Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals/2014/July

Support for Chemical table files
As of now, images of structural formulas have to be created using third party software and converting the output to SVG or PNG. With MolHandler we aim for a solution capable accepting and rendering chemical markup files and providing a web-interface for easily creating, modifying and re-mixing formula files. This does not only make re-using existing structures easier and simplifies creation of structures, moreover it allows Wikis to adopt a unified style for rendering these structures, makes structures searchable (sub-structure search) allows pulling, pushing and verifying data from big databases like ChemSpider and PubChem. In the future we plan to enable support for spectra and more sophisticated file formats to have at least some minimum support forchemistry-related Wiki-works.

I am currently looking for features you would find helpful as well as your opinion of what is needed to deploy MolHandler to Wikipedia and therefore created a test wiki at which you can create user accounts (and do everything you ever wanted to do). A non-exhaustive list of features is available for raking by drag&drop. Or just write here what you at least want, what you would like to see soon and what is less important to you.


 * TLDR: If you want to upload MOL or RXN files instead of SVGs and PNGs in future, go to http://mol.wmflabs.org/, test and say, "YES to MolHandler"!

-- Rillke (discuss • contribs) 14:01, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Preventing IP users from creating new pages
While I believe that only logged in users should be able to edit that's a battle I'm not going to attempt to argue here. However this concerns new pages being created by IP users. Are there more cases of bad page creations than good ones when it comes to IP users? Is there a way of stopping IP users from creating new pages especially creating pages which fall outside of an existing book? Would people support such a change or would it be against Foundation rules? I'd also say that as IP addresses contain personal information wouldn't this cause problems with our new EU right to be forgotten? --ЗAНИA talk 20:42, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
 * for reference I count:

--ЗAНИA talk 20:59, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
 * June 1st - no new good page creations by IP users
 * May 31st - no new good page creations by IP users
 * May 30th - one reasonable page creation by IP user
 * June 1st - 6 new bad page creations by IP users and new accounts (at least 9 today)
 * May 31st - 7 new bad page creations by IP users and new accounts
 * May 30th - 2 new bad page creations by IP users and new accounts


 * I support limiting IP users to creating new discussion pages for existing content pages to allow any well meaning person to at least point out problems with existing content. --dark lama  21:07, 2 June 2014 (UTC)


 * At en.wn we allow page creation by IPs. We'd rather deal with lots of garbage than discourage a single newcomer.  Anyway, my untested impression is that most bad page creations there are by registered accounts.  And imho it'd be a terrible idea to force users to wait four days after creating an account before they could create pages.  Didn't Wikipedia play with this sort of thing, find it was unfriendly to newcomers, go to an "articles for creation" queue, and find that that doesn't work at all well either?


 * If you only allow autoconfirmed users to create pages, that's unfriendly to newcomers. If you allow un-autoconfirmed newcomers to create pages, but don't allow IPs to create pages, that means it's harder to know what IP bad page creations came from.


 * If one were to prevent IPs from creating pages (in some spaces), could one do it in a way that gives humans (but not bots) a friendly invitation to register an account? --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 00:00, 3 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I meant that IP users should at least be able to point out problems by being able to create discussion pages when considering whether to limit IP users ability to create pages. My impression is restricting IP user activity can have a negative impact on contributions, because fewer people are willing to register an account, if activity at non-wikimedia wiki websites that have restricted editing is any indication. I'm unfamiliar with Wikipedia's practices to know what they have tried and what didn't work for them. The Abuse Filter could probably be used to tag new pages created by IP users to make addressing bad page creations easier for the counter-vandalism team. --dark lama  01:05, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Technically it can be done via the site config or via the Abuse Filter. I created an abuse filter a few weeks ago that throttles new page creation by IP editors (it stops them after they've created more than a couple within a short period) to deal with the copy / paste copyright vandal. It would be easy enough to modify it to disallow any page creations. However, I am generally of the view that the whole principles of Wikimedia projects - "anyone can edit" - should mean exactly that. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 07:36, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I understand people's points. Would it be easy to edit the filter to prevent any external links in new pages created by IPs and unconfirmed accounts?  And how difficult would it be to stop such users from creating new books (as opposed to pages within a book or a talk page)?--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_the_Isle_of_Mann.svg|15px]]talk 09:18, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Does anyone can edit mean anyone even if they don't create an account? I mean requiring people to create an account is still allowing anyone to edit because anyone can create an account.  It's even safer because it protects their IP address.  --ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_the_Isle_of_Mann.svg|15px]]talk 20:35, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I think anyone is usually interpreted to include IPs; one wants to encourage them to register, but one doesn't want to make registration a front-end load on contribution. Myself, I made my first edit to Wikipedia in 2005, a typo in an article I was looking at iirc, and figured if I ever found myself editing it again I'd get an account; and sure enough, about a year later I found myself wanting to make another edit, so I registered.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:33, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I think I was really just thinking aloud. I'm pretty sure I know what is meant by anyone can edit.  I might suggest though that encouraging (or forcing) IP editors to use might result in them becoming part of the community and making further constructive edits (more than they would if they remain as IP editors).  No way of proving my wild theory though.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_the_Isle_of_Mann.svg|15px]]talk 22:40, 6 June 2014 (UTC)


 * … While the others would spend a few extra minutes to register a one-time account they’ll never consider remembering the password of, just for that single particular edit. To no-one’s win.  — Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 23:03, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * IMO, at present, the problem of bad page creations is not serious. We're a small community, the Recent Changes do not fill up too quickly, and there's a review system in place, which gives us a list of RCs that are easy to patrol. I'd wager the majority of the bad page creations are deleted before they're caught by Google, i.e. there's very little chance those pages will be seen. I'd rather we continue to combat vandalism/spamming than to bar IPs from creating pages, which will only worsen WB's contribution rate. I fully support the WN attitude Pi zero stated: 'We'd rather deal with lots of garbage than discourage a single newcomer.' Kayau (talk · contribs) 00:45, 27 July 2014 (UTC)