Cookbook talk:Table of Contents/Archive 5

Ideal recipe page structure
Suggested ideal recipe page structure in short see below, for details see Cookbook:Policy and Cookbook:Policy/Recipe template --85.206.192.181 23:58, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Cookbook:recipe name    ==Ingredients==  ==Procedure==  ==Notes, tips, and variations==  ==Warnings==  ==External links==  ???     ??? 


 * Close to what I'd suggest, but I'd make the following additions:
 * summary goes before navigation so that it flows nicely on the page
 * we leave "recipe name" to the page title added by mediawiki (I think this is what you mean anyway)
 * Notes, warnings, external links should all be optional. Empty sections look bad and should be omitted imo.
 * add as appropriate:
 * add Category:By_recipe_type meaning "cookies", "cake", "pot pies"
 * add Category:By_meal meaning "desserts", "breakfast"
 * add Category:By_preparation meaning "canning", "deep frying"
 * Category:Prep_time should be something to think about in the future, but we'll probably do this thru the recipe summary
 * Also Category:Recipe_difficulty, but this will probably also go thru summary
 * I'll probably think of some more...
 * Kellen T 02:51, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Policy suggestions
I would like to make two suggestions for Cookbook:Policy:
 * 1) We should deprecate lists of recipes and instead use categories. For example, the recipe list on Cookbook:Mushroom should instead be in Category:Mushroom recipes and a link to that category should be provided. Categories should be updated as appropriate.
 * 2) Categories should thus have additional text and templates and whatnot to both look like part of the existing Cookbook and also be more user-friendly; as it is categories are virtually invisible to users who don't investigate what they do. GarrettTalk 05:32, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) The lists are more powerful in some ways. In a hand-edited list, I can restrict the number of entries for particularly popular ingredients. (tomato, cheese, chicken, salt...) For the unpopular ingredients, I can tweak things the other way. For example, the Cookbook:Quince page could have a Quince Crisp link that actually goes to the perfectly-suitable Apple Crisp recipe. AlbertCahalan 03:18, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) I think the category summaries should be used for exhaustive lists and the hand editied lists should serve more as a small selection. For instance, the are many mushroom recipes in the Cookbook, but only a subsection of those use mushrooms as the main ingredients. So the mushroom page gets a small hand picked selection of true mushroom recipes (like mushroom soup and mushroom pasta sauce), with an additional link to the mushroom category for an exhaustive list of all recipes that use mushrooms. risk 17:57, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 5) I disagree in part. I actually don't see the categories as exhaustive lists of every recipe using an ingredient. I see them as categories for the major ingredients. It doesn't strike me as particularly useful to have a list of all recipes involving Flour, for instance. This is my impression from going through a large number of the recipes and adding categories; I don't think listing all Cakes as "Egg recipes" is very productive... redundant me! Kellen T 20:03, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 6) Good point. We could have a 'three tiered' structure. The ingredient page shows a small selection (about 4 or 5) of well formatted recipes to which the ingredient is key. The category page shows a list of all the recipes the ingredients plays an important part in. And finally the what links here page could be used to obtain an exhaustive list of everything to do with the ingredient, should anyone want such a list. risk
 * 7) Images for recipes should be included via a template similar to  so that the image appears above the summary. For an example, see: nl:Kookboek:Oliebollen.
 * 8) Pretty, but getting kind of complex. Consider the newcomers. Let's also be sure to avoid making people feel that they should not contribute without having a picture and knowing how many Calories a recipe has. AlbertCahalan 03:18, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 9) I agree that we should encourage newcomers; do you think that having a standard of this sort will actually discourage them? I think in most cases they'll add stuff anyway and put pictures in without the template, then a more committed and aware contributor will clean up their work to fit the templates. Is that more reasonable? Kellen T 09:31, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 10) I think this might have just the right effect on newcomers. It's not a lack of recipes that the cookbook is suffering from, but rather a lack of well thought out recipes. Right now it seems to me that everybody just adds their own dip-sauce recipe and never returns, leaving the cookbook full of these unchecked uninteresting recipes that we can't remove, because of wiki philosophy. If most recipes look nice, in this way, it might increase the threshold for adding new recipes. To me, the lack of a decent selection process is the one disadvantage of a wiki cookbook. Increasing the complexity of the standard recipe layout may force people to think about recipes a little longer, and look through the cookbook more, to see how things should be done. I'm getting a little sidetracked here, but in short; if it does intimidate newcomers a little (it might I'm not sure), that might not be such a bad thing. risk 17:57, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Comments? Kellen T 02:00, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. Here's two more:
 * 1) open-license images should be placed on Commons whenever possible. For example Image:ChewyGingerCookies.jpg would look great on a Wikipedia article, but the user wouldn't know it existed unless they saw it there first. On Commons images can be deeply catted just as these recipies are so any such images could be easily found by users, regardless of their language or home wiki. That would also allow for different languages' Cookbooks to share their collective images.
 * 2) Cookbook images should be catted so they can be easily found by contributors wanting a particular image. For example Image:ChampignonMushroom.jpg could make a useful thumbnail on countless recipies. That would also help keep the current images of the project together; right now the only way to see them is to crawl through Category:Public domain and similar. GarrettTalk 05:32, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

transwikied recipies to be integrated
There are quite a few recipies on Transwiki log/Articles moved to here that have not yet been moved into the Cookbooks structure. These should eventually be sorted through and moved (not by cut-n-paste but by the move tab) to the Cookbook: namespace. GarrettTalk 09:22, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Duplication?
What does everyone else think about how we should handle different versions of recipes?

For example, what would happen if I had a hummus recipe to add to the Cookbook (as it happens, I do). I see that Cookbook:Humus already exists under Israel / Palestine cuisine, but my recipe is more like the Greek version. Would it be acceptable to replace the existing redirect to humus from Cookbook:Hummus with my own recipe, and to categorise it under Greek cuisine?

Consider, for example, what would happen when someone with an authentic Greek hummus recipe came along. Would it be okay for them to replace my recipe, or do they simply add it to the end of may recipe page? Where does it stop, there are many variations of every recipe.

In general, I would list additional recipes (maybe regional variations) in a new section if they are significantly different from the existing one. But, if it were possible (i.e., the variations were quite minor), then I would incorporate them as variations of the existing recipe.

If we are to list several recipes on a page, do we put the most authentic one at the top, or the generic version that more people are likely to use? This is not a major problem yet, but it's something to think about for the future. Geo.T 23:59, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I previously reccomended to User:risk that a disambiguation-style page be created for the "abstract" type of food (lasagna in his case, hummus here) and that each specific recipe be linked from there, each with some sort of distinguishing name. This name could be as simple as "Hummus (Greek)", "Hummus (Variation 1)", "Geo's Hummus" (though I personally hate recipes with people's names in them) -- I don't think that part matters so much. This is almost equivalent to using categories, say "Hummus recipes". Kellen T 00:33, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * OOOOOOOOH!!! This is actually quite the job for: DynamicPageList, which I shall request this evening on the mediawiki bug tracker. With that list in place, Cookbook:Hummus could have a list of everything in "Category:Hummus recipes"!!! Kellen T 00:41, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * That sound like a good idea, I'll do that. Don't worry, I don't intend to plaster my name all over it.;) I suppose my main concern is that, when we get many variations on a single recipe (in addition to the basic regional variations), it will become difficult for readers to decide which one to choose. Also, maintenence of all of those pages may become a chore. Geo.T 00:47, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Its a question that we need to address, and Kellen's solution seems like the best idea. We currently have 5 recipes on Cookbook:Guacamole, at least one of which has variations.  While I don't think 2 or 3 hummus recipes would hurt on a single page, in the future if ingredient searching is enabled, multiple recipes on one module would be difficult to deal with. Gentgeen 00:51, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * feature request/bug filed. Kellen T 01:00, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * In addition to Kellen's suggestion I'd like to suggest a phase before the creation of a 'disambiguation' page. If it's only two recipes, or if the recipes could be merged a single page might be better. If the number of recipes becomes unreasoble (which is around three of four, I think) the recipes should be merged (if there aren't enough differences) or the page should be turned into a disambiguation page (if each of the recipes has their own merit and merging recipes would mean removing relevant and interesting ideas/information). I think most sets of recipes could simply be turned into a most basic/authentic form with extensive notes, tips and variations. For instance the bechamel sauce recipe tells us to season with salt pepper and nutmeg. Moving the nutmeg to the variations sections would create a basic recipe that everybody can agree on. I think we should use a disambiguation page only if all these methods fail (or, of course, if a definitive recipe is unthinkable, like with Lasagne or Omelet). I'd hate for every casual visitor to add their Guacemole recipe simply because everybody else has done it. risk 01:20, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Names, I's and other personal references
Would it be a good idea to add a guideline to the policy against stuff like "Alex's Ice Cream Surprise", "My husband loves this recipe" and other references to the editor? Stuff like that really doesn't belong in a wiki. You can't refer to yourself in a wiki, because the text isn't written by you, but by the community (There is no I in "wiki" :). I'm not saying a rule in the policy would stop people from writing this way, but if there is general consensus on this, these things can be removed systematically. risk 01:27, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Perhaps the language should be something like "Recipes should be named according to their traditional name, their origin, or their ingredients. Avoid naming recipes for people, unless it is a well-known recipe by that name. Recipes should be written in the third person, with a relativly formal style. Keep comments about the quality of the recipe on the relevant Talk page." (Please modify this as I'm not completely happy with it) Kellen T 01:48, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't like a "relatevly formal style". I won't argue for informal either, but for clarity and expressiveness. A bit of humor would be nice too, provided that it never ever interferes with clarity and expressiveness. I also like serving suggestions, purchasing suggestions, etc. AlbertCahalan 21:23, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

silicon.com
FYI: Cookbook got a brief mention in this article. Your book is now slightly more famous than it was before. ;-) - Aya T E C 04:08, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Cool. I don't know if they had anything to do with it, but we're now Google hit #15 for "Cookbook". Wow! Doesn't seem to come up anywhere on a "Recipes" search though. GarrettTalk 04:32, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Correction: we're number 10 now. ;) Yauhin 22:08, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

1881 recipes
Should I be re-writing 1881 recipes or just leaving them as-is? Do we want it as a sort of historical record? or is it just the original source for a recipe we expect to be modified? If I modify it, should I remove the ? Kellen T 06:11, 23 August 2005 (UTC)


 * It would probably be best, since they do not fit with the rest of the book. 65.94.52.193 23:25, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

On a related note, I found a wide variety of PD cookbooks over at Project Gutenberg in my search for Custard recipes, including Presidential, vegetarian (a couple, actually), ancient, Belgian, Columbian, etc. Here's their whole home ec section. Perhaps unfortunately, some of these were probably written under the old-fashioned definition of "vegetarian", and might perhaps contain meat ingredients. I've adapted the recipes (changing "slow fire" to "low heat" and adding "corn starch" where before it had only "flour", etc.), but left a credit and a backlink in the talk page. Feel free to yell at me if I did wrong in this.--Polyparadigm 04:03, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Be sure you understand that flour is not cornstarch. It's also not cornmeal or corn masa. Please don't use the term "corn flour". Cornstarch is what you use to thicken sauces. You'd use it for teriyaki, sweet-and-sour, or that stuff that goes on cashew chicken. AlbertCahalan 05:27, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, but in 1887, apparently cornstarch was not available, and so the practice (at least in the White House kitchen) was to thicken custard using wheat flour. I kept that option in the recipe, but included the (now possible, and in my mind preferable) option of thickening the custard with corn starch.  I certainly wouldn't make that kind of suggestion without considering the context.--Polyparadigm 16:46, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

merging of type and category pages
Shall we merge the "type" pages and their respective categories? For instance, Cookbook:Cake with Category:Cake recipes? In this instance, the text from Cookbook:Cake has been copied to the Category:Cake_recipes module, with good effect IMO. This implies, however, that we could merge ingredient pages and their listings (Cookbook:Okra with Category:Okra recipes) and national and ethnic cuisines as well (Cookbook:Cuisine of Canada with Category:Canadian recipes).

This would be a large shift for the way the Cookbook is organized, but I think it is one that makes sense considering most of what we are doing is categorizing recipes based on these classifications (ingredient, cuisine, type, etc). Kellen T 20:33, 28 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Makes sense to me, hell, I was considering going out and doing it without asking. Nmontague 20:39, 28 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Also, we need to get a single way to list cuisines from a country or ethnic group - right now it's both X Cuisine and Cuisine of X. Gotta standardize that.  Nmontague 19:51, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I think "Cuisine of X" are more prominent, but category names are "X recipes". You can't say "Cuisine of vegans"; you can, but you sound silly. Kellen T 23:14, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


 * It's "Cuisine of X" solely because people have trouble remembering the other forms. If you remember, you can and should change the link name. Like this: US Cuisine British Cuisine New Zealander Cuisine 24.110.64.178 01:16, 31 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I can't say that it really worries me a whole lot, as 24.110.64.178 says, we can change the display name easily. BTW, it's more correctly New Zealand Cuisine .;) Geo.T 01:42, 31 August 2005 (UTC)


 * So what do you think about the original proposal Geo? Kellen T 02:43, 31 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Okay, back to the actual topic of this thread &mdash; I agree that merging the type and category pages would generally be a good idea. I'm not so sure about the ingredients though, but it would mean an end to pages that end by saying, here are some random recipes containing ingredient X.... Geo.T 03:42, 31 August 2005 (UTC)


 * The drawback I see of integrating, say, national cuisines with the category page is a lack of multi-dimensional categorization. For instance, with user maintained lists we can have "Cuisine of Canada" with sections for "Dessert" and "Breakfast", etc. The DynamicPageList (if it ever gets installed......) would allow us to generate such lists by fetching all items in both the "Desserts" and "Canadian recipes" categories. But pages using DynamicPageLists must be updated (as with templates) to force them to un-cache. I hope to high hell that mediawiki people are actually working on this, because it's starting to annoy me and may result in some hardcore php hacking. Kellen T 04:22, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I'm going to start doing this. Kellen T 18:51, 2 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Leave Breakfast and Dessert please, and any other pages that are equally nice or better. AlbertCahalan 23:47, 2 September 2005 (UTC)


 * For now, we're just going to do "type" pages, e.g. Cake, Cookies, etc. Kellen T 02:23, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

video
I can produce video in Xvid *.avi format. It plays fine on a non-x86 computer running Debian, which should qualify the format as being free enough.

How should I add videos?

There are lots of things to show:
 * air-flipping an omelet or pancake
 * scrambling an egg
 * adding food to a deep-fat fryer as safely as possible
 * stir-frying


 * Albert, video would be cool. But, maybe you could convert your video to Theora, as used for video content on the Commons (see commons:Commons:File types). Geo.T 07:04, 29 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I would be extremely excited to see videos! Seems like they should go to commons as they could be useful on other wikipedia pages. Maybe this is obvious, but I think we should make a template much like the thumbnail boxes for images where a screenshot could go, perhaps with a little video icon and short description. Kellen T 16:45, 29 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Converting video is bad for the quality. It's like taking a low-quality JPEG, moving the upper-left corner (crop or add 1 row and 1 column), and recompressing as another low-quality JPEG. Given the harsh stand that Debian takes about free software, anything playable on my system should meet the freedom standards for the Commons. Debian even rejects the GNU Free Documentation License as being not free enough! AlbertCahalan 01:18, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I read the specs of this device, and you're right, 320x240 would look like **** when converted.
 * As for the sidebox there's already this video icon. Although I think I'd prefer a thumbnail like Google Video and such use; we could allow optional specification of an image in the infobox, and then grab a choice screengrab from the video so you can see what you're getting. That would be really nice. GarrettTalk 01:50, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Help me figure out how to do this. I have a video showing how to wrap an egg roll. Hmmm, "Show preview" is giving me a funny-looking video icon in the wrong place. Does it work? AlbertCahalan 06:40, 16 September 2005 (UTC)


 * What you could do is make a nice screengrab from the video. For example, like this. Also note the : before the Image:, this prevents it from attempting (and failing) to generate a thumbnail. Since there's no thumbnail the browser will do something else instead, which is why you're seeing a video icon and yet I'm just seeing a broken image's alt text sort of link.
 * Anyway. as you can see the method at right gives you a preview, both direct and indirect links, and even tells you how big and what format. Later on someone can make a pretty table template to automatically fill in most of this info, but for now this will do fine.
 * Oh and the image description page should have a clear link back to the video just in case people click on that instead. GarrettTalk 13:45, 16 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Wow! That looks great! Now all we need to do is ship you some nice white lights! Kellen T 20:07, 16 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I do have some pretty decent lighting, but the camera has a bad auto-adjustment feature. My fellow CVS camcorder hackers have learned how to extract the firmware though, so that might be fixable. It's MIPS-based. Note that I cranked the resolution up from 320x240 to 640x480, and I cut the framerate from 30 FPS to 24 FPS. Go to CVS quickly if you want one; it's only $30. Minor soldering is required. AlbertCahalan 00:11, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
 * It looked pretty good overall, but just a tad dark. Since the video and audio are in separate streams, seems like there should be a util to strip out the audio without affecting the video... Kellen T 00:21, 17 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I've made some templates based on this: and  . Modifications are welcome. Usage:


 * I'd put the MB in the template, and it needs a place for a description, but generally I don't think we're ready for this yet. Were you actually able to watch the video? With what OS, browser, and player? Embedded in the browser, as a window popped up by the browser, or played after you downloaded it? Does it stream? AlbertCahalan 00:11, 17 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I watched it. Debian/Firefox/mplayer. Firefox tried to load it in helix, but I haven't ever gotten helix to work for anything, so I just saved it to disk (so no streaming). Just trying to stay on top of the templates so we don't have to go around retrofitting stuff later. Forgot to mention examples of template usage are on User:Kellen/Scratch. Kellen T 00:21, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Just tried it on windows2k/firefox -- on one machine with WMP6.4 w/ the directshow drivers installed I got glitchy audio but smooth video, as I did with VLC. On another machine, with WMP9 and K-Lite codec pack installed (includes theora and vorbis), it ran smoothly. It was fine on debian as well. yay for weird codec behavior! Kellen T 00:49, 17 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I've changed the screengrab to a JPEG. It's a fraction of the filesize while still appearing the same as the triple-digit-KB PNG version, so you should probably do this in future. As for the video itself, I wonder if you should be uploading these videos to the Commons instead of here. Unless there's something important that you're saying in the audio track I'm sure the foreign Cookbook projects could make good use of your videos as well. GarrettTalk 01:56, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Pictures
I am going to be cooking for a family event in the near future, since it's me stuck with the job I am wondering if there are any recipes out there that anyone really wants to see some pictures of. I am going to do the Sweet Cornbread and probably a few other desserts, but I figure if there's one someone really wants a shot of, I could probably squeeze it into the menu. Nmontague 23:29, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Cookbook:Swedish_Lemon_Angels but that's just cuz I'm thinking about making and eating them at this very moment. Cookbook:Crème Brûlée or Cookbook:Tiramisù wouldn't be bad. I'm still looking for a good vegan substitution for marscipone cheese... Kellen T 02:47, 31 August 2005 (UTC)


 * The Cookbook:Date Bar is easy, attractive, and yummy. The Cookbook:Saucepan Fudge Crackle Cookies are wonderful if you don't mind something a bit more difficult. If the family is large, take the Cookbook:Molasses Cookies recipe at the original size (double it) and you can feed many dozens. For a much smaller group, Cookbook:Apple Crisp would be good. AlbertCahalan 05:16, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, outside of the Brulee, which I don't feel like doing because of how much of a clutz I am, I'd probably end up burning it all to hell or worse. The others I'll see what I can do about though. Nmontague 05:53, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Lost recipe
I found Cookbook:Paste for tarts in the transwiki log and don't know where to link to it. Snargle 01:21, 4 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I took care of it. Kellen T 22:32, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Category naming of 'type' pages
If we're going to be integrating the category pages with the "types" of food (cake, cookies, etc). Should the categories be named differently? For example, should it be "Category:Cake" or "Category:Cake recipes"? We currently have a mixed system, with mostly "____ recipes" winning out (but that's because I made a bunch of them and inferred that was the format; Gentgeen also did a bunch IIRC), but with notable exceptions ("Pasta" for one).

Also a reminder; we should be sure to create appropriate redirect pages from modules in the cookbook namespace to the merged category pages. Kellen T 22:39, 5 September 2005 (UTC)


 * It would probably be best to have them all be "Category:Pasta Recipes" and such since we could then have "Category:Italian Recipes" and such, "Category:Vegan Recipes" works too, I think that would be the best system for the job. Though I could be wrong.  Nmontague 22:55, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

new frontpage proposal
I have reformatted the frontpage; please see that Cookbook/Temp meets your (collective) approval. If it does, I shall replace the existing frontpage. Kellen T 19:10, 20 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I think it looks better, a bit cleaner in it's presentation. Nmontague 20:16, 20 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I felt rather lost, wondering where most of the page had gone until I spotted the rightmost column. I don't get it; what determines the column something goes in? Also note that these multi-column layouts always seem to have problems with some columns growing more than others. It gets tough to keep the columns the same length. I'm seeing some icky word-wrapping in that rightmost column. AlbertCahalan 00:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I was trying to have a more logical layout for the recipes and give them more frontpage real-estate since they're the purpose of the cookbook in the first place. I'm not that fond of the "list" format for each subsection that we have now, but I'm not real sure what to do with the lists (except getting rid of them completely). The balancing of lengths is always an issue, as is line-breaks, since they're at least partially broswer-dependent. The change might be somewhat harsh compared to the old page, but see if you think a new user would find it more useful or not. Kellen T 01:32, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


 * If you want to really shake things up, try putting the featured stuff on the right. You could add a featured tool. (I reserve the right to dislike it though... it's just an idea that seems kind of reasonable right now.) The link collection goes in the left 2/3 of the screen, maybe in the old style. AlbertCahalan 00:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I'll make a mock up of this as well. Kellen T 01:32, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Done at Cookbook/Temp2. I think this one looks better than the current one, but not quite as good as the previous attempt, and it also doesn't address the sorting of the recipes (which I think is dismal at the moment). I do think the featured whatevers do better in a sidebar, though. Any other ideas? Kellen T 02:21, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking a slight expansion or emphasis of the Recipes section would make this layout really good. Suppose "Recipes" becomes a non-link called "Recipes by Something" and the index gets a link to itself. Between "Special Diets" and "Basic Food Groups" there could be a divider of some sort. Note that there once were extra headers; I removed them because they were very ugly and they took up lots of vertical space. A good divider would be there to guide the eye, but would not itself attract notice. Possibly lame suggestion: a black rhombus as tall as a line of text and as wide as "Gluten-Free, Healthful Eating". AlbertCahalan 02:37, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Hrm, perhaps there is some way to meld the heirarchical view into this without making the page terribly long. I'll muck around with it s'more. Kellen T 02:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Something to keep in mind is that the page should be tolerable on a 640x480 display, nice from 1024x768 to 1600x1200, and hopefully take advantage of screens like the 2560x1600 Apple Cinema HD Display and larger. AlbertCahalan 02:23, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Of course =). I shrunk my browser window down pretty small and it seemed to work ok... we have the wiki sidebar taking up ~200-250 px already, though, so at 640, it's quite tight. Kellen T 02:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Looking over the pages that are listed on Category:Cookbook_pages_needing_work, there are a few types of pages listed there:
 * Recipes close to being ok
 * Pages needing simple formatting and categorization. (Cookbook:Spritzgeback)
 * Pages with multiple recipes. (Cookbook:Pizza_Sauce, Cookbook:Sushi)
 * Pages lacking only one or two measurements/temperatures/times. (Cookbook:Black_Forest_Cake).
 * Recipes needing serious work
 * Pages from the decameron and 1881 books, which usually lack exact measurements, oven temperatures, or cooking times. (Cookbook:Spring_soup)
 * "Info" pages about a type of food which should be recipes, which may or may not have external links. (Cookbook:Savoiardi)
 * Recipe outlines, lacking all but the most general cooking information (Cookbook:Salted_mustard_greens_and_shredded_meat_noodle_soup)
 * Pages which are convoluted or inconsistent (Cookbook:Pizza)

User:AlbertCahalan suggested that the banner for might be overkill for some of these recipes, and I agree. Shall we incorporate some sort of message, similar to to suggest that only minor changes are needed (but denote them anyway) rather than the more abusive style of the  banner? Kellen T 00:54, 24 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Not to answer you, sorry, but: I intend to deal with Pizza. There are two things I haven't fully figured out yet. First, should the history remain at Pizza or should it follow the recipe there to a new page covering that recipe? Second, what do I call that recipe? Ideas include: Pizzaria Pizza, Standard Pizza, and Easy-to-screw-up Pizza :-). It's not the only style of thin-crust pizza, so I don't like that as a title. AlbertCahalan 02:52, 24 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I talked to Nmontague on IRC and he mentioned possibly doing something with pizza. I am inclinded to just purge it and get a proper recipe. As for the history; we're somewhat inconsistent with that. Some transwikis get the whole history, some just get a link to WP, and when we copy articles around (or at least when I've done it) the histories generally don't follow. That of course doesn't mean it's right though... Kellen T 03:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I expect problems with foods that are normally ingredients, but which have recipes: tortilla, crouton, english muffin, ketchup, egg roll wrapper, puff pastry, applesauce, salsa, hot sauce, teriyaki sauce, ravioli, jam, stock, broth, gravy, meatball, mayonaise... AlbertCahalan 02:52, 24 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I've redone savoiardi, I did it with a good recipe that should be of some use - I am probably just inviting extra work by having done it, since it is the real  lady finger and most people will more likely expect the sorta muted version that is more common in stores.  So I'll probably touch up the information on the two pages and try to find a more traditional  Tiramisù recipe too, though the one there turned out alright.  Nmontague 02:07, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

English v. Other language Recipe names
I suggest that the "common" english name for a recipe be used for the module name. If necessary/desired a redirect from the name in the original language can be created. In cases where the non-english name is the common name, that name should be used ("Huevos rancheros"). This came up as I was beginning to edit Cookbook:Khaeng Keaw Wan, which is a recipe for Thai Green Curry. Kellen T 18:15, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Are there any objections to this? If not, I will be adding it to the Cookbook:Policy. Kellen T 21:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't think the common name is really always the best one to list as the first name. For example, some of the French don't really like the way anglophones often refer to egged-toast as french toast.  They feel the same way about things like french fries and such, so perhaps ensuring a neutral common name instead of the most common one as the name for the article and putting the others in as emboldened titles within the description of the recipe would be better.  Nmontague 03:48, 25 October 2005 (UTC)


 * The French should talk! A French term for "condom" translates literally as "English hat". I expect that fr.wikibooks.org will do as the French speakers like, and en.wikibooks.org will do as the English speakers like. We have enough trouble already with the 30% that are non-American; we sure don't need any additional burdens. AlbertCahalan 03:10, 26 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Go with the simple English name. Add redirects as needed, and put the non-English stuff as a secondary name. This is especially important because many of us can't type non-ASCII characters. We have to cut-and-paste. AlbertCahalan 03:10, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Formatting of Recipe Pages
A couple of Recipe Pages have been reformatted - I think that this change is detrimental. The following Recipe Pages follow a format in which the recipes are listed and categorized when possible:

Cookbook:Breakfast Recipes Cookbook:Meat Recipes Cookbook:Pasta Recipes Cookbook:Rice Recipes Cookbook:Holiday Recipes Cookbook:Small Meals Cookbook:Bread Recipes Cookbook:Sauces Cookbook:Side dishes Cookbook:Dessert Cookbook:Snacks Cookbook:Confections Cookbook:Easy Dinners

I think that this is the best format for people who are looking for recipes. Ease of use in finding recipes is an absolute necessity for any cookbook.

The following pages did follow the pattern, but they have been altered:

Category:Salads From Wikibooks (Redirected from Cookbook:Salad Recipes)

Category:Stews From Wikibooks (Redirected from Cookbook:Stews) Not only do they fail to follow the pattern of the majority of the recipe pages, many of the recipes are listed under "C", with the preface "cookbook".

Alcinoe 09:55, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * See Talk:Cookbook. This is a known and desired behavior. Why? It's much easier to maintain the lists via categories (because you maintain them only on the specific recipe page). The lists on the specific pages get horribly out of date and have fewer recipes than the category pages. True, the category pages are not subdivided, but for most of our type pages (e.g. salads, stews) this is fine. For breakfast, etc it's a bit more complicated, but there will probably be better resolutions for that kind of page in the future. The sorting is also an issue, but one that should be resolved when we get a proper namespace for the cookbook (there's an open bug for this...). This sort of change is done with an eye on maintainability, and more pages will be like this in the future. Kellen T 15:59, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * It was much nicer the way it was before. Look at the Desserts section - it is far easier to use than the Salads page. This is because it is divided into categories - clear, easy to understand and attractive. You don't have to scan through the "C's" if you want a recipe for pudding. Because it is necessary to give recipes individual names because often there are several versions of the same dish available, alphabetical order means very little. What do "category: salads" "subcategories" and "pages in category salads" mean to the average user who is just looking for a recipe? Have you ever seen another cookbook or another cooking site set up in this manner?Alcinoe 18:14, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Some specific technical issues:
 * Cookbook:Desserts is a better layout, but consider the fact that it is organizing a different kind of data. It's a fairly high-level category which categorizes a whole range of types of dishes (cakes, cookies, cupcakes), unlike "salad" which is a specific type of dish. For now, we're only moving the type pages (think of "cake", "salad", "cookies") into a category structure, so, for instance Cookbook:Breakfast and Cookbook:Dessert are not going to be altered for the forseeable future.
 * The "old" Cookbook:Salad page had 14 recipes. Category:Salads has 26. There have been some recipes added, but the reason the category is more complete is that each individual recipe can be "tagged" with the correct category w/o having to hand-maintain lists everywhere. Similarly, the Cookbook:Dessert page has 70 recipes, while the category has 107.
 * The "C" prefix is annoying, I agree, but it is a condition of the (relatively) short-lived lifespan of this version of mediawiki. We should have a proper namespace soon enough and the sorting should work itself out. The problem is that we are using a pseudo-namespace for the titles ("Cookbook:" means nothing special to the mediawiki software).
 * "category: salads" "subcategories" and "pages in category salads" might not mean much, but it's fairly obvious what the content of those sections are. Also I have seen a cookbook set up in this way; recipezaar, which I think provides some of the easiest navigation of all recipe sites. Mediawiki needs some improvements to be able to handle category intersections like recipezaar, but that too will occur in time.
 * Kellen T 20:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Pork 'n' Ham
We currently have Category:Pork recipes. Do we need a distinct Category:Ham recipes, or should the two just get mushed together? Kellen T 05:17, 20 October 2005 (UTC)


 * It would probably be best to leave the two apart. Keeping things that are so specific as ham or bacon apart makes sense because they aren't really inter-changable meats.  You can't substitute a porkchop when the recipe calls for a half pound of bacon.  But it really shouldn't be a problem if they are merged together, just make sure that the recipes in the category are specific as to what cut of meat they need instead of saying flatly "pork".  Nmontague 03:54, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

"General" Asian recipes
There's Cookbook:General Asian cuisines, which seems like a cop out. "Asian cuisine" should include recipes from Russia, most former Soviet states, most of the Middle East, India, and East Asia, minimally. The category, Category:Asian recipes is somewhat better. Anybody feel like reconciling (I don't)? Kellen T 06:19, 20 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I can take a look at that this weekend, if someone wants to do it before me that'd be stellar, but otherwise I can run through it. Nmontague 03:55, 25 October 2005 (UTC)


 * No, Cookbook:General Asian cuisines is perfectly fine. Think about cuisine, not plate techtonics. General Asian cuisine is what you get when you go to the "All-you-can-eat Asian Buffet" in the USA, minus anything that is definitely from one specific Asian country. The general flavors would be those of East Asia, maybe with influences of Southeast Asia, Mongolia, and the Polynesian islands. AlbertCahalan 03:02, 26 October 2005 (UTC)


 * But those are American cuisines, not Asian. That they use Asian techniques doesn't make them Asian.  Nmontague 21:14, 26 October 2005 (UTC)


 * You're still thinking about plate techtonics, fault lines, magma movement, and so on. This is an issue of cuisine, not geological processes. The geological definition is useless because it covers everything and nothing, leading to the logical conclusion that general Asian cuisine does not exist. AlbertCahalan 03:41, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Also, while I used "USA" in my example, you may well substitute "Europe" or "International Space Station". The point is that general Asian cuisine does not come from a specific Asian country. It's just Asian-like, for a definition of "Asia" that is centered around the eastern part. AlbertCahalan 03:41, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * If that is how you want to do it, then there is next to no North American, Canadian, American, Mexican, Brazillian, or any other American-continental cuisines. They all draw from one of the European or Asian cooking styles.  The national origin of a food is what matters, where it comes from is it's home, not if it's based on the cooking techniques of another nation.  Like with Pizza, it's origin is Naples - but a Deep Dish Pizza is American, not Italian.  Or anything Creol or Cajun, which are just a modified version of what French cooking is, do they not exist either?  Nmontague 17:55, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Cuisine categories will always be a rough judgement call. Creol and Cajun have greatly diverged from French, though a "see also" link to French cuisine (and the other way too perhaps) would be appropriate. When in doubt, as with the California Roll sushi, go ahead and use more than one category. The whole point of categories is to help people find things I hope, not to play out odd little wars. So I'd link to General Asian Cuisine from the regular Asian Cuisine page, and I'd link back the other way, and I might link from the California Cuisine page as well. AlbertCahalan 19:27, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Garlic Pork Chops with Black Mushrooms has been assigned to California, since the mushroom within only grows along the Rocky Mountains and is pretty uncommon for cooking because of the difficulty of consistantly cultivating it. I've seen some Australian recipes for it as well, but other than that it is an American product that is cooked in America.  Nmontague 19:11, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Both an ingredient and something to be made
How should we name categories for items that will have both recipes for the item and recipes involving the item, e.g. barbeque sauce and bread? We have Category:Barbecue recipes now, but could conceivably have Category:Barbeque sauce recipes, which is ambiguous. Kellen T 06:43, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Delete multi-parent categories?
I think I'd like to do away with most (not necessarily all) categories with multiple parent categories. Examples: Reasoning: making categories like this requires that essentially all high level categories be recreated under each ingredient. To make this consistent, virtually every type of dish (appetizers, mains, pies, pot pies, etc etc etc) would need to be created under "beef recipes".
 * Category:Barbecued_chicken
 * Category:Beef_sandwiches
 * Category:Beef_soups
 * Category:Beef_stews

An appropriate area for multiple-parent categories might be a place where the type of dish is by definition a subcategory of something else. Category:Borscht recipes should be a subcategory of both Category:Soup recipes and Category:Beet recipes because borscht is by definition a beet soup. Kellen T 06:53, 20 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Makes sense to me. Nmontague 03:59, 25 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I made a category, Category:Cookbook:Unnecessary categories to capture these. This isn't dictatorial, so anything in there should be considered fair game to keep; just classifying things as I come across them. Kellen T 04:13, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Basic foodstuffs
(Last one tonight, I promise) What's the purpose of the "Basic Foodstuffs" page/category as opposed to ingredients? I see that Cookbook:Basic_foodstuffs is fairly high level, but Category:Basic Foodstuffs seems very unevenly used, sometimes for very specific things, and other more obvious things seem to be missing (like wheat). So what's the deal? Kellen T 07:27, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Jewish v. Yiddish
We have both Category:Jewish recipes and Category:Yiddish recipes. Is this a useful distinction? I am not qualified in this area. Kellen T 00:40, 25 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Yiddish recipes would be like a subset (subcategory) of Jewish recipes. Just like Cantonese to Chinese or Italian to Mediterranean --SamSam 05:26, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Okay, the subcategorization has been handled...finally. Why didn't either of you folks do it?--Polyparadigm 00:30, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Adding more nutritional info to the Recipe_Summary template?
The Recipe_Summary template seems pretty basic. It has energy (kj/Cal), but it'd be good to update it to include additional nutritional information, such as:


 * amount of fat
 * amount of carbs
 * total Glycaemic Load -  Irrevenant 14:06, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * We have a hard enough time getting calories for a dish. I think more complex additions are probably not a good idea at least at this point. We do have a separate nutrition summary template which might be more appropriate for that stuff. That summary is much more complete, but also therefore much more work and much more of a pain in the ass for which to calculate the values. Kellen T 21:19, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree it's a pain and I expect that a lot of the time it won't be filled in by the original author. But (in my experience) the nature of wikis is that, if the template has spots available for the information, passersby will tend to fill them in.  I, for example, intend to go through the existing recipes and calculate the glycemic load - because that's the bit that interests me.  But at the moment I have nowhere to put the information.  Irrevenant 22:14, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I suspect you could make another template that would butt up against the summary for the GI, without needing to go through all the recipes w/ existing summaries and changing them (which due to the nature of mediawiki at the moment, you'd have to do... or get a bunch of ugly crap in every unfilled template...). Kellen T 23:22, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I think the Recipe_Summary template should be deleted. It's way too hard to fill in. Maybe we could have a template with just one parameter that would make a nice box. You could then add line breaks as desired, along with whatever info you want. AlbertCahalan 23:57, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * The Recipes_Summary template exists as the backend for the recipesummary one (see Cookbook:Policy). If you mean both should be deleted, I disagree. Templates like that encourage standardization and clarity. They maintain a consistent visual appearance throughout the cookbook. As with programming, it may be "hard" at first, but once you get used to it, it's pretty easy. I don't think we can expect first-time users to get everything right from the get-go, and that's why we have more committed contributors do cleanup on their submissions. I don't think a template to produce "a nice box" is all that helpful; we'll end up with a pretty box with the same inconsistent mismash of information that we have right now (or at least had, until recently). Kellen T 07:52, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Do not take this to mean that I think the recipesummary is the end-all for templates and information, but that we should consistently extend it throughout the book if we're going to do that. Kellen T 07:54, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


 * We sure do have standardization and clarity. It's standard to fill every entry with question marks, which provides clarity of a sort. This isn't being useful. Consistent visual appearance can be had with a very simple template that makes a nice box. Then we can just fill it with keyword-value pairs as we see fit, avoiding all the junk entries for things we have no clue about. AlbertCahalan 04:03, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I happen to think that the upside of having a consistent template outweighs the fact that we don't have caloric values for everything. If you like, we could just remove the often-empty calorie values; I don't particularly care about those. Kellen T 07:51, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I think that someone should write a Firefox plugin that takes the quantities of butter, flour, sugar, etc. and computes calories, glycemic load, etc., as well as generating a nice linked, Wiki-syntax ingredients list. Unfortunately, I am not a hacker.--Polyparadigm 03:47, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


 * This would be awesome, and would probably be better integrated into a cookbook-specific piece of software (on the server-side, i mean). This would also require a database full of the caloric content, etc of each ingredient. I believe there is something like this on some of the bigger recipe sites. Kellen T 07:52, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I was just about to suggest that maybe Wikibooks:Cookbook should maintain a table of nutritional information for standard ingredients, but this idea is 10x better. Is it feasible? Irrevenant 12:19, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Only if we separate the cookbook from wikibooks. Right now we're limited in a few different areas because of the mediawiki software requirements for wikipedia. This is a somewhat different issue since it'd be a project-specific extention, but it is one we could work on at least if we had lower-level control of the wiki. Some people have suggested even that wikis are not appropriate for dealing with recipes. That may be possible as well if we want to start piling on custom features. Kellen T 19:55, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Well yes, a wiki is probably not appropriate. A rather hacked wiki, with lots of special-purpose built-in functions that are used like magic templates, would get the job done fairly well. We could then mark each ingredient with density, typical cost, typical package sizes for each country, seasonal availability, nutrition, substitutions, restricted diet flags, and so on. We could convert units and scale recipes with a user-defined tradeoff between accuracy and nice round numbers. Users could express a strong or weak preference for mass or volume. AlbertCahalan 04:03, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Well somebody got up on the sassy side of bed. I'm not advocating that that should happen, but that a prerequisite would be more control over the software. Kellen T 07:51, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Table of nutritional information for ingredients?
I think it would be a good idea to have a table on nutritional information for ingredients in the cookbook. If there was a single standardised source for this, it would be easier for people to provide calorie info etc. for their recipes.

Irrevenant 23:22, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, perhaps each ingredient page should contain nutritional information for that ingredient? Irrevenant 04:50, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Recent Changes Question
There are so many pages here that I'm having difficulty orienting myself to the correct forums for discussion. Assuming this is the correct place to ask this question, is there a page that lists only the recent changes to the Cookbook? If so, I think the link should be clearly stated on the front page of the Cookbook. kneague


 * Specific book recent changes hasn't been implimented yet, although it was requested as a new feature. When it is enabled, I'm sure it will be well advertized. Gentgeen 01:00, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


 * My technique (most of ours probably) is to have recentpages show a large number of pages and then to use firefox to highlight all occurences of "Cookbook". Kellen T 00:56, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

cookbook namespace!!!!
[http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1969 omg! bug fixed!] Kellen T 23:30, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Except now the discussions aren't properly linked. I've reopened and added a comment. Kellen T 23:47, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * We might just have to go in by hand, or use a bot, and move all the "talk:Cookbook" pages to "Cookbook talk:" pages. Gentgeen 00:26, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Bug re-closed. Having talked with hashar and brion on IRC we have 3 options:
 * Have a "move party" and do it by hand.
 * Have someone with a bot move every page.
 * Write a maintainence script (probably at least partially like namespaceDupes.php) to do it.
 * The first two are definitely possible, but seem like a waste of effort. I'm going to look at the script and see how easy it is. Kellen T 12:13, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Further discussion on bugzilla has revealed that there may be a tool in another branch of the wiki code ("wikidata") so I'm going to peek around there. Kellen T 13:31, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Interesting things that now work:
 * all pages from the cookbook (look ma, an automatic index)
 * recent changes for just the cookbook
 * Category:Recipes should start being sorted correctly (once each page has an update, I think ... because of how the caching works)
 * It shouldn't be necessary to alias the category links on each page any more (in fact, it might be a negative thing to do so if the page gets moved)

Other things: Kellen T 13:31, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * cookbook-limited search for chocolate doesn't work yet, but should when the search indexes are updated.
 * This may affect the rationale for title case.

Messed up: We previously had Cookbook:t and Cookbook:T as distinct things, but since these are now equivilent, the references need to be untangled. Kellen T 16:02, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * also anything else that began with a lowercase letter. These are on the last page of the AllPages listing. Kellen T 16:04, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * This is seriously bad. We should not be in a Cookbook namespace. We should be at cookbook.wikibooks.org or similar. Trying to share a wiki keeps hurting us again and again. Note that the wiki can be made case-sensitive, which is the high-performance and unambiguous way of doing things. AlbertCahalan 19:04, 9 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The Cookbook is an integral part of Wikibooks. Recently there has been a big clean-up campaign on wikibooks, and things are looking better - we're not there yet, but the wiki is improving. The Cookbook will do well as an integral part of wikibooks - It has already been featured as the Book of the Month in March. Once the tidying up of the rest of wikibooks is complete, it will be time to rename all pages in the Cookbook so they begin with "Cookbook/", just like all other pages in wikibooks and bring the separate cookbook namespace to an end. I can understand why, before the tidying up, there may have been a desire to have a new namespace to separate the cookbook wheat from the wikibooks chaff - but that reason will soon no longer be relevant, Jguk 08:35, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately it's not the cleanup of the rest of wikibooks that's the problem; it's that there are mediawiki features that are very useful, but which are unavailable to just subpages (read my bulleted list above). A separate wiki, as Albert suggests, is probably the best solution so that the Cookbook can make full use of the available features and extensions to MW. A separate namespace allows us to access some of these features, but as noted above, it did screw up somethings as well. Kellen T 09:42, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Should the main cookbook page (this one) be moved
With the Cookbook: namespace online and functioning, should this page be moved? Right now, this page is in the "main" namespace, while all the content it links to is in the "Cookbook" namespace. It might be helpful if the cookbook front page were moved to Cookbook:Main Page, or perhaps Cookbook:Table of Contents. Any other thoughts before I am bold and just start moving pages? Gentgeen 13:07, 2 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I think you're correct. Kellen T 18:28, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Orphaned pages

 * Cookbook/Temp3


 * That's mine. Started to reorganize then got (very) distracted. Could be deleted if somebody's doing cleanup. Kellen T 03:09, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Further to a discussion in #wikibooks
Hi all. I may have a vested interest in this, since I am on 2 restricted diets, Gluten & Milk Free, but I think that you may like this. I have noticed from looking at the recipe index under each category, that you have no (immediate) way of identifying meals as belonging to a restricted diet group, eg. Low Sodium, Low Fat, Gluten Free, Suitable for Diabetics, etc.

I propose a system of labelling meals in the index using a 2 or 3 letter acronym or sign of some description, which provides immediate guidance to someone on a restricted diet, that the specified meal will be suitable for them to cook. In all fairness, looking at the index and having to search through every recipe manually, with no immediate identification of its content or suitability, is frankly time consuming.

When I say to identify the recipes, simply add something like these following the name of the recipe:

GF for Gluten Free

MF (or LF) for Milk Free or Lactose Free

DS for Diabetic Suitable

RS for Reduced Sodium

RF for Reduced Fat

In fairness, I think also that a pictorial symbol added to the recipe's page, such as pictures of certain foods crossed out, may be needed for people who either cannot read well, or are learning English.

Your views on this idea are most welcome, good or otherwise. Let's see if we can pull this off.

Tmalmjursson 18:48, 31 January 2006 (UTC) Talk to Thor


 * I wonder how could we show reduced sodium food... But I think the idea is good. There already is a section called "Special Diets" on the Cookbook main page, I think we could base on it and create category for most important of these diets. --Derbeth talk 19:00, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * When I say reduced sodium for example, I mean meals with Low or Zero added salt, the kind of meals which would be suitable for people with High blood pressure and heart conditions. Basically, these would be meals where they are cooked with no added salt into them, and we leave it to the consumer of the food to season it according to what they are allowed.  So if a meal has less than one-quarter of a teaspoon of salt, we can mark it as RS, since the amount of added salt is little or none.  Same with reduced fat, like using lean meats, chicken, etc... cooking without butter or excessive amounts of solid fat.  Tmalmjursson 19:24, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

We already have a mechanism for this. See Cookbook:Special Diets and Category:Recipes by diet. Uncle G 21:24, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, Uncle G. I am aware of the current system, however, I fear it is inadequate for what it does.  Like myself, being Milk & Gluten Free, a better system for categorisation would be to mark the recipes, for example, if you have one which contains neither Gluten or Milk, GF - MF next to the recipe would indicate immediately, a meal which would be suitable on both diets.  I fear that as it stands, if someone posts a recipe like that, we are gonna wind up ultimately with a set of crossover categories, such as *Suitable for Multiple Diets*, or recipes appearing in more than one category under the diets.  As I see this, to identify the recipes like this would provide a clear indication straight away, rather than trawling through the categories to find one which matches all dietary needs.  Tmalmjursson 23:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC) Talk to Thor
 * The recipes are marked, by dint of being in the categories. And there's nothing wrong with a recipe being in multiple categories if it qualifies for multiple diets.  The entries in the index aren't marked.  (That's a subject for Cookbook talk:Recipes.)  But the recipes themselves are.  Now there is scope for improvement.  (For example: We could create a system of template tags that expand to a category and to an image, and tag recipes using those instead of adding the categories explicitly.)  But the basic mechanism for the recipes themselves is already there. Uncle G 00:32, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that ultimately there is nothing wrong with having recipes in multiple categories, but when it comes to hunting the recipes out for suitability, searching one category is no prob, but then having to go see if that recipe appears in a second or even third category is gonna be a nightmare in my opinion. You say there is scope there for improvement, through this template thing.  What proposal would you have in mind to organise under that system?  More to the point, would you like me to transfer this section to Cookbook talk:Recipes? Tmalmjursson 01:25, 1 February 2006 (UTC) Talk to Thor
 * Uncle G is correct; you are suggesting that we should duplicate the category information into the names of the pages, which is unnecessary. What you really want is a set-intersection view of categories. The current mediawiki implementation does not do this, but I believe it is being worked on by the development group. Though it's unappealing since we'd all like to have the ideal cookbook now, I suggest you wait for category intersection. What you are proposing as a stand in requires duplicated effort and could end up being bad/annoying in most cases (Cookbook:Boiled Chicken GF LF DS). There is one exception I think where having that sort of naming is useful, and that is when you have recipes for the same item which are substantial variations based upon diet. We already do this for vegan recipes: Cookbook:Chili and Cookbook:Chili (Vegan). So recipes like Cookbook:Chili (Reduced Fat) or Cookbook:Brownies (Gluten-Free) make sense to me. Kellen T


 * For trivial or generic changes like "low sodium", let the cook sort it out. For less obvious recipe-specific substitutions, add a note to the "variations" section. For big changes like "vegan meatloaf", create a new recipe. AlbertCahalan 02:58, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to see the GF on the recipe too, even though I have no other sensitivities I know lots of Celiacs who do. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.167.193.50 (talk • contribs).


 * It's not a good idea. Use categories. Kellen T 23:21, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

German Cookbook
Hi there,

I would like to ask, whether there is an interest to adopt an idea from the german wikibooks-Project. There is a small helper to create/add a new recipe. If there is any interest i would insert the helper into the english Cookbook. But my english is not well enough to compete with a native speaker. I would need help from someone who is able to create a description how to create a good recipe according to the rules of english wb. To see de:Kochbuch -- ThePacker 20:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Adding Indian/Pakistani dishes
Hello! I found out that the Cookbook is accesible for all. So, can we submit any Pakistani/Indian dishes in English? If so, please respond.

Mastermind 007 09:35, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


 * You may submit any recipes you like, in English, so long as they are not copyrighted. You should make an effort to follow the Cookbook:Policy and Cookbook:Policy/Recipe template, and to check Category:Indian recipes so as not to duplicate existing recipes (improve them instead). If appropriate, also create Category:Pakistani recipes. Kellen T 10:51, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Special diets policy section
I have added a section on special diets to Cookbook:Policy which I think encodes what we do already. Kellen T 20:07, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

New Template/Catagory for recipes w/o images.
I created Template:Need Photo (To mark recipe use: ) which will also add the recipe to Category:Recipes Needing Photos. Grimm
 * Heh, that's pretty much all of them, eh? Kellen T 20:49, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Heh heh - Well, at the moment, yes. Grimm
 * Hrm, I'm not so sure about the notice that gets printed (since it'll be on essentially every page)... maybe if you selected a set of otherwise excellent recipes for "photo work". You could maybe even get a monthly project going to have people make those recipes and take nice photos. I tend to think the notice on the page is unnecessary since most photos are going to come from more invested cookbook contributors rather than the general public. Kellen T 18:31, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

If you want to tag all recipes missing images you could alter the code of the new cookbook template to insert Category:Recipes Needing Photos when the image field is left blank. Makes Need Photo pretty redundant. Discordance 22:53, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
 * That's certainly do-able. I thought it would be more useful to have a category which tells us which recipes already have images, since as I said above, almost all recipes have no images. Shall I add a "Recipes w/o images" category as well? Kellen T 12:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Missed that youd already done that. But articles with images doesn't seem too helpful a category, how are you supposed to know whats not on that list? Discordance 17:48, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
 * It's a helpful category for selecting featured recipes, and considering how few recipes actually have photos at the moment, it seems pretty obvious that you could click on basically any link and get to a recipe w/o a photo. That being said, if you find it useful to have such a category, I shall implement it. Kellen T 21:28, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Book of the Month Winner
Congratulations on your win. I have already put the winner banner on your main page. However, there are a couple other you might want to try. Wikibooks:Book_of_the_month#Badges_of_Honor Klingoncowboy4 01:26, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Recipe variants
I have a variation for a recipe to add, the recipe listed appears to be the traditional recipe, I'm unsure whether i should be making a new article (what would I call it it doesnt have a special name) or trying to explain the variations in the variations section. Discordance 21:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * If your recipe is a substantial variant (largely different ingredient proportions, etc) which aims for a different result (say, fudge brownies over cake brownies) then you should make a new page and find some way of distinguishing it (e.g. Cookbook:Fudge Brownies). If your variation is minor (say, rolling a cookie in cocoa instead of sugar) then you should just do it in the variations section. Kellen T 01:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Its not substantial looking over everything I think i'll be able to include it in the variants section thanks. Discordance 19:24, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

IMPROVED! Recipe summary template
The recipe summary template has been drastically improved. All parameters to the template are now optional, so empty values will no longer display as nasty wikicode, and we do not need to have "? Calories" in everything. ALSO! There is now room for an image, so you can put an image right above the summary. You can find examples at Template:Recipesummary/Examples. Kellen T 17:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)


 * There is now also automatic wording for the difficult ("Very Easy", "Easy", "Medium", "Difficult", "Very Difficult"), and automatic categories for each of these: Category:Very Easy recipes, Category:Easy recipes, Category:Medium Difficulty recipes, Category:Difficult recipes, Category:Very Difficult recipes. I'll be updating all the existing recipes with these templates to clean out unnecessary values. Kellen T 12:47, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Also there are automatic categories for:
 * Category:Recipes with images
 * Category:Recipes without servings
 * Category:Recipes without cooking time
 * Kellen T 18:51, 8 March 2006 (UTC)




 * Sweet. Nice work Kellen. Gentgeen 09:51, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Kellen T 12:19, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot to mention that everyone should read Template:Recipesummary/Examples (or just copy a working template) because I slightly changed the order in which you put things for the short version of the template (the one w/o parameter names). I just fixed some errors there, so it's now correct =).Kellen T 12:19, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Ingredients
I've noticed each ingredient has its own category of recipes, ive been starting the same in the bartending book, to make things easier i made vodka etc which is used in the ingredient section to add a link to the ingredient's page and it also inserts the category. Saves time and keeps all the links pointing to the right place and categories. Discordance 22:42, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Recipe identifiers
At the suggestion of Kellen, I'm bringing this up: I have made two templates so far as recipe indicators. I was thinking that they'd be a quick way for someone too tell if a recipe can fit into their diet. This would work for veganism, vegetarianism (with various degrees, most likely), kosher diets, halal diets, and such. It could also work to say "This recipe has gluten!" or "This recipe has milk!" (Because it'd be easier in the something-free diets to do it like that.)

Thoughts? Soviet Dolphin 22:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC) Soviet Dolphin

I like them. Is there a list you're working from for the various categories of recipes that need these little info boxes? Gentgeen 09:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure about the need to distinguish veg-milk, veg-eggs, etc. Maybe we should just haev and  (and gluten-free, whatever else you want) - these could automagically include the recipe in the appropriate category as well. If we wanted to get over-fancy, this sort of stuff could be integrated into the recipesummary. The advantage of that would be the consolidation of all that information in a single place, but the downside is of course that it requires a fancy template and knowledge of how to use it. Kellen T 13:10, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not so good with fancy templates, I'm afraid. I would think that these could just be applied in a separate box down the page a bit; I've been choosing the procedure section to host them. I think we could possibly avoid have a specific "vegetarian with eggs" and "vegetarian with milk" and what-have-you, but we'd need to have warnings. Probably red boxes with warnings like: "This product contains milk", "this product contains eggs", "this product contains gluten and eggs". That could be complicated, though, and it might be better to just apply more, uh, solid identifiers for now? Vegan, kosher, halal, et cetera? Soviet Dolphin 19:12, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Well I could easily do the writing of the template if it was decided it was a good idea. Don't you think if someone is a vegetarian or vegan, they'll be smart enough to read the ingredients (3 inches away from the box) to see if there is milk or eggs? I almost think the boxes are redundant in that respect. I think that categorization of recipes is key, though, since this is what helps vegetarians/vegans find the recipes in the first place. Kellen T 01:32, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


 * This is something that would require a bot. Without a bot, adding or editing a recipe becomes very painful. Please prefix the names with something like BotControlled- so that nobody feels they have to add 42 different templates whenever they add a recipe. (alternately, one could hack cookbook-specific features into a wiki) We really need to keep the basic wiki pages editable by people who don't work here full-time. AlbertCahalan 02:49, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Bot or not, I'm supportive of at least the concept. Is it possible to implement it, and let it slowly take hold? While a bot won't be perfect (and for vegan and kosher, it won't work at all), at least it will be a start. Then, we could have a bot put pages with the tag under the appropriate categories, if needed. Why don't we give it a shot? Scytheml 05:19, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Separate Cookbooks Wiki
Should we attempt to persuade wikimedia to move the Cookbook to its own wiki intallation, perhaps at cookbook.wikibooks.org? Over the cookbook's short history, we've had a number of problems which arise from us sharing a wiki with the rest of wikibooks and which have only partially been resolved by bugfixes and the cookbook namespace. Reasons we might want a separate wiki installation: Reasons why we might not want a separate wiki:
 * Turn off case-insensitive first letters (t versus T for teaspoon and tablespoon)
 * Cookbook-only standard wiki features (uncategorized pages, recent changes, search, all pages, etc)
 * Turn on extensions that wikimedia developers are unwilling to use wikibooks-wide (e.g. DynamicPageLists)
 * Build-in navigation to the wiki theme, so we don't do this by hand
 * We probably gain contributors from random wikibooks users looking at recentchanges or browsing the frontpage
 * More work for wikimedia people

If there is sufficient interest, I'm willing to put in some effort at meta to get us a separate wiki. It would probably be useful for other contributors to help out as well. For myself; I think that the usage model for the cookbook is sufficently different than wikipedia and the rest of wikibooks to warrant a separate wiki (more of a search and category-browse than a follow-links-between-related articles model). Kellen T 15:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I really don't see (m)any benefits at all. MediaWiki will mean your first issue will apply regardless of whether you are part of wikibooks or not. On the second point, most of those cookbook-specific features don't need to be cookbook-specific - eg it is easy to check which orphaned pages are cookbook only pages as they all start with "Cookbook" and are listed in alphabetical order.


 * To the benefits of staying in wikibooks you should add that there is an existing group of wikibookians aiding the cookbook. That transwikis of cookbook-related info come to wikibooks. That by being part of a larger whole there are more visitors to the cookbook. And Wikibooks is well established.


 * Couple all this with the difficulty in getting Wikimedia to approve a new project, it would be better to see the Cookbook become more integrated into wikibooks than to promote schism,Jguk 21:17, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Case-sensitivity is a MediaWiki config option. In cooking, it is a very strong tradition to use "t" for teaspoon but "T" for tablespoon. Having a separate wiki does not prevent sharing of common pages. (not that that would be terrible though) AlbertCahalan 00:15, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Is it? As a reader, I'd find this confusing, whilst abbreviations such as tbsp and tsp are not. Besides, I hardly think trying to arrange a permanent split is worthwhile for minutiae like that. I still think that the cookbook would do better by attaching itself more to wikibooks and working within a larger hole. One thing that could usefully done is to rename all the pages so they begin with "Cookbook/" rather than "Cookbook:" and get rid of the separate namespace, Jguk 06:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, you're not yet an experienced cook. We'll fix that. :-) The "t" vs. "T" distinction has been popular over many many decades, if not centuries. Until the recent wiki change, you could just follow a link to find a good explanation. Part of learning to cook is learning about the conventions of cooking. You learn all sorts of odd terms. AlbertCahalan 16:50, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


 * We just got the namespace activated very recently, and it has cleared up some problems we had before (and which would return if we moved to "Cookbook/"), specifically:
 * Sorting of pages in categories is now automatic (without a namespace, everything is sorted under "C" for cookbook)
 * Cookbook-limited search
 * Having AllPages for the Cookbook only is especially useful since a lot of our time was used building indexes, which we don't need to do now
 * We're able to use the macro and get the actual name of the recipe w/o the "Cookbook:"
 * We're able to have cookbook-only recentchanges (this makes sense for every book on WB, actually)
 * As I said above, this still doesn't allow us to do certain things, which are technically possible (with current MW software and extensions), but not in line with the desires of the wikimedia admins for wikibooks as a whole, specifically:
 * DynamicPageLists (or similar) for lists of recipes from certain categories included on a page
 * Case sensitivity
 * Upping the 1000 page limit on some Specialpages, which currently prevents any cookbook-specific work from being done.
 * Kellen T 09:54, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the recent clean-ups help - and many of the other things you identify are small, but not significant aids. Addressing in turn:


 * It is possible to sort categories alphabetically by the device of, for example, adding mock turtle soup to a soup category by entering or  . OK, it's slightly longer, but it works.
 * This can be done, if necessary, using google. Also, I'm not convinced that it is difficult to search for things more generally. OK "carrot" may appear in the gardening section rather than the Cookbook. On the flip side, as currently organised, if I search for "carrot" as someone unfamiliar with the point that I should tick to search in a particular namespace, I'm never going to find any carrot recipes.
 * Doesn't search under the prefix index of "Cookbook" solve this (or searching for all pages beginning with "Cookbook/"?
 * A minor convenience.
 * It's easy enough to search recent changes for the word "cookbook". In terms of identifying vandalism, there are many non-cookbook contributors also doing that.
 * I don't know what DynamicPageLists are
 * I'm confused by this case sensitivity point - could you explain
 * Isn't this now resolved after the recent clean-ups? Mind you, a separate namespace is a hindrance here, as orphaned cookbook pages can't be easily found now.


 * In short, whilst there are some small editing benefits in having a separate namespace, I believe these are outweighed by the greater audience available through full integration with wikibooks - and by the additional editorial and maintenance help available through this, Jguk 12:23, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The point of us having a namespace or a separate wiki is that these are technical problems that are solved by technical solutions. We shouldn't have to compromise or do ridiculous amounts of extra work to get around these things.
 * Having to "pipe rename" every category link is a waste of time and error prone. It works, but it's not a good or clean solution. The cookbook uses a very large number of categories when compared with every other book, so this is a big issue for us.
 * Searching with Google is stupid, if we have a search box on the page already. People shouldn't have to search for something prefixed with "Cookbook" to find recipes. Sure, they can, but they shouldn't have to.
 * An automatic index is NOT a minor convenience. We seriously have spent more time creating and maintaining indexes than we have writing recipes, which is totally unacceptable. As you can see, the relatively simple creating of a cookbook-specific namespace has relieved us of at least dealing with a cookbook-wide index.
 * DynamicPageLists are a way for us to get set-intersection views of our categories (e.g. All recipes in both "fruit recipes" and "dessert recipes"). They are an extension to media wiki which the developers are unwilling to turn on wikibooks-wide. These would be another tool so that we did not have to hand-maintain indexes.
 * Case sensitivity is the ability for us to distinguish between "Cookbook:t" and "Cookbook:T". These have different meanings in the context of our recipes.
 * No, this is not resolved. Please see Special:Uncategorizedpages. You will notice that at maximum you can see 1000 results. You will also notice that no cookbook pages show up there. You cannot page beyond this limit. This is limited by the wikimedia installation supposedly for some performance reasons (though I don't really buy that), but in any case, getting us off wikibooks would give us more control and separate our uncategorizedpages from the rest of WB, which is generally uncategorized at all.
 * I do agree that we benefit from wikibooks admins and its general community, but the problems listed make it much more difficult for us to develop our content in a productive way, or indeed to maintain it in many ways. Kellen T 19:26, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * It sounds like good idea to get the Cookbook it's own mediawiki installation, but it should be done without turning it into a separate project. Like you said, put it under cookbook.wikibooks.org and emphasize that it's still a wikibook. We might be be able to set a precedent for other wikibooks or bookshelves that are growing too big and getting special needs. I can see a biology wikibook growing into a massive biological reference that could use it's own wiki environment. Come to think of it, the WikiJunior folk have been thinking about getting their own wiki too. If wikibooks allows books their own wiki, there's no need for anybody to apply for a new project (which the cookbook probably wouldn't get) and we could maybe even keep the procedure for this inside wikibooks (instead of voting on meta).
 * I also see a danger of people forking the cookbook out of wikibooks (and wikimedia) entirely and starting under it's own management if we don't get our own wiki, which would be a shame. Long story short, I'm for. risk 14:41, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Having looked at the cookbook in more detail, I am now ready to reply further. Responding to Kellen's points in turn:


 * It would be possible to have a bot do the "pipe renaming" you refer to. This should make the exercise (1) quick; (2) not be error prone. Going forward, it will be easier to remember to pipe rename and easy to spot where this has not happened. As you note it works. This may not be ideal, but neither should it take much time to organise (certainly it'd be a lot quicker than getting the Wikimedia Foundation to agree to a new project!)
 * It should be possible to search through browsing from the main cookbook page. If this is not possible, then the cookbook page should be redesigned so that it is possible. I must admit, I'm a bit confused by this one - I though that was what the categorisation system was doing.
 * Can you show me what you mean by an index? To me, the list of all pages beginning with "Cookbook/" would give you every page in the cookbook. Am I missing something?
 * Could we not persuade the developers to turn on DynamicPageLists for Wikibooks? It may be worth raising on the Staff Lounge. I can't see it benefiting other books, but neither can I see it being a problem. If it's helpful for the cookbook, I'd therefore support introducing it. Also, it seems to me as though it may be useful once we have improved the categorisation system of wikibooks as a whole.
 * Although not convinced by your case sensitivity point, I'd note that if the cookbook were returned to the main namespace, this issue would be resolved, and you would be able to distinguish between "Cookbook/T" and "Cookbook/t". It is having the cookbook in its own namespace that eliminates this functionality.
 * Is the only problem with the Special:Uncategorizedpages page? If so, this could be resolved by categorising all pages beginning in letters A, B and C so that the cookbook pages then appear. I'd be happy to help with this task myself if it would clear things up. If not, could you outline what other problems there are?
 * I note that we are in agreement that there are benefits of the cookbook being part of wikibooks.

At present, persuading the Wikimedia Foundation to open a new project is a non-starter. If you garner enough support, and they approve it, we are still looking at a year off at least. Also, it will be difficult to persuade them of the need. Whether it is for the short-term or the long-term, the cookbook will be staying on wikibooks.

This leaves open the question of how it should fit into wikibooks. Surely it should be just another book (albeit one of our best ones, and promoted that way)? Surely it should fit in more - and how many Cookbook contributors are, for example, sysops at present, or contribute regularly to wikibooks discussions, votes and the staff lounge? (Some, but no doubt, not as many as we'd like to see).

In my view, it would be better to move the cookbook from the current namespace. This would not only give the cookbook the right "feel" for wikibooks, it would also allow us to get the special pages working for the cookbook articles as well as other articles (perhaps by some further tidying up first). It would resolve the case sensitivity point. It would also allow us to get rid of the ghost pages you can see at the end of the Cookbook "allpages". Another benefit would be that the cookbook modules would count fully in our module count - at present, the cookbook contributes only 1, Jguk 16:42, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I have to disagree. There have been many improvements to the functioning of the Cookbook by moving it to its own namespace. Cookbook enabled search, recent changes, and new pages make the job of editing the cookbook much simpler. The namespace gives the Cookbook project many of the benefits of a seperate wiki, while still benefiting from being an integral part of the english language Wikibooks. To reply to your points:


 * It was possible for people to hand pipe trick categories or run a bot to do it automatically before we moved to our own namespace, yet it rarely happened. I personally have spent many hours category sorting recipes, and the backlog never seemed to get shorter. Additionally, if a page is moved to another title, the pipe sorting would have to be redone, while it is automatic under the Cookbook: namespace. The functionality of categories under the namespace system is far superior to what it was, or what it will return to, without the namespace.
 * It's not feasable to list all the pages in this book from the main Cookbook page. There are hundreds of ingredient pagess, dozens of cuisine pagess, scores of cooking equipment pages, and perhaps thousands of recipes here. Automatic searches of just the Cookbook namespace is more useful than even the best designed category browsing technique. If I had a dead-tree recipe with an ingredient I didn't know, such as an aubergine, and came to the Wikibooks Cookbook for help (which I think is part of our goal here) and I didn't know an aubergine is a vegetable (which is quite possible for people not familiar with British food terms), I'd never find it using categories (especially as the module is titled under the American term eggplant, and wouldn't appear in the category as aubergine anyway). (Maybe we should consider putting a search box on the main page that searches just the Cookbook namespace?)
 * As I stated in the last point, a list of all the Cookbook pages would be quite large. If you want to see a hand made index, look at Cookbook:Recipes. The automated recipe index is at Category:Recipes. There are also indecies for Cookbook:Ingredients (Category:Ingredient), and other types of cookbook content.
 * As I'm sure you know, features that are requested by Wikibooks and the other sister projects tend to have a lower priority than those requested by Wikipedia. However, as the basic functioning of categories would not significantly change if the Cookbook moved to the subpage model (although they would become less usefull by all being sorted under "C" until pipe sorting was applied), I don't think this is a point for or against either system.
 * The T/t thing is really a minor annoyance. A page at Cookbook:T that explained that capital T stands for tablespoon and lowercase t stands for teaspoon would solve the problem almost as efficiently as seperate "T" and "t" pages did. I tend to type out Tbsp and tsp, so I'm personally not that interested in this little issue.
 * The problem is with all the special pages. Special:Shortpages, Special:Deadendpages, etc, all become less useful for the Cookbook if it is returned to the main namespace (and would be less useful to everyone working on non-Cookbook content, as well, as the large number of Cookbook pages would push the other pages further down the list).
 * I too agree that the Cookbook and Wikibooks as a whole both benefit from the Cookbook being an integrated part of Wikibooks. The extra admin and editor eyes on RC helps, as does the "wandering around and found this" factor. I believe it is a two way street, that both benefit from the close integration.
 * There are other benefits, used and unused, to seperate namespaces for large and well developed projects. Although we don't do it right now, it is possible to change the global .css files to customize the Cookbook namespaces, leaving the others alone. Each book is different, and can benefit from different formatting or layouts. While this could be done with html and css coding on the pages themselves, it would have to be done on every page, would not automatically update if changes were made, and could not be customized by users modifying their own stylesheets.


 * Some very active users and administrators have "cut their teeth" in the Cookbook. This book is very approachable for Wikipedia users, as 1) everyone eats, and 2) this book is much more loosely organized than most Wikibooks. It is the single largest Wikibook, with its own policies and procedures, its own featured content, and its own culture, all within the overall community of Wikibooks. Our presence in the mainstream Wikibooks along with our level of autonomy lets new editors who find us from the 'pedia feel more comfortable in the project, while still showcasing the differences between 'books and the 'pedia.


 * The issue about the module count is trivial. I don't edit here so that our brag sheet can look more impressive. What really matters is the quality of our content, not the quantity of database entries we have. We could have a million pages, but if they were garbage, no one would care. I'd suggest that if it is really important to boost the module count, someone should submit a bug fix requesting that all even namespace ids over 100 are included in the module count. This would capture Cookbook content, as well as any new namespaces that are developed.


 * In summary, right now, I believe the benefits to both the readers and the editors from the Cookbook remaining in its own namespace as a part of the english language Wikibooks far exceed the benefits of spliting into our own wiki or returning to the main namespace. Gentgeen 22:06, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Seasonality
I've been thinking about adding seasonality information (what's in season when) to recipe pages, but it seems like something that should be done right from the start, so I thought I'd bring it up here, to see if anybody has ideas or other input. Ideas so far:
 * A seasonality article explaining why seasonality is important and all the details.
 * A category for winter, spring, summer, autumn and 'all year' to group ingredients by season.
 * A template that generates a 'bar' based on values of 1 to 5 for each month, to show how much the ingredient is in season each month. There's probably some way to make this highlight the current month as well.
 * A small paragraph describing the exact seasonality.
 * Separate pages containing seasonality tables for various food groups (like this). This could just be the bars from the second point, in a long list. On the other hand, in the name of formatting according to the meaning of the data, it might be better to make it a table with some css, to make it look nice.
 * It might be nice to feature ingredients that are in season

One thing I haven't figured out yet is how much seasonality is linked to location. If asparagus are in season from april to june in Europe and North America, they should be in season from around october to december in Australia and South America. Since wikibooks is an international site, we really can't count on our visitors all being American and European. This might mean the seasonality information would have to be split by hemisphere as well. risk 17:35, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Location only matters to people who insist on buying local in-season foods for cost reduction, freshness, or enviromentalism. The rest of use eat everything year round, taking full advantage of modern greenhousees and airplanes. Variety is important in the diet, even in winter. AlbertCahalan 16:56, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Especially in winter. Though I'd say there's plenty of variety in seasonal produce. I can see I'll need to present two sides to the issue on the Seasonality page. risk 14:23, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Ideally you'd mark ingredients, then have the software automatically propagate this to the recipes. AlbertCahalan 16:56, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a pretty big 'ideally'. Maybe DynamicPageList can be hacked to do that somehow, but I thinkI'll hold off on grading recipes for now. risk 14:23, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I've thrown together two templates to use on the ingredient pages:

Displays a table for strawberries. The southern hemisphere is automatically rotated 6 months.

Allows users to enter the information spearately based on hemisphere (just in case that's ever needed).

I'm fairly new to all this template business, so I haven't quite figured out how to make it highlight the current month (with darker background for the cells). The colors could also use some tweaking, but this is the basic functionality I was thinking of. risk 14:23, 17 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I think you have to use a combination of Template:Qif and the July variable. It gets really dirty really quick, though, because there's not an effective (to my knowledge) looping mechanism, so you have to have a qif for each month you want to highlight. Kellen T 15:29, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Move Category:Recipes to Category:Recipe
I think I am going to move all recipes from Category:Recipes to Category:Recipe. I will do this by altering the template. My reason for doing this is to allow the recipe subcategories to show up on fewer category pages. Alternatively, if there are objections, I could move the subcategories of Category:Recipes to a different parent category. Kellen T 17:56, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Eh scratch that. Instead I think I shall leave the giant index (generated by ) in Category:Recipes and move the navigational categories into Category:Recipes by... or some such category to make the whole navigation easier. Kellen T 13:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Cookbook redirects deleted
We just had a bunch of redirects deleted. See Special:Log/Delete. Kellen T 14:29, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * That's right. I am removing those that are not linked to by any article, taking care not to destroy any links. This should allow for better navigation and easier maintenance of the articles in the Cookbook (if we didn't take this approach, by now we'd have more redirects on Wikibooks than articles, which just makes things difficult to look up and monitor), Jguk 16:21, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * While I appreciate your hard work in keeping wikibooks tidy, it should be obvious that a good number of the cookbook-related redirects were created with the explicit purpose of making editing easier. This is especially the case with plural forms and pages with differing lettercases. This is a change that I think warrants a post here at least, and some amount of discussion. Kellen T 17:42, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Please undelete them. I added many of them when I discovered that we were getting duplicate articles. It sucks to put lots of effort into writing a nice article, then discover later that the article already exists. You may also find a couple deliberately unused disambiguation pages, like "Tomato Sauce" (which I will not link), that instruct the reader to fix the referring pages. Those pages are useful. AlbertCahalan 22:27, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Redirects tend to encourage duplicate articles. For example, suppose that "Cookbook:Apple pie", "Cookbook:Apple pies", and "Cookbook:Apple Pies" all redirect to Cookbook:Apple Pie, and users are making links to all four.

Then when users want to add Cherry Pie, they will make red links to "Cookbook:Cherry pie", "Cookbook:Cherry pies", "Cookbook:Cherry Pie", and "Cookbook:Cherry Pies"; then we might get two to four cherry pie recipes instead of one.


 * That is exactly what was happening. Adding redirects put a stop to this problem. Many of the redirects were added before the articles they pointed to. For example, if I spotted a cherry pie link, I'd add the redirects immediately -- even if there was no recipe. This worked great. AlbertCahalan 17:58, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

However, those redirects are still far more useful than having "Cookbook/Apple Pie", "Apple Pie", and "Apple Pie (Cookbook)" being redirects. --Kernigh 17:20, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Your pie example is less the issue than ones such as for ingredients ("Kiwi" "Kiwis" "Kiwi Fruit" "Kiwi Fruits", etc). Not all of the recipes need multiple namings, but many basic types do. We have an abundance of duplicate recipes for precisely this reason. Kellen T 22:09, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

User:Eadmund's edits
Eadmund was a user who for a short period of time made an attempt to change articles to conform to his/her preference. Some of these were useful such as spelling fixes, some of these neutral such as changing Tablespoon to Tbsp. but some of these were disruptive such as removing metric measurements from recipes. I have quickly gone through Eadmund's contributions most disruptive ones have already been reverted or modified. However there were a few more I carried out, but I have discussed all my changes in the respective talk pages. There were two I did not modify but perhaps others would feel differently. Specifically Cookbook:Lasagne with bean sauce he/she added 15 oz. to 1 can of navy beans. Cookbook:Pumpkin Scones he/she changed whatever in to "other squash". In both cases, I felt these edits were acceptable.

Note that as I pointed out some of Eadmund's edits were useful or neutral. However in a number of cases, his/her edits were completely reverted. This should be a lesson to people. Don't be disruptive or all you useful work might come to naught as well. If you're making changes to a substial number of articles and these are not spelling mistakes, you should discuss these changes first. Nil Einne 14:30, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

This page is not in the Cookbook namespace
I just kinda realized this, but the this page, the main page and table of contents for the Cookbook, is not in the Cookbook: namespace. I think this page should be moved to Cookbook:Main Page, Cookbook:Main or Cookbook:Table of Contents, or something similar. Any preferences, other nominations, or disenting opinions? Gentgeen 04:22, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * "Main Page" seems to be the standard for the wikimedia projects; I'd be okay with that. Kellen T 15:11, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Suggested rename of pages
I'd like to suggest renaming all the pages of the Cookbook so that they begin with "Cookbook/" rather than "Cookbook:". This would also mean the end of the cookbook namespace. The benefits of this would include:


 * 1) Making the cookbook consistent with the naming convention used elsewhere in Wikibooks - and the cookbook feel more like a wikibook as a result.
 * 2) A number of the Special pages, such as the Orphaned modules pages would then work for the Cookbook.
 * 3) It would also be possible, through categorising other pages, to get Special:Uncategorised pages to work.
 * 4) Cookbook modules would count towards Wikibooks' module count.
 * 5) The Cookbook would be able to have modules that do not begin with a capital letter. I have had it suggested that Cookbook:T should really be called Cookbook:t. Well, although it can't be called that, Cookbook/t would work.

I also note that there are few real benefits in having the cookbook in a separate namespace in Wikibooks. Some have suggested that the cookbook should move to a separate wiki so that more of the Special clean-up pages can work to aid editors, but this has nothing to do with the cookbook as part (or whilst it is part) of wikibooks. Also if there are MediaWiki featured that are not turned on on Wikibooks, but which would help the cookbook, provided they would not screw up any other part of wikibooks, we could turn these on.

Any move would be bot driven, so would take up little time. All the best, Jguk 06:56, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd really rather not have that happen. That the special pages, uncategorized pages, etc don't work are bugs in the mediawiki software and we should file bugs to have them fixed. To me, the benefits of having a namespace outweigh the drawbacks. Kellen T 10:00, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

What are these benefits? (I'm afraid I still don't understand what they are meant to be) Jguk 13:10, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Seriously? Read Talk:Cookbook again. Me, Albert, and Gentgeen, all of us major cookbook contributors, agree on this point. I appreciate that you're trying to clean up wikibooks, but you've made no contributions to the cookbook, and indeed have caused problems by deleting redirects which have still not been undeleted despite requests by cookbook contributors. Kellen T 14:07, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


 * For reference, the redirects I am referring to were deleted on April 18, log here. While they may have been unused, they were not useless. Kellen T 14:16, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

That was about the possibility of having a separate Wikimedia wiki for the cookbook, wasn't it? I can't see much in there about benefits of having the cookbook on a separate namespace in wikibooks. There is talk of a case sensitivity issue (which only exists because the cookbook is in a separate namespace). The "sorting of pages" issue is easily dealt with by a bot. The other points seem very minor.

I would add that, whilst at present the naming convention has not yet been applied to all existing books, it is only a matter of time before the Cookbook is the only one not complying with the slash convention. Should the cookbook really be an outlier rather than an integral part of Wikibooks.

Incidentally, I'm not sure which of the redirects you believe should be readded. I'm sure you are not saying all of them were valuable. They can be by yourself, but if you give an indication as to which ones are considered valuable, I will undelete, Jguk 14:23, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The redirects between Cookbook:Poppy seeds and Cookbook:African horned melon. As reported above, these were created for the explicit purpose of avoiding duplicate articles. Kellen T 18:53, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Related to Jguk's original point, I feel the benefits to having the Cookbook as its own namespace far outweigh any possible benefits that would come with the subpage naming scheme. Forcing every project into a particular mold is rather un-wiki in my opinion, and should really be stopped Wikibooks wide. Organized, active, and mature projects should be granted a wide ammount of autonomy, including book-specific policies, guidelines, and style guides. The Cookbook has all of these in place, and to abandon them at this time would be a major step in the wrong direction. If anything should change, it is that more bood specific namespaces should be established for projects that reach a critical mass of activity. Gentgeen 08:35, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd be grateful if you'd list out what you consider the benefits of a separate namespace to be, Jguk 08:53, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Go re-read Talk:Cookbook. We covered this all the last time you brought it up. Kellen T 11:16, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

As an additional note, I checked everything linking to Cookbook:T a while back and there weren't any referencing recipes using it for teaspoon (lowercase 't'). Kellen T 11:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Kellen, the problem I have with that discussion is that it is intertwined with discussions on the virtues (or otherwise) of having an entirely separate wiki. I'd be grateful if you would list out what the perceived benefits (and disadvantages) are of having the cookbook on a separate namespace in Wikibooks compared with having it in the main module namespace in Wikibooks. Thanks, Jguk 11:45, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * As we seem to keep having the same discussions on this point, I'll go ahead and tabulate what I see as the advantages and disadvantages of a seperate namespace vs the subpage scheme.
 * {| border="1" style="width: 80%"

! System !! Pros !! Cons ! Namespace ! Subpage
 * + Namespace vs. Subpages
 * 1) Search in book's namespace
 * 2) Recent changes for book's namespace
 * 3) Customize display of entire book via project and individual style sheets
 * 4) No automatic link back to book main page
 * 1) No automatic link back to book main page
 * 1) No automatic link back to book main page
 * 1) Automatic link to book main page
 * 2) No book search
 * 3) No book recent changes
 * 4) Not able to customize with anything other than inline css or using html for display (which is bad xhtml)
 * }
 * These are my opinions, but I think they capture the main points of all involved. Gentgeen 08:13, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * }
 * These are my opinions, but I think they capture the main points of all involved. Gentgeen 08:13, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Gentgeen. And I hope others feel free to add or alter this table if something is missed. I do feel a number of the benefits of subpages are being missed, including:


 * Availability of Special: features, such as orphaned and uncategorised pages to help with administrtaion;
 * Being more noticeable, and getting more attention, from readers (particularly those browsing "Allpages");
 * Being more noticeable, and getting more attention, from Wikibook tidy-uppers and admins;
 * Being fully integrated into Wikibooks;
 * Having all your modules count to the "good" page count, rather than being included as "bad" pages (which indicate the amount of non-article pages on a wiki)

I also disagree with some of the pros of having a separate namespace. The search function works perfectly well if you search for your "item" by typing in "Book title/ item". There is even the added benefit of the possibility of some related pages, perhaps on gardening, appearing too. Also, a search on google can easily be restricted to the book in question. Would it be helpful to expand Help:Searching to outline how this can be done? Recent changes could be checked by adding every recipe to a single category - alternatively we could put on bugzilla a request for functionality to restrict recent changes to items with a given prefix (or alternatively functionality of that everything within the same book title is automatically added to a category, perhaps Category:Pages in Book title, allowing recent changes to be found by using "related changes"). This would also benefit all other wikibooks.

As far as monobooks are concerned, not being able to program them myself, I do not understand what can be done with them - but is it not possible to ask the monobook to change everything beginning with Cookbook/ in the same way as it is possible to change everything beginning with Cookbook:?

It strikes me that if these issues can be ironed out, there would no longer be any benefit to having a separate namespace, and that the benefits of reuniting the cookbook with the rest of Wikibooks would be worth the effort of a move, Jguk 14:52, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Jguk, you are correct that "if these issues can be ironed out, there would no longer be any benefit to having a separate namespace". We don't want a separate namespace; we want the features that it enables us to have. Given the fact that the mediawiki programmers are more focused on wikipedia than wikibooks, having a namespace is the most effective way (short of moving all content to a separate mediawiki installation) to have these features dealt with so we can get on with actually working on the book. Of your list of benefits, the only one that's actually important to me is that the special pages do not all work properly for non-main namespaces; this is a bug in the mediawiki software and should be fixed as such. With respect to your comments on the search; in software we call your solution a workaround -- something that works around a bug or defect in the software -- the normal search is useless to the cookbook and only becomes useful if limited to a namespace. Your solution is unacceptable for readers of the book; we as contributors might know to take the steps you describe, but they're not intuitive for casual users. Kellen T 15:38, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I think this leads us to two "bugs" that we can request be fixed: (1) We would like to be able to restrict the results on recent changes to pages with a user-defined prefix (in this case "Cookbook"); (2) We would like to be able to restrict the results coming out of a search query to pages with a user-defined prefix. Additionally, I could add a third (3) Where Special:Prefixindex gives a result that does not fit on one page, the continuation button changes the prefix by reference to which the list is given (ie you do not get a continuation of the list, but instead normally just one page coming up). If the first two were fixed, we could return the cookbook to the main namespace. Additionally, they would potentially benefit every other book on here (and presumably on other Wikibooks).


 * If people could check over those two/three fix proposals, I will then list them as a fix request for Wikibooks and argue that they are prioritorised, Jguk 18:17, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * If the goal is to use subpages (and I don't agree that should be the goal), my list would be more like:
 * Make all special pages for a prefix (search, recentchanges, allpages, uncategorizedpages, newpages, etc, etc, etc)
 * Option to sort categories by automagically
 * Ability to customize the theme of the book
 * Alternatively, the Cookbook is kept in its own namespace and we do:
 * Make all special pages work for a namespace (some already do work)
 * Option to sort categories by automagically
 * Make cookbook (or other arbitrary) namespace show up in module counts, allpages, etc.
 * These are pretty similar, except that some crucial special pages already work for a namespace and the bugfixes are much more likely to happen for namespaces since they have a wider impact (as namespaces are used on all WM projects while subpages are not widely used). Kellen T 23:27, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

customization fun
I wrote a little javascript function that'll put cookbook recentchanges and allpages links in the "personal tools" section of your wikibooks page. I may have gone overboard on formatting. javascript: User:Kellen/monobook.js, css (optional): User:Kellen/monobook.css. Kellen T 13:58, 15 June 2006 (UTC)


 * My monobook.js now also creates a sidebar portlet with cookbook-specific items. The code could easily be used for other portlet creation. Kellen T 15:25, 20 June 2006 (UTC)


 * This is all pretty cool. I was wondering if you'd put together a sub-page of your user page explaining what each section does, and perhaps some optional things to add to a user's stylesheet for further customization. Thanks. Gentgeen 03:07, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I went back and wrote some javadoc-style comments for each of the functions and some inline comments as well. They're easier to read here. I also wrote a few short examples. What were you thinking about in terms of CSS? Do you just want a listing of the relevant id's and classes? Kellen T 09:24, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Corn
Hi, sorry i am a total newbie to wiki. sorry if i am posting in the wrong place. i am learning. but one question, what is sweet corn and how is it made? is it grown? the corn i eat is not sweet but some e.g. the canned corns or 'Magic Corn' is sweet. why is that? can i make normal corn sweet like that? also, can anyone tell me how to make the flavorings for corn (bbq, chicken etc), the spice that is sprinkled on it? thankx If this is not the place to answer, pls answer me at my email address and tell me the correct procedure too! haseebanjum[AT]gmail.com thankx hdaackda


 * See Sweet_corn. Kellen T 16:37, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Invented recipes?
How do original recipes fit in? I do a lot of inventing and adapting. I've started writing some down, here. With Wikibooks supposed to be creating textbooks, I'm not sure how opinion, preference and "original research" fit in.

I wonder if there's a way to incorporate both?

If we sign our original recipes, then we could look up the recipes by people we like. People could do their own page of recipes, but a more reliable way might be to sign on the recipe page, and work out some variation of the "What links here" function that only lists "Cookbook" pages and not Talk pages.

If that's not very clear, I apologize! Obviously these ideas need a lot of work. --Singkong2005 11:26, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Don't sign the recipe page, but you can make a note that you created the recipe on the talk page. We haven't really dealt much with this, but allowing "new" recipes or millions of variations on recipes makes for a weird site; more of a "community cooking" site than a wikibook. So it's vague. I'm not sure how I feel about either one really. Kellen T 14:19, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


 * There are two sides to this coin. If we're not careful, the cookbook could explode into a collection of thousands of unchecked crappy recipes, like so many online recipe sites, where more people write the recipes than cook them and all quality control is lost. On the other hand the wiki format does allow peer review, which could lead to wiki recipe creation, with people cooking each other's recipes and improving on them. Of course, nobody's going to cook wikibook originals unless we get a solid reputation for good recipes (which could be some time). I suggest we implement a policy that does not ban original recipes, but does discourage adding trivial stuff. I can think of the following components to this kind of policy.
 * If at all possible, the recipe should be added as a variation. For instance, if the recipe is basically a lasagna with a certain combo of ingredients, the combination could just be added to the notes, tips and variations section under lasagna. If there are a lot of special preparations that need to be described, or the recipe doesn't fit any kind of category, a new page would need to be made, but a lot of stuff could be restricted to this format. An additional advantage of this is that once the variations section gets too large, some of the least notable variation can be removed, or merged with others.
 * We implement a notability requirement for recipes, analogous to the one wikipedia has. Notability would be based on how well known a recipe is (eg. Lasagna, or Curry), and (for original stuff) redeeming qualities like the use of ingredient that doesn't have a lot of recipes yet, originality, quality of the dish, quality of the recipe page (layout, pictures).
 * The ideal (for me at least) would be a collection of recipes that grow slowly in quantity and steadily in quality. A policy would at least give us some sense of general direction. risk 02:53, 17 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Perhaps what I'm looking for is more of a "community cooking" site... it would be great if we could have the best of both worlds on the one site, with the ability to access standard recipes and ingredient info, as well as "community cooking" stuff if desired.
 * I doubt that it's possible to come to agreement about what's a good recipe by peer review. What's delicious for me will be hippy crap to someone else, and what's delicious to them might be horrible to me. Some form of voting could be good, but I don't think the software allows for that.
 * It's true, we don't want someone coming onto the site finding thousands of unchecked crappy recipes.
 * So I suggest something like this:
 * We adopt a form of sorting, so that the first thing you find when looking for a recipe is the standard version, but there is also a set of links at the bottom to similar recipes, and individuals' variations on these recipes.
 * Individual users could put their own recipes in their own userspace, with no notability requirement, and link to there. There could be a problem if we have hundreds of links to personal recipes at the bottom of the single "standard" recipe page... but perhaps by the time we get to that point, we might have a voting feature in the software, which would allow the most popular recipes, and the most popular recipe authors, to be ranked first.
 * This also means that when we find a user whose recipe we like, we can check their other recipes.
 * How does that sound? --Singkong2005 07:14, 17 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think mixing the User namespace and Cookbook namespace is a good idea.
 * Why not? (Not picking an argument, just curious.) --Singkong2005 16:01, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Because it muddies the clarity of what we are producing: a type of book. We're not a community site. If we at some point become a community site, then some other solution would probably be appropriate (probably categories rather than user subpages). You can put recipes in your user space if you want, but they shouldn't be considered part of the cookbook (and should not be linked from main cookbook pages). Kellen T 17:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 * And while I don't object to community cooking sites in concept, I don't think that the wikibooks cookbook is cut out (software-wise) to become such a thing. Kellen T 09:57, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Has any thought been given to moving to a different domain? It seems like a more elegant solution, would make linking easier, and would also allow for some modifications to software (only slight, to maintain maximum compatibility with Wikimedia sites). I notice that http://wikirecipes.net has voting, so it shouldn't be hard to implement on a wiki.


 * Efforts at recipe building could potentially fragment (with sites like http://communipes.com/ and http://wikirecipes.net catering more to individuals) or unite. An effort here to make something more inclusive could result in a larger community of editors on the one site. I know that I would rather not be involved in two separate wiki recipe sites, one for "textbook" style recipes and one for recipe sharing and creativity - and if I had to choose, it would be the community site, as I'm an experimenter, and I believe recipes are variable and changing by nature. However, I'd rather be able to contribute to both aspects on the one site. --Singkong2005 16:01, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, thoughts have been given to that idea; Talk:Cookbook. Kellen T 17:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

transwikis
Some transwikis have been moved with the prefix Transwiki:Cookbook: -- they can be found here and should be moved into the main cookbook namespace and probably tagged with cookwork. Kellen T 20:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Crosslinking with A Wikimanual of Gardening
While that book is nowhere near as well developed as this one, I think some cross-linking might be nice between the cookbook and the gardening book.

On the gardening book, perhaps links to recipes using a particular ingredient (which would come in handy for gardeners with too many zucchinis and tomatoes, etc.)

From this book, maybe links from ingredient pages to chapters about growing those ingredients. Johnny 11:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

DynamicPageLists
Hi, I spoke with Brion on IRC yesterday and he said that they would turn on DPLs if we can get a "yes" from a good number of wikibookians. Please go say "yes" at Staff_lounge Kellen T 11:18, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Tempering
I was wondering if there was page on tempering. I can't find it in the places that I have looked. If it is a page, then can someone direct me to it. If not, then please say here. Mr. C.C. 05:20, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * There doesn't appear to be. It would be at Cookbook:Tempering. Feel free to write the module. Kellen T 12:17, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

WOW pagemoves
Just reverted two Willy on Wheels pagemoves. Look out for pages on Wheels. Josen 16:55, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Most wanted Cookbook pages
Get to work! Kellen T 00:28, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Cookbook:Yeast (29 links)
 * Cookbook:Pie (15 links)
 * Cookbook:Buttermilk (14 links)
 * Cookbook:Ice Cream (13 links)
 * Cookbook:Broth (13 links)
 * Cookbook:Tomato Paste (10 links)
 * Cookbook:Barley (10 links)
 * Cookbook:Sauerkraut (10 links)
 * Cookbook:Sesame Oil (9 links)
 * Cookbook:Stew (9 links)
 * Cookbook:Batter (8 links)
 * Cookbook:Rye (7 links)
 * Cookbook:Griddle (7 links)
 * Cookbook:Browning (7 links)
 * Cookbook:Tripe (7 links)
 * Cookbook:Shellfish (7 links)
 * Cookbook:Pecan (7 links)
 * Cookbook:Ice Cream (6 links)
 * Cookbook:Cottage cheese (6 links)
 * Cookbook:Puree (6 links)
 * Cookbook:Cuisine of Portugal (6 links)
 * Cookbook:Date (6 links)
 * Cookbook:Brandy (6 links)
 * Cookbook:Human (6 links)
 * Cookbook:Alcohol (5 links)
 * Cookbook:Corn Tortilla (5 links)
 * Cookbook:Tortilla Chip (5 links)
 * Cookbook:Walnuts (5 links)
 * Cookbook:Juice (5 links)
 * Cookbook:Tongue (5 links)
 * Cookbook:White Pepper (5 links)
 * Cookbook:Mustard seed (5 links)
 * Cookbook:Liver (5 links)
 * Cookbook:Eel (5 links)
 * Cookbook:Cod (5 links)
 * Cookbook:Ravioli (5 links)

Transwikied pages
These are all the cookbook pages still in the transwiki pseudo-namespace as of July 25. All of them have the cookwork tag.

Transwiki:Cookbook:Arroz con leche - Transwiki:Cookbook:Baghare Baigan - Transwiki:Cookbook:Barbeque slaw - [[Transwiki:Cookbook:Bløtkake - Transwiki:Cookbook:Chicken alfredo pizza - Transwiki:Cookbook:Ciceri e Tria - Transwiki:Cookbook:Dark and Stormy - Transwiki:Cookbook:Dum ka qimah - Transwiki:Cookbook:Flavor in Lean Breads - Transwiki:Cookbook:Friar's omelette - Transwiki:Cookbook:Katchi Biryani - Transwiki:Cookbook:Khagina - Transwiki:Cookbook:Khatti Dal - Transwiki:Cookbook:Khichri - Transwiki:Cookbook:Liquidex - Transwiki:Cookbook:Mirchi ka Salan - Transwiki:Cookbook:Miser's sauce - Transwiki:Cookbook:Molah khodra - Transwiki:Cookbook:Nahari - Transwiki:Cookbook:Pasande - Transwiki:Cookbook:Pescado Tipitapa - Transwiki:Cookbook:Qabuli - Transwiki:Cookbook:Rawghani Roti - Transwiki:Cookbook:Shirmal - Transwiki:Cookbook:Sydney Smith's salad dressing - Transwiki:Cookbook:Tamate ka Kut - Transwiki:Cookbook:Tiki Bar TV recipes - Transwiki:Fried rice - Transwiki:How to cook dandelions - Transwiki:Indian pone - Cookbook:Sindhi Food - Transwiki:Zucchini bread

Can a cookbook contributor move these into the cookbook namespace and link to them from within the cookbook? Thanks! --hagindaz 02:13, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the heads up, I'll move them once I'm done with formatting what's in the main namespace (another week probably). Kellen T 09:18, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks! --hagindaz 14:03, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I think it's better if they stay in the psudo-namespace until they meet a basic minimum standard, such as linking to Cookbook: pages for ingredients and possibly techniques. Once they look somewhat like our other recipes, etc., then any logged in user should be able to move them to the Cookbook: namespace. Gentgeen 23:00, 26 July 2006 (UTC)