I discovered today that recipes are now legally deleted from the english
wikipedia where they are not welcome any more.
Still, I had the memory there was no clear agreement on doing so, and
for months, there was a sort of balance with removing all those of minor
dishes, while keeping those from typical ones.
When I tried to make a policy on the topic, clearly, there was no
agreement. Neither to keep, neither to delete. Mostly two factions.
Today, I realised all had been deleted. I restored one and was
immediately reverted by Gentgeen (of course, he is the one who deleted
them) and he pointed to me a policy on "what Wikipedia is not".
On this page, it is written that recipes should not be kept in
Wikipedia. So, now, Gentgeen has a argument to revert me, and possibly
even the right to block me if I restore a recipe.
My question :
* why is it so that rules are written in the big book (what wikipedia is
not) which makes reference, while these rules are not widely agreed on
the project ? If not agreed but by a couple of bold people, should they
be used to revert the others ?
I realised the recipes were not welcome any more at all today, because a
couple of french people wish to delete them as well on the french
wikipedia. And one of their arguments is that the english wikipedia
decided to delete them (and so, they must be right !).
I removed the rule as is now, and asked the editor who initially added
it to show me where this was supported initially.
Ant
We dealt with this in the Spanish wikipedia sometime
ago.
We decided that bare recipes would be moved to
wikibooks,
while recipes that illustrated a typical dish of some
region, with additional encyclopedical information
about the dish, could stay. We have had not had more
troubles with this ever since, and I believe that
excluding recipes just because of their POV makes, as
somebody said, as much sense as removing photographs
because they illustrate the POV of the photographer.
AstroNomer
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Anthere wrote:
>Would mentioning a cookbook in which the recipe is mentionned enough to satisfy those hungry for "credentials" ?
>
>
It would at least help avoid the argument over whether recipes are
copyrighted. Given the skeletal nature of a recipe, it may be tenuous to
take the position that they are, but there are a significant number of
people out there who are concerned about reprinting published recipes
for that reason. If we credit the cookbook, we're complying with Article
10 of the Berne Convention, which requires that you make mention of the
soure when quoting.
Also, the way we traditionally handle certain types of POV - one of the
main complaints about recipes - is by attributing that POV to a credible
source (not by removing it entirely). A recipe from a standard cookbook
for a given style of cuisine, or from a noteworthy cook (not your Aunt
Tillie, in other words), can satisfy this angle too.
--Michael Snow
ok - I admit it - I got a little bit too excited, my language got a little bit flowery, I may have exaggerated somewhat, and maybe I was a wee bit over the top to boot. I gave the POV inspectors plenty of grist for the mill. All this is true.
But when I said "a microwave just doesn't cut it" - was that truly POV? Especially in the context of traditional cuisines?
If so - I would like to apologise to all microwaves, and microwave enthusiasts - for my penance, I am going to order an upsized, mega combo heap of mush. Not that there's anything wrong with that :-)
pippu d'angelo
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>Stan
>Hear hear. I'm just waiting for someone to complain that articles
>shouldn't mention specific examples of a general concept, because
>picking an example makes it seem more important than the unmentioned
>examples, and we can't have pictures, because it's "POV" to only
>depict one object and not any of the others...
>NPOV is a technique to cope with intractable disputes, not some
>kind of weirdo Wikipedian-only quasi-religion. :-)
>Stan
I really agree with Stan.
Two of the arguments given to remove recipes from Wikipedia are
* but these are only examples and are primary research type
* but these are not NPOV
Well, using example is a top mean to have someone understand what a dish is.
Saying that a tagela is made with wheat flour and water... does not explain where the difference is between a tagela and the bread I eat in France.
The ingredients alone do not make a dish, but also the amount of each ingredient, the way they are mixed together, and in which order they are mixed, and how they are cooked.
And this is what is a "recipe".
Explaining a dish without explaining how the dish is done is just cruely forgetting information.
All along our articles, we give "examples". Except we do not call them examples, we call them "citing a source to support an argument".
We say "There is a general sentiment against this country. In her speech of the dd/mm/yyy, Secretary X. mentionned that this country would be forgiven, this one would be ignored while that one would be punished". In most articles, this is a citation. Well, in a dish article, this is a recipe.
We do that all the time. This is citing sources, examples.
Why is it different for recipes ?
An argument could be "yes, but Secretary X is a famous person, while your recipe could just be your own creation. This would be personal research and Wikipedia does not welcome personal research".
But here, we must rely on the logic and education of Wikipedians. If the dish looks like "just a creation from any one", the recipe will be removed. If the dish is famous and recipe is approved by those reading the article, and is basically the recipe mentionned in most famous cookbook, could not that be enough to accept it ?
Would mentioning a cookbook in which the recipe is mentionned enough to satisfy those hungry for "credentials" ?
In all cases, any decent cook will know very well there are as many recipes as there are cooks and days. If one does the job well, he will do the small improvement that makes his recipe unique. And all readers of cookbooks know this and satisfy themselves with general directions for a dish and manage to do it as they feel is best.
Each time I bake a bread, I follow the recipe of a "bread" and it's different. But to start the first one, I needed information on how to do it. And this is also part of human knowledge.
The other point is NPOV. The argument given is that "recipes varies and accepting one would be being pov". YES, I agree. It is ONE recipe amont others.
Now, NPOV was created to prevent the project being filled up with personal rants. To avoid it to become just another forum of discussion. Not to become a wall against valid information reporting. We should take NPOV seriously, but not more than what it should be. A useful tool, but not a divine word.
In 3 years now, I have NEVER seen an edit war on a recipe. I have seen people adding that "though beef was usually used for the recipe, pork was also used as well". And I never saw anyone complain with this.
Anthere
http://fr.wikipedia.orghttp://anthere.shaihome.net/
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I have set up an early testing version of my map drawing software. It
can be found at
http://magnusmanske.de/wikimaps
Note: You'll see SVGs directly. So, you'll need a browser that natively
supports SVG (Konqueror, some Mozilla builds) or a plugin.
The site is basically a 1.4 MediaWiki with an extension called "geomap".
You can see the invokation in the source of the main page.
The actual map rendering extension is running on its own, using the
MediaWiki database as data source. It outputs SVG, which is embedded as
an object in the actual wiki page output.
I will add my demo data of the rest of Germany tonight, so there's more
to see than Bavaria...
Please note that the SVG is actually generated in *real-time*, on *each
view*. Of course, in its final form, it would cache the SVG, and also
offer rendered PNGs. I'm not quite there yet, as ImageMagick tends to
die on SVG-to-PNG conversion :-(
Please visit the demo site, have a look, tweak some stuff (add a city,
resize Bavaria;-) and tell me if (and how) we should make this a "real"
Wikimedia project.
Magnus
There seems to be a difference in opinion about what a recipe is. Those who
are against having recipes as part of the food articles appear to think
that including a recipe is a(n attempt of) falsification of different
points of view.
A well-written recipe is, in my opinion, a very valuable part of a food
article. When that is said, it is of course essential from a lexicographic
point of view that:
1) It is clear that the recipe is a description rather than proscription.
2) The provided recipe/s is/are reasonably representative for the tradition
in question.
3) Common variations are listed in the recipe/s.
4) It is made clear what the general source for the provided recipe is.
Also, some recipes are very loosely defined, whilst others are by nature
extremely fine-tuned. The provided examples (recipes) will, if properly
written, help make this clear.
>From: Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com>
>Of course we want to know what they are. And of course you can write about
>it. But what I do not want is to be specified how much saffron I need,
>just that it's there, and why.
Sometimes this is essential information, and other times it is not.
>Wikipedia should describe what the world is, what things are. Not be
>prescriptive in what one should be doing. The article on food products
>should specify what's in them and how they are made, but a recipe is not a
>good way to do so. Just like the table article does not specify which
>length the legs of a table should be,
I beg to differ: It is essential information to mention the difference in
leg length of a diningroom table as opposed to a sofa table.
>the arancini article should not specify what filling should be in or how
>long it should be fried.
Maybe not. But that depends on what arancini-like foods one needs to
distinguish arancini from in a contrastive perspective. It also depends on
what the actual cultural criteria are for how much variation there can be
in the preparation before the result is no longer considered to be
arancini. (Which is not to say that the resulting non-arancini need to be
inferior in any way. They just happen to be something-else-than-arancini.)
>From: Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com>
>In 3 years now, I have NEVER seen an edit war on a recipe. I have seen
>people adding that "though beef was usually used for the recipe, pork was
>also used as well". And I never saw anyone complain with this.
Sounds about right... :)
>From: Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com>
>Stating exactly how the dish is done is overfeeding with too-specific
>information. Should Wikipedia be deciding how long people boil their eggs?
Maybe. If describing boiled eggs, it may be essential to describe the
process well enough that a person who doesn't already know how many minutes
it is boiled *in a specific tradition* is able to find this information. It
is also essential that any such cultural description be relativised through
explicitly providing the information about *who* cook/s the eggs for the
specified number of minutes. If people from one culture tend to boil eggs
for two minutes and slurp them up from the shell with a bit of salt, there
is nothing wrong in Wikipedia articles mentioning this as long as the
description is properly qualified. It should then, of course, also be
mentioned that other cultures slow-cook their eggs for close to 20 hours,
peel the eggs before serving, and serve these eggs one-per-person as a
brown-grean-and-yellow almost creamy hors d'oeuvre.
>But even without looking at that, the way they are presented, they are not
>examples. They are descriptions, and often rather forcibly so ("you should
>do this-and-that"). My objections would be much less _if they were indeed
>given as examples_. On the Dutch Wikipedia I have recently proposed to
>consider recepies "a kind of image", and add them in a separate block as
>such, not part of the main description.
Not at all a bad idea! :-)
>Which to me is exactly the reason why we should not have them in
>Wikipedia. If recepies were just "general directions", I would not be so
>much against them. But they are not. They give one, specific recepy, and
>take that as the be all and end all.
Not if they are well integrated and properly qualified. Just like a
picture, a data table, or a graph representing specific data of relevance.
>But what defines "valid information". Is it "valid information" that an
>egg should boil a certain amount of time? Unless we give ourselves an
>amount of authority I'd say we should not even strive for, my answer is no.
That it "should" boil a certain amount of time? Probably not. That it *is
typically* boiled a certain amount of time in a particular and explicitly
specified cultural setting? Yes, in my opinion.
-Olve
___________________
Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org
I agree with Sabine, Giuseppe Guillaume, Sj, & al.: Recipes do belong in
Wikipedia -- they are excellent sources of cultural information. The
appropriate level of detail for the recipe may of course vary between
articles: A recipe for "pinnekjøt(t)" (typical of (mostly) one region of
Norway) is relatively easy to write down, and the variants are similar
enough to each other that one can keep it short and clear. A recipe for
"haroset" (typical of almost all Jewish cultures) is obviously going to be
a much harder task with all its variety... If someone just enters a
recipe, the challenge is to expand the article to contain something more
than that -- not to take away the important cultural information that has
been offered in the form of that recipe. In my not-so-humble opinion, that
is... :)
-Olve
___________________
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http://utne.nvg.org
Aoineko
>I can't imagine a consensus about an exhaustive list of references, so
>your definition moves the debate to "what a reference is?". Personally,
>I think the "reference" concept is not relevant outside of science
>domain. In science, the pertinence criteria are concrete: accuracy of
>formula and reproducibility of experience. What are the pertinence
>criteria for culture?
You are correct.
It could be
* whether the dish is famous or not
* whether the recipe if tried is good or not good
First the fame of the dish could be measured by
* First step : comments from people on the wikipedia itself
* Second step : check on google over the name of the dish
* Third step : comments from all wikipedians (a dish famous in zimbabwe will possibly not be recognised famous on the english wikipedia)
>>> this suggest the creation of a core list of famous dishes built between all encyclopedias
Any famous dish should present at least one typical recipe
Second, whether the dish recipe is rather representative
* First step : comments by people who have already been doing the recipe of that dish
* Second step : checking and comparing the recipe with available sources (should be rather easy for a big network of wikipedians, since the dish is famous)
The famous dish recipe should be refered as representative but not unique.
Citing a famous cookbook OR a famous cook doing this recipe is possible.
Third, reproducibility and quality
* First step : I suggest a team of testers be created... take pictures to improve the dishes... (I join !)
* Second step : In 10 years, we have 20 WikiRestaurant opened in New York, Beijing, London etc... preparing dishes with Wikipedia recipes from all over the world
>>>The famous dish recipe on Wikipedia should advertise the restaurants... and use them as a source :-)
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I'm backing Sabine on this one. Recipes are culture (unless we're talking about anglo countries - where it is perhaps a little bit murkier - where tasteless hegemony is the norm - where the confluence of globalisation, commercial imperatives, mass marketing and isolationism has enabled people to believe they are eating food when they purchase something shrivelled up sitting in a baie marie in a well known chain store - and maybe that's the real source of this debate).
People want to put up whole articles on individual pokemon cards, but I can' t tell the world about that great Sicilian dish: arancini - that this is their idea of take away food - imagine - arancini vs a Big Mac - and you don't want to get a sense of that? You don't want to know that you need to add some saffron to get that unique colour and subtle, mysterious flavour. That you really need to deep fry them, a microwave just won't cut it. The fillings are as myriad and complex as the people themselves. For optimum results, make your own bread crumbs - you don't know how to? hopefully an article will tell you about this lost skill/art. Should we add parmesan or pecorino? Don't worry, there should be another article explaining the difference.
If you don't know what arancini are - have a look here:
http://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arancina
Alas, it's lacking some key info - but it is an important an article as reading about Terry Wallace. Don't know who he is? There's an article on him in en:wiki. I'm perfectly comfortable with that, but surely recipes are equally deserving of attention. Bon appititu!
pippu d'angelo
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