<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title></title>
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff">
Imran Ghory wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid20040512003113.AC8DE1AC0229@mail.wikimedia.org">
<pre wrap="">On Tue, 11 May 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">So a description of how a food is made is encyclopedic, but instructions
on how to make that food are not encyclopedic.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">The descriptive/prescriptive distinction is very narrow in this case. I prefer to avoid a pompous definition of what is encyclopedic.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->Not really, the instructive case tells you how to make a specific version
of a food product but the descriptive case tells you how it is made in
general.
To look at a very simple case consider boiling rice, a specific recipe
could tell you to use a kettle to pre-boil water, another could state the
entire procedure should be done on a hob, yet another could suggest using a microwave. And that's before you start considering things such as whether you should add salt and how much you should add.</pre>
</blockquote>
Actually, to comply with our NPOV policy, an encyclopedic article on
cooking rice needs to incorporate all of these different possibilities.
A recipe is a point of view on how to prepare something. After all,
there are almost always other recipes to prepare the same dish. Also, a
recipe is POV as to how many servings are desired.<br>
<br>
Having examined the issue in this way, I find the solution easier. I
think in this case the distinction between description and instruction
is a false dichotomy. We do not delete material for being POV, we
rewrite it so that it is presented in a neutral fashion. If you find an
overly "biased" recipe, rewrite the article so that it describes how to
prepare the food in question, and take into account different opinions
about what to cook it in, how much salt to use, etc. I look forward to
the inevitable edit wars between competing traditional family recipes,
as I'm sure that will be far more entertaining than the ones I see now.<br>
<br>
I do note that our material on the domestic arts (or are they sciences,
I'm never sure) is sorely neglected in general.<br>
<br>
--Michael Snow<br>
</body>
</html>