User talk:Dan131m

Dan. Welcome to Wikibooks. I hope you enjoy your time here.

Can I just check whether you are aware of Bartending/Cocktails/Glossary. Generally cocktails should only appear on the glossary unless there is something too long for the glossary that can usefully be said about them (indeed, some of your new additions (from Wikipedia?) are duplicates for pages that have already been merged into the glossary and deleted.

As I note, where a cocktail is genuinely worthy of its own page, it should indeed have one, and it should be linked from the Glossary too.

Finally, if you have ideas on how to improve the Glossary, they would be appreciated too, Jguk 07:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with your comments on my talk page. My point really is that the glossary should be just that, and that there should be separate pages for many of the cocktails, but this should be done only where we have more content on a particular drink than would reasonably be covered in the glossary.


 * Before the glossary was created by merging articles we had over 200 of them, the overwhelming majority of which were stubby, giving little more than the ingredients and very basic instructions and were poorly formatted (though there were exceptions to this). No-one in their right mind would want to read them. If we end up with a glossary and 40, say, full, good-looking, informative articles about the more popular and/or tricky cocktails, that would be great, Jguk 11:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * By all means format the glossary better. Do bear in mind, of course, that the glossary is really a throwback to the (sometimes quite poor) articles mass transferred here from wikipedia, rather than to lots of well thought out, specially designed pages made with this wikibook in mind. I also think it will still be of interest to those who drink cocktails and amateur bartenders at home, although I accept that it has little or no value to the professional. The glossary is also a good place to chuck any future poor articles that come here from wikipedia:). As long as you're committed to making sure all your pages look good and complete before moving onto the next series of cocktails, I can see this book soon becoming a "Book of the Month", Jguk 19:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Templates
Hey, awhile ago I made some templates for ingredients, for example vodka tequila gin. Any opinions on their usefulness or any changes you think should be made? Discordance 20:48, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Measure was an attempt an internationalising the recipes although it needs linking to the measurements and conversions page explaining that U.S. recipes use 1 fl. oz (us customary) and the rest of the world use 25ml. the difference is only about 3ml and the ratios are the same. A simplier and perhaps more familiar word would be parts, but that still needs some explaining as to the recommended volumes for glass sizes etc. Discordance 12:27, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I did think it might be too rigid to include measures in the templates, I was experimenting with things at the time. For things like the martinis with widely ranging ratios they should be listed as variations on the martinis page, a lot of the different ratios are distinct enough to have their own names after all.

As for categorising by base-spirit, I can see how its not going to be very useful at the moment (a bloody mary would have gin and tequila listed from its variations), In the long term i'd like to see variations with unique names moved to their own pages to help improve indexing of the recipes etc in which case it might become slightly more useful but leaving the categorisation in templates means we can remove it or add it back later easily without having to change hundreds of pages. I did intend there to be a template for every ingredient eventually which while it would take awhile to set up makes changing links and categories later a whole lot easier, and while base spirit isnt that useful at the moment a category such as cocktails with Green Chartreuse certainly would be.

As far as internationalisation is concerned the british reference books i have seen so far all use measures or parts as the majority have come from imperial measurements in some form but have taken advantage of the fact that 1 fl.oz~25ml in order to make it more accessable to everyone. In most cocktail chains here also they use in-house recipes given only in metric, while im sure the more professional bars are familiar with jiggers and ponies etc the more casual bars and the average uk reader is not. I see nothing wrong with fluid ounzes being used as thats pretty simple for everyone but i'd like to avoid jiggers, ponies, cups etc. I would still prefer to see parts or measures being used however to have consistency across the recipes as the actual difference in volume between imperial and metric recipes is sufficiently small that they are effectively the same recipe, in which case it makes no sense to use a mixture of units across the book. Discordance 01:51, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Removing the measure thing from the template is fine by me, I'll do that later today.

Consistency is important across a book which is why i think we should ideally be using only one set of measurements. This is more important in my eyes than making it easy to contribute, and converting to and from ratios should be something any reader can do quickly, I think its overly-optomistic to cater this book towards professional bartenders, especially in its current state. We should list all known measurements on the measures page so it is there if people need it but i dont think they should go beyond that. Anyway we should get some more opinions I'll ask Jguk after this. Discordance 15:10, 4 May 2006 (UTC)