"Steve Bennett" <stevag...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:b8ceeef70908230910h3466019cpcedf7ae0a2c0a...@mail.gmail.com... > On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 1:17 AM, Bod Notbod<bodnot...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I'd really hate to go to [[curry]] and see recipes. The sorts of >> spices that are often included yes. But not cooking times. >> >> If I look up [[engine]] I want to know how it functions. But I don't >> want to see a tutorial on how to deal with specific problems. >> >> Although I suppose there's a possible claim of hypocrisy here. Many of >> our medical articles include a section on treatment, which I guess is >> a form of How To. >> >> And I just happened upon [[suicide methods]] which perhaps is the last >> word, almost literally, on How To do something. > > I think the difference is between instructions with the expectation > that someone would actually follow them, and simply understanding > common practice. > > Curry recipe: you don't need precise cooking times, sequences etc to > understand common practice. > Engine: You don't need troubleshooting instructions to understand > common practice. > Disease: A description of treatment *is* appropriate to understand > common practice.
I agree. Sometimes doctors do not hav time to describe exactly what they will do, because they're concentrating on minute details, like angiograms, and it is useful to hav a cursory description of a medical procedure, so patients can compare or deliver informed consent. Nobody will put a step by step process for a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commisurotomy into the encyclopedia. > Suicide methods: It's a fine line, but there is probably information > you can leave out without affecting the encyclopaedicness. For > example, we could explain that people take certain kinds of pills > without being too specific. We could mention that people jump off > buildings without highlighting particular ones. Maybe. > > Steve > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l