[WikiEN-l] Flagged Revisions

[Steve Bennett]

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 1:17 AM, Bod Notbod<bodnotbod at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd really hate to go to [[curry]] and see recipes. The sorts of
> spices that are often included yes. But not cooking times.
>
> If I look up [[engine]] I want to know how it functions. But I don't
> want to see a tutorial on how to deal with specific problems.
>
> Although I suppose there's a possible claim of hypocrisy here. Many of
> our medical articles include a section on treatment, which I guess is
> a form of How To.
>
> And I just happened upon [[suicide methods]] which perhaps is the last
> word, almost literally, on How To do something.

I think the difference is between instructions with the expectation
that someone would actually follow them, and simply understanding
common practice.

Curry recipe: you don't need precise cooking times, sequences etc to
understand common practice.
Engine: You don't need troubleshooting instructions to understand
common practice.
Disease: A description of treatment *is* appropriate to understand
common practice.
Suicide methods: It's a fine line, but there is probably information
you can leave out without affecting the encyclopaedicness. For
example, we could explain that people take certain kinds of pills
without being too specific. We could mention that people jump off
buildings without highlighting particular ones. Maybe.

Steve