Rick wrote: 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

Peter Jaros wrote: The only ones that are proscribing the work of others are those wanting to delete these recipes. If there is more than one recipe, than why not just show how they vary? That's very patronizing of you. Ec

Peter Jaros wrote: 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

Peter Jaros wrote: 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

"Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> writes: Can you be more specific please, so we can look up what you're referring to. -- Gareth Owen "The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity"

Charles Matthews 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. 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.

On Feb 26, 2004, at 4:04 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote: Indeed. Perhaps I have a new perspective. 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. 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: 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. 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