As several people have informed me, there is an issue of possible bias at Wikipedia with respect to a couple of users in their treatment of PortableApps.com. Things like systematically removing our mentions from some of the apps we package and enhance with author encouragement, highlighting a bug in the introduction, making uncited inaccurate statements in criticisms, etc. One user in particular that people had mentioned I have contacted via their talk page. We'll see what the response is.
I'm posting a link to my message here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Nuwewsco#Bias_Regarding_PortableA...
Please keep civil and don't go posting random angry messages to the talk page, that's not the point of this at all. This is for a healthy discussion of the issues brought up. Hopefully, it's just a misunderstanding/misinformation and will be resolved amicably.
Thanks,
John
UPDATE: The user in question was not the user who added the incorrect bug assessment to the intro and I've apologized to them for thinking they were. One of the emails I received indicated it was the same user, but I hadn't checked the history until now.
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Thanks for doing something about that. I noticed the 'propitiatory paf format' one, and how we package already portable programs.
Someone is ignorant, eh?
Sure. I read about the (paraphrasing) "the change from zip to paf was criticized as it seems a move away from open source to a more proprietary format." Sometimes I have a similar feeling, that in the future I could not release apps or games I made compatible with the PA format without asking permission, agreeing to some license, signing a contract and/or paying money to John. Maybe far fetched and untrue, but thats just my feeling sometimes.
And the 'already being portable' is just because many non portable issues are often invisible to some people.
We need a detailed information for Developers about technical things of the Portable software.
Come on... it's open source under the GPL. The Platform is open. You don't even have to package an app to get it to appear in the menu, you just stick it there. The installer isn't required for apps, it just makes things easy and consistent.
We're in phase two of the licenses' progression right now. Phase 1 was my own apps. Phase 2 is contributed apps (where we shake out any bugs in the process, especially with the menu refresh pieces). Phase 3 is open for anyone to use... open source, free, no contract to sign... for everyone doing open source that's GPL compatible as well as exceptions for non-GPL and closed source freeware... essentially, that GPL with exceptions opens up for not PA apps. And phase 3 is where we introduce the no-coding part of the installer... still GPLed, still open source, but with a packaged utility so all you need to do is edit a simple config file and you have an automatically generated and compiled installer (including GPLed source code). We just want to ensure that it's working right and don't rush it out so we don't have multiple incompatible implementations of the installer with different bugs floating around. That would be a support nightmare.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Although the user in question might add negative comments to PortableApps.com page, please realize that this is one of the effects of having an Wiki which everyone can edit. Because of this these type of things have and always will happen in articles.
I recently have gone through the wiki history (yesterday I believe) to see if the article itself was changed since it was removed last year. At that time I talked to some editors arguing that the article should remain and the editors had the opinion that just removing the page without the chance to have people improve it was not the desired way. But I still see the article is tagged as being written as an advertisement.
What I'm trying to say is please let us try and improve the article so at least that article will not be tagged as written as an advertisement anymore.
I didn't realize the fact that the mentioning of the FireFox Portable issue was an issue but it did felt out of place. Whatever the reason for writing it, it was certainly not suited to be included into the introduction.
On the other side there's the Toucan issue, which to what I understand hasn't reached notability. Notability is achieved by references from other sources like reviews and news sources. To that effort notability is not that high. For that to improve you really need references... Still, I might think it would be suited for its own article. Inclusion into the PortableApps.com page isn't really helping I think.
I suggest PortableApps community should spend their energy on the article itself. And this effort should be well balanced and objective. The positive as well the negative aspects should help to get an article that doesn't read as an advertisement. That would make the PortableApps article better.
I don't know. Turning the concept of Firefox passing a file to a helper app via TEMP and possibly leaving it behind if the helper app locks it open and you close Firefox before the helper app seems like a pretty minor issue to be blown out of proportion for the opening paragraph of that article. And it's not like it's buried, it's mentioned right on the Firefox Portable homepage. The full details are here:
https://portableapps.com/support/firefox_portable#helper_apps_privacy
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
A stretch and certainly not suited for the opening paragraph.
The user replied yesterday (or two days ago as it's now past 12). He says he's taking a NPOV, but it seems like more of an opinion and a bit of ignorance when they say we package already portable software, possibly they don't know what changes we make and how we make it easier for users to find, install and more.
It does seem a bit more of an opinion. I responded with some details and asked him to look into it further.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
It shouldn't take much to push back if the article contains a lot of opinion. The best ammunition would be objective third party reviews or security audits of the Portable Apps collection. Pointing out contradictions or errors of fact should not be too difficult either.
Any chance we could encourage some of the online tech magazines or bloggers to do such a review?
MC
how many of us here actually knew that the firefox bug existed?
But there’s no sense crying over every mistake,
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
It's right on the Firefox Portable homepage under the link to the section on configuring Firefox Portable to use help apps (which is when you would usually encounter this). And it only affects you if you happen to open a file downloaded directly in an app that locks the file and then close Firefox before close the app. Incidentally, this issue affects any portable software written by anyone that passes off a document from one program to another.
Either way, the issue isn't about the issue, it's about the fact that someone elevated it to the intro paragraph who has an apparent axe to grind with PortableApps.com. There are similar and worse issues with U3, but you won't see it mentioned in their intro, for example.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!