fix on this wiki, rather than talking about my alledged (false) copyright violation. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 06:42, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license requires to name the authors. How should one know the authors from looking at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Bing_Maps&action=history ? You just add 6.472 Bytes with no author or source given. It is only reasonable to assume that you are the author of those 6472 bytes. Yes, splitting pages is needed sometimes in all wikis, but you should document it properly - also to adhere to the license!

Countless? Well - it is more than 250 in total.

Yes, the reader can click through Bing Maps. Still, it was nicer before - for the readers. The article authors had linked to bing and there the content was. By your change this is broken.

Yes, you are right that more precision might be good, but just (more or less) moving the page without taking care of the links is not really good. Many links were intended to go to the bing aerial imagery description. Now they land on a description of the company bing.

Not a company but a generic brand by Microsoft. Microsoft is still the company, even if Bing is cobranded with Yahoo participating. And that adds to the confusion because We also had Yahgoo imagery up to 2011, now over and integrated into Bing (which also integrates now Nokia data transfered to the HERE division, Nokia being now only a brand for mobile devices by Microsoft.

All this needs cleanup and separation. Yes there are wrok to do, this is jsut a start. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 07:34, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

what about "Bing aerial imagery" https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Bing_aerial_imagery&redirect=no as name for THE page? bing Maps nearly only consists of it and we DO NOT use bing maps for tracing but Bing aerial imagery. And then we need to fix the links and history/authors then. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 20:43, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

ID/Shortcuts

Thanks for the edit summary and the translation! It would be better, if you had noted that you are (apparently) not a native speaker of German (fixed). --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 20:51, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to add what is missing there are still a couple of things missing — Verdy_p ^(talk) 07:31, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Url encoding in Template:User_username

Hi Verdy p. Thanks for the cleanup effort on my userpage. You are right, the use of Template:User username looked strange. By closer inspection the template now handles url encoding as it should. The template doc however was not in sync with the template. I have updated the doc. miki (talk) 11:49, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

There are various cleanups in this area, I also make sure that all these templates line up correctly in user boxes with coherent sizes and alignments.

The docs were saying this did not work, but I've fixed that and checked with various users including you to see how they passed the argument (notably those having spaces or undescores or non Latin user names)

Sorting all this mess takes time to check everything, the doc is a secondary issue (frequently the docs were not even showing the correct examples, or some templates were not using coherent naming, or were incorrectly categorized (notably transalted ones that I will probably deprecate to use autotranslation. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 11:53, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Featured tile layers

In https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Featured_tile_layers&diff=890881&oldid=855996 you added tile.openstreetmap.fr. Is it supported by operators of this map style (see Featured tile layers/Guidelines for new tile layers) See also Talk:Featured_tile_layers#Proposed_layers Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 22:33, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

I added it in 2013, but it is still continuing to be supported (and is one of the default layers proposed by the French QA tool "http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/"...)

Anyway I don't really understand what you're asking for (the link about guidelines for proposals does not contain any contradiction: the tiles have worldwide coverage, with updates in the minutes at low zoom levels, it is constantly improved, supported by the French mailing list, as a Trac bug tracker. See the links provided for details, you'll find contacts. 23:41, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

I am asking whatever maintainers and operators of this style support displaying it on main OSM web site (what will significantly increase server upkeeep costs and complexity) Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 00:23, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

We know that Mapquest is now closed, this is also discussed on the French talk list, which was also speaking about the Wikimedia alternative (but this is still a beta and not fully operational).

I am not the maintainer of this layer server. Ask to the documented contact or write to the Frnech mailing list, about what youy want to do.

The French tiles are documented since long on this wiki, and used for QA tools, and it was shown in State of the Maps several times becauser it contained various improvements that have been partly implemetned in the OSM default Mapnik rendering (many POIs, rendering names along borders, shadings, showing green borders of natural parks, tuning the selected names by criteria, better placements of labels, infering abbreviations (in French and a few other local languages, rending sportive areas, placement of arrows on oneway highways, many other details). 07:10, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

So you asked this only to REMOVE the entry ? Your question was not clear at all ! This entry is there since 2013, and it was regularly announced and discussed on the French mailing list.

Your individual removal is unfair, I've restored the entry (the guidelines you cite above have NOTHING that follows your supposed rules). Did you even search in the past mailing list ? May be you don't read French, but the tiles service is there since long (even long before 2013, it existed before the HOT rendering also made by OSM-FR). People have regularly beend encouraged to use it, and the official OSM-FR site also regularly posts about this map. I've restored the layer (in its proposed section, only because it is not featured on the main OSM site). This layer follows all rules on the Guidelines : worldwide coverage, active support, official publication. It has been cited many times including in World State of The Maps. It has also been used to show possible improvements for the OSM.org Mapnik default rendering (and some ideas were implemented).

This tile server has a bug tracker, most French OSM users use it. It has excellent performance, even if it is not meant for now to be reused on third party websites because it targets mostly OSM mappers.

The tile server is ALSO presented in the list of supported layers on UMap (which is intended for creating custome maps on third party maps). UMap is also supported by OSM France.

Bad guess from you. And the way you asked your question was really not clear (probably your level of English was insufficient to be clear about your intent). You did not ask to anyone before your undesirable deletion. The presence of the layer on this wiki page was not clandestine. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 12:22, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

And if you want to know, Christian Quest (OSM France) manages this server.

See this diff: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Featured_tile_layers&type=revision&diff=938488&oldid=890883

Do you really think he would have left that entry ? He added more details about this support, he did not delete that entry. 12:29, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

"Proposed" section on Featured tile layers is not for all good tile servers - it is already covered by Tiles#Servers. This section is for tile servers proposed to be available on the main page. And such proposal must fullfil some requirements described on Featured tile layers/Guidelines for new tile layers. Starting from "Internally supported. The service provider/author must be in favor of having their tile layer on the website.". Is there any clear declaration that people resposible for running servers for this map style currently support displaying it on the main OSM site? It is not the same as running tile server for their own site. And if "it is not meant for now to be reused on third party websites" then it is not fullfilling mandatory requirement from Featured tile layers/Guidelines for new tile layers Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 13:50, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

You're using your own invented rational, this is NOT what is in the guidelines. And this is supported by the official maintainer of the tile server (who participated to the redaction of this entry), and has been discusssed and presented since years.

"Proposed" means that it may be included in the main page as it fulfills ALL conditions (free for general use, maintained, worldwide coverage...). The decision to include it on the main OSM site is still up to the Foundation (that included Mapquest but has removed it even if it is still active until July 11). Look at the links in the entry everything it explained...

You deleted it as if the maintainer had not proposed it as well ! This tile server is much more active and maintained than all other proposed ones (which don't fulfill all conditions) !

— Verdy_p ^(talk) 16:55, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Did you realise you edited another user’s signed comment?

Were you actually aware that you were editing someone else’s comment? I take it you aren’t the same person as Vmeurisse.--Andrew (talk) 21:18, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Farsi or any oder RTL language template

Hi, I noticed that you changed Template:Fa I know that the last one was incorrect, too. Recent days I wanted to translate OSM wiki to Farsi/Persian which is a Right-To-Left language but that template and also this one which you have edited has a big problem. We couldn't use WYSIWYG editor because all the page (all paragraphs, tables, columns, and contents) comes under this template and only "Edit source" is usable and translating with "Edit source" is really hard. If you use "Edit" tab in Fa:Main_Page you would find my problem.

Is there any way we use Wiki editor in Persian too?

I don't understand your problem. Yes the tempalte used with parameter does not close its div, but using bdi is not correct as well because they do not nest cleanly.

The tempalte has been used mostly to setup the content of the page, and notably setting the correct classes for all other mediawiki contents that depend on direction (notably lists)

Yes it does not close by itself, but you may close it using an explicit "</div>" at end of the page (not needed because MediaWiki already closes all open divs at end of the content...)

A the remplate is supposed to be used near the top of page, it does not conflict with anything (the documetnation was missing however I added it).

I also added the possibility of including a parameter 1 to include it completely in a "bdi" section (which is then explicitly closed, so that thye can be nested correctly), because this is apparently what you wanted to do (various tests you did were breaking pages).

This has been used since long in Arabic exactly the same way.

I added better styles for free fonts, and also changed the font-size to use the initial size (browser default) instead of a incresing the font size (because MEdiaWiki is seyup by default not with the initial size but with a reduced size, that the font-size which was initially in the template was attempting to revert for Arabic, however, this was not correct with all skins, the simplest way to revert the font-size change was simply to use the "initial" font-size, for which the browser works; the font-size reduction reduction forced by MEdiaWiki is a bad thing, which only works well with Latin, and does not really help users.

I linked the other RTL templates for Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu (the most popular RTL languages) in the new docs.

— Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:06, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Also I just tested the Farsi Main Page, and there's absolutely no problem with the Visual Editor, even if the div is not closed explitly (why did you comment out this template which works exactly the one for Arabic?). The problem was only when you tried to use bdi instead (without closing it). MediaWiki has special support for div, not for bdi (that must still be closed explicitly, even if this is also optional in HTML5, just like with div). Ideally MEdiaWiki should support bdi as well, but this cannot be solved here, you'll need to send a bug request to MediaWiki. For this reason I restored the initial div (bdi is only used when it is explicitly closed, but only with a nonempty parameter 1 for its content). You also broken the Android support, and added a duplicate "Tahoma" font (in fact a very bad one only meant for Windows but not very good for something else than basic Arabic) in first position, I moved it only last, where it was. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:40, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Note you wrote me an email about this. We know that there are layout issues with RTL languages, but this is progressively being solved. The code you attempted to patch was in fact completely incorrect, the code before was correct even if it could still be improved.

Over time during past years, many broken attempts have been made by users that actually don't understand how CSS works or the effects of the wiki syntax. I've corrected many of them with always the goal to maintain the wiki syntax usage minimal. Templates are tuned and becoming smarter over time.

But note that even if Farsi is not a lot advaned on this wiki, there's been significant work in Arabic and Hebrew, and most cases are already handled. There remain various layout compatibility problems in many places difficult to locate (and not always easy to fix in complex templates that do most of the work, so that this compelxity is hidden in articles).

However I've not seen any problem when using the Visual Wiki editor (it works well for example on the Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew Main pages). Be careful not tweaking fonts only for your PC, this wiki should work also on MacOS, Linux, and mobile OSes, and some fonts are not widely available for common platforms or not free and not reusable on other platforms (e.g. "Tahoma" is specific to Windows, the "free" version is in fact not free, and much more limited than the version provided now in Windows, and it still does not cover the Farsi and Urdu languages correctly).

Also please the "mw-*" class names. Avoid also inserting newlines everywhere you think it is more "readable" in templates: the result after inclusion in articles may be catastrophic. Templates require much more scrupulous syntax than articles (and notably generic templates that will be used on lot of pages: the Template:Fa is in fact not very specific).

If you have problems using the Wiki editor, it would be good to know which ones you have, or on which pages this occurs. May be there's a technical thing to add to pages, so don't hesitate to ask for help.

Finally be careful when designing pages that they will work reliably on small screens such as smartphones, and accessible to readers: don't assume specific font sizes (there's a wide variation depending on devices used: avoid pixel units as much as possible), and encode your text in the logical order, not the visual order! — Verdy_p ^(talk) 22:38, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Apple iOS

Hi, in the future, please supply a reason when moving a page, either in the Move tool or on the talk page. I don’t really have a problem with the page being called “Apple iOS”, though I figured “iOS” made more sense, since that’s the name the operating system is commonly known by. I’m trying to make the page more usable for end users who wind up there from Main Page and Software. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 00:34, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

"IOS" is NOT a trademark of Apple http://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/appletmlist.html. In summary, you need to explicitly specify "Apple"...

Citation: "IOS is a trademark or registered trademark of Cisco in the U.S. and other countries and is used under license." (without the Apple prefix it designates the wellknown OS running on Cisco routers).

"IOS" is a trademark of Cisco since much longer, and it is also the name of several companies (including a Canadian company working on geographic data). The full name is Apple iOS, and the logo always associates the Apple logo with "iOS"... — Verdy_p ^(talk) 00:38, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for this information; I was unaware of the Canadian geospatial company. (This government agency is what you’re referring to, right?) Since a trademark is in question, it’s probably relevant that it’s Cisco that consistently prefixes their usage of “IOS”, not Apple; moreover, the {{Lowercase}} template allows us to force the “i” to lowercase in the masthead (if not in category listings). With the lowercase letter, we can unambiguously refer to the Apple operating system, though I concede that it probably makes no difference legally. In any case, as I mentioned, I don’t have a strong preference, except to ensure that users can find the information they’re looking for. iOS (Apple) would be just as well by me. Incidentally, when you move a page over a redirect, please remember to fix any double redirects that might arise. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 00:56, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

There was NO double redirect before, there should not remain any, unless you started to fix them the reverse way. What is important is that Even Apple has not registerd iOS as a trademark, but only registered iOS as an attached brancd and the logo was consistaently always with the Apple logo (in an earlier attempt, Apple tried to releas an independant logo for iOS, and lost a trial with Cisco: the trademarks page on the Apple site was updated. Adn the Cisco IOS is definitely not something unknown. the term IOS has also various synonyms, including as a common abbreviation for I/O's...

Writing it "IOS (Apple)" would just be worse than simply "Apple iOS" (which does not need the {titlercase} quirk, given the article title is still a capital.)

There's also a "IOS Geoscience" company in Canada working with geolocalized data and solutions. And in few languages, IOS is the same as "ISO" (the International Standard Organization).

The "common" usage of "iOS" alone is not so much universal. (Well we should probably also use "Microsoft Windows" rather than just "Windows" (after all I don't see why we could not have mapping feature related to windows on houses...). Same thing about "Chrome", better written unambiguously as "Google Chrome". As a general rule, when there's a conflict with some brands, we first try to use the official full term before adding disambiguation suffixes (and suffixes in parentheses are uncommon in English, and it would not be better to have "iOS, Apple").

— Verdy_p ^(talk) 05:05, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Rest assured, I don’t intend to move the article any further, even though I disagree that there’s much of a conflict here. (In all the years we’ve had this article, no one has bothered to start a page here on all these other things that could be called “IOS”.) As a point of clarification, it’s interesting to note that, after lots and lots of discussion, Wikipedia eventually decided to rename their article to simply “iOS”, reflecting the stance that “iOS”, unqualified, nearly universally refers to Apple’s OS. Windows was brought up as a counterexample, but the difference is that Microsoft considers “Microsoft Windows” to be the full, official name of the OS, which is not the case with Apple’s OS. The Apple logo never officially appears in conjunction with the iOS wordmark, unlike in the Apple TV and Apple Watch logos. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 16:51, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I've always seen an Apple logo attached to the iOS logo, except when they are present on Apple products that already have this protected Apple logo.

I've pointed that Apple explicitly says on its official site that "IOS" is not their trademark, and does not even list the "iOS" variant as their trademark. Nothing appears on the Apple trademarks page (it appeared only for a short time but was then removed, because Cisco protested and Apple found an agreement with Cisco). On publications by Apple, the Apple logo is always present and attached. Packagings for Apple products featuring this OS never claim the trademark, but proeminently show the Apple logo itself, "iOS" is in fact not really promoted as a brand like "iPhone 5" (and most often the term "iOS" is not even present).

It is abbreviated only for convenience on the proprietary Apple website or documentation. On other sites "Apple" is removed only if there's no ambiguity (for example in articles explicitly speaking about Apple devices). But we cannot name the article "iOS", only as "IOS" (you may lie on the presentation of the page but this wil not change the fact that the article would be named only "IOS", not "iOS", and it's impossible to distinguish "iOS")

The situation is different for "iPhone", or "iPad", or "iTunes" which are officially trademarked (and not contested) independantly of lettercases.

I don’t think you could find a single instance of Apple referring to the OS as “Apple iOS” per se. If it were merely a matter of convenience, you’d expect to see “Apple iOS” at least in the “Definitions” section of legal agreements such as [1], where they’re obligated to fully spell out any names, their agreement with Cisco notwithstanding. Apple has promoted iOS as a brand ever since iOS 3. (Before that, it was called “iPhone OS”.) You don’t see the wordmark advertised at Apple Stores, but you can find it prominently all over Apple’s website [2][3]. If it’s hard to distinguish between an ordinary reference to iOS and the iOS wordmark, that’s intentional. (They also promote individual iOS versions with special logos.) The mere fact that the Apple logo appears on the same box or the same webpage as the iOS wordmark is irrelevant. They never put it next to the wordmark. Compare to the logo here. Yes, Apple had to license “iOS”, but that hasn’t stopped them from changing the facts on the ground to favor their product over Cisco’s. Anyways, it’s clear that neither of us are convincing each other, and the page is staying put regardless. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 19:15, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Did you read http://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/appletmlist.html ???? Why iOS is NOT listed ? Simply, it is not a trademark, unlike "Apple" which is listed, along with "iPhone", "iPad", "iTunes" and so on (which are followed by the registered symbol, or trademark symbol). It is only used as a convenience on places where "Apple" is explicit.

Go to the "iTunes" site Apple is not shown everywhere, "iOS" is never used alone, they display "iPhone", "iPod", "iPad", or "MacOS" (which is also attached to a device, but has some technology licences for use on non-Apple hardware, notably on PCs where they are licenced with Windows Server. The iOS is only documented as a part of another product, from which it is not separable ("iOS" is not a separate product, you simply can't use it legally on non-Apple devices due to licensing restrictions, it is in fact not even traded separately; iOS is the most restricted OS that has ever existed, even more restricted than MacOS; Unix and Windows are more liberal, even if they are not as free as GNU/Linux). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 19:17, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Wow, I didn’t expect to go down this rabbit hole when I started working on the Apple iOS page the other day. :^) Changing the subject a bit, do you have an opinion on what I’ve done with Apple iOS content-wise? Do you think it would be desirable to bring this layout to pages about (less restrictive) OSes, like Android? For iOS, it was possible to make the list of applications manageable merely by filtering out all the applications that hadn’t been updated in 18 months, but I’m not sure what a reasonable cutoff is in the Android world. There are simply a lot of apps, and I don’t want to be accused of unfairness by curating the list a bit. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 19:40, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

No problem, there's lot to do to better recategorize the various apps, tools and devices (and anyway, most of them are in fact working across device ans platforms. There's no need to categorize everything unless it is very specific. In most cases, a list of supported platforms would be enough without overcategorization in many platforms for products that are not really designed specifically for these platforms. This is the case of most webapps (not even targetting a specific browser, unless these are browser-specific extensions, or mobile apps designed to run only from platform-specific mobile stores, but even in this case, apps exist for several mobile mobile stores such as Google Play, Apple Store, or Windows Store, with only a thin compatibility layer and the rest almost unchanged as those apps are now using HTML+CSS for their UI, plus some common frameworks ported to work across mobile platforms; additionally those frameworks are not really specific to OSM or just cartography, such as jQuery that works almost the same on mobile platforms, mobile browsers, and desctop browsers and now as weel for standalong apps on desktops; same thing about Python, Java, and most javascript frameworks made now by Google, Apple or even now Microsoft, because HTML5 federates all the requirements and conformance level needed, and integrates complex components such as database storage, audio/video codecs, accessiblity tools and IME for input, and discovery and description of various I/O devices, including virtual devices; another important protocol is RDP that allows remote execution, using standard codecs for audio/video capture and rendering, WebGL and the HTML5 canvas, HTTP(S), Rest APIs and WebDav, JSON and XML data formats, and other common standards for security and now even for virtualization and delegation of tasks to other remote devices on demand...).

So basically we only compare devices now for their performance, or energy efficiency and autonomy on mobiles, for their form factor or for their local storage (to save network usage). And for their hardware plugged or wireless connectivity (Ethernet and Wifi are now ruling, along with USB and Bluetooth for more local usage, plus 3G/4G mobile networks when away from home; 4G mobile networks are now even faster than Wifi whose frequency bandwidth is very limited, but economic for use). OSes no longer play significant differences, and even the UIs tend to become almost identical; even the hardware between devices are almost identical (you'll just pay more to have wider screens or better colors, but you may loose on battery life, or on mobile data subscription plans if you need the cloud for your storage). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 20:17, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree that many OSM-powered applications are cross-platform thanks to using hybrid toolkits like Xamarin. But judging from the iOS and Android listings, the majority of applications (particularly navigation) are native, so I think it still makes sense to categorize applications by platform. The reader knows which platform they care about, so it’s an easy way to filter out applications right off the bat. An iPhone user shouldn’t be overwhelmed with all the Android apps they can’t install anyways. This way we can tailor the page to the platform’s characteristics. For example, Apple iOS has links to the iTunes App Store only, and the comparison table doesn’t need cells like “version a.b.c $$$ for iOS but version d.e.f free for Android”. Android, meanwhile, should probably say which app store each app can be downloaded from, because I’m sure there are Android apps you don’t download from Google Play. But for Windows Phone, Firefox OS, etc., there’s little distinction between native and hybrid applications, so a cross-platform Hybrid applications catalog would be a great idea. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 21:16, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Moving Relations/Proposed/Dual carriageways

Hi, what's your reason for moving Relations/Proposed/Dual carriageways?--Jojo4u (talk) 09:04, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

It fell in the wrong category because of the name used in the template, and did not match its use (the tag value displayed was wrong); now it is really a proposal and this has not changed. The status and the "abandonned" category is still there (given it is abandonned it is not even a proposal anymore).

Note: fixing the categories of proposals is in progress, but there are conflicting templates that don't use the status given the same way (one scheme uses a lowercase initial "abandoned", another scheme wants an uppercase initial "Abandoned", this will be fixed later). Sorting them by language (independantly of their status) is advancing, and allows now cross language navigation. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 12:15, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Tinkering with "Nottingham" page

Can you explain what you were trying to do with http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Nottingham&type=revision&diff=1319501&oldid=1285885 please? It doesn't make sense to think about Nottingham as a "City in the East Midlands" in the first instance - it's in England. Arbitary divisions such as http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Places_in_East_Midlands simply don't exist on the ground in any meaningful sense. Having a link to the ceremonial county allows us to link mapping activity in Nottingham with the wider Nottinghamshire area. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=East_Midlands&action=history has essentially no content on it. Can I please suggest that before you make changes such as this that you try and discuss with local mappers first? The "talk-gb" list would work for this, and so would #osm-gb on IRC. --SomeoneElse (talk) 16:21, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I've not changed the fact it is in England. Those categoies were hald filled, sometimes duplicate. Nothing is wrong... And "Places in..." is a general category scheme used everywhere, I am grouping things accurately in the correct place, with overcategorizations. The cateogies are already used since ling via the {{Place}} but they are not cross-linked and many items are missing everywhere. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 16:31, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

If you'd like to make changes here please discuss first. Do not, as you have tried to with http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Nottingham&type=revision&diff=1319524&oldid=1319514 , try and start an edit war. --SomeoneElse (talk) 16:41, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

The wiki says the opposite: We boldly do, then we discuss when there's a problem. I don't see the problem at all; what you've said is simply wrong: East Midlands is as region of England, the first level of administrative divisions in England, and Nottingham is really BOTH a city (in its region and legacy county) and an unitary authority. The categories are being sorted out, deduplicated and with coherent names. I'm also fixing the cases of homonyms. Finally the naming is being regularized so that templates can use the correct categories (without red links that people will fill in to create duplicated categories that are now merged).

Those categories are being refilled with all wht is missing. They were already there but used incoherently.

All this was also stated in the article itself and also visible on the map ! — Verdy_p ^(talk) 16:45, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the East Midlands is NOT "the first level of administrative divisions in England". It's used for some statistical purposes, and is (currently) a Euro-constituency. On other pages you removed all useful categories (e.g. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Derbyshire&diff=prev&oldid=1319222 ). It is unhelpful to say that "Derbyshire is in a category of Derbyshire", which is how you left that page. OpenStreetMap is a collaborative project, and pages like this affect lots of people - we need to work together, not perform unsourced ad-hoc tinkering without thinking or discussing how pages are actually going to be used. --SomeoneElse (talk) 17:12, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Look at the article about regions of England, which states it is administrative. There are also counties (metropolitan which were already listed). The categories for regions were there since long, but incomplete.

And no I've not put Derbyshire as a subcategory of Derbyshire... Note that these categories do not strictly speak about the admin status (this is stated in OSM data). It does not matter, those 9 regions are there independantly of their status... — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:17, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I do not need to read a wiki page to know what administrative levels of government there are between me and Westminster - I live here! Please don't spend your time added thousands of unnecessary categories to our wiki - go out and map something instead! --SomeoneElse (talk) 17:24, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I've not created these 9 regions, they were already there (and they are also in OSM) ! — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:30, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

After looking at the other similar edits you've actually made a bit of a mess of things. For example, former metropolitan counties have no adminstrative function (e.g. South Yorkshire). Local government there is handled by unitary authorities (in South Yorkshire, the largest are Sheffield and Doncaster). However, South Yorkshire is still a ceremonial county (it has a Lord Lieutenant) and some quasi-government services operate across its former area, including the police and public transport. These pages that you are tinkering with are created by and for mappers, and whether they organise themselves by administrative regions, ceremonial counties or geographical features is entirely up to them. Pages that you've created such as http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Unitary_authorities_in_Yorkshire_and_the_Humber are both ridiculously incomplete (it's missing the vast majority of unitary authorities) and useless (why would anyone even want "only the unitary authories" in an artificial statistical region, but not the county and district councils?). --SomeoneElse (talk) 18:09, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Did you note that the two categories "County in England" and "Counties in England" were merged (the 1st redirects to the 2nd one, whose name is already used since long by Template:Place) ? And that the correct category name is already generated by Template:Place ? Most place pages do not need any explicit category if there's already a matching category name where it will be the main article. adding categories may be necessay only for other things (e.g. adding Mapping parties, or caegorizing for other projects related in the content of the page). Geographical entities almost always are part of a subarea (or area). Template:Place already uses the category:"<place type> in <area>" and fills it automatically.

You've reverted that on Nottigham.

Also I know that there are several types of counties, but I've not added them. They were already in the wiki (and most of the time mixed together simply because they did not qualify the names or used incorrect redirects). I've just kept the existant as is, for now, grouping what was needed. However it does not mean that no other changes are needed. Many of these pages are old, but not updated because they were difficult to find. Now it is easy to find them. You've just stopped a cleanup in progress. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:18, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

And "ridiculously empty" is wrong, given that not everything is listed (but the pages exist, and just have to be listed properly). I was filling them by collecting the relevant pages. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:20, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

"Why would not someone want districts"? only because they are not unitary authorities. They are also in their relevant categories for their type. I've already collected all counties for 3 regions. I was also collecting the unitary authrories, but I cannot do all at once. All existing categories were already mising many items (they were even less populated than they are now).

I've done that on cities, towns and villages (many red links in existing place article are now poiting to the correct category). There are tons of missing categories on this wiki (notably those generated by templates: some of them were created, not all, I've filled the gaps). It was already imossible to have a complete view of the admin structure of England. For the UK level, the cleanup is almost complete (grouped by the 4 countries; excluding the overseas British dependencies that remain separate), even if there remains some details. England is more complex only because of its 9 regions and because of the transition from counties to unitary authorities (that still coexist). Most towns/cities/villages are still in their legacy counties, very few indicate their correct unitary authority, except the largest towns or cities. I don't intend to add categories per village. But categories per region or per county have been created here since long (but this was less than half-done). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:35, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Edit descriptions

Hello again. Can I remind you once again to add descriptions to your changes? Especially when you're changing hundreds of pages a day. I have to go back a long way (I gave up to find an edit with a custom description). You have been blocked until to read and acknowledge this. --Deanna Earley (talk) 17:13, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

These are incremental changes, they are viewed. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:17, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I cannot make all edits at once, before looking at other links. If you speak about the classification of feature description pages, I've solved thousands of red links, and now they are all correctly linked in all languages (except a few ones that have a single page in them for minor languages). Editing requires first creating the english category name, then redirecting it. Then looking at relevant categories in the language to locate them. Possibly creating them where they are missing, or deduplicating them. This cannot be done all at once, but I avoid leaving red links or broken links.

I've also solved thousands of double redirects, or duplicate categories with similar name for the same purpose and merged them. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:22, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Also look at the many edits used everywhere by everyone: they don't give any edit description; I use them when there's an ambiguity or things that may still need work (pending further edits after fixing something else).

— Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:30, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Please re read my request and try and understand what I'm actually asking. You've not addressed it yet. Maybe this link (Included below the edit window) will help. --Deanna Earley (talk) 17:25, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Where ? I use comments when this changes radically things, not for minor edits (e.g. typos I could detect, such as missing letter or plural). And I'm not alone. There's no need of any description for page creations (it is autofilled, the comment is then not empty), especially when they are created from a red link and the content to fill in is almost automatic (and reported in the autofilled comment). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:30, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

So what is each of these changes? or [4]? Or [5]? Or [6]? Well, that's 200 unknown changes, and I don't know anyone that wants to check each individually. You know what needs to be done. Will you do it? --Deanna Earley (talk) 17:42, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Oh! I see you're seaking about the "Server status page" ? Yes I've filled incrementally missing links (after looking at each of them). Yes those edits where grouped in a few minutes but extremely small. I've also completed the list of servers that was not maintained since long, looking for the infos where they were. I've not broken the page at all at any time. And this all this was done on a couple of days, last month or long before. If somewthing was broken it would have been reported, nobody complained about that, and a few other people then filled in some other details. There were already discussions since long saying that these pages needed some actualization. Things may have continued to change since I edited it, I've not checked it more since last month. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:39, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

No I'm not. --Deanna Earley (talk) 17:43, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

OK these all were red filling links, and it was done coherently. Yes I was adding a new nav template on these pages, because it is simpler to navigate between them instead of going through two links to see brother pages in the same parent. What is done here is very basic and the diffs themselves for these additions are very explicit on separate lines of code).

May be you've been contacted by the previous discussion above, because a user thinkgs that he does not need the English regions (even if the wiki say they are official, he thinks they are not). I've not removed at all the traditional navigation by counties, I've improved it, and correctly grouped everything that was for the same English county (those categories existed or were linked by the Template:Place or missing, or were using different variants of the same name with the same meaning, and the edit to unify them was evident). I've not changed the content of these articles (unless I saw a preexisting wiki syntax problem, for which I made the minimum needed to restore the functionality or a basic readable layout). I avoid changing actual information.

Also I detected a few ambiguities in links for unrelated regions, which were not disambiguated correctly.

— Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:51, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Finally I don't know how you count, but your links are not pointing to 200 edits without comments in my recent edits. Most of them have comments (it is autofilled for creations: do you mean that for these creations I should delete these description and enter my own which would contain much less info than what is autofilled!). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:56, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

There's one case where I don't enter any edit, it's for full edits (because this server has lags or bugs in its internal cache, I sometime just need to ad or remove a non significant whitespace from the page so that it is refreshed correctly: these are solved by newer versions of MediaWiki, but this wiki uses an old version or is very slow to show the changes, and may continue to show a red link for a page that is actually already stored and accessible). In that case this is a second immediate edit after the first one (and this is not a problem of previewing it or not). When you see two successice edits on the same page, the second is most of the time a null edit, you can run diffs on the group or look at them individually: the history shows that.

I've no problem following many edits, and in fact I receive many notifications. If I need to correct something after someone else, I always add a comment to explain what was wrong.

Look at the global history, I'm not alone, everyone (even those with long experience here) do not comment minor edits or null edits. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:03, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

So what can I do ???? I've read, and in fact there's nothing that I broke that would be demonstrated. I was replying when you just blocked without discussing. OK I've made a few errors, but I've corrected them as much as I have seen them, I regularly check lots of errors everywhere on this wiki and I have fixed a lot of them (but it's true that sometimes it required trying and changing a few things soon after). For things that I have doubts, I usually provide a comment in the first edits, but I forget it when fixing something rapidly after: those edits are grouped and have the same purpose, I don't think it's useful to add the same comment or just a ""oops!": those grouped edits are a whole under the same comments. For some cases there's a new added goal and I add another comment. For basic things that don't alter the existing content (e.g. adding a navbar, or fixing a typo), comments are not very useful (it's more urgent to fix errors that could be seen, because I test many things after and look at dependencies to see how they are propagated in various cases: if this breaks too much (and this is not an obvious error in the other dependant pages which can be corrected simply), I'll provide the fix for compatibility (to help the transition).

Look at how I've cleaned up many missing categories in this wiki, and cleared all double redirects that were no longer working. I've helped lots of users that had problems with the wiki syntax, by providing them some better templates doing the magic. I've made the wiki accessible to all languages, notably RTL languages that still need various fixes. I've documented many templates for which the doc was missing or very incomplete. I have provided examples of use, or additional testcases as samples in doc pages. Complex templates are now working with more cases than before.

There are lot of cleanup tasks in this wiki, but too few people work on them, and this cumulates over time up to situations where people no longer understand what to do and try to create many variants for the same purpose, and these variants are then complicate to maintain globally (notably across languages that rapidly go out of sync and that are complicate to update together coherently).

When people don't understand things, I try to explain and I add some more docs. My goal has always been to create manageable content and to maximize the ease for translators or people that want to add new contents for their communities or local projects. Many things were initially developed on this wiki that only work with English and were never tested for other languages (frequently with layour issues, but also linguistic issues).

If possible I try to create or update templates so that less parameters are needed (even if this requires some more "magic" in templates... I have fixed also various CSS issues for usage on mobile phones/small screens, or for better HTML semantics (that will help other browsers presenting the pages very differently, or for accessibility). Templates will do most of the work, contents of page will concentrate on the semantic.

Supporting the visual editor is also challenging (for now few templates have JSON descriptions).

Categorizing the contents coherently and completely for the most important pages has been a goal in the last weeks, this work is almost complete. I still have works on OSM cartography that require access to project pages to follow them. With this block, I will no longer be able to follow what is needed or track the progresses (there are other tools but they don't always provide what is needed, or data is too much fragmented). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 20:55, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Wow, that's really way TL:DR; All I'm asking is that you add edit summaries. Yes, other people also don't add summaries, but no one else edits hundreds of pages at a time for some vague unknown (to other people) reason. This is one of the conditions of the ban being lifted. If we notice any other significant runs of random wiki changes with no indication of what they are for, you will be banned again. Understood? No more discussion, just yes is all that's required. --Deanna Earley (talk) 00:52, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, and now ? You've not changed anything, anyway I was far away in the last few days, don't have time for now, I'm going elsewhere again for the next two days and the 2 next weekends. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 16:13, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

And now for just fixing typos, and solving red links... These was just minor cleanup, commented where it was not complete but still solved some of the problems... I also solved double redirects again. Really Deanna you're just overlooking this. I've not deleted anything. If you think that broken links everywhere are here to stay... — Verdy_p ^(talk) 21:00, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Deanna. Verdy_p, please, please just leave a short comment, so that others can see that you did a typo fix - without looking at the diff. Just "typo" as comment is fine. Wikis are about working together and without edit comments that's hard. Also keep in mind that not only one person needs to look at a diff if you do not use a comment. Other people also could use their time more useful than for looking at diffs - if you would use comments. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 20:06, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

It's really quite simple. You edit lots of pages, you add suitable edit summaries. --Deanna Earley (talk) 21:51, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

It is also helpful to use meaningful descriptions and not just random sequences of words, for instance if you knowingly break category sorting so that all pages in Portuguese appear under P you shouldn’t say it doesn’t happen.--Andrew (talk) 06:00, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

You are yourself knowingly breaking category sorting that was alreayd working since years without using *any* defaultort from a template that cannot generate the correct sort keys.

I've repeatedly told you that sort keys are NOT just exactly the page title, notably for non-ASCII scripts.

That is precisely the corner case that defaultsort=no is there for. People have been adding it where it is needed and in fact it is unnecesary in language namespaces (including ja:)--Andrew (talk) 20:32, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Sticking {{DEFAULTSORT}} doesn’t work when pages are renamed. An actual example was the category category:ES:Buildings which was moved to category:ES:Edificios but was still sorted under B in categories.--Andrew (talk) 21:36, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

And your "random words" is just an insult here. I've used meaningful descriptions everywhere (not the case for you). I've signaled you problems that you wanted to ignore and that were later signaled to you. You finally saw the problems and made very late some bug I had signaled you (but included it without any comment). In fact you don't understand what you do or anything people are saying to you, or do not want to trust anything rom others (there's been already 4 persons reconforming and doing everything that I correct well the first time, and that you blindly reverted.

And when I told you that your indent was wrong, it is exactly becauise it was wrong and caused errors in several places where you did not match the correct braces. Iwanted to exhibit it to you, but you never want to read anything. This was not just reindentation but always corrections that you wanted to ignore, even when others than me were telling them to you or wanting to do the same accurate corrections I did the first time.

You have consistently refused to edit without ripping out the brace placement that makes it clear what matches what and that I used to get the syntax 99% right and to set up long term maintenance, or to teach anyone else what syntax you think is a problem. I have come to the conclusion you are trying to set up a personal priesthood consisting only of yourself; why would you say I am wrong?--Andrew (talk) 20:32, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

No: I demonstrated that your understanding of indentation did not follow the correct pairing rules, in your code the braces did not match, and finally (after reverting me too many times) you have admitted sliently it in your most recent edit : I was right since the beginning when you persisted in your error. Your placement was NOT clear at all and this caused that error you did. In fact it was completely inconsistant by itself and I had regularized it. Multiple times I have tried to signal your errors and now you are just seeing them because there are other people correcting your code the same way I did the first time. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 21:28, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

You actually want other people to make edits you think are wrong so you can abuse them, even people like Math1985 who try to be nice to you.--Andrew (talk) 21:36, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

What ? Complete non-sense. Those that corrected you were not "abused" by me, I did not even contact them. You are just lying or inventing. I can prove that you made errors that you finally admitted (silently) when these other people corrected you again. You just don't trust anyone than yourself and you are only assuming I'm wrong without checking anything and admitting your own errors. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 23:32, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

You have no excuse, you have abused this wiki and broken it repeatedly.

It's not the way we work on a wiki: we cannot do radical changes by ignoring everything that is already present and that still depend on a feature. You have to preserve the compatibility even for things you want to deprecate; and as long as dependant pages are not migrated to use the replacement features, you MUST preserve this compatibility.

And finally you MUST read the docs: you have repeatedly ignored what was documented, and never documented what you added yourself (even the existing examples in the doc pages were no longer working! but as you don't read the docs...). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 08:24, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Ambox style

Hello. I see you reverted my edition in {{Ambox}}. Why exactly should we "keep a minimum margin below" if the other following elements almost always have their own top margins? I was trying to make it look better, more like Wikipedia's Ambox, which look better in sequence, because of the left coloured borders getting uninterrupted. "Borders never need to overlap", sure they don't need, but why couldn't they? And, about the negative margins, I did it to avoid a thicker 2 px border between two Amboxes. Well, okay, they're negative, but, really, what problem could just one pixel cause? –Virgilinojuca (talk) 23:21, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

There's already an option "stack" that controls their superposition for the following Ambox'es. For all other cases, there's no need to overlap these box with the rest of the page that margin is small enough to not cause problems anywhere !!!

Note that margins between two elements are combined into a single one: it is the maximum of the bottom margin of the first box and of the top margin of the next element that is taken into account, and not the sum of the two margins. Margins don't work like paddings, even if both not part of the "height" of the element, so margins are already overlapping. To "stack" two boxes, only the 2nd box needs a negative margin, and this is what the stack parameter already does. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 00:06, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Note also that the example on Wikipedia is incorrect by 1 pixel (these boxes are overlapping the border on top of the "content" area of the first box). This causes problems in some cases with csome contents (such as hiding one significant pixel in the inner image, or gluing some letter descenders with the bottom border (so a "g" looks like a "q") with small font sizes or on displays with low resolutions. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 00:09, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Finally note that some browsers (old versions of IE or browsers running in "quirk" mode for compatibilty with IE) are counting the border width within the margin or as part of the height (this quirk was fixed in CSS3 using a new "box-sizing" property): the default border being 1 pixel, we need an extra pixel to compensate, so the margin is 2 pixels and not just one. (note also that 1 pixel in CSS is not necessarily on pixel on display or when printing, i.e. a "CSS pixel" tuned for visualisation of bitmaps and fonts with good readability; most smartphones today use 2 devices pixels or more or 1 CSS pixel; CRT displays or video projectors may display less than one device pixel per CSS pixel as they are more "fuzzy": to display correctly a 1-pixel wide border on CRT, we need some minimum contrasting margin and usually fonts with larger sizes in CSS pixels). — Verdy_p ^(talk)

The reason for the top margin is that here it is used on many pages where it would collide with floatting elements above it (notably images). On English Wikipedia the negative margin used unconditionally causes various problems, but Ambox is only used at top of pages or at start of a section after a sectio nheading that has enough margin to avoid collisions. On Wikipadia howver we very frequently have to use Template:Clear to avoid those collisions, and this does not work in all cases, so we constantly have to adjust the placement of floating elements instead (this is a bad thing for notably for illustration images). Here you can get the desired stacking effect using a "stacked" parameter on every Ambox, except the first one (but this use case is in fact extremely rare, Ambox is most often used only once). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 00:30, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for you answer. I didn't know about the stacked parameter. But how would I activate it in a Template that uses Ambox? For example, I tried something in {{Stub}} but it didn't work. Can you help me with that? –Virgilinojuca (talk) 03:21, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Nevermind. I got it. Thank you anyway! —Virgilinojuca (talk) 04:28, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

The stacked parameter was already within the line you edited. it's a simple flag that only enables the negative top margin (but does not change the bottom margin): use it on all Amboxe'es you want to stack, except the first one. I made an example in the doc page of the template for stacking all boxes together, and documetned it (because it was still not documented but was already implemented since long). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 04:17, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Also note that many templates found on English Wikipedia won't work on this wiki.

First: this wiki does not have support for Lua Modules so things have to be simplified, or they assume some complex structures of adminsitration that this wiki does not have and will never have, such as article quality tools, reviews, Wikipedia project trackings, microformats, templates generating content from Wikidata: we don't use Wikidata in OSM, but Wikidata may import OSM data);
Second: too many templates developed on English Wikipedia will not work on international wikis that have stronger requirements (notably compatibility for RTL languages, or assumptions on fonts or text lengths suitable only in English, or assumptions about sentence ordering and grammar, also only valid in English).

If you want inspiration, really don't look at Wikipedia which is typical of what not to do on this wiki ; instead look at Wikimedia Commons (which is international), or on Mediawiki-Wiki (which uses a more basic set of features not requiring many extensions not installed on this wiki, so that its documentation can be installed and viewed on all wikis without these extensions): these two last wikis are really making efforts to support many languages and scripts (and it would break too many things in English Wikipedia if the same technics were used there): the English Wikipedia is too much specific and cannot be a model (not even for other Wikipedia editions!). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 04:50, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

SOTM Categories

I noticed your category gardening edits for a similar reason, so I think the topic fits. My issue is that, in practice, removing elements from supercategory changes the content of that category page and can make it less useful for human readers. That's why I'm a bit uncomfortable with removing the State of the Map from the Conferences category, for example. So do you think there is a place for "redundant" categories in the OSM wiki? --Tordanik 18:43, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I have not removed State of the Map from the category of conferences. I've just sorted it because I was personally asked' by several users to help for this: it is now correctly sorted by year or by region and not mixing everything: we can focus better on the recent or next topics, the older years are now archived but still easily accessible, and each regional conference is also linked now as well in the relevant category for their goegraphic region. I have also added the parent categroies for the city where they occur.

In which precise category are you seeing that a SOTM conference is missing now and that was not already absent before this change ??? I can't see any one. Give examples, but this can be easily fixed. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:57, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

And I don't see how what I did made the categories less useful, it is largely better organized now, with evident sorting: it is much easier to locate an item now than what was there before.

May be you want some redundance only for the most current or next conference, but these are linked directly from various places including from the main page of the site.

But I'm not responsible if there were many pages left without any uncategory before: these pages were already in dead ends. I've found a few of them and added the minimum categories that should have been there since the beginning. I've probably forgotten others, but this is fixable if we know where they are. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 19:03, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Feature Template

Thanks for your change to the feature Template, Verdy. I'm new to the template system so I'm not (yet) aware of all (im)possibilities. You also mentioned the parameters I added are undocumented. Could you let me know where I can document them? Thanks! ---- Math1985 (talk) 19:15, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

If you're new to wiki editing, I suggest you not to edit these widely used templates. You made various unsuccessfull "tests" but this is not a good thing to do when they are used on lot of important pages of this wiki.

You should already know how to document the template, this is no differnt than on other wikis, whereyou edit the documentation subpage. You have reallyt no excuse here because the link to edit the doc is diredtly visible on the template page ! — Verdy_p ^(talk) 06:04, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

In fact you've changed the new parameter (for the redering image) from normal wiki syntax (allowing multiple images to be inserted if needed for variants), into a single link. I don't think it is a good idea. Additionally, images have multiple parameters that are easier to set there, not just the size, but also its description text. Things were in fact simpler by not enforcing the syntax to a single link, notably for this optional paameter that will likely never be parsed by other tools, only rendered on the page.

Also you renamed it to use "osmcarto", however I don't see any reason on this wiki to give preference to a single rendering, when the OSM site itself uses multiple renderings. What it actually shows is only a suggestion, but it is probably much better in this template to use only descriptive photos. There are various rendering options different for nodes, for lines, or for surfaces, and it's often hard to isolate one. Each rendering will choose an appropriate icon/color/stroke style to match its coherent sets of renderings for various features, and there's never any requirement to render anything on any map). The rendering will also frequently vary according to zoom level.

As it is not possible in this box to show all possible alternate renderings, I've documented it to allow it to use a link to a wiki page, and not necessarily a "File:xxx.png" (equivalent to "Image:xxx.png"), or an "#Anchor" to a section of the page showing some examples of usage. OSM data is also not limited to rendering: they are used also in searches, and Nominatim frequently uses different icons in its result sets. There are also different icons in editors or in their "preset" menus.

I know that you have launched a discussion proposing it on an OSM mailing list. These will probably be changed, but for now I've documented only what is there. As discussions are ongoing, you should not use it on many description pages on this wiki (for experimental parameters I also suggest adding a tracking category for this parameter when it is set, so that we can easily fing and update where it is used). Probably I should add the fact that this parameter is still experimental. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 11:39, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Category:pages unavailable in Czech and friends

I know that the "category:pages unavailable in Czech" consisting of pages not written in Czech wasn’t asked for and you invented it when you boke the completely different "category:Czech documentation" As I know that, why should I take your unsupported word for any similar category?--Andrew (talk) 22:02, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Actually you requested it, and even battled for it. Don't you remember ? — Verdy_p ^(talk) 22:07, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Category:State of the Map 2015

Why create a category for a something that didn’t happen?--Andrew (talk) 07:41, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

It does not matter, it is just for categorizing existing things and cleanup the parent category. I had messages asking me to do that. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 09:17, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Note the 2017 edition has also not occured, but has already its category and pages. how it will happen will be specified later, but thre are still things to sort. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 09:20, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Changes in templates

Hi. About your changes in "Category:User ast-N" I see you wrote "User adt-N" in the template, but I guess that's a typo and should be "User ast-N". I'm changing it now but, just in case, I tell you.

Regards. --Xuacu (talk) 22:13, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

I had immediately corrected it, even before you wrote here. yes it was a typo. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 22:36, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

LINES 3-3B-116-119-125 and 332.

REQUIRES WARNING! Dear Verdy p, on the next page: http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/389557 remove:

Relazione Bus 3B (2372896)
Relazione Bus 116 (2208096)
Relazione Bus 119 (2208101)
Relazione Bus 125 (2208105) and
Relazione Bus 332 (2208153)

as it suppressed by time.

I have not managed these members at all. Do it yourself ! — Verdy_p ^(talk) 14:53, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Also on the following page: http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2206996 not Membri

Relazione 3 (Valle Giulia) (1965412)
Relazione 3 (Piazzale Ostiense) (1380980)

but Membri

Relazione 3 (Valle Giulia) (1965412)
Relazione 3 (Staz. Trastevere) (1380980)

THANK YOU FOR THE ATTENTION shown me! -- UNTERNOALLOTTO 14:51, 27 October 2016 (UTC).

??? These are identical relations !!! — Verdy_p ^(talk) 14:53, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Edits of Template:OverpassTurboStolpersteine

Hi, thanks for adding the URL encoding support. However next time please create a copy of this template and check your changes there first instead of fiddling around with the live template and breaking all the links at DE:Städte_mit_Stolpersteinen. Also note that not all features are working correctly anymore. See e.g. the {{OverpassTurboStolpersteine|name=Chemnitz|display area=yes}} example and compare the gegerated query and the output with the old bahavior, which you can find at Template:KlumbumbusTestTemplate. Note that the doc page has some more examples for debugging the template, which you can unhide to test them and hide them again when you are done.--Klumbumbus (talk) 13:09, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

I made various tests each time, including with those in the doc, each time I found something was not working correctly, and it required some minor fixes. The complex thing is about handling whitespaces (because URLENCODE does not work as expected on fragments and unpectedly trims its parameter. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 13:12, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Note: I followed all the examples you gfive above. Not all of them were working already. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 13:13, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Ok this is fixed (in fact the text for checking if there was an admin_level specified dropped completely the "[admin_level]" filter, so you got extra objects with the same name.

Also I've reversed the condition for enabling the stylesheet on display areas. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 13:25, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Polish pages

Please stop mess up with categories. I spent a lot of time to enter the requirements of Polish editors. Do not do anything without my permission. --Władysław Komorek (talk) 20:03, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

"Your" permission ? I'm not messing up these, I unify them across languages allowing interlanguage navigation.

Note that the group name "Location" does not exist, the matching category is places with their related items (Boundaries)

Note also that I monitor the Special page tracking "Most wanted categories": these are most often incorrect names used (or not correctly linked for translations). I scrupulously look at the English categories to detect the missing translated categories, and check if they are properly linked for the interlanguage navbar. I've collected thousands of categories and constantly the "Most wanted categories" are now becoming less populated.

There is still work to do, notably for sorting place "types" and feature "groups" correctly and make sure that all language have the same categorization. This widely improves searches on this wiki and categories are now much easier to look at. This is a huge task started many months ago but now it is becoming usable and all languages have indifferently benefited of this classification, making the wiki easier to read and edit for many more people, even if they don't understand English correctly, and still allowing users to write their new articles in other languages, using appropriate categories that all have a coherent language prefix and using coherently prefixed categories (whose name is now also translatable: just look at Japanese, German French for example, but in fact I do this work also for all other languages, including "minor" ones, without discrimination) — Verdy_p ^(talk) 20:05, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Once more. Stop making any changes in the structure of Polish categories and names. Your translations to Polish are wrong. Polish pages have to be user friendly for Polish users, not for international users. I will create, very soon, new structure of categories base on requirements of Polish users, who complain that Wiki is not user friendly and it is not understood by novices. "Interlanguage navigation" may be, but is not mandatory for all languages. We have enough problems understanding British names that do not make sense if you translate it literally, or have no equivalent in the Polish language. This causes the constant bickering in the forum. That is why Polish template is different from the official, and has additional parameters with the "native". Wiki is not for you or for me, but for novices who do not understand English. --Władysław Komorek (talk) 23:56, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

"My Polish traanslation are wrong"??? I did not translate any Polish word at all. I only categorized as is. But when there are missing categories or names the first thing to create is the English name then redirect it to the translation. Really look at how trnaslation works on this wiki: this is documented since VERY LONG with the link at top of every page that has a language bar (and not specific to Polish at all, it applies to all languages).

In summary I won't invent Polish terms if they are missing, I keep them with English as the default, unless I am certain that mly translation is correct (as it is used in existing translated pages using the same term).

Note also that the structure of cateogies is exactly the same as in English: it applies to Polish when it needs the same categories and the parent categories must also reference them. This was not the case as with the existing versions, they pointed to missing categories (with red links), so these page were not accessible by all the expected ways you think. I made NO error: if a category name for Polish is still not translated ("Category:Pl:English name") all you have to do is to rename it (and ***keep*** the redirect which is needed for interlanguage navigation, which is an important feature for this wiki, as well as for many templates).

Note: you do not need to convince me that translations to other languages are not useful. In fact I have always strongly supported it and made this possible for lots of languages. You do not seeem to realize the huge work that this required to make this possible on this wiki. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 23:59, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

If you really want to help improve the Wiki to make it accessible for novices, think about how to create a structure for categories, so that the main category of "Category = <country>" mappers can see the names of keys and tags in their native language, of course, that will link to the original names. For example, the Polish language. Category: Poland -> Category:Granica, and inside "granica=administracyjna" related to "boundary=administrative".

This is exactly what is being done, but not by country, only by language. Category names are prefixed by their langauge code, and all have a matching "Category:<langcode>:Name in English" which is a redirect to "Category:<Langcode>:Native name", if you want the categoy name in Polish: This is explained since long in the Translation help page (whose link is in the language navbar).

Look at all the other categories already working like this (notably French, Japanese, Russian which are using this extensively, without loosing the capability of linking to the matching English page). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 20:56, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Appearance of such a "category" are demanding Polish users and it could prevent endless bickering, what does the tag means, and criticism that a lot of tags in the UK language does not make sense in the Polish reality. For example, the "village green". Keep in mind that everything we write in order to improve readability Wiki for people who do not understand English, but are great mappers. What is clear to us, it may not be obvious to others. I think the major changes of the names in the native language should be consulted in advance on the forum of the language group. PS. Add new category but do not remove existing ones --Władysław Komorek (talk) 12:51, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "UK" : if you mean "United Kingdom", there's no "en:" prefix at all and these pages in English are applicable to all users speaking English in any country. If you mean "Ukraine" (UA) its language code is "Uk:" in page names prefixes, and there's no confusion at all. When pages contain area specific contents, the area names are explicitly in their title (which is still translatable in multiple language using additional language prefixes).

I think you have not understood the principles. Please read the Translation help and look at the many examples where this has been done consistantly. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 21:03, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

STOP IT!!!! Yor screw up all my work. DO NOT CHANGE ANY POLISH CATEGORIES!!!--Władysław Komorek (talk) 21:44, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

No, READ THE DOC (the link at top of the navbar) !!! Adn don't displicate categories that are left unlinked ! 'You are messing' everything yourself. Stop reinventing the structure

— Verdy_p ^(talk) 21:46, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Last warning. Stop vandalize Polish category!!! --Władysław Komorek (talk) 21:57, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

You are breaking everything on this wiki, by duplicate categories: there can only be ONE category matching the English category. You are vandalizing... Because you do not want to read the doc present at top of pages! — Verdy_p ^(talk) 21:59, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Be aware with your edits

Do not change pages of spain wiki

Don't just insult (your initial title: "You are very troll")... There are tons of things unsorted there, including many categories unlinked that I am fixing properly. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 20:03, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Dear Verdy_p, in the Spanish Community we are bit upset about your latest edits within the Spanish Proyect's Wiki pages because you did it ignoring we are actually working on it (it was a note already there)! PLEASE, we are working harder to improve the wiki and trying to reach some agreements withing the community. Sorry but we will revert some of your editions. You are very welcome to open a discussion in Talk-es email list or through the wiki pages Msevilla00 (talk)

Do you realize that many links are broken by the various languages used, and that I've fixed many of them ? — Verdy_p ^(talk) 20:42, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Please, we are working on it, check first than edit important pages even if you think it is obvious. It is like in OSM, do not touch anything if you are not VERY sure it is correct. Those wiki pages are under reedition. Cheers

Those pages that are missing completely ? OR that give random names and do not properly sort in any category? — Verdy_p ^(talk) 20:59, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Dear Verdy_p, we are very aware of the hard work you are putting in fixing OSM wiki. We only are asking you to reach consensus with es:community before acting. We will be more than happy to help you in fixing missing or broken items in a way that make sense both for you and us (there may be more than one way to fix it, after all). Best regards, --Xuacu (talk) 21:16, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Do you think there are errors ? I scrupulously resect the languages (and Spain has many languages used on this wiki)

There's been attempts since months in trying to do what I'm doing with lots of errors or failure. Basically something was changed in the Template:Place that made categories partly translated in Spanish, and not working with other parts left in English, or not working at all for Catalan (the two major faults found in many places). I don't want to promote a single language because I know that Spanish useers will want all thei own community language (notably in Catalan and Basque, not just Castillan). This requires much work, but for the few pages I have fixed that already existed, I just fixed the mix of English+Spanish that could not work. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 21:22, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

I say «errors» as in «missing or broken links or anything that is not working properly» ha ha... I really know how much work takes to have a version in any given language; actually, most of the content in Asturian language (both in the wiki and elsewhere) is done by yours truly. Check a few messages above my question on Asturian babel box. And I still think that your (and our) goals are better achieved by collaboration and consensus. Once again, thank you for your hard work to have the best possible wiki! --Xuacu (talk) 22:45, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Explain better. I don't understand your problem. Where is Asturian concerned in what I did (I can't see anything above related to that)? Is it because it finds a fallback from Asturian to Spanish if there's no matching translation in Asturian ? — Verdy_p ^(talk) 22:50, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

If you speak about this, I have correctly reverted your error for the ast-N babelbox. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 22:56, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

When editing German pages, please check spelling first

In DE:JOSM/Basic editing you introduced "Anzicht" for the description of several images. Please use a spell checker like this if unsure. On the other hand "Darstellung" is better in this case than "Ansicht". Also "screenshot" or "Bildschirmfoto" would work. Ansicht is mostly used like "view" (my personal view, an aerial view,...). I'm not sure about the right term in French.

And as another thought: Your typos made me aware of outdated "best practice" descriptions, so thanks! --zarl (talk) 09:43, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

I've only structured/wikified what was on the page, where it was written "Anzicht", I've not made any spellchecking or "introduction"... 13:07, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, no. Here you added Anzicht. Also the next edits. --zarl (talk) 19:43, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes but I just copy-pasted from another similar image insertion using the same label (or from the non-wikified text that was there before I transformed a link to an image description page to a thumb). All that page was not wikified at all, and almost internal links were using absolute URLs (frequently wrong, but not trackable with local wiki tools: I wikified all these internal links, in addition to formatting true tables instead of large monospaced blocks). So don't care much about these two letters uncorrected, there was much more useful things done on this page. ~~

Please stop breaking the taglist template

The reason the taglists were not working at all was something else (Mediawiki Javascript issue). That has been fixed. And using single quotes is not valid JSON, but double quotes is. It is difficult to test this, because of caching issues. But when the template cache is purged my changes did work on your version didn't. The lists would show but the options didn't work, so you couldn't change language or add the rendering images or tag stats. Please fix things again.

Joto (talk) 20:14, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Lists are apparently delayed for another reason (not just caching). I had changed it because earlier with single quotes, they appeare immediately, but with double quotes, lists were NEVER coming. This is apparently corected recently, so yes I have already reversed the quotes. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 21:08, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

So no my intent was not to "break" this template but fix it (when I modified it yesterday) because it was not working at all at that time. Someting must have changed today on the Taglist server that now accepts the double quotes for JSON strings (yesterday it was working with single quotes, not double quotes). Today it seems that the Taglist server now accept both forms when parsing the JSON data. Most JSON parsers are in fact accepting both forms (without any ambiguity of syntax), even if the standard JOSN form is defining using double quotes for string literals: they include a "strict" or "legacy/relaxed" parsing option for string literals (the legacy/relaxed form will also accept numbers with extra leading zeroes, some of them accept octal numbers, or binary numbers with "0b", or hexadecimal floating points whose optional exponent specify a power of 2 instead of a power of 10, or they accept parsing "Nan", "Nan(10)", "Inf", whose values are defined in the IEEE floating point format standard...). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 21:19, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

why defaultsort here?

Hi Verdy p, why this https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Qa.poole.ch_(QA_tool)&curid=101673&diff=1394145&oldid=1339134 ? The page name is the same what you specified as defaultsort parameter. Not? Thanks! --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 22:11, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Translators want to custumize this sortkey and like in many other English pages, this indicates were this can be done. Of course it does not impact English itself. Please keep it ! — Verdy_p ^(talk) 22:14, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! Hmm, okay, so that is just a help for possible translations like the {{LL}} template (which I see quite sceptical, too). --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 23:07, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

If we don't put them in the English pages, many translators will just copy-paste the English content and will forget to fix many links (leaving many translated pages uncategorized by language, and linking many pages only to the English version, when they don't look for actual translations of the links. This is a helper that speed ups things and allows translations to be directly accessible from where they should, found immediately, corrected sooner by more visitors seeing it. And regular readers (that won't edirt this wiki won't be fed up of seeing contents in English everywhere when they can't decipher it correctly (this was a past criticising of this wiki to not be very attractive for many international users, thinking it was just a wiki for UK!) and they prefered working isolately on separate sites, or in various external talk pages which are impossible to find again later as they are not indexed (people won't search in tons of discussions, they want relevant links directly in their language).

And it was really hard to coordinate the various translation efforts (even English users had to look hard to find information given in other languages in pages ordered very differently or simply missing in categories). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 23:26, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Please talk with each other: Wynndale just has removed the defaultsort again (and mentioned a wiki help page in the comment. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 07:03, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Wynndale just reverts everything he has not done himself. He does not read any comment even when we explain the reason why some fixes are done. Yesterday he cancelled agaion all fixes done since months, creating many errors in many pages, creating also incorrect sort keys, and using false statements in his edit comment.

He also modified a documentation adding false information just to refer to it. He maintains that default sort keys are used everywhere and he still thinks that the default sort he generates are correct, when they are in fact wrong. I had fixed these sort keys (whjen they are used), and disabled them completely in Japanese (because there's NO way to generat thjem correctly, they are always wrong.

More generally forcing default sort keys in templates is a very bad idea, when in fact pages should control their own sort keys (or even use their own default sort keys). Forcing sortkeys in tempaltes generates many problems (they are conflicting with other desired sort keys, and in fact the sort keys he uses are incorrectly computed (he ignores completely various Mediawiki tricks and completley ignores the needs for various languages as he is only interested in English and never checks what he does).

He used an snapshot of a tracking category to justify his position, but this was only for a tracking category that is NEVER sorted subcategorized by manguages and that does not have to use any sort keys for its members that are just flat lists of pages.

If you read above (or on his own talk page) he rejects any possibility of errors in his code (and he still thinks that his indentation is correct, when in fact it it is even wrong (does not match braces correctly)

He has abused the template repeatedly. Plerase talk to him too. He is unable to understand the issues in Tempalte:Languages and gives false hints.

Initially there was NEVER any default sort key generated in templates, this is known to cause problems because these keys, even if they are correctly computed (by just dropping the language code prefix... when it is a language code!) will be wrong including for Latin-written languages (he incorrectly assumes the English rules are applicable everywhere). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 12:59, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

JOSM Validator

Please note (I do not know if you watch all pages you are editing) Talk:JOSM/Plugins/Validator#It.27s_not_a_Plugin. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 22:13, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

See my response on the talk page. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 22:15, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Please take a break

Would you mind calming down with your mass changes across the wiki. Allow others to get involved, honour their views and don't think you are right all the time

-- Firefishy (talk) 23:27, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

There are lot of red categories containing pages that I have patiently collected (see Special:WantedCategories and other categories with double redirects, and various orthographies most of these were there since long and never corrected) so they link correctly together. All these need incremental changes to look for them, frequently by successive edits (after looking for other pages and unifying them coherently). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 23:29, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Note: none of these edits are automated, they done one by one manually after looking for various pages to find the proper links to use (or the most frequently used when there are aliases) . — Verdy_p ^(talk) 23:39, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

If some one had made any opposition, they would have talked to me: this occured for example above with the JOSM/Plugins (even though this was because someone requested me to do that, I have also reversed this renaming, and fixed many double redirects remaining since long!). Also I use the existing most compon naming conventions that have been chosen by others. I don't invent them, this is what they initially intended and many are happily seeing that what they wanted finally works.

I also see that you've apparently unlocked the job queue (after I pinged you from the Status page talk) which was stalled since a few days by some job in an infinite loop. I look at it frequently as well as other Special pages collecting maintenance tasks. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 23:41, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm somewhat reluctant to comment here, given the stream of invective that will likely follow, but the comment "If some one had made any opposition, they would have talked to me" is slightly disingenuous. Most people's talk pages do not have more than 500 revisions, and most of the things on here are complaints (e.g. my comment re the Nottingham page above). "User contributions" suggests that you've made (at the last count) 317 edits since you were asked to "Please take a break". Everywhere local to me that I have seen you make changes they have been harmful, not beneficial, so please stop. --SomeoneElse (talk) 12:15, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

People rarely contact me here, but this page is made for that. I don't know where they are "complaining" if they don't say anything and discuss what I dod in places I absolutely don't know.

Harry Wood for example just thanked me (but in another talk page where I had talked... — Verdy_p ^(talk) 12:59, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

About Nottingham, the small havoc came when someone else inserted two areas in the same field for the Place template (using "area" only instead of "area" and "subarea" separately, creating a red link). It is perfectly possible to separate them, and still have cities and counties properly sorted where they are along with other categories and counties of the same type within the same area. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 13:21, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Just in case it wasn't clear, my comment above about Nottingham was a _complaint_. Most of the comments here are. If everyone says "you're doing it wrong", you really do need to take a step back and take on board other people's views, just like Firefishy suggested at the top of this section. --SomeoneElse (talk) 13:31, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

I could complain to you about your own errors or imprecisions. Several people wanted to add East Midlands to that page and see that city sorted there, it does not mean it is not in England even if you revert it on the page to just give the county name. Counties in England are mostly ceremonial but here do not add a very clear indication of where it is located in England. You're just removing a fact from this infobox and decategorize that city. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 13:36, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

To help you take the time to reflect on what people might want to tell you when they ask you about "taking a break" I have blocked you from editing the wiki for a week. As you probably know, people who do something make mistakes sometimes. People who do a lot make more mistakes. And you are making a huge amount of changes in a short time. So please consider the possibility that in some cases where people ask you to stop something or do it differently they might actually be right. --Lyx (talk) 22:58, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

The complain you received from another one (that did not contact me at any time), was about sopmething that was an error made by him just after (see what he reverted in the DE:Rhein article which was made long ago, anf not massively, and that was correctly linking the river in its category and with the French version as well as other languages: the river is shared across multiple countries, and pages are noramlly linked across languages).

You give the followng reason : "consider that they may be right even when they disagree with you". But when did he disagree with me? Did he ever attempt any contact anywhere (except to you, Lyx) ?'

He disagrees, but does not complain to me, and complains to you instead, just to block me ? What he said is wrong (like in this diff, I commented the edit on the Rhine river. For other edits he just reverted, he just did not see that I effectively linked to the German versions of other pages from an existing German page (or solved existing red links)... This was absolutely not automated edit, and all contents were preserved.

There was absolutely no link broken (but now with his two recent reverts, in German, there are broken links no longer working). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 23:05, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

There have been complaints by more than one user. Those users probably make mistakes as well; I know that I make mistakes myself occasionally. But that is not the point. You have been asked repeatedly to give other users a chance to understand and follow what you are doing in the wiki. Two points that appear frequently are that you please slow down your editing rate AND that you give a meaningful comment to your changes, so the readers have a basic idea what you did and what you intended with that change. --Lyx (talk) 23:23, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

At any slow rate he would have made the same error in the Rhine river; he reverted an edit/fix made a long time ago (and created new errors with this revert). But then he complains to you, not to me? Note that in some cases an edit mst be made in two successive passes occuring rapidly (the time to fix another page), but the comment is in the first edit. If I see an error imemdiately I'll also fix it, but the last comment remains valid (this happens sometimages when I see a missing brace causing harm or some minor typo (not seen in the editor or preview, but possibly viewed when checking another page), that is immediately corrected. But for the Rhine river there was no error at all (now this river no longer links with France withe the incorrect revert made by him. I was not given any chance to discuss it with him, he did not attempt anything in fact. I don't think I made any error, and instead fixed links, fixed to use the correct language code prefix (various templates on the wiki depend on using them, they are now standard everywhere, so this is not "new"). There was no "mass" edit at the time the Rhine river article was properly linked by me, when he just came back months later just to drop the language bar, and without looking at where the German article was really linked from! He just reverted without looking at any place. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 23:35, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I already said that other users make mistakes too. I didn't look at this individual case in detail, so I can't make any meaningful comments on it. --Lyx (talk) 09:01, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Also see below the talks about Overpass API documentation, about how talking can be constructive and help improve an important article that still needs some more work (since long) as it was very confusive. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 23:37, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree that this is how it should work. --Lyx (talk) 09:01, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

You've problably not followed all what documented since long in the WikiProjekt Cleanup, and how much the stats in Special:WantedCategories have been improved (now there's less than 150 categories listed with more than 1 member page, in the past this was about tens of thousands), as well ad the thousands broken redirects or double redirects (also tracked in Special:Pages) that I have found in so many places (their progressive accumulation without correction is what makes this wiki more and more difficult to navigate and use, especially for international users). Basic renaming adding a language code is self-explanatory (also documented since long on the wiki on how to translate it). Various edits have been done to make sure that all renders correctly also with RTL languages (Arabic, Hebrew...). Most of these edits are extremely basic (generally adding a missing language code prefix, or sometimes using the correct translated name of another existing page). Sometimes they can be very complex in some tempaltes (it may need lots of preparation before, or looking at many pages first: this requires hours of searches, but it is not made with "massive" edits: these tricky templates have sometimes multiple issues to solve, but not all at once, so they'll be fixed in several steps).

As well when moving a category to use a language code, it is imemdiatetely followed by moving their member pages, then editing the source category to use a tracking template. This is understood now by many contributors (and fully documented). In some cases a pseudo "null-edit" (adding/removing a non-significant space) will be finally be done on the source category to decategorize from the target category, for final cleanup. All these operations remove many red links in pages, and in categories, and allow generic templates (already widely used) to work properly. But it does not involve changing the content (sentences, words, images) and only very minor layout fixes will be done (this does not require changing the initial color design). Overall this unifies the navigation on this wiki with a consistant look at feel across all languages (the most important layout changes needed are those for RTL languages due to the bidi ordering, and for correct display on narrow screens (not assuming that everyone will use a desktop browser or Windows), but once again by keeping as much as possible of what was already there, and syncing contents in translations if possible (filling some forgotten gaps left by lack of maintenance in translations, but only if they are simple to do).

You say "many are complaining", but I don't hear them. It's probably not at all on this wiki, where in fact discussions are in fact inexistant (even if we tell people to talk, or sak questions in appropraite places, there's no reply at all, no one hears). So it's just too easy to come back hear to complain to you, without even participating before. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 00:18, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I think this is part of the problem: You don't recognize a complaint as being a complaint. There are numerous complaints on this talk page alone. --Lyx (talk) 09:01, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Also Nakaner used a false comment here [7]

There's never been any page blanked in the past when I move the page. He has just created "Rhein" today by his new move (without the language prefix) jsut because he had seen red links from several articles in German refering to "Rhein" instead of "DE:Rhein" (or before "Rhine river" or "Rhin"). The diff given just here demontrates that this is a new move (not over any past redirect) and that the article has never existed under the name "Rhein". So he is clearly wrong.

He argues on your talk page that he had some talk in real life. This is wrong: when? where? with whom? I was never involved in such talks happening possibly elesewhere with others, without even informing me. Unfortunately this wiki does not allows receiving a notification when someone talks about me somewhere on this wiki, so I was never notified if this ever happened somewhere. I was never "pinged".

This is a misunderstanding: He had a "real life talk" with me a couple of weeks ago. --Lyx (talk) 09:01, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

So if you argue that others should have a way to discuss what I do, they still need to send an appropriate link where talks may really happen. He has just asked to you to block me, with false arguments (and then made several new uncorrected errors in his reverts). I've always wanted to have such discussions, but it's simply impossible to talk with those that do not preset themselve or do not discuss in any place (the Nakaner's edit history on this wiki is clear, he never talks to anyone here, and will then edit or revert what he wants. He just talked to you without using unjustified arguments, not any justification of something that I could have made incorrectly).

Even if I had left some error on the single page about Rhine (I don't think there was any error, and certainly not "many changes" in that page as what he claims, as I only added a language bar and used the German category for that river!), he could have contacted me instead of complaining to you. Or he could have made his revert and I would have contacted him to say why he was wrong.

So no I have not made any "mass change" in the pages he reverted and for which he complained to you with very evasive arguments.

May be you talked with him in the past, but I was never involved in these discussions or aware of them: how could I have changed anything in the direction he wanted and how my rate of edits would have changed something, for a very tiny change made months ago on a single article (now incorrectly linked after his incorrect revert today) ?

My initial move was there: [8]: I did not blank the redirect at all, and there was broken redirect left at all (and not even any double redirect). It also had an accurate comment explaining why it was done (and explinaing the couple of edits that followed (after checking the category about this river, which is not just in Germany, but also in France, and in French speaking area of Switzerland, and Dutch speaking areas in the Netherlands, and it was the reason for making it international with the language bar I added at top of the page, even if these pages do not discuss the same part of the river wit hthe same levels of details: the German page just talks about the part in Germany, or along the France-Germany border, the articles should still be linked together for complete coverage!).

Is that the way we can work on a wiki: not talking at all, not asking for any information, not documenting what could be missing (or corrected a bit more), reverting immediately (but incorrectly) and then complaining isolately to someone else, ignoring all the huge work made everywhere else that he benefits directly (silently) from my past work to make this wiki really international and not just for a few users in Germany or UK? — Verdy_p ^(talk) 02:09, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

No, that is not the way and you know it! I think that many of the things you do on the wiki are helpful. But there are problems. The most frequent complaint we see is missing change comments. The reason why this is a problem: Most users just monitor a few pages where they care about the content. If you change that page they get a message that you changed the page, and they try to find out what changed. These users are not familiar with the wiki tools, maybe don't know how to create or read a diff and want to know what happened. So adding a short comment like "fixed typo" or "improved page layout" or "better categorization" would go a long way to help users understand what you are doing. The second problem frequently coming up is complaints from language communities that try to organize pages in their language that you please should not mess with their categories. I know that you want to improve these categories, but you need to accept that they want to improve their categories as well and are not there to sabotage your work, as they should understand that you don't want to sabotage theirs. Judging by the comments I see on this talk page you should try to start a constructive dialog with these communities to find a way to use categories in a way that works both for your AND their purposes instead of telling them you are doing the right thing and therefore they are in error. Of course this takes time, but probably will have a more sustainable result in the end. --Lyx (talk) 09:01, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

To be fair, your last edit on Overpass API was kind of useless and, I think, made the page less readable than before. FrankVD (talk) 02:18, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Look at the talk below: this was discussed. And there are good reasons about making this part clearer/less evasive. The Overpass API documetnation still needs work (and finally merging or organizing the various guides.

And this was not "massive edit", and not a resason for blocking me. It's still something to improve with several participants (and reviewers that are noting several things not clear enough).

The talks below show aslo that the "area" thing in Overpass is largely a beta feature that is not correctly explained. The fact it uses some "magic" constant to compute id's is also not something very stable.

The talks revealed also that Overpass PI is in fact not seen directly by users, and that they use Overpass Turbo (the API query form is also likely to disappear, it is not really supported).

But I did not make changes randomly in the article, they were in a clearly separated part (in distinct paragraphs, now in a subsection). I took many care about not changing things everywhere.

Other minor edits were about adding some missing operators (in the list of tag filters) and commenting them (clearly in my opinion) to properly make the necessary distinctions.

If something is still not clear in the article, it does not come at all from my edits but about the way it is generally organized (but I did not change it). It is still very fuzzy for explaining the recursive requests like (>>) and so on, not explained at all, and still not clear about "pivots"... It still does not give a clear organized syntax and separation of concepts. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 02:29, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I meant [edit], which I discuss at the end of this conversation page.— (unsigned comment by FrankVD, 02:36‎, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Which is unrelated to the reasons given for blocking me, as this is not a "mass change", and the comment in this basic edit "why extra newlines?" is correct.

I did not contest at all your addition of another server (which just adds more unneeded elements to the presentation of the service). Instance servers should still be on a separate page, along with their support/contact, and details about their version, or their hardware: this has nothing to do in "Overpass API" itself: what will we do if there are in fact hundreds instance running somewhere in the world for various applications?). It's like if the MediaWiki website started by presenting itself by first listing all Wikipedias (and other wikis of Wikimedia), along with the version they use, and the hardware they use! instead of presenting what it is made for and the basic concepts! And this small edit does not make the page clearer at all for viewers (and not really for editors: rows are already introduced by "|-", cells in rows are using "| " before the content, except "|?" for cells with unspecified contents). That table remains small without enlarging it, it is not so essential to that page. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 02:59, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Lyx was very restrained to only block you for a week. Your mass reversion (rather than arguing any issues) of Charel drove him away; you have sought to bury the substance of your claims that I made a Mediawiki format mistake by repeatedly making large numbers of extranous changes even when I specifically asked you not to. The alternative conclusion is that you are too narcissist to function in a team project like OSM and maybe the leopard can’t change spots.--Andrew (talk) 22:44, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Which "mass reversion" ? I did not revert any one of his changes, HE only reverted some of my (old) changes on the Rhine river. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 22:47, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

And no he did not ask me anything for this article (whose change by me was made a LONG time ago). And why do you speak about "Charel". Do you see anything that he has done on this wiki since May (7 months ago) and that I hwould have "mass changed"? No, this is not a fact. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 22:53, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Tinkering with "Nottingham" page (again)

I've just rolled back your change to the Nottingham page. As stated clearly above, it doesn't make sense to think about Nottingham as a "City in the East Midlands". Please do not change it back until you have consulted with local mappers.--SomeoneElse (talk) 13:26, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Look at categories where it goes separately. It makes sense when the page itself describes it as part of East Midlands... Someone else than you else wanted to add it it in the same filed as England, and this did not work, I've not removed it from "England" which is correctly displayed as expected. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 13:29, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

It makes no sense to link to an "East Midlands" page because that page has essentially no content on it. The "East Midlands" does not exist as an anything more than a vague geographic entity, a statistical sub-total for councils and (currently) a Euro-constituency. The Nottinghamshire and England pages do actually have content on them. Please be aware that you're not editing some ad-hoc hierarchy disconnected from the real world here, you're editing pages that consist of actual OSM communities composed of people. --SomeoneElse (talk) 14:02, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Those region pages were created and partly filled, disconnecting items that are connected to them will not help filling those pages. Even if it is just for euro-constuencies (which will be phased out in some years when UK will leave EU), they will probably remain important administrative and planning units (such as Greater London), even if there's no locally elected regional council for some regions, and bound culturally.

They are even present in OSM data ! Do you really want to remove all references to these regions ? — Verdy_p ^(talk) 14:08, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind either way - if a mapper thinks it's useful to store "stuff about the East Midlands NUTS area that's fine (I've done something similar with relations such as https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_Way ). What doesn't make sense is to impose a non-existant admin hierarchy on pages that makes people think that the East Midlands is somehow a "thing" in OSM terms when it isn't. Deleting all the categories at the bottom of the page would make things more readable (how on earth is a casual viewer supposed to know what "pages with status" means? That whole section is garbage anyway; it hasn't been updated since 2009). --SomeoneElse (talk) 14:50, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

"Pages with status" was not created by me, it comes from some old templates used on that page that are autocategorizing there all pages using them. In my opinion it should better be a hidden tracking category. But this is not related to this discussion.

Deleting geolocating categories however is a bad idea when there are so many entities in England that are hard to locate together. Even if they are only geographic, they do exist with these names, inclujding culturally (proof being that people have created pages for them) and sorted various contents under these region names, which are now disconnected from what they are refering to geographically: the information are then not easily linked, not updated coherently, and stay behind (or as you've seen, with incomplete pages). Reconnecting them by grouping them help people finding all other related articles, and linking to them correctly). "England" alone is not enough, it is very large, it has many entities and a complex adminsitrative structure, and many people get "lost in England" (not just locals), and will not familiarize easily with its geography (or will be confused by hymonyms without clear hint about what is really refered). OK Nottingham in Nottingamshire is precise, but it really does not give any hint of where it is really located. Adding the intermediate "Est Midlands" geographic indication is helpful (and in fact it is precised in the text of the article itself). It does not matter if the article it is linked to has much content in it or not, what matters is how it is categorized, and how categories are grouping nearby cities/towns/villages and counties (plus the addiotnal complciation in England with "ceremonial"/cultural counties and various historical subunits, still found in local toponomy).

If these things were simple, there would not be a so complex hierarchy of levels for England in OSM data (and many people are still interested in seeing/finding these units, which are also used in news, branded services, or sometimes even in addresses...). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 15:03, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

No-one navigates the OSM wiki via categories! In case you hadn't noticed, the OSM wiki has a handly map associated with it (openstreetmap.org) allowing you to easily locate places. --SomeoneElse (talk) 15:14, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

"No-one navigates the OSM wiki via categories!", wrong, you just don't want to use them (because for long they've been a mess on this wiki). They should do it, at least all wiki editors to locate articles (and all translators are using them to locate the articles). There's been intense cleanup of categories and this has helped many translators creating pages and organize their mappings in their areas outside UK where you live without depending only on the English-only content that was for long the only one navigatable (including for documenting the features they need locally). Categories can be much more focused and in scope than basic plain text searches. And they are extremely useful for the maintenance of contents on the wiki, or have an organized view of our coverage on various topics and areas. They require much less maintenance in fact that creating lists or tables on various pages and maintaining them later (with much more work needed). A good example of this is Commons, which could not live at all without categories, and that has also been a great help to help organize the contents on all Wikipedias (and long before Wikidata was launched, but still Wikidata offers no comparable navigation and is still too complex to use for linking to related topics: you need to get out from it and go to some Wikipedia or Commons; so wikidata is still just an external tool for interlinking the wikipedias and Commons: people use then categories to stay on topic, and find relevant info, when plain text searches on the wiki or on external search engines are failing). Categories are also greatly helping external search tools to find more relevant articles (and also avoiding keeping them completely orphaned, so unreachable, and later kept unmaintained).

Note that the slippy maps on this wiki are broken in many cases (you can only use only one per page, and you cannot put any mark on it, which means that you still have to search, and the names given are in a single language not maatching the name used in pages !). So it is not so "handy" (and editors are finally using map images borrowed from Commons).

Anyway these place pages are for handling mapping projects and informing about local events, and putting lists of useful stuff and links to map these areas. Many things in those pages will become outdated once a subproject is completed, but editors will create subpages when needed for keeping historical activities, or will restructure it (without putting all the stuff found in Wikipedia or elsewhere: that's why these pages are still useful to group various links for external information and data sources. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 15:21, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

More unwanted edits

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=WikiProject_Switzerland&action=history if the Swiss community wants to change its page it is completely capable of doing so itself, up to now the 3 of 4 language versions were roughly in sync, your gratuitous edits now mean that we have to go back acheck everything that you have done. PLEASE SIMPLY STOP. SimonPoole (talk) 16:31, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

They are in sync ! (but they were left unmaintained since long).

I've not deleted any content, I've fixed various layout issues (a table too large at the bottom that does not render on narrow screens forcing the use of two scrollbars...). And everything is visible on large screen without scrolling too much vertically when it's not needed. The map was also correctly centered to show the whole country more exactly. All links are present, all texts are there.

The most important changes made was to simplify a lot the unnecessary encapsulation of multiple table layers (they were complex to edit), into something that is much easier to read in code, and fix very few incorrect HTML/CSS and some margins for correct alignment of boxes. I kept even the chosen colors.

If you're not convinced, compare the versions in history with your smartphone. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 16:32, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

You don't understand, nobody was unhappy with the page, if you wanted to change things, you could have -asked- beforehand. If you want to do something useful instead of annoying people, there are still multiple 10'000 of unfixed issues with TIGER data in the US. What about taking a break, say a year or two, from wiki editing and concentrate on TIGER for a change? SimonPoole (talk) 17:34, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

I have absolutely no interest in TIGER, I'm not in US. On the opposite I'm regularly in Switzerland and have contacts with Swiss people. And you are also in Germany, only concerned by this page in English because Switzerland also speaks German (but not only that language, and in fact not English officially)... — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:37, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

What is deceptive is that almost no one discussses anywhere on the dedicated places that exist on the wiki (and its talk page, also adveritzed on the "Wikiteam" page). Coordinating with oither is simply impossible if we never hear them. Given the many problems I have fixed on this wiki, it is in fact very surprising that there's so few problems reported to me. Problems may occur of course, but generally this is a lack of understanding and instead of just complaining this should be requests for information/explaination.

In fact very few people care about doing maintenance on this wiki, they just post various things and forget it, leving it completely unmaintained, not linked, and usually not found at all. All I do is to make sure that everything is readable for everyone, translatable for every language (as easily as possible), correctly indexed, reached when searching, and also with easier additions of pages with more links to relevant informations.

You say "the 3 of 4 language versions were roughly in sync", but it is a very rough estimate. In fact it was difficult to maintain them in sync due to the over-compelx structure of tables, and also because any addition of content would have messed up more a layout that was already very confusive (and full of empty spaces on all screens). This page has in fact never evolved, it was not maintained at all since the begining because it was difficult to understand its structure. As a result, the page was also almost not used at all. It was even difficult to find in it the link to the OSM.ch website which was mostly hidden there.

I have filled all these left gaps, and I am convinced that it will be easier to update it more regularly (in all its 4 languages).

So you've just said "undesired" ? But in fact you've not said exactly where was the problem or if there was any problem. Did I forget something? No. Did I drop any item ? No. Are you really satisfied with the previous page layout ? Do you think that it desserved better the Swiss interests than the current one that fixed just the minimum needed.

And what did you really do in the past on that page ? You seem to take action too instead of the Swiss community, to which you don't belong, except by one native language (but this is also my case, I share a common language with Switzerland, which als oshares interests with its neighbours for various projects or common pages on some geographic features such as the Rhone river or transportation).

If there was someting better to propose, this is visible nowhere on this wiki and not discussed on any talk lists by mail (and I've found nothing elsewhere on the net). Without doubt the OSM.ch external web site is more visible with an evident link to it. I think this page will help attract more Swiss visitors on this wiki or on OSM.ch, or in one of its local subjects by canton. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:35, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Feedback on changes to Overpass Language Guide

Thank you for your changes to the Overpass API documentation. I have a few points concerning your changes, in particular to the Overpass_API/Language_Guide#Area_clauses part, which are to some extend not exactly to the point.

As a general comment maybe: the Overpass API area creation is strictly governed by a set of area creation rules, which decide, if an area object is to be computed for an OSM way or relation respectively. If that decision is positive, all tags of the original object will be stored along with the area object (not "Overpass area batch process recognizes and indexes several naming tags" as you wrote). In your changes, you didn't mention this at all, although is it very important to understand. Please also see Overpass_turbo/Polygon_Features for a human readable form.

Also, you introduced some example using Overpass Turbo syntax extensions, which are of course not available for Overpass API ("geocodeArea:"United Kingdom"). Can you maybe revise this example and use Overpass API syntax only?

It will take me some time to go through all of your changes, try to understand what you intended to describe in the first place and adjust everything as needed. Just wanted to make you aware that a lot of want you seem to derive from your knowledge from conventional relational database systems does not always apply 1:1 to Overpass API and a bit more background research is sometimes advisable.

Mmd (talk) 18:02, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

I did not invent the geocodeArea and tried it (initially I used something else, that was not working, but I tested it against the current version of the server)

This is sometihing however that has never been correctly documented, and whose support is still under the needed level. Areas are still very fuzzy in this API (and likely to change again). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:05, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

See this demo (yes it works as documented): http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/krP

— Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:09, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Please read up overpass turbo syntax extensions first. Your example does not work as Overpass APi query in http://overpass-api.de/query_form.html Mmd (talk) 18:12, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Sorry to contradict you but it works as is on the German instance (via Overpass Turbo when you select the German API instance, or the French one, or the Russian one).

Other syntaxes that were documented in the past do not work at all. I think that your query form uses an older syntax.

This query clearly demonstrates the two uses of areas: preloading an area in a query by name, and then using that area as a filter. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:15, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Did you try the query_form.html page as I mentioned? You'll get lots of error messages, because geocodeArea:name is an overpass turbo proprietary extension, which is not understood by Overpass API. Mmd (talk) 18:20, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Also I wrote that the legacy form uses only the legacy "Overpass area ID", and that usually we perform queries using names. Querying the OSM database will only return a true relation or way, but no "area" at all suitable for the (area) filter.

You can also find matching areas via its tags, e.g. area[name="put your name here"][boundary=administrative]... Mmd (talk) 18:27, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

This is true but already mentioned at top of the article as a special kind of object (like way, relation or node native objects), usable in the main query, but not as a "filter" within queries.

There's a huge difference between keywords used in main queries and those used in additional (optional) filters:

In fact you cannot get anything from Overpass with just single query "area...;" even if you add tag filters after it (that's why it was not working at all in earlier attempts using this syntax): syntaxically it is correct, but you get only empty result sets on which the additional filters have no effect at all !
The only case where you can have (currently) one or more "area" objects in a result set, is by using "main requests" with '(area:id)', possibly grouped into an '('union';'of';'queries';)' !
The other case (for which further work would be needed) would be to have bounding boxes or '(poly:"...")' inserted in an union to create more complex areas (these areas won't have any "pivot", i.e. applying a pivot on them will not return any OSM id, as they also don't have any Overpass area id to convert, so the pivot transform on them will return an empty set of objects, unless Overpass Turbo performs internatlly other requests to the Over API to get all OSM object intersection with these areas).

There was some discussion to have ad-hoc areas, but that's not yet implemented Mmd (talk) 16:01, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

More useful custom areas would be to allow transforming areas with some geometric transforms,

notably intersections of areas,

I think that should be possible when looking at the result on a query (see set intersection in the Overpass examples)

unions of areas

see example below

, creation of buffers on boundaries

See example in this thread: https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=56429

, extension of an area by adding or substructing these buffers,

computing a bbox containing the area,

You can use rel(pivot) and out bb for that;

That's not the same! You do not get an area in a result set, you just "output" 4 points, not usable in a query by area. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 16:32, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

or its geometric center,

That's not the same! You do not get a node in a result set, you just "output" a point, not usable in a query by area (e.g. in a circle around that point). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 16:32, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Use rel(pivot) and out center; for this

That's not the same! You do not get a node in a result set, you just "output" a point, not usable in a query by area (e.g. in a circle around that point). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 16:32, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

or a node centered within the most central and convex subarea, or computing a linear skeleton...

What do you mean by linear skeleton?

The last cases would create new kinds of 'point' and 'polyline' objects within result sets, not attached to any OSM node, way or relation and also without any pivot!

What it the purpose of such an object? You can already use out geom; and don't get any other details about the OSM nodes (only lat/lon values).

You are right, that you cannot add criteria for a filter itself in a node/way/relation query. But there's nothing which prevents you from doing that in two separate steps and store the results of your relevant areas in an inputset and use that for your actual query. You can easily combine several areas, either via a union, or even with a regular expression and use that as an inputset for your query. Here's an example: it returns all charging_station nodes in both Austria and Switzerland.

area[boundary=administrative][admin_level=2]["ISO3166-1"~"^(AT|CH)$"]->.area;
node["amenity"="charging_station"](area.area);
out;

or the same written as union:

( 
  area[boundary=administrative][admin_level=2]["ISO3166-1"="AT"];
  area[boundary=administrative][admin_level=2]["ISO3166-1"="CH"];
)->.area;
node["amenity"="charging_station"](area.area);
out;

As you can see, there's no need to find out the id of a way or relation and add 24 or 36 billion to that id. Just by specifying the right tags in an area query, you will get all you need. Even better, this works even without overpass turbo syntactical suger ("getgeocodeArea"). Hope this makes things a bit clearer for you. Mmd (talk) 15:49, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

That's exactly the code I tried... that did not work at all! It just returned an empty set containing no area at all! so the next query iusing that set in a filter by area simply returned nothing ! — Verdy_p ^(talk) 16:18, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, that query is not supposed to return an area, just the nodes. Can you confirm that the following query is working for you: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/ksF

Returning the nodes is not so useful, it would just be better to return the actual areas. Ther's really a confusion of concepts, making areas much less useful; then the seconq query using the filter by area also cannot work if the first result set "a" contains only nodes (the filter "area.a" ignores these nodes completely, it can only process "areas" that are in the result set). So your suggestion is not relevant here for how to build a suitable result set usable in a filter by area. It simply does not work at all. That's why I had to use a result set containing area selected by id's (even if the ids come from the Turbo extension). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 16:32, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

There's really not much point to "return areas". They're an Overpass API internal construct, and the output is probably not what you expect. There's really meant as part of an area query.

Returning areas is useful, even if it is for debugging intermediate queries and see what we get before using it in further filters for other queries.

I have discoverd that sometimes Overpass returns spurious areas whose pivot relation or way does not even exist ! So we get areas which, when used in filters, won't match anything

( 
  area[name="France"][place=island];
);
out; // you get an area id=2487182947

( 
  area[name="France"][place=island];
)->.a;
rel(pivot.a);
out; // you get nothing

rel(87182947);
out; // relation does not exist in OSM

This may explain why we don't get data when testing queries (in fact my initial tests were about getting data for France only (the country, not that "island", which may refer to the former historic name of Mauricius, but not stored in a "name=*" tag).

Ah, ok. I see your issue. You need to realize that areas can originate either from a way or a relation. So, in case the area was created based on a way, you cannot use rel(pivot). For debugging purpose, I'd suggest to use a combined approach as follows. This should return a result, regardless of whether the area was created by a way or relation:

( 
  area[name="France"][place=island];
)->.a;
(
  way(pivot.a);
  rel(pivot.a);
);
out geom;

Also, do you realize that the following two queries return exactly the same result? Please try it out! Don't forget to switch to the DATA TAB in overpass turbo, otherwise you will not see anything. That's intended this way.

You don't need to be bold. I've never forgotten to switch to that data tab, including in the examples above. Overpass Turbo informs me anyway that the map is empty but that there are still data in that tab, even if there's no geometry for displaying them on a map

Agree, no need for bold. Removed.

There are still too frequent cases where we never get any area (either from a way or relation).

Well, as mentioned before there are some Area creation rules that control the whole process. If your way/relation doesn't have the right tags, it will not be considered for area creation. As a very rough rule of thumb: if an object has a "name" tag, chances are very high, that there's also a corresponding area.

The 24 or 36 billions quirks are also still unneeded quirks in Overpass; why not using the effective OSM id's directly (possibly prepended by "r" or "w" depending from which they originate). Sooner or later the way-areas will collide with relation-areas using the same range of area id's (for now you assume that there can't be more than 12 billion distinct ways in OSM, but you give an unlimited number of relations!). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:20, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm also not very happy to have those internal constant values exposed, given that they are only as stable as the original OSM object (someone might delete a relation/way and create a new one -> new id) and in the worst case would have to be adjusted at some distant point in the future (12 billion is actually quite a lot for ways). That's why I'm always advocating to use tag values for filtering, rather than doing some magic with those 24/36 billion constants and provide the id values. Also, there's the map_to_area statement, which does that addition automatically: just query for a way or relation, followed by map_to_area, and you automatically get the corresponding area id without doing any math on your own. Mmd (talk) 17:37, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

It's also the reason why I wanted to add a subsection about how to replace those magic values by something more stable. I've also added the alternate way in the section, without using the Turbo extensio n(and without the limitation to only one area and some Niminatim magic about which names are taken into account for the selected area returned).

Probably the "geocodeArea" extension of Turbo will be phased out/deprecated, if the syntax using main "(area[filters...];)" queries work as expected (additionally this removes a dependency on Nominatim and will possibly reduce the response time, because it is using an internal server-to-server query, between an Overpass API instance server and a Nominatim server, and admins of Nominatim may not like seeing too many queries coming from automated processes running on an Overpass API server, even if the Overpass API maintains some local cache for Nominatim queries by name). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:46, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

In fact, the Nominatim lookup is part of overpass turbo and is executed right from your browser (remember: it is an overpass turbo extension). By the time the query hits Overpass API, it will only be a number. So, Overpass API server does not do any Nominatim calls at all. Mmd (talk) 17:50, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for this precision, I thought that the edited query in the Tubo form was sent as is to the Turbo server, I did not realize that they were in fact part of the Javascript running on the browser, and that transformed internally the edited query before executing it over an API instance. That's something that was not clear anywhere in the doc about how Overpass Turbo really works. Once again most users are first exposed to Overpass Turbo as the front web server, instead of an Overpass API server (that has a minimalist or inexistant UI: I did not know, before you suggested me to use it on the German instance, that Overpass API servers even had a basic query form, which is not documented in any evident place, and I'm not sure that all Overpass API instances have, or even need, such basic web form !). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:59, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Right, these days, the query_form.html is more or less obsolete and nothing I would recommend a normal user to take a look at anymore. It is just important to realize that some extensions by overpass turbo are not available, if you run your own application (without turbo inbetween). To some extent, other applications had to reimplement the same extensions, because many people are so used to it (like in JOSM, or believe also in QuickOSM for QGIS). Mmd (talk) 18:07, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

If those Turbo extensions had to be reimplemented in other applications, it just means that they are very useful and should be integrated directly in Overpass API. This will remove the dependency for client-side support. However I would keep outside the CSS extension used in Turbo, as they are extremely bound to the client application using the returned data to format it the way it needs. And it should be clear that "{{}}" double braces are kept reserved for client-side extensions in queries, so that application can implement any query language or data formatting language they need for integrating. This means that another new syntax in Overpass API will have to support the equivalent {{}}-extensions that are being integrated in Overpass API (these extensions will then just use dummy transforms for ascending compatibility if they want to use the native API syntax). For example MediaWiki will want to have its own extensions using double braces for template transclusion, or #tag: extensions, and will want to limit the kind of CSS styling usable. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:16, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, according to Overpass turbo/Extended Overpass Turbo Queries, two of them (bbox + center) depend on the current view in the application, so they cannot be implemented on the Server without the client providing at least a bbox, for the others we have a number of Nominatim lookups (geoCode*), and one extension for date calculations. To avoid dependencies on Nominatim calls on the server (the server would also get quickly blocked), I guess the date calculation is probably the only candidate. Mmd (talk) 18:29, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Don't forget also the other {{}} extensions for formatting (with some variant of CSS).

MediaWiki has its own needs for extensions (basically for supporting its template transclusions, and special "#tag:" extensions including "#if:" or "#expr:" that are part of its core syntax), and more work is happening there to integrate maps.

Wikimedia will certainly soon implement its own Overpass API server, for use first in Wikipedia and Commons, and probably Wikivoyage. It will implement its own styling for markers. Wikimedia already runs its own tile servers. It is already experimenting several new tags for showing maps directly in articles or in popups, and wants these maps to be also accessible on mobile platforms, and using a consistant "modern" style matching its newest UI (including in VisualEditor for example). Keeping the "{{}}" braces free (not used directly in the Overpass API syntax that must not recognize them as valid in any query) will allow all these extensions for various languages and platforms. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:43, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

( 
  area[boundary=administrative][admin_level=2]["ISO3166-1"="AT"];
  area[boundary=administrative][admin_level=2]["ISO3166-1"="CH"];
)->.area_1;
.area_1 out;

( area(3600016239);
  area(3600051701);
 )->.area_2;
.area_2 out;

Also, when you come across an issue, please create an overpass turbo shortlink and add that here, also mentioning the Overpass API instance you're using. Otherwise it's extremely difficult to find out what went wrong. Mmd (talk) 16:24, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

The "getgeocodeArea" extension cannot still return more than one area, due to the way it currently works: Overpass Turbo still does not know how to transform multiple ways or relations (returned by Nominatim) into an "('union';'of';'queries';)' on which additional '[tagfilters]', or '(areafilters)', or '->"outputset"' can be applied.

— Verdy_p ^(talk) 21:32, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Most users (as well as all templates in this wiki) prefer using Overpass Turbo rather then the simple query form using the legacy syntax with the unsupported "area id's" (but they are still described in the API doc before introducing the geocodeArea). But may be we should add a notice that this is an Overpass Turbo shortcut (to avoid the dirty tweak on id with the unsupported large constant offsets, which will collide one day with real id's). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:23, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, please add a comment that this is overpass turbo specific. Thanks! Mmd (talk) 18:24, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Fine, I'll add this note. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 18:25, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Is it better like this ? (I inserted some links too for Overpass Turbo and Nominatim and separated it in a subsection). Note again that all examples on the Overpass API page are using in fact Overpass Turbo and not directly a query to an Overpass API server, so the syntax recognized by default in examples from this page is effectively the one supported by Overpass Turbo (which is even given as the first link in the navbar at top of pages, before Overpass API itself, treated more as an internal utility). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 21:22, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, will review this soon! Mmd (talk) 15:49, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Overpass API "newlines"

Hi,

I just put the newlines on between the different row just to make them way easier to read. Actually the table is a complete mess; newlines didn't mess with the html output, so…

Cheers. FrankVD (talk) 20:06, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

How do the newlines help making the table more "readable" ? — Verdy_p ^(talk) 21:27, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

When you edit the source code, different rows are easy to distinguish. FrankVD (talk) 21:36, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Other edits I made was to add to some examples (that were only shown in the XML syntax) their equvalent in QL syntax (that most users prefer). This is not complete for all examples on this page. And add a link to execute both of them via Overpass Turbo to see the results. This is not as compelte as in the separate page showing more advanced examples.

It's true that I added a section about resource management query parameters (alias "osm-script"), as it concerns all requests you can do. It was completely missing before! But I added it only after the first simplest query example (used in the introduction just to present the service, but very unlikely to be useful for real needs). The language reference contains more details about them, but it's necessary to introduce them I think, independantly of the further sections presenting the various query types you can do with it (they are explained in more details in the language reference).

The "Overpass API" page remains an introduction page for presenting the service (but most examples at end of the page should be moved out of this page to the pages for example: I've not changed them). However I moved almost all examples about Sketch lines (a separate service, not really part of the Overpass API) in its separate page, keeping only one image of the result.

This page also still uses too many details for documenting the location, status or implementation/versions of existing server instances. IMHO, this should be on a separate page. But I've not moved them out.

The table of servers don't really need to be present in that introduction page, and this is a very simple table that should not take so much space in the article. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 02:47, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Suggestion for better communicating improvements

Seems like your changes are beneficial (not sure really, I am not wikimedia person). But you are just not listening to those asking you to slow down and better explain the changes. My suggestion is to take a break from wiki edits and write some OSM diary entries that explain the larger types of changes you are making and why changes like that are an improvement and important. It would help a lot if you educated some of us less expert wiki users so we could understand, make use of and maybe even help with some of this maintenance. Making improvements is very much appreciated, but you have to bring the community along with you and get the community support or acceptance or all the improvements and work you are doing can be counter productive. --Bgirardot (talk) 16:12, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Yet, look at my user page. Look also at the many doc pages I have been alone to add for many things in templates that were not documented anywhere. There are many places where I have explained that. But no one wants to read the appropriate places I have commented. — Verdy_p ^(talk) 17:24, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Template:TagValue

ok @ https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Template:TagValue&diff=next&oldid=1411588 Merry Christmas --Reneman (talk) 18:01, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

User talk:Verdy p/Archive 2016 Jul-Dec

Contents

Need your help again with a template

an

ID/Shortcuts

Url encoding in Template:User_username

Featured tile layers

Did you realise you edited another user’s signed comment?

Farsi or any oder RTL language template

Apple iOS

Moving Relations/Proposed/Dual carriageways

Tinkering with "Nottingham" page

Edit descriptions

Ambox style

Categories

SOTM Categories

Feature Template

Category:pages unavailable in Czech and friends

Category:State of the Map 2015

Changes in templates

LINES 3-3B-116-119-125 and 332.

Edits of Template:OverpassTurboStolpersteine

Polish pages

Be aware with your edits

When editing German pages, please check spelling first

Please stop breaking the taglist template

why defaultsort here?

JOSM Validator

Please take a break

Tinkering with "Nottingham" page (again)

More unwanted edits

Feedback on changes to Overpass Language Guide

Overpass API "newlines"

Suggestion for better communicating improvements

Template:TagValue

Navigation menu

User talk:Verdy p/Archive 2016 Jul-Dec

Need your help again with a template

an

ID/Shortcuts

Url encoding in Template:User_username

Featured tile layers

Did you realise you edited another user’s signed comment?

Farsi or any oder RTL language template

Apple iOS

Moving Relations/Proposed/Dual carriageways

Tinkering with "Nottingham" page

Edit descriptions

Ambox style

Categories

SOTM Categories

Feature Template

Category:pages unavailable in Czech and friends

Category:State of the Map 2015

Changes in templates

LINES 3-3B-116-119-125 and 332.

Edits of Template:OverpassTurboStolpersteine

Polish pages

Be aware with your edits

When editing German pages, please check spelling first

Please stop breaking the taglist template

why defaultsort here?

JOSM Validator

Please take a break

Tinkering with "Nottingham" page (again)

More unwanted edits

Feedback on changes to Overpass Language Guide

Overpass API "newlines"

Suggestion for better communicating improvements

Template:TagValue

Navigation menu

Search