Wikipedia:Recipes proposal

Note: Recipes are now kept at Wikibooks Cookbook

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How recipes and how-to (cooking) should be handled in Wikipedia has been a long term problem. It was discussed on many wiki pages, and on the English mailing lists, as well. Some consensus was reached, which has never been clarified in rules or a recommendation. This proposal aims to fix this, and to propose a set of guidelines, which follow. SweetLittleFluffyThing 01:11, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC).

I made some updates on the 23:33, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC) following some comments. SweetLittleFluffyThing

Scope

The proposal is based on three considerations

There is serious controversy about what should be done with recipes. Some consider recipes should be part of the encyclopedia; others support keeping the recipes of dishes, which have a strong cultural background, or are very famous world wide, and moving the other recipes to wikibooks; others, yet, consider any recipe (or even any food article) to be unencyclopedic, and support their simple deletion from the encyclopedia.

We currently host a wikibook project, which can host recipes

I want bridges to be created between projects, and that any reader coming to wikipedia for a food item or a recipe, be able to quickly and easily find the information he is looking for, whether on wikipedia or on wikibooks. The goal of Wikipedia is not only to gather information, but also to give access to it.

Proposal

Point 1a

Among articles containing a recipe and/or a how-to, we shall distinguish 3 types of articles.

The article also contain encyclopedic information
The article does not contain encyclopedic information, but the scope of the article is such that it is likely to happen one day
The article is unlikely to become encyclopedic

Point 1b

Point 1b added/modified on the 23:39, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Encyclopedic might be any information which is bringing information useful aside from the pure cooking event.

Rule of thumb :
What are reasons for recipes in the encyclopedia?

the food is famous and the recipe is one or a few examples of how it is customarily prepared
the food is part of the coverage of another encyclopedia topic, such as the cuisine of a region, much like the plants or animals of a region

Example 1 : an article on butter is likely to contain information on how butter is made, its composition, health-related problem related to over consumption etc... : it is encyclopedic

Example 2 : an article on christmas pudding is likely to be encyclopedic, as it is related to a religious celebration in certain countries and is quite famous.

Example 3 : an article on meatball may be considered encyclopedic as well, if only because it report the fact that meatballs are one of these food which may be found in most countries, though with variations.

Example 4 : a recipe on honey soup is unlikely to get encyclopedic. It is neither referring to a custom, nor is a famous food, nor is a primary food anywhere. Most likely, this is a family made recipe.

Point 2

All recipes will be transwikied to Wikibooks (made available over there). If an article stays on Wikipedia about that recipe, a direct link to Wikibooks recipe will always be provided.

Point 3a

For all articles containing encyclopedic content, or likely to do in the future, one example of a recipe or how-to will be acceptable. Decision to keep it or not, will be based on consensus.

Point 3b

Added on the 00:11, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
No variations will be included (so, maximum one recipe). If many variations exist, we try to agree on which one to keep, and we remove the rests of it. If no reasonable agreement may be found, we move them all but are very careful to describe very well the core of the recipe.

Point 4

If an article likely to contain encyclopedic information later in the future and left with no recipe is a stub, it will not be deleted on the ground it is a stub. At the minimum, a short description and a link to the wikibook recipe should be kept.

Point 5

For all articles not containing encyclopedic content, and unlikely to do so in the future, the recipe will be transwikied. A father article will be found. The cleared article will be transformed into a redirect to the father article. The link to the recipe will be preferably left in the father article. Otherwise, it should be left in the equivalent father article on wikibooks. See Fried meatballs (link kept in meatball) for an example, or oyster (links kept on the wikibook article on oyster).

Point 6

Discussion about whether articles are potentially encyclopedic or not (hence whether they should be kept; or content transwikified while the article is transformed in redirect) will be discussed on this page (not on vfd directly).

Comment : Gentgeen suggested that these discussions should take place on WikiProject Food and Drink for example rather than here. I think this is a good proposition (see my comment to Gentgeen below). SweetLittleFluffyThing

Discussion

I fail to see how an article on "fried meatballs" is not encyclopedic. anthony (see warning) 01:25, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

for reference, the original article here

I'm the author of that version of the article. I don't see how it's not encyclopedic. It's a stub, yes, but there's a lot that can be said about fried meatballs. In fact, my mouth is watering just thinking about it :). anthony (see warning) 03:07, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I love meatball just as much as you :-) and I would not have seen a problem in keeping it. However, it was meant for deletion. The current issue I am raising is not discussing precisely whether fried meatball is encyclopedic or not, but what to do with articles for which there is a consensus they are NOT encyclopedic. Given current positions of many editors, I doubt very much it will be possible to keep all recipees, I am just trying to find a compromise. ant

Ant, your position with regards to my proposal is unclear. We will have the opportunity to discuss the relevance of "encyclopedic". What is your opinion then ? SweetLittleFluffyThing

The meatballs example is part of the coverage of Cuisine of Albania, which links to it as an example of the classic cuisine of that country. It's encyclopedic as part of that coverage. Jamesday 03:05, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Since it is controversial that fried meatball are encyclopedic or not, I removed this example and replace it with honey soup•

I think that this proposal is a good beginning for dealing with this controversial pproblem. Referring to The Case of the Fried Meatballs only addresses one specific example; adopting the policy should not prejudice the way in which the example is solved. Eclecticology 11:13, 2004 Oct 10 (UTC)

Support Sounds good to me. As of 2004, I feel that sending something to Wikibooks without linking to it is not that different from deleting it. My apologies to all those who are working to build Wikibooks. It may not be deletion in a legalistic sense, but it effectively amounts to the same thing. If the intention of moving recipes to Wikibooks is to build Wikibooks, Anthere's proposal preserves that goal while still making the content apparent and reachable by people whose entry point is Wikipedia. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:18, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I intend to help Wikibooks to grow, by strengthening path of communication between all projects. See my proposal below :-) I appreciate that you understand my wish to preserve views of most editors :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing 00:21, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Oppose. What I believe will happen is that we'll have all sorts of articles like Apple Tart or Lasagna, which say things like "Lasagna is an Italian dish", and then point off to Wikibooks, or perhaps just redirect there. I don't think this is desirable -- it's feature creep, and no more appropriate than, say, making Wikipedia a web directory to other sites. I am not, for reference, opposed to people collecting recipies on a Wiki. It sounds like a great idea, and as I'm not a great cook, I'd probably find it really useful. However, I don't think that Wikipedia should become cluttered with such articles, nor with simple descriptions of food, and I see no point in links except for the very very few articles where the food is really really notable. Meatballs are not. Also, the Wikipedia namespace should not become polluted with things that are just links to other namespaces, I feel. I also feel that Wikibooks *may* not be the best place for this kind of thing -- a new mediawiki project would probably be warranted (Wikipies or Wicipies, maybe?). I feel that recipies deserve their own namespace, and would love to see that happen. --Improv 21:30, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I can only disagree with you when you say that food and recipes are just not encyclopedic, but I agree with you multiplication of stubs pages are not necessarily a good idea. This is a point (Point 5) I am adressing to when I suggest that those unlikely to ever be encyclopedic should be transformed into redirect to a mother article and this article contains the recipe link. This will certainly prevent clustering the wikipedia space with stub; We might succeed to find a ground for agreement then :-)

As for a new project... well, I think we should rather take care of what is already existing; but well...:-) SweetLittleFluffyThing

I generally like the idea. We should try to link to as many Wikibook articles as possible, in general, the same way we link to almost all Wikiquote articles (using the template {{wikiquote}}. There is nothing wrong with using an already existing article to refer people to a page they may be seeking that is part of a sister project. However we should not create substubs just to point people to Wikibooks. In this case, the link should be from another page, (the way fried meatballs was done). —siro χ o 01:53, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

Good. SweetLittleFluffyThing

I generally support the idea. Someone (don't remember who, sorry) came up with a template for wikibooks cookbook links at Template:Cookbook, while I modified it for articles with different titles at Template:Cookbookpar. Over the past few days I've been inserting it wherever a link to the cookbook seemed logical and the cookbook had a page to receive said link. I have noticed a significant increase in editing at the cookbook, so I'm quite happy with the results compaired to the simple one line external link that had been normal before. A few quibbles I have with the proposed policy:
- Point 3: I'm opposed to allowing example recipes into food articles. I was just jumping around and found what I think is a very bad article, Chili con carne. The text of this article is interupted by 6 recipes, one with 5 variations. Three recipes from Texas, one from New Mexico, one from Cincinnati, and a vegetarian recipe (on an article where the title means Chili with meat). Additionally, while the article appears long and inclusive (due to the substantial length of the recipes that breakup the narative), there is only passing mention of chile con carne, chile verde, or chile colorado (note the spelling chile vs chili), the Mexican dishes American chilli is decended from.
- Point 6: The place to determine what dishes are encyclopedic and should have an article should be the WikiProject Food and Drink, or at VfD, not some obscure new page Ant made to hide the discussion. ;)
other than those qualifications, I agree with the proposal. Gentgeen 14:04, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Gentgeen says Someone (don't remember who, sorry) came up with a template for wikibooks cookbook links at Template:Cookbook, while I modified it for articles with different titles at Template:Cookbookpar.'

Nod, I saw, and I appreciate it. I think that however, it is very infortunate that articles in wikibooks do not seem to link to the encyclopedia. I highly regret that. Could we manage for oyster on wikipedia to be linked to oyster in wikibooks ?

Another point is, would it be acceptable to you that some recipes are mentionned sometimes in the template ? SweetLittleFluffyThing

Gentgeen says The place to determine what dishes are encyclopedic and should have an article should be the WikiProject Food and Drink, or at VfD, not some obscure new page Ant made to hide the discussion. ;)

It was not to hide the discussion, but mostly to separate it from the pit hell which is VfD. The idea is that whether it is encyclopedic or not should not be discussed randomly by deletionists wandering on VfD, but should be discussed among those interested in the topic, and aware of the policies agreed upon the topic. For this reason, another page such as WikiProject Food and Drink suits me just as well as here. I have no problem with this. SweetLittleFluffyThing

Gentgeen says I'm opposed to allowing example recipes into food articles. I was just jumping around and found what I think is a very bad article, Chili con carne.

I think you are giving a very extreme example to justify your position. You seem to oppose it only for the reason the whole article would be plagued by several variants and possibly edit wars upon which one is the good recipe. I do not think it is a very good approach. Obviously, the encyclopedia goal would not be to present any variations, but mostly to roughly present a special example, possibly an cooking oddity, or a preparation oddity. I will past you below a comment I made on wikitech-l recently so that you understand better what I mean here Gentgeen.

Generally speaking, I do not think variations are acceptable in the sense it could grow to huge. So, I suggest that we add a rule of thumb that no variations will be included (so, maximum one recipe). If many variations exist, we try to agree on which one to keep, and we move all the other ones. If no reasonable agreement may be found, we move them all but are very careful to describe very well the core of the recipe. Would you agree with this ? SweetLittleFluffyThing

I agree with this proposal; it sounds like a good summary of a policy that has come to informal consensus several times since I joined Wikipedia. It's about time to formalize it into an official policy page. I think Anthere's done a very good job of putting it in neutral, easy-to-interpret terms. The one-example-recipe seems sound too, especially if the prominent Cookbook template is used to ensure that additional recipes and information is not overlooked. Count me as a supporter. Catherine | talk 17:09, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing

Hear ye, hear ye. This needs to clearly state that recipes can and should be part of Wikipedia's actual encyclopaedia content. Quite simply, an example recipe on an article about any food item some way notable, is encyclopaedic! It's preposterous to suggest that an actual example recipe for e.g. Christmas pudding should not be included. zoney ♣ talk 16:13, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I understand. Well, just keep in mind that the current situation is most of the time of just plainly deleting recipes. No policy whatsoever will just have for consequences to just validate this situation and to validate somehow deletion of recipes from now on. SweetLittleFluffyThing

Hear ye, hear ye is unfortunately not an expression I understand :-))) SweetLittleFluffyThing 19:12, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I oppose this proposal, since it endorses:
- deleting encyclopedic recipies (the example of meatballs, part of the coverage of the coverage of the cuisine of a Albania).
- treating removing something from a project as something other than deleting, when it is in fact deleted.
- stopping a project from being standalone and independent, but instead requiring other projects to be around to see the full work
- forking content whenever there is an specialised project on a subject, which is also one of the reasons there were objections to the wikispecies proposal.
- making one project just a link farm to another project on a topic. Jamesday 03:05, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Jamesday said

- deleting encyclopedic recipies (the example of meatballs, part of the coverage of the coverage of the cuisine of a Albania).

I think there is a misunderstanding. Along this proposal, editors decide whether it is encyclopedic or not. If it is decided it is not, then it is redirected. If they decide it is, it is kept. So, the proposal does not endorse anything such as deletion of encyclopedic contente..

- treating removing something from a project as something other than deleting, when it is in fact deleted.

no, it is not in fact deleted, it is put in another place.

- stopping a project from being standalone and independent, but instead requiring other projects to be around to see the full work

You are very correct. Now, the point to solve is whether editors see Wikipedia as close stadalone" version.

- forking content whenever there is an specialised project on a subject, which is also one of the reasons there were objections to the wikispecies proposal.
- making one project just a link farm to another project on a topic. Jamesday 03:05, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

About point 6 :
Discussion about whether articles are potentially encyclopedic or not (hence whether they should be kept; or content transwikified while the article is transformed in redirect) will be discussed on this page (not on vfd directly).

Comment : Gentgeen suggested that these discussions should take place on WikiProject Food and Drink for example rather than here. I think this is a good proposition (see my comment to Gentgeen below). SweetLittleFluffyThing

A bad idea IMO. Genteen has been leading the moves to effectively make the encyclopedia a link farm for the wikibooks cookbook, so shifting discussion to a group most likely to favor that work is unlikely to be in the best interests of this work. Jamesday 03:48, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There are basically two options. With such a proposal, the only thing left to take care of is to decide whether encyclopedic or not.

This may be done on vfd
- Drawbacks : people will vote without knowing the recipe deletion rules
- Drawbacks : people will vote "keep" or "delete", when the question is "encyclopedic" or not "encyclopédique".
- Drawbacks, the recipes will get lost in such a big place
- Benefits : more people likely to know the recipe and realise it is of encyclopedic value
- Support :

This may be done on a specific place (here or on Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and Drink).
- Benefit : people voting are those interested in the topic.
- Drawbacks : see Jamesday comment
- Support

Of course recipes are encyclopedic and belong here. If there are crusading deletionists who for some reason want to make people looking for information about food look in several different places, then the next best thing would be to keep the information within the GFDL corpus and make linking to Wikibooks as easy and transparent as possible. A long term goal would be to have a transparent interface for all 'free information' like Wikipedia, wikibooks, wikitravel etc to make navigation for the user as easy as possible. Mark Richards 17:56, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Support This makes sense to me. It's good to have it clarified. JesseW 15:26, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[Wikitech-l] Projects linking

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-October/025766.html

For the other issues you mention, I strongly agree we have a serious problem of communication between projects. I do not mean human communication (though...) but just plain communication between information.

Within the dictionary, there is no possibility to access automatically and directly to the same article in other languages.
Within wikipedia, there is no possibility to access automatically and directly to wiktionnary.
Within wikipedia, there is no possibility to access automatically and directly to wikibooks (this would be especially useful for wikibooks).
Etc...

We patch the best we can by putting links between our projects as external links, as if each project was independent, while it should NOT be independent, but an interconnected network. This is exactly what I was saying about food and recipees just 3 days ago, we are here not only to create information, but also to make it available. Information stored, but not available proeminently within a couple of click is LOST. It may exist somewhere, but it is of little use.

And I find extremely miserable that some of us try to put links to interconnect projects, while others are busy deleting those links (typical example are recipees being transwikies, then links to recipees being removed).

Consider the fugu.

Dictionnary : The fugu is as a poisonous fish, being used as food, especially in Japan, after poisonous organs have been removed. Add pronunciation.

Link to translations in other languages (other wiktionaries)
Link to recipee of fugu (link to wikibooks)
Link to biological, environnemental and cultural background (link to encyclopedia)

Wikipedia : Full article about the fish itself. Background on fugu cultural weight. Who died eating it. Who are the most famous chef preparing fugu. Decoration. Delicacy etc...

Link to other articles in other languages for more information (other wikipedias)
Link to have pronunciation and exact writing in japanese (link to wiktionnary)
Link to recipees (link to wikibooks)
Link for more biological information (link to Wikispecies)
Link to wikinews (last minute : Bush mistakenly poisonned in a japanese restaurant ! )

Wikibooks : List of recipees and pictures

Link to short descriptive of the fish (wiktionnary)
Link to biological, environnemental and cultural background (Wikipedia)
Link to movie showing how big chef prepare the fish (Wikicommons)

Etc...

Contrary to languages, I presume one article in one project should only lead to one article in another project.
So, on top of all international links, for each article of each project, there should be the possibility to link to an "sister article" in any other project we have.
A nice way to do this would be to add to the tool bar (well, say, the area where interlanguage links are displayed), a little icon of the sister project. The click on the icon would lead to the appropriate page.

Then the wikipedia article on Fugu would display

all international links, plus
a little book icon (to represent wiktionary),
plus a little pan (to represent wikibooks)
plus a little bee (to represent wikispecies) (or whatever icons)

It would look good, using small graphics would help readers identify links for navigation from toolbar links, and it would be much useful.

It was several time discussed that international links had nothing to do in the body of the article. Nor should categories. Nor should probably interproject links.

What about then working on a new special area, which would provide a sort of form, with

Wiktionary : "empty space to put the name of the article in wiktionary"
Wikibooks : "empty space to put the name of the article in wikibooks"
Wikispecies : "empty space to put the name of the article in wikispecies"
And an area for all the internlinks ?

Comments

Have to chime in with a big I agree on this one too -- this sounds like a fabulous, consistent, space-conserving, project-promoting way for a HUGE amount of information to be available to someone searching for information. Not to mention setting us apart from some of the wiki-clones out there... Catherine | talk 03:36, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

External links is an excellent way to do this already. It's as much part of the article as any other external links, so including it in the article text with the other links seems best. Searches spanning many projects are somewhere on the to do list, so a search in an en project may include all en project results after those for the work where the search is happening. Details of implementation not decided, just accepted as a good idea. Jamesday 03:24, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think those interproject links are a great idea! We need such an easy way of linking to sister projects. In my humble opinion interproject links are even much more important than interlanguage links! On de.wikipedia.org we have had the same discussion. But no one cares! This is a very important feature. Why do not implement? There are no drawbacks but many advantages! -- hopefully, Melancholie, 00:08, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I invite you to add some points to the feature request I opened then : http://www.bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=708 SweetLittleFluffyThing

The above Link does not work for me.--Purodha Blissenbach 13:40, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed to the basic idea. Some of these Linking could even be automatic. E.g. a Wikipedia article could imho be automatically linked to the identically named Wiktionaly entry, provided, it exists, and vice versa. A template such as in "The wolf {{Template:Species|lupus lupus|1}} …" could be used to links an article to WikiSpecies and create a backlink of priority 1 into that language Wiki. etc.

As for separating these informations from the article text, when not burried in templates, I consider this a good idea but would not recommend putting them in a separate field for on-screen editing purposes. Rather set a marker where the article text ends and linkage / category info starts. E.g. a single line of -------- (klick Line-symbol twice) or ======= (There is no <h7> or above in html) might do, and can be easily inserted automatically after a software update before any new edit. --Purodha Blissenbach 13:40, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation

There's one issue here that should be clarified. Occasionally, the name of a recipe is also the name of some other more important concept unrelated to food (drink names are a very common example, such as screwball). I'd say probably the best thing to do is to have the disambiguation link (whether it's on a disambiguation page, a (disambiguation) page, or the main topic page) point to either the article on the food/drink or the "father" article, which then links to some Wikibooks source, but not to have the disambiguation link be directly to Wikibooks. Any dissent here? Derrick Coetzee 04:59, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I support this. SweetLittleFluffyThing

Relevant recipes

pizza
Christmas pudding
Cheesecake
Stollen
Mustaccioli
Pannettone
Lebkuchen
Pasta al pomodoro (noodles with tomato sauce)
Spaghetti (originally from China as much as I remember)
Sushi
Sauerkruaut
Wienerwürstel (the "Viennese sausages" that are called "Frankfurter" in Vienna)