Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of edible seeds

List of edible seeds

This list has developed over the years (by a community effort) into an excellent list. It's useful for anyone who wants to study seeds as food, it's comprehensive (I'm amazed at what seeds people eat), it has references, it's uncontroversial and stable. And the lead section is quite thorough, also.

*Support and nominate hike395 06:32, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Not comprehensive, inconsistent structure and lacking enough references.

The list's entry criteria need to be defined. I can't see how a list of all edible seeds can be constructed as it would be huge. By "edible", the list includes seeds from which we only eat an extract (e.g oil or gum) rather than eat whole. You may want to reconsider that. Man has had a go at eating most plant seeds at one time, and even the toxic ones probably have some medicinal value and might be consumed somewhere.
This list could aim for a summary style approach that leads off to other lists (of nuts, oils, beans, etc). However, it would then have to set some kind of criteria/threshold for the shorter set of entries that are listed. Perhaps some commodities source could indicate the top beans by sale volume, for example?
The groups are a mix between type (bean, nut, cereal) and usage (beverage, oil, snack). Thus we have soy mentioned as a bean, an oil and a beverage. For a single list such as this, possibly plant type is the only grouping that avoids overlap. It is hard to define a natural "snack" food since almost anything could be consumed as such.
The "Fruits eaten with their seeds" would be huge as by definition all berries are included. Most of the seeds are probably undigested so perhaps that could be considered a reason to exclude them.
Have a look at List of vegetable oils. Almost all the entries have inline citations and include a short piece of information. This is the standard we are looking for.
Quite a few of the links could be improved. Two bad examples are for nut and acorn.

Colin°^Talk 23:51, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Thanks, Colin, for your incisive feedback. Let's discuss them one issue at a time:

Comprehensiveness/Entry criterion. Unfortunately, if we use a commodity volume cutoff, I would find the list much less informative and charming: I like the list precisely because it lists obscure seeds. Would you accept the following criteria: if the WP article mentions that a plant's seed is edible, then it should be placed into this list. I'm open to other criteria.

Inconsistent structure: yes, good point. Snacks and fruits eaten with their seeds could be rationally excluded. In fact, one could argue that the list of vegetable oils is such a wonderful list, that WP would lose nothing by only including seeds that are directly a foodstuff, rather than yielding a derived product. In this case, the list would be organized by bean, nut, cereal.

List of vegetable oils as standard: As much as I admire that article as a paragon of WP list-making, I would respectfully point out that the criteria listed at WP:FL? are not nearly as strict as your proposed standard. WP:FL? guides us to feature lists containing a reference section, and inline references "where appropriate". Nowhere is a short piece of information per item suggested. Is short piece of information + inline citation per item really a community standard?

Bad links: Could you clarify? I'm happy to fix, but not sure what you mean here.

Thanks again for your feedback! hike395 03:01, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Slightly later: cut out beverages, oils, snacks, to address Colin's concerns. Further comments? hike395 03:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see only two options: go for completely comprehensive, or summary-style. If the latter is less "charming" then perhaps this charm could be moved to "List of edible beans", etc. Re: "informative", I would say that without a sentence per seed, the list isn't very informative without clicking through to the article.
The FL criteria are a minimal set of fairly objective tests. Editors are allowed to express their subjective views on the quality that makes up the "very best work" and "professional standards". You can disagree and if others disagree too then perhaps the consensus is different to what I've expressed. I really think that a sentence would be a big improvement. Think about colour, taste, size, hardness, cooking method, notable recipies, world-distribution, cultural importance, etc. There can't be many Featured Lists that have just a bare list of wikilinks.
In the Nuts section, the wikilink for nuts is a disambiguation page. Also the entry for acorn has a link to oak, which isn't so useful. There were others were the link/redirect took me to a long article page on the plant/tree. It might have been better to wikilink to the section on the edible nut/seed in that article.
Re: "if the WP article mentions that a plant's seed is edible". Don't use Wikipedia as a reference. Try to find some reference or culinary books on nuts, beans, spices, cereals, etc.

Colin°^Talk 00:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I guess I'll go for summary style, moving the more obscure seeds to their own lists. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has its own list of commodity foodstuffs, so we can base it on that. And, we'll add more information per item, too. User:Waitak has volunteered to help out on expanding the information, but he is affected by an earthquake, so it may take several days. hike395 04:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. It would be nice if someone else offered an opinion and suggestions. I guess some folk are on holiday. Don't be afraid of failing (due to lack of time/supporters) this time – you can resubmit when ready. Colin°^Talk 09:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you are right --- we may wish to withdraw and work on it at leisure, then resubmit. We'll figure this out. hike395 10:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talked it over with Waitak --- I'll withdraw the nomination and we'll resubmit later. Thanks! hike395 08:11, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]