Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals

Welcome to the Proposals reading room. On this page, Wikibookians are free to talk about suggestions for improving Wikibooks.

Enabling meta:Global bots on this wiki

Hi, we've historically disabled global bots on this wiki, because of (I'm guessing) fears about them creating unwanted edits for us to review (not sure about this - couldn't find any on-wiki discussion about this); however, it turns out that global bots already include autoreview meaning that this issue should not happen. I propose we enable them, as this will help global bot operators who don't need to come to this wiki separately to request the bot flag (not that we have many of them anyway) - if we run into problems we can tell the operator not to run it on this wiki or block it if necessary. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 17:18, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I have no problems with this! Out of curiosity, what kinds of things do these global bots do? —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 18:27, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

@Kittycataclysm Depends. Historically these bots only could fix double-redirects and maintain interlanguage links (which has been redundant now with Wikidata). In 2021, this restriction was removed and any kind of task is now allowed, provided that a global 2-week discussion occurs on whether the community thinks that the bot is good. An example of a global bot is User:InternetArchiveBot, which fixes links that have gone dead. My bot (which is under discussion by the community) is meta:Global reminder bot, reminding users when their temporary rights (like your temp admin) are due to expire so that they can renew. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 19:06, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I'd rather not have global bots here. Engage with the community if you want to use your bots. --Xania ^talk 06:05, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I agree with this reasoning. I just don't want our community to be cut off from the resources available to the global community. While I do ideally want people to be engaging with our community directly, the reality is that we are very small, and I don't expect individual bot creators to always come to us directly. I imagine that if we did enable global bots, we would have more of a say in how they are operated as well, forcing engagement between us and the global community, which seems like a good thing. Plus, it seems that global bots are efficient. @Leaderboard if there were specific global bots we didn't like, would we be able to individually disable them here? Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 12:22, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

@Kittycataclysm Of course, we can tell the operator not to run the bot, and if that isn't possible for whatever reason, we simply block the bot. Also it's important to note that any new global bot is subject to a 2-week discussion period that's actually advertised via MassMessage (the list of pages that get notified is at m:Bot_policy/New_global_bot_discussion) - so if we want, we can choose to be notified whenever any bot applies for global bot permission. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 18:28, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable to me. @Xania do you have specifics you can elaborate on regarding your concern? I'd like to better understand your perspective, but I don't from your comment. Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 18:33, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

• I support enabling global bots. This wiki is small enough for that. --SHB2000 (discuss • contribs) 12:26, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

This has been done: meta:Steward_requests/Miscellaneous#Enable_global_bots_for_en.wikibooks. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 17:01, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

@Leaderboard I haven't seen any new bot activity since this change—am I missing something? —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 16:07, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

@Kittycataclysm What do you mean by "new bot activity"? Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 16:25, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

New nutrition summary for Cookbook

Nutrition Facts
4 servings per recipe
Serving size	1 cup (227g)
Amount per serving Calories	277
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 9g		12%
Saturated Fat 4.5g		23%
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 35mg		12%
Sodium 850mg		37%
Total Carbohydrates 34g		12%
Dietary Fiber 4g		14%
Total Sugars 6g
Includes 0g Added Sugars		0%
Protein 15g		30%
Vitamin D 0mcg		0%
Calcium 320mg		25%
Iron 1.6mg		9%
Potassium 510mg		11%
* The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

I have created a draft of new nutrition summary (User:Xeverything11/nutrition facts label and User:Xeverything11/nutrition facts label/testcases) (see right for example of frozen lasagna) and I am proposing as a new tenplate under the name Template:Nutrition summary new.

It will have a updated format (designed in 2016, required for new labels in products since 2020/2021). This existing template is based on older pre-2016 format.

Users can simply enter the macros and it will calculate the calories and daily values for you.

Could you share the thoughts on this proposal? Xeverything11 (discuss • contribs) 07:52, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Additionally, if no one replies in 7 days, I'll create this new template. Xeverything11 (discuss • contribs) 07:53, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Xeverything11! If you can make this collapsible, I have no objection to this. I think collapsibility is important since nutrition summaries can get big and take up valuable page real estate, which often messes up formatting (especially on desktop). I also know that having uncollapsed nutrition summaries can be bad for individuals with eating disorders and related conditions, and I want to make sure these people have access to the cookbook. I would personally rather not include nutrition summaries at all for these two reasons, but I do realize that they may be very helpful for some individuals—as a result, I think making them collapsible is a reasonable compromise. Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 14:04, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

I made this template collapsed by default. Xeverything11 (discuss • contribs) 15:14, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Great, thank you for making that change! This is fine by me. Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 17:25, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

This proposal is sensible, though I wonder how easy it would be easy to translate this to other wikis should that be needed. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 04:23, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Nutrition Facts
3 servings per recipe
Serving size	3 pretzels (28g)
Calories	Per serving 109		Per recipe 326
	% DV*		% DV*
Total Fat	0.5g	1%	1.5g	2%
Saturated Fat	0g	0%	0g	0%
Trans Fat	0g		0g
Cholesterol	0mg	0%	0mg	0%
Sodium	400mg	17%	1200mg	52%
Total Carb.	23g	8%	69g	25%
Dietary Fiber	2g	7%	6g	21%
Total Sugars	1g		3g
Incl. Added Sugars	0g	0%	0g	0%
Protein	3g	6%	9g	18%
Vitamin D	0mcg	0%	0mcg	0%
Calcium	10mg	1%	30mg	2%
Iron	1.2mg	7%	3.6mg	20%
Potassium	90mg	2%	270mg	6%
* The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

I have created another draft, see User:Xeverything11/nutrition label double column and User:Xeverything11/nutrition label double column/testcases. In additional to proposed new standard summary, I am also proposing this new double column nutrition summary. FDA requires double column layout in products that have two or three servings. These products "could be consumed in one sitting or multiple sittings". This proposed double-column template is intended to be used in recipes with 2 or 3 servings. The proposed standard summary is intended to be in recipes with 4 or more servings, or single servings. See example on right.

What are your thoughts, in addition to proposed standard summary, on proposed dual-column layout of nutrition summary? Xeverything11 (discuss • contribs) 13:52, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm not sure how beneficial it is to have two columns since it's slightly cramped and hard to parse visually. What are your thoughts on the specific benefits of having the two columns? Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 19:15, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Some people consume multiple servings of food that normally have two or three servings in one sitting, so the second column is benefitical.

For instance (see right), a serving of pretzels has 109 calories and there are 3 servings. When you consume all servings in one sitting, you would consume 326 calories. Xeverything11 (discuss • contribs) 21:12, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Given the positive feedback and support from contributors, I am creating these templates and after that, I am deprecating the existing template. Xeverything11 (discuss • contribs) 08:07, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I have created these templates: Template:Nutrition summary new and Template:Nutrition summary new/2c; and deprecated the old template: Template:Nutrition Summary. Xeverything11 (discuss • contribs) 08:52, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Reforming the edit filter

One area of administrative work that I see almost never being done is that which involves the edit filter. The false positives page seems to be constantly backlogged; currently, there's a request from three weeks ago, and until October, there had been a request from July that had not yet been answered. Meanwhile, the edit filter requests page was not edited at all for seven years, and no requests had been made since four years before then, until a request was made on 21 August 2024, which was handled on 4 September. It seems that the main reasons for this is that there appear to be very few administrators who have either the technical knowledge or interest in this kind of work, and non-administrators who would like to help generally cannot, because only administrators can view the detailed edit filter log. I would like to present two proposals for addressing this problem, which need not necessarily be mutually exclusive: the creation of an edit filter helper user group, and the unbundling of abusefilter-log-detail from adminship.

The first proposal would create a group similar to Wikipedia's edit filter helper group, which would grant the following permissions (permissions of Wikipedia's user group are bolded):

• abusefilter-view-private - Allows users to view the content of private edit filters
• abusefilter-access-protected-vars - Allows users to view the content of edit filters with protected variables enabled
• abusefilter-log-detail - Allows users to view detailed information in the logs of public edit filters
• abusefilter-log-private - Allows users to view the logs of private edit filters

This would allow non-administrators who are (a) technically minded and want to assist in the creation of filters, (b) want to help resolve false positive reports, or (c) require access to private filters for the purpose of combating long-term abuse, to view edit filters and their logs.

The second proposal would entail granting abusefilter-log-detail to more users. This is the right that allows you to view the content of or examine edits that triggered public filters. Wikibooks appears unique among English-language Wikimedia projects in that this right is only granted to administrators, whereas on Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wiktionary, Commons, etc. it is granted to all autoconfirmed users. And on Meta, it's granted to all users! Not even just logged in ones! But if there is some special reason for why Wikibooks in particular needs to limit access to this right, perhaps it could be bundled in with the reviewer group, or, if there is one, an edit filter helper group. That is all for my proposed solutions to this problem, thank you. JJP_Master (she/they) 00:41, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry I missed this! I agree that we have a deficiency in this respect, and I'm not immediately opposed to creating a helper group for the edit filter as you described. I'll leave room for other people to weigh in as well, since this seems like a not-insignificant change to one of our primary means of combating vandalism. But, I'm not seeing any immediate red flags, especially since these proposals are already in place at other projects. Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 04:59, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

@JJPMaster

• Oppose the first proposal. The reason is that this is not en.wikipedia, and I'm wary of "unbundling" adminship more than necessary (related example). My feeling is that such users are better off applying for limited adminship, because this is a right too sensitive to be included automatically with the reviewer group. Maybe my opinion would be different if there's significant demand for this unbundling.
• Support expanding abusefilter-log-detail - I agree that it doesn't make sense to limit this to administrators only. I'm OK with making it available to all or only autoconfirmed users.

Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 16:42, 20 December 2024 (UTC)