Thanks to entire Ops group for work on this and other things!
4 Jul 2020, 07:35 by m...@teczno.com:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> Since Tobias Wrede started this thread in May, the Ops group has discussed
> the Help site during our regular meetings. We understand the importance of
> the Q&A site and acknowledge that the software running it is old and
> under-maintained.
>
> In addition to the possibility of moving the site to a new platform like the
> ones mentioned in this thread, we’ve also verified that all past Q&A content
> can be archived [1] regardless of future platform and talked about potential
> underlying causes of the frontend script problems some users have experienced
> [2]. Currently, the Ops group has two initial conclusions:
>
> 1) We aren’t able to confirm the extent of the Javascript problems described
> in this thread because we lack a front-end monitoring that would provide this
> information. Our existing monitoring extensively covers the underlying
> server, shenron [3], alongside superficial uptime measurements [4].
>
> 2) The Q&A server is shared by Trac and SVN services which are being
> deprecated over the next month [5]. Deprecating Trac and SVN will allow us to
> better isolate and observe problems that Q&A is experiencing, and perhaps
> solve them by removing these competing services on one of OSM’s older pieces
> of hardware.
>
> Over the next two months, I’ll be watching the thread [2] for reports of new
> failures. If these continue past August when SVN and Trac have been
> deprecated, we’ll add monitoring to better understand their cause and
> determine what work may be needed to fix or migrate OSM’s Q&A site.
>
> -mike.
>
> Links:
> 1. https://ops.pads.ccc.de/meeting-202006-A (archiving report starts at line
> 173)
> 2.
> https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/74831/why-does-the-add-a-new-comment-button-sometimes-not-work?
>
> 3.
> https://munin.openstreetmap.org/openstreetmap.org/shenron.openstreetmap.org/index.html
>
> 4. https://uptime.openstreetmap.org
> 5. https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2020-July/030958.html
>
> Ops Meeting Minutes:
> - https://ops.pads.ccc.de/meeting-202005-B (July 1)
> - https://ops.pads.ccc.de/meeting-202006-A (June 4)
> - https://ops.pads.ccc.de/meeting-202007-A (May 22)
>
>
>> On May 20, 2020, at 12:28 AM, Tobias Wrede <l...@tobias-wrede.de> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> we have several channels in OSM to facilitate discussions and support. First
>> touch point for new users is often help.openstreetmap.org. Questions
>> relating to mapping in general, tagging, editors, development, OSM based
>> applications are asked there and get answered in most cases.
>>
>> The site is based on OSQA, a software which has not been maintained in some
>> time. Some application errors have surface in the past but had to be ignored
>> since no fixes are coming from OSQA any more. Until now we could live with
>> that. They were annoying but not critical. There are open tickets on OSM
>> github to move the help site to some other framework
>> (https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/149,
>> https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/377) but there isn't
>> exactly an abundance of volunteers to take care of that.
>>
>> Usability of help.openstreetmap.org has now seriously worsened over the past
>> few days with some js error popping up for longer and longer times
>> (https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/74831/why-does-the-add-a-new-comment-button-sometimes-not-work).
>> Buttons to support formatting questions and answers are gone, comments
>> cannot be added and moderation functions (reporting, converting questions to
>> comments etc.) are not working anymore.
>>
>> If this continuous we can shut down the site soon. Even if this problem got
>> resolved somehow it's only a matter of time until a new problem arises. The
>> site provides a low entry hurdles place to ask questions that can be solved
>> by simple answers. I'd hate so see it gone.
>>
>> I'm neither a programmer who could help out on the technical side nor am I
>> involved in OSM organization and politics to have an idea on how this could
>> be sorted out. Question around: Can we find someone to take care of the
>> technical side? Can we involve any of the OSM organizations to find, maybe
>> pay, someone? Does the community even find it worthwhile keeping the site?
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>> Tobias
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> talk@openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> michal migurski- contact info and pgp key:
> sf/ca http://mike.teczno.com/contact.html
>
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