New WoS and ZXDB

[Morkin]

How's that..?

[hikoki]

^^
Glad everything is sorted out

Edit:

Fake news?!! Prince Morkin, I promise you won't ever be crowned king

[Morkin]

[Hroudik]

Hello,

I did not read everything but enough to make decission that it is very important to support ZXDB.

[Einar Saukas]

FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE! WE ARE RUNNING IN CIRCLES AGAIN!!!

Ok, time to clear this up.

Except you didn't. I have proved beyond any doubt that new WoS "stole" ZXDB, despite you explicitly denying it and accusing me of the opposite. You didn't even try to explain anything I wrote.

Instead, you are just following the Trumpesque principle of "never give up no matter how much evidence they have against you, just deny everything then try a different excuse".

After god knows how many pages of discussions, nobody from ZXDB has contacted me at all.

"Your honour, the robbed bank should have contacted me first before calling the police!"

Are you seriously suggesting that this problem was caused because I didn't try hard enough to discuss ZXDB with you? I wrote over 5,500 posts in this forum, about 1,000 of them about ZXDB. There are entire threads that I started in this forum exclusively to attempt discussing ZXDB with you. My invitation to join the WoS admin group on Facebook in February 2017 was a direct response to my PM to both you and Richard Chandler, trying to sort this out privately.

Except this time I couldn't send you a PM, because you disabled my PMs (everyone can still see "Roles: No PM" in my profile) and you never answered the reason you did it to me. Even so, this time everything I wrote was posted first in your own forum for the last 3 weeks. Wasn't it enough to "make contact" with you? Then I guess you don't visit your own site very often.

Firstly, there will never be an agreement as to what happened with the old data. I say it was take in its entirety without permission, Einar says otherwise.

"Your honour, evidences show I'm guilty but I won't confess, therefore you cannot condemn me since we will never agree."

Except it's too late. Let's see:

• ZXDB has been always publicly distributed online since the beginning in July 2016.

• I finished converting the entire WoS archive to ZXDB and published it in August 2016.

• Peter started and then launched SpectrumComputing using ZXDB in September 2016.

• Months later, you (Fogarty Lee) wrote "Peter and Einar are good guys doing a good thing - if it comes down to it, I am happy to host their work from my business account. We have "discussions" but neither Einar or Peter are doing anything WoS disagrees with or have argued against." in January 2017.

Attempting to rewrite history doesn't really work unless you have your own trustworthy portable time travel device.

What Einar was given (in my opinion as part of the WoS admin group - the facebook group is also called WoS Admins), was the entire database. This was never released by Martijn, nor myself.

It seems you have fallen into a temporal paradox and got stuck in a time loop.

First of all, you have to decide what exactly your "opinion" means:

• Are you referring to the time I joined the WoS admin group on Facebook in February 2017? I spent 3 months asking for your new database model (so I could import data from ZXDB for you), you kept telling me it wasn't ready and providing new excuses, until I finally gave up in May 2017. In your parallel universe, it's when I grabbed a new WoS database, travelled back in time and released everything in August 2016.

• Are you referring to the time you asked Gerard to give me Martijn's internal WoS files in July 2016? I converted and published half of them (with support from Gerard and Martijn himself) in July 2016, Richard Chandler immediately replied "You've done a really good job there Einar", then I finished converting and published everything else in August 2016, a few posts later you wrote "It's good to see a workable DB rather than some suggestions I got!", Peter launched SpectrumComputing using ZXDB in September 2016, 4 months later you (Fogarty Lee) wrote "neither Einar or Peter are doing anything WoS disagrees with or have argued against" in January 2017. Presumably in your parallel universe, this entire forum doesn't exist thus these posts never happened.

I will propose something you never considered so far: proof! In the private WoS group you wrote "There is a WoS admins group on FB that Einar was in, and posts still there where I am sending structure/data to him". I'm glad you have evidence of my wrongdoings from a parallel universe (presumably my mirror version is evil). Now you only have to teleport this evidence to our own universe, so you can publicly release our private WoS admin group discussions about ZXDB. Don't worry about privacy, you already had my approval to release from years ago.

Having said that, like I said, there will never be an agreement. I will however say that the WoS admins are very good at telling me when I am wrong - and in this case all have agreed and stated over the last couple of years that my opinion here isn't wrong. Everyone in the admin group were working (as far as we were concerned) on Infoseek.

"Your honour, my friends believe I'm innocent therefore I cannot be guilty!"

Seriously?

I should also point out here that our "secret" facebook group is the official WoS fb and currently has over 5,000 members.

"Your honour, I made false accusations but they were not secret and I told them to thousands of people!

I never said WoS group was "secret". I wrote "private WoS group at Facebook that I cannot access". Guess what? It's still private and I still cannot access.

Posting false claims about ZXDB behind my back to "over 5,000 people" in a private group doesn't make it any better.

So, moving forward [...] So, what now?

"Your honour, I was caught driving a stolen car but I will be driving a different car next week"

Really?

The old database is considered legacy. As of today, the old database can be taken and used at will. However, I would like all mention of myself & WoS removing. It is provided "as is" without any guarantee of accuracy or quality.

OK, I just uploaded the "old database" here.

DISCLAIMER: These files are provided "as is" without any guarantee of accuracy or quality.

These are the famous "Martijn's old WoS internal files" that I mentioned several times over the years, but never shared before. There are 8 packages, I named them according to the date when I received each file (from July 13th 2016 to August 3rd 2016, except "zines.dat" that was missing and I only received later on February 20th, 2017). If anyone wants to compare these files against ZXDB, I suggest downloading the ZXDB incremental scripts (from the same link provided at the end of my first post). Every single change in ZXDB is preserved in these scripts for auditing, so it's possible to see exactly how ZXDB evolved over time. The ZXDB files are organized as follows:

• 001 - The original ZXDB database model that was published on July 11th 2016, with a few tweaks applied in the following 2 months.

• 002 - Scripts to populate enumeration tables.

• 003 - Scripts to populate a list of magazine names.

• 004 to 006 - It took me a month to implement and improve a conversion system, that loaded the entire content of these "Martijn's old WoS internal files", cross-referenced everything, detected and fixed about 50,000 inconsistencies, then automatically generated all scripts into these 3 files. The final result was released in August 2016, although I rerun my converter one more time on February 22th, 2017 after I got the missing file "zines.dat".

• 007 to 010 - These scripts contain other inconsistency fixes that my conversion system could not fix automatically, so I applied them myself afterwards. I have explained it in August 2016.

• 011 - This is a script that added SPOT/SPEX content as separate tables. It's basically the same content that's available for download at SPOT/SPEX, except Gerard told me that Richard had already converted it to CSV/SQL, as I mentioned for instance in August 2016 and again in October 2016. [Although I don't recall which Richard so if anybody has this information, please let me know since I just realized his name is missing from ZXDB credits!] Gerard sent me these files on July 13th 2016 but I only added them to ZXDB later because my first priority was converting old WoS, afterwards I started working on SPOT/SPEX in September 2016.

• 012 to 102 - The remaining scripts contain incremental changes to fix errors and inconsistencies, and add new information. Some SQL was generated manually, others produced from spreadsheet macros, and more recently using an editing tool called ZX-Ed that I created for this purpose.

The organization of these files is still the same that I already explained in October 2016. Although in a certain parallel universe, everything was just a dream.


NOTE: Reproduced from my post at the WoS forum

[akeley]

Hi [mention]Einar Saukas[/mention]. My advice to you is to walk away from this argument, because after LF's latest post it's crystal clear it will never reach any civil & sensible resolution.

I do realize being slanderously accused of theft, especially when it's blatlantly not true, and after all the years of work on ZXDB (which is then being appropriated by the accusatory party) is very upsetting - but it's just not worth losing sleep over anymore. And these things, as I know from personal experience, can be quite destructive, poisonous and lead to a possible burnout. And nobody would want that since we all really appreciate your work.

You have already stated your case numerous times and made every effort to resolve this in good spirit. The record is there for all to see, and those interested know what's what. It's clear that the others are deaf to reason though, and so from now trying to argue with them you'd be only wasting time and nerves. It sucks, but that's how some humans operate, and there's nothing can be done about it. Instead of writing yet another rebuttal, you could be doing something much more happy and productive. Leave it be and start enjoying working on ZXDB again, in the end it'll be your legacy which is used as a definitive Sinclair database, no worries about that

[Pegaz]

Frankly Einar, I'm not sure how productive is, all this rolling in the mud with Lee.
It's clear to me that you want to clarify every single fact, but keep in mind that on the other side there's someone who simply doesn't care, what are you going to say.
Why?
My impression after all these years, is that he hates you personally and I will say it out loud.
Envy, malice and vanity or some irrational reason that motivates him to behave like this, doesn't matter anymore.
As someone has already said, there's no need for any deeper analysis of such infantile behavior.
Every time you pay attention to him, you just do him a great and undeserved honor.
He showed himself completely unworthy and inferior in the discussion, with the obvious intention of ignoring the truth and making all your efforts meaningless, at all costs.
Only a malicious person can ignore what you have written and suggested in the past few weeks and you shouldn't waste any more time...

[utz]

+1 to what [mention]akeley[/mention] said. As has been demonstrated countless times in the past, Lee and his clique aren't interested in a rational discussion, so arguing with them is a waste of time. Other than that there's no need to defend yourself [mention]Einar Saukas[/mention], you've done more than enough to prove your point, and I don't think anybody on here has any doubts that you are in the right.

I think the best thing we can all do moving forward is spread the word as much as possible and try to save honest folks from getting sucked into the sh*thole that is WOS nowadays.

[moroz1999]

Nobody wants to roll in mud really. It's taking time and forces which could be spent on something better.
But. If Einar just remains silent, then Lee will be the only one who speaks, and he will speak a lot, he wont just stop.

I have the same experience from the very similar situation: if Einar restrains from all this unpleasant discussion, then Lee simply wins. However, chasing every post of Lee is not effective as well, since Lee can throw in a lot of lies without efforts and Einar would spend a lot of his resources to provide some sane arguments. Slandering is always easier than defending, so this cannot be won by just thoroughly answering to any nonsense Lee will come up with.
Einar, instead of this I'm suggesting:
1. Gather some really short and strong facts together in one place (sticky-topic here on forum?).
2. Every time you meet new accusations or old myths, just leave the comment with link. This way Lee will have to spend more efforts for slandering than you for defenses.
3. Stick to improving and spreading ZXDB as much as you can. You have leading positions currently, and Lee is distracting you for a reason: when you spending your moral efforts on defense and finding new arguments, WOS will try to regain what's lost. I can clearly see that WOS doesn't want to be one more friendly archive working on a common goal for the interests of all ZX users, but they would like to be the only archive. So, just don't let them keep you busy with useless bullsh*t.

[Ralf]

I'm too for a sticky post visible to anyone who enters the forums explaining all the story. We could discuss it here.

This is a war that can't be won. Lee won't admit his wrongdoings. WOS won't be shut down and I believe we don't want it here.
There will be always a small group of people who believe Lee and a bigger group of people who don't care.

Einar, you put a lot of work into proving your point of view. Actually this effort could go into developing ZXDB.
Or you could just go for a walk in a park instead

[Mike Davies]

1. Gather some really short and strong facts together in one place (sticky-topic here on forum?).
2. Every time you meet new accusations or old myths, just leave the comment with link. This way Lee will have to spend more efforts for slandering than you for defenses.

These are great ideas.

This sounds like a FAQ, something with a nice short memorable link. Einar has written multiple times in there (with references), so perhaps it's something we as a community to gather Einar's posts over the last month, and distil them into a clear FAQ pattern.

[Einar Saukas]

Thanks everybody for your support!

Also I appreciate the offer for others to compile a FAQ because I'm tired of writing about this subject myself

[Vampyre]

This is a war that can't be won. Lee won't admit his wrongdoings. WOS won't be shut down and I believe we don't want it here.
There will be always a small group of people who believe Lee and a bigger group of people who don't care.

Great post although I'd add to "a bigger group of people who don't care" with "or are hesitant to get involved". I have a feeling that there could well be a few regular/long-standing users on WoSF who have seen through WoS's bullsh*t but have been like me in the past and not gotten involved. I'm definitely guilty of that in the past and I bet I'm not alone. Sometimes silence speaks volumes, particularly from users who are particularly vociferous when they feel a fellow user has been wronged.

Personally I don't want WoS going anywhere and I will forever respect and admire Lee for bringing WoS back from the ashes when Martijn left and the WoS server died.

But all this has been WoS bullsh*t. And I'm glad the community has not accepted it.

[Morkin]

I'm sure a lot of participants in Speccy forums over recent years (both WoS and SC) can make up their minds. Aside from the jokey pic a few posts earlier I haven't said much about it, but I haven't posted on the WoS forums for years now, there was too much unnecessary arguing and banning that could have easily been avoided. WoSsers are pretty sound though, despite a lack of culinary skills in some areas...

Until recently I was still visiting the WoS site regularly, but without sounding like a grumpy old git ("Too late for that!" - Ed) I just can't find anything now. Aside from the database issues, the new site renders badly on both desktop and mobile, there are lots of basic design and navigation errors, its lists are slow and cumbersome, and any useful functions I used to use to find things are now gone. I really don't know what I would suggest, other than "please get a professional web designer in to re-do it from scratch, perhaps consulting a real site user or two". But we all know how well that suggestion would go down...

In contrast, I think [mention]PeterJ[/mention] has taken a good approach to this site and forum, encouraging participation and suggestions without wrangling, and making good use of the expertise of technically competent helpers and contributors. It's a 'community' after all.

For me SC is functional and easy to use. It's not about competition or taking sides - it's about creating something open and welcoming that people want to participate in and contribute to. People will be drawn to that, I wouldn't worry about doing much else. Nobody's got a monopoly on Speccy stuff, there are tons of places you can visit around the interwebs (and back on topic, a lot of them now use ZXDB )

[Nienn Heskil]

Frankly, both sides of this are equally unsympathetic to me (although for different reasons), so it's a bit of a 'sh!t vs p!ss', you-asked-for-it situation. But at least I'm glad it took all the NPCs less than a month to process the input data and agree with me.

ZXVega+. No criticism without offering new information. We don't want to be a platform for ranting or attacks. If you don't have anything factual to add, don't add it.

If you're able to compute 2x2=4 and see the parallels, do something productive for once - there's enough fuglyness in the world as-is. (If not, I press 'No' beforehand to your tutorials about the name of this city, how things Actually Are and other topics ).

[Rorthron]

But at least I'm glad it took all the NPCs less than a month to process the input data and agree with me.

We really don't agree.

ZXVega+. No criticism without offering new information. We don't want to be a platform for ranting or attacks. If you don't have anything factual to add, don't add it.

If you're able to compute 2x2=4 and see the parallels, do something productive for once - there's enough fuglyness in the world as-is. (If not, I press 'No' beforehand to your tutorials about the name of this city, how things Actually Are and other topics ).

Cut out the snotty attitude and stop telling the rest of us what we can and can't discuss. You've already received a warning from the mods about this (in record time).

[PeterJ]

[mention]Nienn Heskil[/mention],

Can I suggest you maybe just ignore the sections of the forum that aren't of interest to you?

[hitm4n]

Guys i've run out of popcorn... I got through 238 bags of it already!

All i could think of while reading Lees long winded useless post was a small child covering his little eyes up and shouting...

"you can't see me, you can't see me"

Einar, i'm in agreement with a few of the last few posts here, it must take quite some time to write your extensive factual posts, and while the proof is undeniable and i'm still amazed by your restrain, it IS as you say going round in circles. I don't think it's getting anywhere and your time is better spent.

However, i also don't want to think that deciding to no longer fight this means Lee gets exactly what he wants. To get off scott free, where undoubtedly he will continue to lie and falsely accuse AND take credit for a newly emerging Spectrum database built on other peoples hard work. It just isn't fair...

**Throws toys out of pram**

Props to the SC and ZXDB krew. peace.

[TMD2003]

All i could think of while reading Lees long winded useless post was a small child covering his little eyes up and shouting...

"you can't see me, you can't see me"

...Lee is the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal?