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.org http://anthere.shaihome.net/ --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:44:27 -0800 (PST), Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
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".
I disagree. Each dish has variations, sometimes wide variations. You cannot say that there are certain amounts of each ingredient, because the next person will use different amounts, or even different ingredients.
Explaining a dish without explaining how the dish is done is just cruely forgetting information.
Stating exactly how the dish is done is overfeeding with too-specific information. Should Wikipedia be deciding how long people boil their eggs?
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 ?
For one thing, they are not stated as examples. For another, they go well beyond what is necessary to give the example. I don't like your example either - this kind of thing usually is done when people start making a case rather than describing it, that is, go beyond NPOV.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It may be part of human knowledge, is it the kind of knowledge that should be in Wikipedia? I seriously doubt it. We don't describe in detail how to build a table or how to hold family counseling. Why is cooking any different?
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.
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.
Andre Engels
Andre Engels wrote:
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.
I think what you're proposing is exactly right; the main description is "chicken curry traditionally includes...", and then you can have one sidebar giving the "Betty Crocker recipe" and a second with the "1895 Cordon Bleu recipe", in just the same way that the article on chairs can include photographs of several different chairs, but nobody takes it to mean that all chairs must look exactly like one of the illustrations.
Stan
Andre Engels a écrit:
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:44:27 -0800 (PST), Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Hi Andre
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".
I disagree. Each dish has variations, sometimes wide variations. You cannot say that there are certain amounts of each ingredient, because the next person will use different amounts, or even different ingredients.
So ? I think that if ingredients are VERY different, then it is not the same dish anymore.
Explaining a dish without explaining how the dish is done is just cruely forgetting information.
Stating exactly how the dish is done is overfeeding with too-specific information. Should Wikipedia be deciding how long people boil their eggs?
Wikipédia is not "deciding" for people. Actually, people are not even deciding how long an egg takes to be hard. Nature did. All we do is to describe it.
And I think we should describe it.
Now, Chinese decide how long to let eggs rot. This is described very well here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_egg
I think it is here because many people find this important. Because they learn something in reading this. It does not matter really if it is 3 months and 6 months, by reading the recipe, you get the idea.
I think the information should be there.
And I think it is actually there because MOST westerners have no idea what are these 1000 year old eggs, so they think it is relevant. You know how long it takes to boil an egg, so you may not perceive it as relevant ?
...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.
You mean, like writing a general article and having "sub pages" to present each "pov" ?
I do not think Wikipedia should do this. I really do not.
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.
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.
No, we could have more than one. We could change the recipe over time. We could give links to other types of recipes.
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.
It may be part of human knowledge, is it the kind of knowledge that should be in Wikipedia? I seriously doubt it. We don't describe in detail how to build a table or how to hold family counseling. Why is cooking any different?
I think how to make bread is relevant knowledge. There was a time when human being did not know how to cook bread, and I think the civilisation benefitted from them learning it.
I think Wikipedia should not restrict itself. I see it more as L'encyclopédie des Lumières was. It also contained the information of the real people, those living in small houses, having small fields, not having much education.
It is just the same today. Knowledge in the encyclopedia should not only be about Huygens probe; it should also be about what is the daily life and problems of people.
Possibly with how to grow a forest and cut wood and shape it so that it makes a table. And possibly about family counselling, something that is nearly none existent in the current project.
As if family problems did not existed and no one needed to know anything about it.
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.
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.
It exists, so it is valid. But this is exactly the problem Andre. We do not define what is valid the same way, and we do not find interesting the same things. Some people here think the way you think. And some have the same opinion I have. The question I would ask : what do you lose in letting information which interest others in the encyclopedia ? What do you fear ? Do you fear it will appear a collection of irrelevant things ? This is what I do not understand :-(
Andre Engels
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:32:28 +0100, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Stating exactly how the dish is done is overfeeding with too-specific information. Should Wikipedia be deciding how long people boil their eggs?
Wikipédia is not "deciding" for people. Actually, people are not even deciding how long an egg takes to be hard. Nature did. All we do is to describe it.
And I think we should describe it.
I don't. Some think it's this long, and others think it's that long. It's not to Wikipedia to make that decision.
Now, Chinese decide how long to let eggs rot. This is described very well here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_egg
I think this description is quite good, the only thing I would leave out is the amounts of the various substances. Do people really use seven pounds? Not six or nine?
I think it is here because many people find this important. Because they learn something in reading this. It does not matter really if it is 3 months and 6 months, by reading the recipe, you get the idea.
No, by reading the description you get the idea. Recepies are not descriptions. They're prescriptions. It's exactly what I have against recepies. They do not "give the idea". They are stating exact things. Much more exact than they should.
And I think it is actually there because MOST westerners have no idea what are these 1000 year old eggs, so they think it is relevant. You know how long it takes to boil an egg, so you may not perceive it as relevant ?
Do I? I don't. At least I don't know how long *you* boil your eggs, I have a good estimate how long *I* do it. But the difference is that I don't want to write *my* preferences down as *the* way of boiling eggs.
...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.
You mean, like writing a general article and having "sub pages" to present each "pov" ?
No. Like having an article describing all kinds of dogs, and a picture of one specific dog.
I do not think Wikipedia should do this. I really do not.
And I don't think Wikipedia should write a general article and add one "pov" in it. I really do not.
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.
No, we could have more than one. We could change the recipe over time. We could give links to other types of recipes.
Yes, we could. But I don't see how that improves things. It's not what Wikipedia is for.
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.
It exists, so it is valid. But this is exactly the problem Andre. We do not define what is valid the same way, and we do not find interesting the same things. Some people here think the way you think. And some have the same opinion I have. The question I would ask : what do you lose in letting information which interest others in the encyclopedia ? What do you fear ? Do you fear it will appear a collection of irrelevant things ? This is what I do not understand :-(
Yes, that's one thing I fear. Another thing that I fear is that it gives the information it does have in bad ways. Another thing that I fear is that it shows just one possibility as the general truth.
Andre Engels
Andre Engels a écrit:
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:32:28 +0100, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Stating exactly how the dish is done is overfeeding with too-specific information. Should Wikipedia be deciding how long people boil their eggs?
Wikipédia is not "deciding" for people. Actually, people are not even deciding how long an egg takes to be hard. Nature did. All we do is to describe it.
And I think we should describe it.
I don't. Some think it's this long, and others think it's that long. It's not to Wikipedia to make that decision.
Well, I am sorry, but I just do not think we will be able to reach a consensus here. None of your arguments are convincing me :-(
However, there is one point which retains my attention in what you write above.
You said "Should Wikipedia be deciding how long people boil their eggs?"
To which I answered "Wikipedia is not deciding for people but only describing".
To which you said "It's not to Wikipedia to make that decision"
Possibly you are right here, and possibly only what people are willing to see in an encyclopedia will matter in the long term. Only what people come to see and are looking for and are happy to see will matter. We should not decide for them, but let them the opportunity to create the encyclopedia they wish to have.
I suspect this means we should create the largest encyclopedia, and possibly, it is for people to decide that in the encyclopedia, they do not wish to see or even to see mentionned all the articles which belongs for example to * recipes * how-tos * high-schools * little cities * mangas * sex and violence
etc...
Perhaps will it be an encyclopedia where you decide which type of information you want to see ?
The reader will decide then. Not us. Right now, if he is not interested, he can avoid following links.
But if we remove the information OURSELVES, then it is Wikipedia which decides what people should see or not see.
Imho.
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org