I'm not a dogmatist on this point (recipes), I'm just throwing out for consideration -- what exactly makes this
non->encyclopedic, other than
the constraints of paper on traditional
encyclopedias?
--Jimbo
I'd have fewer problems if they were accompanied by an article on the food item in question. A recipe, on its own, doesn't belong in an encyclopedia.
Meelar
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On Feb 24, 2004, at 10:31 AM, Dan Miller wrote:
I'd have fewer problems if they were accompanied by an article on the food item in question. A recipe, on its own, doesn't belong in an encyclopedia.
Again, however, as someone said earlier, an encyclopedia ought to be *de*criptive, not *pro*scriptive. Thus, cocktail recipes might be more appropriate than, say, cake recipes (in their respective articles). A Cosmopolitan, for instance, is made according to more or less one recipe, whereas there are myriad recipes for, for example, chocolate cake which are more than slight variations of one another.
Giving a recipe for a particular chocolate cake would not serve to describe chocolate cake. If one recipe was particularly famous, however, it might merit its own section (or possibly article; I'd like to try *that* cake) where the recipe *would* be descriptive. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. It comes through to readers, if only in terms of a sense of the style.
Peter
-- ---<>--- -- A house without walls cannot fall. Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org -- ---<>--- --
My request for arbitration with Wik has been sitting there since February 18, and not a single step has been accomplished. Is anything going to get done, or is this just a black hole?
RickK
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Rick wrote:
My request for arbitration with Wik has been sitting there since February 18, and not a single step has been accomplished. Is anything going to get done, or is this just a black hole?
Arbitration in Wik's case has been accepted (I think this is noted on the page somewhere, though the page is badly in need of some reorganization), and is currently being discussed.
-Mark
The Matter of Wik has been accepted for arbitration, and is proceeding. The arbitration committee has a one proposed first draft of our findings and is discussing remedies at this point. This matter is somewhat complicated by the delay in actually adopting the 3 reverts rule. We had voted to conduct our deliberations in private so no page on which we are opening deliberating exists.
Fred, member of the arbitration committee
From: Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 19:50:08 -0800 (PST) To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration
My request for arbitration with Wik has been sitting there since February 18, and not a single step has been accomplished. Is anything going to get done, or is this just a black hole?
RickK
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Peter Jaros wrote:
On Feb 24, 2004, at 10:31 AM, Dan Miller wrote:
I'd have fewer problems if they were accompanied by an article on the food item in question. A recipe, on its own, doesn't belong in an encyclopedia.
Again, however, as someone said earlier, an encyclopedia ought to be *de*criptive, not *pro*scriptive.
The only ones that are proscribing the work of others are those wanting to delete these recipes.
Thus, cocktail recipes might be more appropriate than, say, cake recipes (in their respective articles). A Cosmopolitan, for instance, is made according to more or less one recipe, whereas there are myriad recipes for, for example, chocolate cake which are more than slight variations of one another.
If there is more than one recipe, than why not just show how they vary?
Giving a recipe for a particular chocolate cake would not serve to describe chocolate cake. If one recipe was particularly famous, however, it might merit its own section (or possibly article; I'd like to try *that* cake) where the recipe *would* be descriptive. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. It comes through to readers, if only in terms of a sense of the style.
That's very patronizing of you.
Ec
On Feb 24, 2004, at 11:51 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Peter Jaros wrote:
Giving a recipe for a particular chocolate cake would not serve to describe chocolate cake. If one recipe was particularly famous, however, it might merit its own section (or possibly article; I'd like to try *that* cake) where the recipe *would* be descriptive. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. It comes through to readers, if only in terms of a sense of the style.
That's very patronizing of you.
Sorry, I worded that poorly. What I meant that the distinction may not jump out at casual readers, but it sounds better nonetheless. As analogy, using the wrong word in a sentence and making the sentence meaningless is obvious to even a casual reader, while using casual language in a formal setting is often "felt" while not directly noticed. It can take a bit of working with a sentence to figure out what in it sounds too casual (or too formal, or awkward, etc.).
Peter
-- ---<>--- -- A house without walls cannot fall. Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org -- ---<>--- --
Peter Jaros wrote:
On Feb 24, 2004, at 11:51 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Peter Jaros wrote:
Giving a recipe for a particular chocolate cake would not serve to describe chocolate cake. If one recipe was particularly famous, however, it might merit its own section (or possibly article; I'd like to try *that* cake) where the recipe *would* be descriptive. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. It comes through to readers, if only in terms of a sense of the style.
That's very patronizing of you.
Sorry, I worded that poorly. What I meant that the distinction may not jump out at casual readers, but it sounds better nonetheless. As analogy, using the wrong word in a sentence and making the sentence meaningless is obvious to even a casual reader, while using casual language in a formal setting is often "felt" while not directly noticed. It can take a bit of working with a sentence to figure out what in it sounds too casual (or too formal, or awkward, etc.).
I do get a little hot over these deletion issues. :-)
The expression that I found most patronizing was "it might merit its own section". I suspect that the subtleties between descriptive and prescriptive or between imperatiuve and indicative might not be meningful to the casual reader who wants to find out about a food and/or how to make it. The technical detailsof chocolate cakes are not inherently controversial. If different ways exist for making such a cake, the results of which is better can be entirely subjective.
Using a wrong word that gives the sentence a different meaning, rather than just making it meaningless can launch a discussion into a very different direction. I confess to being quick to notice this kind of thing as I did with the earlier part of your previous post. "Proscriptive" and "prescriptive" have almost contradictory meanings, but grammaticaly can fit equally well into the same context. I couldn't pass up the opportunity.
Ec
On Feb 25, 2004, at 7:13 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
I do get a little hot over these deletion issues. :-)
I understand. I'm very much against deletion of recipes (and most valid information), I just think we need to define the right place for them.
The expression that I found most patronizing was "it might merit its own section". I suspect that the subtleties between descriptive and prescriptive or between imperatiuve and indicative might not be meningful to the casual reader who wants to find out about a food and/or how to make it. The technical detailsof chocolate cakes are not inherently controversial. If different ways exist for making such a cake, the results of which is better can be entirely subjective.
My point was not about controversy or POV, just about appropriateness. A drink recipe generally describes the drink, while a chocolate cake recipe does not describe chocolate cake. If a particular cake recipe is famous and generally significant, I would say it warrants its own section or article (regarding its significance, history, etc.). There the recipe *would* describe the topic (being the topic itself).
Using a wrong word that gives the sentence a different meaning, rather than just making it meaningless can launch a discussion into a very different direction. I confess to being quick to notice this kind of thing as I did with the earlier part of your previous post. "Proscriptive" and "prescriptive" have almost contradictory meanings, but grammaticaly can fit equally well into the same context. I couldn't pass up the opportunity.
Huh. I actually thought I was being correct by avoiding "prescriptive". Ah, well. Touché. :)
Peter
-- ---<>--- -- A house without walls cannot fall. Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org -- ---<>--- --
Peter Jaros wrote:
On Feb 25, 2004, at 7:13 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
I do get a little hot over these deletion issues. :-)
I understand. I'm very much against deletion of recipes (and most valid information), I just think we need to define the right place for them.
The expression that I found most patronizing was "it might merit its own section". I suspect that the subtleties between descriptive and prescriptive or between imperatiuve and indicative might not be meningful to the casual reader who wants to find out about a food and/or how to make it. The technical detailsof chocolate cakes are not inherently controversial. If different ways exist for making such a cake, the results of which is better can be entirely subjective.
My point was not about controversy or POV, just about appropriateness. A drink recipe generally describes the drink, while a chocolate cake recipe does not describe chocolate cake. If a particular cake recipe is famous and generally significant, I would say it warrants its own section or article (regarding its significance, history, etc.). There the recipe *would* describe the topic (being the topic itself).
I get the impression now that you blindly walked into an old war, only to realise that bullets were flying in every direction. The Battle of Recipes was only one episode. :-)
The war is between two competing visions of Wikipedia. One side, the "deletionists", believes in deleting material which they consider to be diminishing the reputation and authoritative quality of Wikipedia. The other side, the "inclusionists", believes that the purposes of Wikipedia are better served by having articles in an ever expanding sphere of knowledge defined in the broadest terms, even if it is in subjects that others may find trivial. I am clearly in the latter camp.
I don't work much at Wikibooks, so I am in no position to comment on its policies. Producing a cookbook seems well within its mandate. It would also seem to me that it would approach a subject in a broader, more systematic way. In the course of doing that it should be free to copy any recipe from Wikipedia that it sees fit. I even think that Wikibooks might be a good place for starting the "1.0" project for a stable printed version of Wikipedia that proponents prefer to only talk about.
If a duplicate os a recipe remains o Wikipedia, no harm is done, and perhaps when the cookbook in Wikibooks is recognized as a serious project people won't mind replacing the chocolate cake recipe in Wikipedia with a statement like, "For a chocolate cake recipe see [[Wikibooks:Chocolate cake]]", but until then attempts to remove them will only cause arguments.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote
<snip>
The war is between two competing visions of Wikipedia. One side, the "deletionists", believes in deleting material which they consider to be diminishing the reputation and authoritative quality of Wikipedia. The other side, the "inclusionists", believes that the purposes of Wikipedia are better served by having articles in an ever expanding sphere of knowledge defined in the broadest terms, even if it is in subjects that others may find trivial. I am clearly in the latter camp.
I was fairly neutral about this - believing that the trivia/ephemera/popular culture stuff is pretty harmless in its place. Until a recent VfD experience, that was, with a mathematical article where the 'keeps' really couldn't know why the content was objectionable, and precisely 'diminishing' to WP. So there is more to it, and I have a beef with the 'radical' inclusionist stand (not with the Power Rangers completists).
Charles
"Charles Matthews" charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com writes:
Until a recent VfD experience, that was, with a mathematical article where the 'keeps' really couldn't know why the content was objectionable, and precisely 'diminishing' to WP.
Can you be more specific please, so we can look up what you're referring to.
Gareth Owen wrote
"Charles Matthews" writes
Until a recent VfD experience, that was, with a mathematical article
where
the 'keeps' really couldn't know why the content was objectionable, and precisely 'diminishing' to WP.
Can you be more specific please, so we can look up what you're referring
to.
Certainly - [[unifying conjecture]] survived VfD recently. It was a load of tendentious sociological twaddle by a once-notorious now-banned user. It seems that 'looks interesting' is enough in some quarters. After the vote I moved it to [[unifying theories in mathematics]], to give context to the one sentence that wasn't pretty well false as it stood. That's not a finished article, though it's not bad, by the way.
Charles
Charles Matthews wrote:
Gareth Owen wrote
"Charles Matthews" writes
Until a recent VfD experience, that was, with a mathematical article where
the 'keeps' really couldn't know why the content was objectionable, and precisely 'diminishing' to WP.
Can you be more specific please, so we can look up what you're referring to.
Certainly - [[unifying conjecture]] survived VfD recently. It was a load of tendentious sociological twaddle by a once-notorious now-banned user. It seems that 'looks interesting' is enough in some quarters. After the vote I moved it to [[unifying theories in mathematics]], to give context to the one sentence that wasn't pretty well false as it stood. That's not a finished article, though it's not bad, by the way.
Is the 142 in question really the same as the banned individual. His original posting was dated Feb. 21, 2003, and you made the first subsequent edit 4 months later. My guess is that this was put there before the banned user became active. Apart from that, it's a good example for this discussion.
I have to admit that it would take a great deal of effort on my part to understand what it's about. On first reading I have no basis for agreeing whether or not it is in fact twaddle, but if I chose to participate in the VfD on this I would want to have a reasonable basis for my vote. However, I am not ready to spend hours trying to figure out what the guy is talking about in order to decide on a yes or no vote. That being said, I would vote to keep based on giving the contributor the benefit of the doubt. That's IF I were voting at all. It looks as though the survival vote worked in this case, because it encouraged you to work for a "not bad" article.
I also do not support arguments that are styled, "I am an expert, and I know better." New theories that deviate from orthodoxy tend to be routinely viewed as muddle-headed by the experts. In a vast majority of these cases, the experts will probably be right, but the idea must stand or fall on its own merits. If a nutcase proposal is more than idiosyncratic, it should be enough to add a polite comment about that, without the need for a detailed demolition of the proponent's points. Sometimes a pointed statement can be more effective than copious verbiage. If argument B in the proponent's theory is based on perpetual motion, and he shows that arguments C through K depend on that detailed discussion of C through K is useless.if you have adequately dealt with B.
Ec
I think that we are perhaps closer to agreeing on a permissive approach about articles that are harmlessly trivial.
Ray Saintonge wrote
Is the 142 in question really the same as the banned individual. His original posting was dated Feb. 21, 2003, and you made the first subsequent edit 4 months later. My guess is that this was put there before the banned user became active. Apart from that, it's a good example for this discussion.
The identification was Axel Boldt's in the VfD discussion, not mine - I guess Axel was around through all that history, though I wasn't.
Charles
On Feb 26, 2004, at 4:04 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Peter Jaros wrote:
On Feb 25, 2004, at 7:13 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
I do get a little hot over these deletion issues. :-)
I understand. I'm very much against deletion of recipes (and most valid information), I just think we need to define the right place for them.
The expression that I found most patronizing was "it might merit its own section". I suspect that the subtleties between descriptive and prescriptive or between imperatiuve and indicative might not be meningful to the casual reader who wants to find out about a food and/or how to make it. The technical detailsof chocolate cakes are not inherently controversial. If different ways exist for making such a cake, the results of which is better can be entirely subjective.
My point was not about controversy or POV, just about appropriateness. A drink recipe generally describes the drink, while a chocolate cake recipe does not describe chocolate cake. If a particular cake recipe is famous and generally significant, I would say it warrants its own section or article (regarding its significance, history, etc.). There the recipe *would* describe the topic (being the topic itself).
I get the impression now that you blindly walked into an old war, only to realise that bullets were flying in every direction. The Battle of Recipes was only one episode. :-)
Indeed. Perhaps I have a new perspective.
The war is between two competing visions of Wikipedia. One side, the "deletionists", believes in deleting material which they consider to be diminishing the reputation and authoritative quality of Wikipedia. The other side, the "inclusionists", believes that the purposes of Wikipedia are better served by having articles in an ever expanding sphere of knowledge defined in the broadest terms, even if it is in subjects that others may find trivial. I am clearly in the latter camp.
I suppose I am in my own camp, or perhaps a deletionist sympathizer in the inclusionist camp. To stretch the word "sympathizer" a bit.
I am in favor "an ever expanding sphere of knowledge defined in the broadest terms". What I am wary of is becoming the Unedited Guide at h2g2. This is the body of entries not in the Edited Guide, encompassing works-in-progress, community pages, and random junk. Random junk is fine in a system with an Edited distinction, but here everything is in the main product.
I support the hosting of recipes, but I support the encyclopedic "look and feel" first and foremost. If that means removing some recipes, they ought to be moved to Wikibooks and not blindly deleted, but I think many recipes have a home in the encyclopedic format. It make take a bit of moving, but it shouldn't require *re*moving.
If a duplicate os a recipe remains o Wikipedia, no harm is done, and perhaps when the cookbook in Wikibooks is recognized as a serious project people won't mind replacing the chocolate cake recipe in Wikipedia with a statement like, "For a chocolate cake recipe see [[Wikibooks:Chocolate cake]]", but until then attempts to remove them will only cause arguments.
Sounds good to me. Then this is one of the next steps.
Peter
-- ---<>--- -- A house without walls cannot fall. Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org -- ---<>--- --
Peter Jaros wrote:
I suppose I am in my own camp, or perhaps a deletionist sympathizer in the inclusionist camp. To stretch the word "sympathizer" a bit.
I am in favor "an ever expanding sphere of knowledge defined in the broadest terms". What I am wary of is becoming the Unedited Guide at h2g2. This is the body of entries not in the Edited Guide, encompassing works-in-progress, community pages, and random junk. Random junk is fine in a system with an Edited distinction, but here everything is in the main product.
Peter
---- Begin Davodd comment:
Maybe folks with a passionate interest in this area can work on updating
[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and Drink]] to include format suggestions for historical, geographic or cultural importance In addition to the How-to element.
Davodd -- David Speakman http://www.DavidSpeakman.com
Peter Jaros wrote:
The war is between two competing visions of Wikipedia. One side, the "deletionists", believes in deleting material which they consider to be diminishing the reputation and authoritative quality of Wikipedia. The other side, the "inclusionists", believes that the purposes of Wikipedia are better served by having articles in an ever expanding sphere of knowledge defined in the broadest terms, even if it is in subjects that others may find trivial. I am clearly in the latter camp.
I suppose I am in my own camp, or perhaps a deletionist sympathizer in the inclusionist camp. To stretch the word "sympathizer" a bit.
I am in favor "an ever expanding sphere of knowledge defined in the broadest terms". What I am wary of is becoming the Unedited Guide at h2g2. This is the body of entries not in the Edited Guide, encompassing works-in-progress, community pages, and random junk. Random junk is fine in a system with an Edited distinction, but here everything is in the main product.
One of the difficulties is that not everyone has the same definition of "random junk". I can understand your apprehensions, but the way that things are removed is just as important as what is removed. If things are removed in the "wrong" way many otherwise valuable contributors can see this as a disrespect of their efforts.
I support the hosting of recipes, but I support the encyclopedic "look and feel" first and foremost. If that means removing some recipes, they ought to be moved to Wikibooks and not blindly deleted, but I think many recipes have a home in the encyclopedic format. It make take a bit of moving, but it shouldn't require *re*moving.
If a duplicate of a recipe remains o Wikipedia, no harm is done, and perhaps when the cookbook in Wikibooks is recognized as a serious project people won't mind replacing the chocolate cake recipe in Wikipedia with a statement like, "For a chocolate cake recipe see [[Wikibooks:Chocolate cake]]", but until then attempts to remove them will only cause arguments.
Sounds good to me. Then this is one of the next steps.
Yes that would be making the Wikibooks cookbook a respected project where contributors will see that as a site of choice when they want to add a recipe.
Ec