On Sat, 22 May 2004, Peter Jaros wrote:
On May 21, 2004, at 9:46 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
- Concerns about whether we have to include 50 recipes for something
as mundane as Chocolate cake are valid concerns, but they are in principle no different from concerns in other articles as to how much detail to include, and the same sorts of external considerations can come into play just as well here.
I think chocolate cake is a broad enough topic to have sections, or perhaps separate articles, about different kinds of chocolate cake, each of which can be illustrated by an appropriate example recipe. Presumably, any food topic this broad will be similarly divisible.
Adding my two cents . . .
I took a look at the article [[Chili]] (properly [[Chili con carne]]) just to get a feel for how the problems that might arise from including recipes have been dealt with (or have failed to be dealt with). I selected this dish because it is one place where I expect that we will have NPOV disputes over recipies. This is what I noticed:
*There is an introductory paragraph, that explains a little about the dish. *There are several recipes, only one of which (i.e. "Cincinnati Chili") goes into some detail about the background. *There are a number of omissions in this article.
Let me develop that last point further. I am not by any means a Chili expert (although I do enjoy a good bowl of chili), but I did miss reference to the following facts:
*There is an annual Texas Chili contest. IIRC a Wall Street Journal article from several years ago, one entrant made his chili without beans, meat, chocolate or several other expected ingredients. *The state of New Mexico is known for having regional varieties of Chilis *A source for the recipies that were provided. (Did they come from a cookbook? Or from a family recipie? If so, can we localize this family, say in Texas?)
In short, if one were to remove these recipies, the Chili article becomes a scrappy little article that is barely more than a stub. There is almost no information about how Chili is a significant part of some American regional cultures, & the various ways one can make Chili helps to distinguish between them. (Similar to pasta in Italy, beer in Britain & Germany, & countless other examples I hope that find their way into Wikipedia.)
I'm not against the inclusion of recipies in Wikipedia: I'm something of an agnostic on the issue. It's like including quotations in an article, where quoting an authority or well-explained POV can make a lot more sense than paraphrasing (or using weasel words like "some experts think"). However, an article should not be simply a collection of recipies or practical instructions -- otherwise, we end up with the same problem voiced in another thread about the article on the [[XFree86 logfile]].
Geoff