[WikiEN-l] More on recipes

Sun May 23 16:33:21 UTC 2004

On Sat, 22 May 2004, Peter Jaros wrote:

> On May 21, 2004, at 9:46 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > 3.  Concerns about whether we have to include 50 recipes for something
> > as mundane as Chocolate cake are valid concerns, but they are in
> > principle no different from concerns in other articles as to how much
> > detail to include, and the same sorts of external considerations can
> > come into play just as well here.
>
> I think chocolate cake is a broad enough topic to have sections, or
> perhaps separate articles, about different kinds of chocolate cake,
> each of which can be illustrated by an appropriate example recipe.
> Presumably, any food topic this broad will be similarly divisible.
>
Adding my two cents . . .

I took a look at the article [[Chili]] (properly [[Chili con carne]])
just to get a feel for how the problems that might arise from including
recipes have been dealt with (or have failed to be dealt with). I selected
this dish because it is one place where I expect that we will have NPOV
disputes over recipies. This is what I noticed:

*There is an introductory paragraph, that explains a little about the
dish.
*There are several recipes, only one of which (i.e. "Cincinnati Chili")
goes into some detail about the background.
*There are a number of omissions in this article.

Let me develop that last point further. I am not by any means a Chili
expert (although I do enjoy a good bowl of chili), but I did miss reference
to the following facts:

*There is an annual Texas Chili contest. IIRC a Wall Street Journal article
from several years ago, one entrant made his chili without beans, meat,
chocolate or several other expected ingredients.
*The state of New Mexico is known for having regional varieties of Chilis
*A source for the recipies that were provided. (Did they come from a
cookbook? Or from a family recipie? If so, can we localize this family, say
in Texas?)

In short, if one were to remove these recipies, the Chili article becomes
a scrappy little article that is barely more than a stub. There is almost
no information about how Chili is a significant part of some American regional
cultures, & the various ways one can make Chili helps to distinguish
between them. (Similar to pasta in Italy, beer in Britain & Germany, &
countless other examples I hope that find their way into Wikipedia.)

I'm not against the inclusion of recipies in Wikipedia: I'm something of an
agnostic on the issue. It's like including quotations in an article, where
quoting an authority or well-explained POV can make a lot more sense than
paraphrasing (or using weasel words like "some experts think"). However,
an article should not be simply a collection of recipies or practical
instructions -- otherwise, we end up with the same problem voiced in another
thread about the article on the [[XFree86 logfile]].

Geoff