Daniel P.B.Smith wrote: If so many people want them, why not make a new project -- WikiHowto? Either that, or extend the scope of Wikibooks slightly. Timwi

On Tue, 11 May 2004, Anthere wrote: The central basis on which I argue on vfd when these things come up is that wikipedia should be descriptive not prescriptive. Instructive works come under the remit of wikibooks so that is where they should go. So a description of how a food is made is encyclopedic, but instructions on how to make that food are not encyclopedic.

On Tue, 11 May 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote: 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. On the other hand a descriptive version could just be "the rice is heated in boiling water".

~You miss the point. Many people do consider many recipees are encyclopedic, as some have cultural value.

I would like to note that we discussed this matter in February, and although perhaps no consensus was formed on policy, I continue to stand by my statements on the topic, particularly that how-tos, recipes, and similar didactic texts are inherently POV and don't belong on Wikipedia proper. <http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-February/010873.html> <http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-February/010883.html> Note, however, that information about this kind of content is decidedly NPOV.

In any case, the point is that there is no such thing as a neutral recipe, only a neutral "meta-recipe".

On May 13, 2004, at 5:37 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote: The mood is not, for me, the issue. Certainly, the imperative mood is useful in such articles. However, there is a difference between the only way to do it and the "best" way to do it. If there is a finite number (such as one) of ways to do something (such as replace a bulb in a particular lamp), all of these should be documented or none at all. Anything else is POV. Recipes are tricky. If you provide a recipe for chocolate cake as a "chocolate cake" recipe, that's POV: you're asserting that *this* is chocolate cake. If you include "Le Grand Pain's famous chocolate cake recipe", that's the only one of *those*. It's all in the presentation.

Ray Saintonge wrote: 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.

Delirium wrote: What happens in Wikibooks is a different matter. My involvement there has been so minimal that it would be inappropriate for me to comment about what they should or should not accept. It is an autonomous project, and it is not up to the rest of us to dictate their rules. This is about whether recipes (and other forms of practical knowledge) belong in Wikipedia. An encyclopedia covers all sorts of knowledge, not just those forms that a self-appointed elite would allow. Is there really a 15 page article of chocolate cake variations in Wikipedia? I doubt it. This is nothing more than a straw-man argument created for the sole purpose of making an opposing argument look ridiculous. (I don't know enough about C-language to be able to say anything about that.) I'm baffled by people who want to exclude such material. I agree that the mainstream English-language encyclopedias like Britannica have traditionally omitted this kind of material, but we are not them, and we have no need to restrict ourselves to the academic trappings that they chose to adopt for their own purposes. To take the matter even further afield (I've been reading Ivan Illich) we are dealing with an attitude that reflects something that is wrong with education in general, and universities in particular. Wikipedia is bound to appeal to a community of autodidacts with an incredible variety of backgrounds. No sphere of knowledge is so inferior that it needs be ignored. Education has become a process of buying into "The System", of paying one's dues thereto, and receiving accreditation to elite circles. For the less capable it is intended to insure compliance. The freeing of knowledge thus applies to ALL aspects of knowledge. The eventual third-world barely literate reader of our encyclopedia is not going to open it to read about how the rich and powerful got there, or about their complex science for launching astronauts, or about the strutting gliterati gazing into the navel of their own foolishness. These only add acuity to their poverty. For them, simple techniques to enable them to bring a few of those things in their lives that we take for granted will be greatly appreciated. Ec

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.

Fennec Foxen wrote: 3 points, one a direct response to your point, and 2 others that I wanted to say more generally. 1. It is of course true that Wikipedia articles are not recipes. Wikipedia articles are not mathematical equations, either. But Wikipedia articles can _contain_ mathematical equations, and similary Wikipedia articles can _contain_ recipes. 2. Recipes are not "inherently NPOV" any more than any other kind of knowledge. Wikipedia need not _advocate_ for one particular way of cooking Key Lime Pie, in order to _describe_ the traditional recipe and variants, with the description being in the detailed format of a recipe. 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. 4. It is of course possible for an article which includes a recipe to be POV. If someone wrote: "This is the only proper way to make chili; all other ways are abominations not deserving of the name" then we would of course edit that bit out. We'd look for some intrinsic "hook" by which to choose which recipe to choose, i.e. "oldest known", or "first published", or "a typical example" or "published by noted chef thus-and-so" or any of a thousand other possibilities. So it isn't that the concerns peopel are raising aren't valid at all, it's just that I don't find them automatically compelling. --Jimbo

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.

Peter Jaros wrote: Where there are identifiable distinct types that are commonly made, that makes sense. In many cases though, you can vary almost any of the ingredients, which results in an exponential number of possible recipes. It'd make more sense (to me) to describe it in a prose style instead of a recipe style, saying things like "in some areas walnuts or chestnuts are commonly added on top", or "a number of other ingredients, including orange peel, nutmeg, coffee grinds, ... are sometimes added" (examples made up on the spot).

On May 21, 2004, at 9:46 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote: 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.