I recently used the IATI Public Validator to check our Organisation file, after a user flagged that it was not validating.
1- The user provided a link generated by the Validator through the “Share the results” button: http://validator.iatistandard.org/?perm=w05.international.gc.ca_projectbrowser-banqueprojets_iita-iati_dfatd-maecd_organisation.xml_1525333064 (Note that this link has the file path and a string of numbers at the end that look like it may be a unique ID). That link did not work. Its purpose is presumably to go back to a specific validation result, but it did not work.
So I provided the link to our file and sure enough, the Validator said there was a problem. I poked around until I got this feedback on our data: "Line 148 Error 1871 Element ‘recipient-org-budget’: Element ‘recipient-org-budget’: This element is not expected. Expected is one of ( recipient-country-budget, document-link, ##other* ).”
2- Our file doesn’t have line numbers, so that reference was not very helpful.
3- What on earth is Error 1871?
4- I understood “Element ‘recipient-org-budget’: This element is not expected” to mean that the element was not in the standard. However, I checked the standard and found it, so I was lost. I had to turn to the always helpful @andylolz to help me understand what the Validator was saying we were doing wrong (answer: the elements were not in the order dictated by the standard).
As a non-tech person, I found the Validator interface not very friendly and its results/feedback very hard to understand. Perhaps a bit of UX could help improve it?