[WikiEN-l] Re: HOWTOs/Recipes/Instructions and other imperativecontent

Tue Feb 24 20:12:48 UTC 2004

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I'm not a dogmatist on this point (recipes), I'm just throwing out for
>consideration -- what exactly makes this non-encyclopedic, other than
>the constraints of paper on traditional encyclopedias?
>  
>
Well, except in the case of a very few dishes which have an "official" 
way of doing them, there is generally no one recipe for any given dish.  
Guacamole, for example, has as many recipes as there are people who make 
guacamole: the recipe is essentially "put anything you want into mashed 
avocado".  Sure, cookbooks often give a particular recipe for many 
popular dishes, but I don't see us as a cookbook.  We can instead 
describe what a dish is, and if someone wants a particular cook's 
opinion on exactly how many tablespoons of this and that to include, 
they can buy a cookbook from that cook.

Again, I'd refer people to [[turkey (food)]], which I hope does a good 
job with the balance.  It even mentions 30-45 minutes as common cooking 
time for deep-fried turkey, without giving instructions such as "fry for 
38 minutes at 450 F", which would not really be supportable.

Plus I just don't like the tone.  I'd rather we be descriptive.  [[Virus 
cleaning]] that describes what virus cleaning is and how it's usually 
done, instead of [[How to clean your computer of viruses]] that gives 
instructions.

-Mark