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

Fri May 14 09:29:44 UTC 2004

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I have no objection to documenting ALL the ways to put in a light 
> bulb. (There are more than one ways.)  Just because the first person 
> to post on the subject has only presented one way of doing something 
> does not in itself make that contribution POV.  If it is the only POV 
> it is necessarily neutral.  If there are other POVs, the solution 
> begins with others presenting them, not with censoring the one that's 
> already there.

I see this as more a place for a Wikibook recipes book.  An article that 
consists of 15 pages listing all the variations on chocolate cake is 
ridiculous for an encyclopedia.  An encyclopedia isn't the place to get 
detailed how-to instructions, but to get conceptual information.  This 
is why the article on, say [[C programming language]] describes the 
language, rather than being an intro to programming in C tutorial---if 
you want a detailed intro to C, that's what an "intro to programming in 
C" wikibook would be for.

I don't even see why this is an argument---it's so completely ridiculous 
to have recipes in an encyclopedia, barring some famous ones, that I'm 
baffled people are actually seriously defending the idea.

-Mark