[Wikipedia-l] Re: Recipe

Fri Jan 21 02:11:59 UTC 2005

Andre Engels a écrit:
> On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:32:28 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>Stating exactly how the dish is done is overfeeding with too-specific
>>>information. Should Wikipedia be deciding how long people boil their
>>>eggs?
>>
>>Wikipédia is not "deciding" for people.
>>Actually, people are not even deciding how long an egg takes to be hard.
>>Nature did.
>>All we do is to describe it.
>>
>>And I think we should describe it.
> 
> 
> I don't. Some think it's this long, and others think it's that long.
> It's not to Wikipedia to make that decision.

Well, I am sorry, but I just do not think we will be able to reach a 
consensus here. None of your arguments are convincing me :-(

However, there is one point which retains my attention in what you write 
above.

You said "Should Wikipedia be deciding how long people boil their eggs?"

To which I answered "Wikipedia is not deciding for people but only 
describing".

To which you said "It's not to Wikipedia to make that decision"

Possibly you are right here, and possibly only what people are willing 
to see in an encyclopedia will matter in the long term.
Only what people come to see and are looking for and are happy to see 
will matter. We should not decide for them, but let them the opportunity 
to create the encyclopedia they wish to have.

I suspect this means we should create the largest encyclopedia, and 
possibly, it is for people to decide that in the encyclopedia, they do 
not wish to see or even to see mentionned all the articles which belongs 
for example to
* recipes
* how-tos
* high-schools
* little cities
* mangas
* sex and violence

etc...

Perhaps will it be an encyclopedia where you decide which type of 
information you want to see ?

The reader will decide then. Not us.
Right now, if he is not interested, he can avoid following links.

But if we remove the information OURSELVES, then it is Wikipedia which 
decides what people should see or not see.

Imho.