[Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

Fri Jan 21 02:05:46 UTC 2005

The main argument of those who would like to remove recipes from 
Wikipedia is a recipe is just a POV of a given dish. I would like to 
point 2 things:
- A picture is always the point of view of the photographer (= he can 
choose what he wants to show and therefore, the feeling he wants to 
transmit). Does that mean we must remove all pictures from Wikipedia in 
the name of NPOV? I don't think so. Even if pictures are always POV, 
they give as information as they are useful to understand a concept (ie. 
Show picture of tsunami devastations is a good shortcut to explain its 
power).
- I think there a two kind of recipes: 1) the personal way of cooking a 
dish 2) the minimal requirement to make a given dish. The first kind of 
information is, imho, non pertinent for an encyclopedia. The second is 
essential! A "crepe" is not a crepe because it's making with flour, milk 
and egg, but because those ingredients are present in a particular 
proportion and because they are mixed in a particular way.

I would like to make a proposal for Wikipedia:

- A dish's article can contain one recipe (the minimal requirements to 
make a dish what is it)
- Each ingredient is express in range of proportion (to be 
representative of variations)
- Non essential information (like flavors, decoration, etc.) is 
explained into the article's text (this must be a representative 
variation, not a personal taste).
- Dish's recipe alone is a stub that must be enhanced.
- If it's obvious that there is no intention to improve the stub (recipe 
alone), it can be proposed at VfD.

I think, the only case we can't found a consensus about proportion range 
to make a given dish, imho, mean that two dishs sharing the same name 
(for example Japanese Kuri are very far from Indian one).
What do you think about my proposal?

Aoineko