[WikiEN-l] Re: recipes

[Ray Saintonge]

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