[WikiEN-l] Re: Historian: origin of apparent "policy" re recipes and how-tos?

Wed May 12 05:48:12 UTC 2004

Imran Ghory wrote:

>On Tue, 11 May 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>  
>
>>>So a description of how a food is made is encyclopedic, but instructions
>>>on how to make that food are not encyclopedic.
>>>      
>>>
>>The descriptive/prescriptive distinction is very narrow in this case.  I prefer to avoid a pompous definition of what is encyclopedic.
>>    
>>
>Not really, the instructive case tells you how to make a specific version
>of a food product but the descriptive case tells you how it is made in
>general.
>
>To look at a very simple case consider boiling rice, a specific recipe
>could tell you to use a kettle to pre-boil water, another could state the
>entire procedure should be done on a hob, yet another could suggest using a microwave. And that's before you start considering things such as whether you should add salt and how much you should add.
>
Actually, to comply with our NPOV policy, an encyclopedic article on 
cooking rice needs to incorporate all of these different possibilities. 
A recipe is a point of view on how to prepare something. After all, 
there are almost always other recipes to prepare the same dish. Also, a 
recipe is POV as to how many servings are desired.

Having examined the issue in this way, I find the solution easier. I 
think in this case the distinction between description and instruction 
is a false dichotomy. We do not delete material for being POV, we 
rewrite it so that it is presented in a neutral fashion. If you find an 
overly "biased" recipe, rewrite the article so that it describes how to 
prepare the food in question, and take into account different opinions 
about what to cook it in, how much salt to use, etc. I look forward to 
the inevitable edit wars between competing traditional family recipes, 
as I'm sure that will be far more entertaining than the ones I see now.

I do note that our material on the domestic arts (or are they sciences, 
I'm never sure) is sorely neglected in general.

--Michael Snow
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