Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Beer/Archive 4

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Falstaff Brewing Company

How is it possible that we don't even have an article for Falstaff Brewing Company. I think without getting into an arguement, we'd all agree that Falstaff was very, very important to the history of American brewing. Anyone willing to take up the torch for Falstaff? --Brownings 03:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

• Actually, the article on Falstaff Beer, although short, seems to actually be about the company. Perhaps Falstaff Brewing Company and Falstaff Brewing Corporation should redirect there? There is a wealth of info on Falstaff at [1], but I can't figure out where the original sources are from. If someone could find some reliable sources to cite from, it looks like an extensive article could be written. Alienmercy 05:09, 27 July 2007 (UTC)See this: http://www.falstaffbrewing.com/ and this, http://www.falstaffbrewing.com/jos__pickett_&_sons.htm

This grand injustice *cough* has been rectified... I wrote the article and created a category. The article needs a lot of love, as I could really care less about Falstaff, St. Louis, or even beer. Have fun - its just too bad you couldn't slam one down while doing it. • Freechild'sup? 15:40, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Format of main page

I may have bumped into a few of you on here and as such you may know I work extensively on WikiProject Food and Drink which is the parent project to this one. As such, I have in an attempt to revive some of the other projects which have softened by revamping their main pages and adding subsidiary pages for better organization and appeal. Now this project has a large following and doesn't necessarily at this point need appeal for new members, but it can never hurt. It will also give the page an ease of use for places to click and get templates along with info on merge proposals, deletion proposals, and other information on the project.

As this project is very active I wanted to talk here first about helping the project by putting it along the format which WikiProject Food and Drink, Wikiproject Wine, WikiProject Foodservice and WikiProject Cheeses are currently under. I'm still finalizing Foodservice and I am offering the same to the remaining projects under Food and Drink as well. Please take a look at the other pages and tell me what you think when you get a chance.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC 03:00, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Christopher, I've seen the work you've done around and it's really terrific. I think our main page could use a bit of a refresh, but I would like to maintain its current character. I think we can work on updating a few areas, and improving the visuals, while maintaining the current feel and most of the current content.

Of course, I would like to hear what everyone else here has to say about any changes before going ahead with a big overhaul. If there's a good consensus, then it'd be great to have you work with us on improving our welcome screen. Cheers! --Daniel11 07:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

The content would remain the same,WikiProject Food and Drink was a major edit some time ago, but there is much more content on your project here than there was back when I got involved with the food and drink project. If you look at the WikiProject Cheeses and WikiProject Foodservice, I mostly just added templates and headings, which you actually already have, just organizing the templates to one area would help out editors for quick access and having the right panel with quick access info and templates helps as well.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC 07:22, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

As there were no objections I updated the main page, let me know what you think.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC 22:17, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm cool. It looks good. SilkTork *SilkyTalk 19:50, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

If SilkTork likes it, then I like it. I do think it looks really nice, although this means there's now some new content that we have to create, and we've already got a ton of unfinished stuff. Thanks a lot! --Daniel11 06:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Not a problem, once I get some other stuff cleared up I can help creating those new pages for the project. I was also wondering if you guys were interested in having assessment capability for your discussion tags? I just created them for WikiProject Cheeses and as I know you have significantly more articles to your credit, I thought perhaps this would be a good tracking device for you. Let me know what you think, it will take me a little bit to do it, but I sincerely don't mind. I think it would improve the project viability and quality greatly.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC 19:33, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Assessment stuff would be terrific. I wanted to do that myself a little while ago but never got around to figuring out how. Your very generous offer to create some of the new project pages and the assessment capability would be most welcome, and I think that once the templates or whatever for assessment are set up then I and undoubtedly some other Beer Project members will eagerly help go through all the articles. I agree that it would be a vast improvement for the project. Thanks again for your help thus far, and any future contributions would be icing on the cake. Cheers! --Daniel11 02:49, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I love so much that projects are adopting my design! :) I originally created this for WP:MCB. I have to say, though, would you guys mind much if I changed the color scheme a bit to be more in line with our "beerishness"? – ClockworkSoul 16:44, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I told you it was a nice design! Obviously feel free to change the colors to something beerier, I'd actually sort of wondered whether someone might do that for a while. Great to see you around these parts again! --Daniel11 (talk) 07:12, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you did! I'm back on the beer thing. I've been brewing, and now I'm borderline obsessed. I just bottled a nice cream stout tonight. Yum, yum! – ClockworkSoul 07:28, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds delicious. I've never brewed but I guess I should. By the way, one other thing re the template, I actually originally thought it might've been a somewhat off attempt at beer colors, but knowing that you originally designed it for MCB explains all. Bottoms up! --Daniel11 (talk) 07:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

<outdent> Which template do you mean? I was thinking of using similar colors to the one I used in the brewboxen, which I had long ago also used to create my user page. – ClockworkSoul 07:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Hm, I guess what they say about beer and memory must be true. :) I wasn't looking at the template as I wrote about it, but going from memory, and I had a different thing in mind. Anyway, I was referring to {{Beer}}, which I believe is the relevant one. Anyway, I like the brewboxen colors (which I shamelessly stole for the navboxen), and I noticed you'd used the same for your user page. At any rate, I guess I've lost track a bit of the various schemes in use previously and in the present, but I like the ones on your user page and I trust your judgment in applying colors to whatever template we're actually talking about. :) --Daniel11 (talk) 09:18, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah - yes, I did make that one too! You have a good memory if you remember that I also designed the standard talk page templates. The funny thing is that I modified those colors from the ones I used for the beer project. Truly, we have changed the world! – ClockworkSoul 15:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The revolution has begun... --Daniel11 (talk) 23:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks very good - definitely a beerier color scheme, and much easier on the eyes.

By the way I noticed that somebody cleared the lighter background shade from the brewery brewbox (unless that's another memory thing...). Is the paler color still supposed to be there? I notice it's still there for the beer beerbox. On which subject, I've been wondering: is it appropriate to use the beer beerbox within a brewery page, say in a section about that particular beer? Or is it only meant to sit at the top of an article about a beer itself? --Daniel11 (talk) 23:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Beer Template

I created a beer template for beers within the context of a brewery article. I was working on updating the Great Lakes Brewing Company article and got annoyed with the format so I came up with {{User:DavidJ710/Template:Beer}}. Let me know what you think, and please feel free to update it with anything you like. If you think this is unnecessary, please discuss, and I'll revert my format changes, but I think this could be useful, especially with some more attention from all of you! DavidJ710| talk 21:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

While this might be nice on a company website, I don't know if the show/hide for the awards is very wikipedia like. What do others think?

Yukata Ninja (talk) 15:56, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, that is one of the things I was worried about. I have been on the fence as to whether or not that adds notability to the beers/brewery. I added the show/hide for that reason, it doesn't clutter up the page and if you are interested you can see them easily. Is there a way to include this information in a more suitable way, or is this something that should be omitted from the encyclopedia?  DavidJ710  talk  19:18, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd say make a note that it has won awards at certain competitions but omit the details, instead link to that competition (ie GABF). On the competition page they can have separate list pages that show winners, etc. Yukata Ninja (talk) 19:46, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Beer in O'Reilly's Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

WikiProject Beer makes an appearance in O'Reilly Media's Wikipedia: The Missing Manual in a chapter about WikiProjects. You can view a preview of the chapter, including a nice screenshot, here, by opening the WikiProjects section in Chapter 9 (I couldn't find a direct link to the section in question). Congratulations to all WikiProject Beer members.

Thanks to author John Broughton for the mention. It looks like a good book! --Daniel11 (talk) 03:29, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Where WikiProject Beer had been making great strides at adding and improving beer-related articles through about summer 2006, since then it has stagnated if not regressed. Am I the only one who finds it ironic that out of all the WikiProjects that could have been featured in such a work, they happened to choose this one? --Mwalimu59 (talk) 18:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

If you'd like to see the project improve, or improve at a faster rate, then the best way is to make those improvements yourself. Do you have any specific concerns? It seems to me like most if not all the members have moved beyond the sometimes uncivil arguments over what belongs in articles, and continued making (quiet) strides in improving the beer articles and the WikiProject infrastructure. It's true that there definitely remain vast areas that need to be filled in and improved, and many people don't have time to contribute at a steady pace so that there are faster and slower periods. We can always revisit any specific recommendations or standards if anyone's unhappy over their previous resolution, although hopefully in a calmer manner. Again, if you feel that this project has somehow stagnated or regressed but are still interested in its scope, then please bring up any specific areas that you're unhappy with, or make more detailed remarks about the broader, more general failures you see, and of course you're also encouraged to make any changes that would improve those areas yourself.

Besides, maybe they chose to use this one knowing it could use a bit of lovin'! --Daniel11 (talk) 07:39, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I sat on this and had to think for a while before deciding how to respond. A lot of the suggestions you are making are the same sort of thing I might say myself to a newer contributor who was getting frustrated at the process. In fact I probably have. Ideally, contributors work through their differences of opinion and come to some sort of consensus on what belongs in the articles.

Unfortunately what I see happening is that we have a handful of key participants in WikiProject Beer who "know they're right", no matter how many others disagree with them, who don't care how stubborn or obnoxious they have to be to other participants to get their way. I have made improvements to articles, only to have them stomped on by said individuals. One individual in particular (I won't mention any names but I'll bet many readers know who I'm talking about) has frequently gutted articles of content and revert others' good faith edits, often characterizing them as crap, vandalism, nonsense, and the like, terms normally reserved for truly bad faith edits. He's mocked others in his comments and is quick to accuse others of breaking the rules even when he is just barely within them himself. On Wikipedia there's always the risk that something you spend a lot of time on to improve an article won't pass muster and will get removed or heavily altered, but on this project that risk got to be too great to be worth the time. I started contributing to WikiProject Beer because I love beer, and I had to stop contributing to it because my experiences trying to contribute here were tainting and diminishing my love of beer. At one point the individual I was referring to left for several weeks, but he's back and as recently as this past week is still up to his old tricks. I don't really see myself returning in any significant capacity unless he seriously cleans up his act or leaves for good. And until then I shall regard beer related articles on Wikipedia as potentially biased or incomplete and to be taken with a grain of salt. "Salt in my beer." Yep, I'd say that's an apt description.

Having said that, I do appreciate your efforts and those of several others here toward continuing to improve the articles here on beer despite the atmosphere, and it is with no small amount of regret that I have had to step away from it for the sake of my own sanity. --Mwalimu59 (talk) 16:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Requested article

Requested article (why is there no "requested articles" section in this project, unlike all others?): Sour ale (currently redirects to Beer style). Badagnani (talk) 05:42, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The general section for listing articles that people would like to request assistance with got moved over to the WikiProject Beer collaboration page, although we haven't really had enough ongoing interest in the collaboration to keep it current. You could add a requested articles section to this project, or you can use the collaboration page and try to whip it into better shape, and maybe draw some more attention to it. The latter might require some extra work, although if you feel like doing that it would be greatly appreciated! --Daniel11 (talk) 07:46, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup and Citations

Hey everyone, I'm asking the Beer Project to try to help cleanup and cite the last few articles in this contribution history [2]. The editor is rather... passionate... about the article for Emerald Coast Beer Company and was recently blocked for sticking an AfD tag on several other brewery articles. I attempted to start a citation effort on the list with Diamond Bear Brewing Company and Rio Salado Brewing Company but I don't really have the will to do more than research one at a time and only every so often. If the Beer Project could get involved in the citation clean-up it would greatly decrease the odds of these breweries ending up at AfD in the future.--Torchwood Who? (talk) 16:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Importance standardization

Hello, all. I've been developing Igor lately, and have finally gotten to see all of our articles and their assigned importances and whatnot in one place. Right now, they're a little inconsistent, so I'm trying to standardize them a bit. This is what I'm setting for now:

• Beer styles and other core topics: Top importance.
• Glassware like pint glass and pilsner glass: High to mid importance
• Beers of (country/continent/nation): High importance.
• Lists: From high (list of breweries) to low (list of Ukrainian beer).
• Individual breweries: I'm not touching right now, but I'm thinking that the five or so giants should be top, ranging all the way down to low for the little local guys. We should come up with a definition of what defines a top brewery vs. a mid vs. a low, though.

What do you folks think? – ClockworkSoul 17:58, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I pretty strongly agree with your proposed categorizations.

I'd also like to add a few comments/questions about Igor in general, I guess this isn't the ideal place but I hope you don't mind.

First of all, I think it's a really good idea, I'm sure it will encourage the rapid growth and improvement of existing projects, and spur the creation of new ones.

Is it Windows-only, or multi-platform? On a somewhat related note, would it make sense to incorporate it into any existing tools for use with WP?

Finally, a recommendation, in case you hadn't already thought of it: implementing the ability to browse existing WikiProjects, both for its own sake and in order to help someone classify a new project that one might be interested in creating.

Again, looks really good so far, and I'm in agreement re your proposed assessments.--Daniel11 (talk) 07:28, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Igor is a multi-platform application. It's written in Java and will be distributed as an executable JAR file, so (in theory) it should run on just about anything with a new enough JVM. I'm not sure of any tools that we would want to incorporate into it, at least not offhand. Did you have anything in mind? As for browsing WikiProjects, I'm not sure what you mean, exactly, but at the moment you can easily scan and see (and modify) the articles tagged for any of about 1200 WikiProjects and workgroups. Take a look over at the Igor page. Let me know what you think. If you have any other suggestions, you can post them right on the talk page. :) – ClockworkSoul 02:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Fine, I'll post further comments/questions in the appropriate place! --Daniel11 (talk) 02:33, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Beer at IBM Research

Here's another mention of WikiProject Beer. In a fancy paper on Visualizing Activity on Wikipedia with Chromograms, some IBM Research and MIT people make passing reference to us, though not exactly in the most flattering light...

Wikiprojects have distinctive social atmospheres. On “Wikiproject: Mathematics” a typical participant introduces himself with, “Ph.D. in mathematics from Caltech, with a specialization in mathematical logic” while on “Wikiproject: Beer” a representative self-description reads only “mmm, beer.”

But seriously, it's an interesting paper. --Daniel11 (talk) 01:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

There's also a slightly different version here, looks like basically the same thing but without as many illustrations. --Daniel11 (talk) 01:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

"Mmm, beer". Not's not unflattering, it's just unstuffy. I'm an educated guy, but when I think of beer, I don't imagine (usually) the enzymes of fermentation decomposing glucose into pyruvate and ethanol with a net gain in ATP... I think "I like beer, beer good". The atmosphere here is different is all, and I'm reasonably sure that's all they were saying. It's a bit less academic, and that's a good thing. – ClockworkSoul 02:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, I just found the contrast a bit stark, and thus funny, but you're right that it's not really unflattering. --Daniel11 (talk) 02:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, it is stark, and I'm glad! Great article, Daniel. I was a good read, thanks! – ClockworkSoul 15:13, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Mergers and stuff

I think we need to do more work on companies that have merged and bought each other. For example, I was looking for MacTarnahan's, a Portland brewery. Turns out MacTarnahan's and Portland Brewing Company were both bought by Pyramid, which was then bought by Magic Hat. None of the pages said anything like that. --AW (talk) 21:45, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines say that you should use the current name and upmerge the information. I think this is a good example why keeping old articles can be useful, or creating them if needed. After multiple merges, the history sections can be rather a mess. In the case of brewers, the fact that the brand may continue to be made, merges can be tricky. Yes, you can use redirects, but then someone still needs to add the information to the current article. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

So should I create a MacTarnahan's page? I wouldn't know where to stop. --AW (talk) 03:44, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

If they are notable yes. If someone ever feels the need to merge they can. Since it is now closed, using reliable sources with something like {{cite web}} would be critical. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:16, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

They still have a website and stuff though, which is odd. I'll just make it and see what happens. --AW (talk) 17:06, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Keg stand vs keg games

I've been doing a little work on keg stand, and another user decided to merge it into a new article called keg games. Personally, I think a keg stand is its own thing with plenty of references (try Googleing it), whereas keg games is kind of a nebulous term - is it a game involving beer from a keg? A game physically using the keg? I dunno. My suggestion is to have a section in keg with brief mention that there are games that use a keg with references. And if any of those games are notable enough, which I doubt, then make their own articles. Figured this was an organizational thing which would be good to talk to you all about. --AW (talk) 21:19, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you that "keg stand" is either worthy of its own article a section in a much larger drinking games article; honestly, I see no point in the continued existence of keg games, because keg stand is the only "keg game" even mentioned there and constitutes 85% of the entry. I'm wholly opposed to adding it to keg though. It's really just an amusing cultural item and really doesn't have much to do with defining and describing what a keg is, making its addition no better than slapping a "trivia" or "in popular culture" section onto an otherwise decent article. – ClockworkSoul 15:11, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Cool, sounds good. And about keg, if there are games involving it and they have sources, I don't see why they shouldn't be added. Most appear to be not very notable though.--AW (talk) 18:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Alternate banner

Hello,

I have recently modified the {{WPFOOD}} banner so that it supports this project. I did this to unite all the food related projects under a uniform banner as well as cut down on the number of banners that appear at the top of each article talk page. It also allows for a streamlined assessment process where we can help assess articles across the scope of the related WP Food and Drink projects.

Just add the |Beer=yes switch to any {{WikiProject Food and drink}} tag at the top of the article talk page and you will get this:

Standard banner -

As you can see, this project is prominently displayed in the banner, and I can add any custom text you would like.

With nesting function -

This is now functioning properly with assessments carried over to both projects. It is still rough looking at this time.

If there is any questions, please post them not on my page but on the WP Food Banners talk page. Other modifications can be made to the template to allow for custom alterations to the template.

As for the banner, there is currently a bot going through and tagging food and beverage categories.

You don't have to use it, but please consider it. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 09:50, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I've started a discussion of this here. In a nutshell, I disagree with how it was implemented without our input. – ClockworkSoul 16:21, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Just to note, it hasn't been implemented at all, it has only been created and offered as a suggestion, perhaps worded improperly but I'm sure many of us have been found guilty of using improper phrasing in our excitement of making a post of something we put a lot of time in and hoped that other people might find the same excitement in our ideas like when i came on to the Beer Project and revamped the main page.--Chef Tanner (talk) 17:10, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't care for it and I also don't like that all the WikiProject Beer articles have been tagged with the Food and Drink banner. --Thetrick (talk) 17:30, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I also object. While I welcome interproject collaboration, especially where there is a genuine cross-over, The Food and Drink project is one step removed from beer articles themselves - it is a parent project rather than a cross-over project, and so should interact with the project itself, and not directly with the articles. Beer is fairly specialised, and requires specialised interest and knowledge which a general project like Food and Drink would not posses. Depending on which route one wishes to follow, beer also comes under the Chemistry project as well as the Science project - and it would also be inappropriate for those projects to get directly involved in Narragansett Brewing Company. Some projects which are cross-overs and do sometimes have a shared interest are the Architecture Project, the Tourism Project, the Business Project, etc. The point of a project is that it is a body of people who have an interest in a topic and can therefore deal with issues that occur. WikiProject Beer directly oversees matters relating to beer, including brewing companies. Any matters relating to beer should come to WikiProject Beer and not to WikiProject Food and Drink. Having a Food and Drink tag on beer related articles would only confuse matters. SilkTork *^YES! 22:11, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

My error

I would like to apologize for the poor wording I used as well as my failure to elaborate my ideas for this proposal. Please realize that is all it is, a proposal. I have no intentions to forcibly remove your tag or perform a "hostile" take over of this project, assumptions that couldn't be further from the truth.

As I have stated on the WP Food talk page, I was looking to unite the foodies of WP to accomplish several things:

• Simplify assessments of articles by pooling our resources,
• Associate the food projects together, allowing readers the chance to read related articles under the auspices of associated projects.
• Keep talk pages with overlapping subjects free of the clutter of multiple banners.

My reasoning is this:

1. I have spent weeks pairing the unassessed articles in WP Food, reviewing hundreds and not making any headway. I figured that the other projects were having the same issue and came up with this idea to resolve the problem: By pooling our resources we would put more people on the job thus completing the task quicker.
2. Wine is an indelible part of Iberian, French and Italian cuisines just as beer is to Germanic and Nordic cuisine. As much as we would like to think beer is beer, wine is wine and food is food and never th twain shall they meet, that is not the case.
3. This would allow overlapping subjects such as a beergarden or brew pub to to have one tag for both beer and food service or Coldstone Creamery which falls under the auspices of ice cream and food service. Off hand, I can think of a dozen separate cases with this type of overlap.

I have been working with the WPBannerMeta people to find a way to accomplish this in the best way possible and have soliciting the input from these food and drink projects to discover the individual needs of the groups before implementing this. It would be completely voluntary for the group, currently it is only being used on the WP Food task forces and a couple of articles as a test. I have not removed any project tags and will not do so unless given permission.

Any questions, please post them on the banners talk page.

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 04:15, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Testing of banner

I need a beer article to test the banner out on, I will be using Narragansett Brewing Company (Good old Heffenreffer!) because it is not incredibly well know and is not very high on the importance scale. Please tell me if there are any problems with this. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 03:50, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Wording

Would any one like to have me customize the text for this project? --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 18:38, 6 July 2008 (UT

One last try

I recently found that the WikiProject Hinduism Banner has a function that would place a child project banner as well as the parent project on a talk page using the same format as I have already. The way they have it set up, the switches activate the child banner and place it above the parent project. Would this be acceptable?

You can see an example of what I mean on the Talk:Ocimum tenuiflorum article.

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 02:16, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The explanation isn't very clear, but it seems fine. Badagnani (talk) 02:30, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The explanation is very clear, this is what I was talking about in another post actually and I think this would appease numerous issues.--Chef Tanner (talk) 05:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

So by setting a parameter, two templates can be created in place of one? This is a very interesting proposition, but still automatically makes all beer articles into food articles as well. I can't stop you from doing that, but in my experiences that is a bad idea. After all, if BEER decides that something is of High importance to beer, like flocculation, do you definitely want it to be High importance to FOOD? – ClockworkSoul 09:24, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The beer articles wouldn't become food articles, as you imply, but "Food and drink" articles. The project is called "Food and drink," not "Food." Beer is a type of drink. Badagnani (talk) 17:45, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Of course, but I'm talking about categorization. In the example, the tagged article is added to "Start-Class Hinduism articles" and "High-importance Hinduism articles" as well as to "Start-Class Krishnaism articles" and "High-importance Krishnaism articles". Is that the direction in which you would like to proceed as well? If so, if an article is very important to the subject beer, but less important to to that of food and drink as a whole (take beerstone, for example) who would assign the importance? Should beerstone, in this example, even be part of F&D? – ClockworkSoul 18:49, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

You can add separate importance ratings in this template, right now I have it set to use the single assessment, but I can easily change it. It is a single switch, you would add the |beer-importance=Top, High etc once I were to turn it on.

Shall I ask HappyMelon to make a test template? It may take a few days. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 04:49, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

If you like, but it doesn't address the core issue that not all beer articles SHOULD be F&D articles. Once this new banner rolls out, F&D is committed to that double tagging, and it cannot be easily reversed. With a system like this one, just just adds two banners with one template, can't you simply use two templates? – ClockworkSoul 13:21, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 22:16, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Alternate beer banner: take it or leave it?

Hello, all. As most of you are aware, Jerem43 (talk · contribs) from the Food and Drink project (the parent project of this one) has created an omni-banner that rolls our Wikiproject banner ({{WikiProject Beer}}) into the food banner, along with many other task forces and descendant projects. This banner, in addition to clearly marking BEER as a child of FOOD, tags its host page as part of the FOOD project, in addition to being part of the BEER project, effectively making all BEER articles FOOD articles as well. An example of this banner is use can be found at Talk:Narragansett Brewing Company.

Arguments for this change include:

• This will unite all the food-related projects under a uniform banner, cutting down on the number of banners that appear at the top of each article talk page.
• This allow more graceful tagging of overlapping subjects. For example, a beergarden or brew pub can be tagged once with the omni-tag instead of one tag for Beer and another for Food Service.
• There is sufficient crossover between beer and food subjects that a single banner can be used for both.
• Simplify article assessments of articles by pooling the resources of multiple projects.

Arguments against this change include:

• The BEER project is wholly independent of FOOD, and this change threatens that autonomy.
• The original banner is sufficient, and the new banner is unnecessarily complex.
• Not all BEER articles should be tagged as FOOD articles, and to do so would not only be redundant and overwhelm the FOOD project, but would be trivializing the BEER project and defeat the purpose of having a child project.
• The goal of change would be better accomplished by creating a new community entity, such as a joint project talk page; simply tagging more articles as being in the FOOD domain cannot foster greater community interaction.

Discussion

Please voice your support, opposition, or comments regarding the proposed changes below. Remember, this is a discussion, not a vote, and the goal is to reach a consensus. Finally, while this discussion is intended to ascertain the opinion of BEER project members, input from those in other projects is welcome.

Support

1. Support - It seems like a fine idea, as beer is a form of "Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink" (it is drunk as well as used in chili, beer batter, etc.). Badagnani (talk) 18:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
2. Support - I created it. We are still working on accommodating the wants and needs of the projects. This proposal is premature in its nature and should be held once it is out of the RfC stage. Please see my comment below. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 07:38, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Strongly oppose - My opposition to this proposal is multi-levelled. First, I feel that this change trivializes the beer project by essentially taking the entire scope of BEER and rolling it into FOOD, even to the degree that our banner is made an aspect of theirs. Second, not all beer subjects should be part of the food project, and to try to make that so would be harmful to that project by making its list of articles entirely unmanageable. I highly recommend that FOOD tag specific beer-related articles as being part of its scope, and let BEER take care of the details. – ClockworkSoul 19:57, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
2. Also strongly oppose - In addition to the observations above and in line with some of them, I believe that this proposal runs contrary to the whole purpose and set of benefits of specialization that WikiProjects promote. I like the idea of more inter-project collaboration (we've certainly already benefited a lot from that which we've had with the foodies), and in particular I wholeheartedly endorse a joint discussion board and other similar improvements. Note the difference -- those are incremental changes, easy to start out small and grow if it succeeds or fall back harmlessly if it turns out not to be such a great idea after all. This, on the other hand, looks pretty unwieldy and lacking sufficient delicacy. --Daniel11 (talk) 06:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
3. Oppose (conditionally) - I oppose the proposed banner as it is currently defined, however if "unification" is agreeable to some extent, maybe we should just modify the beer banner to include a reference to food and drink as a co-project or sister project or something like that. Nevertheless, the beer banner should not be subordinate in any way. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE 14:22, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
4. Strong oppose WP:BEER is a separate and active project with its own importance and inclusion criteria. That including all of the BEER articles in the F&D project directly will bring more activity is pure supposition. It's just as likely that tagging everything under the sun will drive people away from an overly large F&D project. Inclusion of individual BEER articles in F&D by hand on a case-by-case basis would be okay, but the mass tagging by the bot should be undone. If someone wants to coordinate the look and feel of the BEER and F&D banners that also would be okay. --Thetrick (talk) 13:45, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
5. Weak oppose - I'm comfortable enough that a suitable template design could be developed. Nevertheless I'm opposed primarily because I concur with the sentiment others have expressed that not all BEER articles should be FOOD articles. --Mwalimu59 (talk) 16:42, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
6. I have made my feelings on this matter known in various other channels. Mass tagging of beer articles is not appropriate. Where there is a genuine cross-over the Template:WikiProjectBannerShell works fine. SilkTork *^YES! 22:43, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• Dear colleagues in fermented beverages, over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine we have so far been rather uninterested in using this option. It will preclude us from applying another assessments than the WPFOOD project. It also makes us (and you) look like a taskforce rather than a project, but saying that makes me perhaps seem a bit territorial? Cheers, Tomas e (talk) 20:11, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

• As another WP:WINE member, I share a lot of the same views as the "oppose" commentators in regards to this change. While WP:FOOD is a parent to the wine and beer projects, both projects have essentially "Grown Up" and are for all practical purposes independent from WP:FOOD. I mean how often does WP:FOOD members actively take part on the Beer and Wine project pages, contribute to project decision making process/templates/article improvement drives, etc. Don't get me wrong, I think WP:FOOD is a wonderful project but this action seems like it is trying to assume both WP:BEER and WP:WINE in a matter that is not needed or beneficial to any of the three projects. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 21:50, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

• Please take a look at the One last try post above, I believe that there is a solution that can accomplish my proposal while meeting the needs and wants of the Beer and Wine projects.

Here is what the new proposal would do:

1. Place a Beer (Wine, Ice Cream, etc) banner at the top. This new banner would be the text and image that is currently one the existing Beer banner.
2. Place the Food and Drink banner below Beer banner automatically, and you would not be able to place the F&D banner before the child projects when using the new template.

It would look like this (using the ice cream project as an example):

As you can see from the example (which is not how the banner is currently configured) the child projects would be listed first. Based on the real world example that I mention above it works rather nicely for the Hinduism project and its child projects. I would still place the task forces in the main banner.

It will take me a few days to set it up to show you what I intend by the revised proposal. Please give me a week or try to make the proposal work. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 05:02, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't mind waiting a week or so. – ClockworkSoul 13:19, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

There still needs to be a rating scale for the "child" projects though as their rating scales on many topics will differ from Food and Drink. i can't think of any articles off the top of my head right now, plus I'm packing for Vegas, so my mind is somewhere else, but I think my idea is clearish.Chef Tanner (talk) 13:53, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

What are we waiting a week for - a new design? I'm not quite sure what difference the design will make. I am quite happy with this: Talk:Michael Jackson (writer). As I say above, the Template:WikiProjectBannerShell works fine. SilkTork *^YES! 22:56, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think I care all that much about whether banners are separate or bunched together, but I am rather disturbed that so many members of this project are implying that beer is somehow a subject separate from food and drink. I can for the love of me not understand how anyone could even attempt to imply that WP:BEER merely overlaps WP:FOOD rather than sorting directly under it topic-wise. I can understand that there's a need to separate rating scales, but I don't understand how a WP:BEER article would somehow not be relevant to the WP:FOOD banner. WP:FOOD is about cuisine and most things related to it, which includes various drinks. So the question is: if a beer article isn't a drink article, then why would it be relevant to WP:BEER in the first place? Could those making these kinds of arguments please provide a single valid example to support their claims? Peter ^Isotalo 16:39, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Although all articles in beer are also "drink articles", there are good reasons for not placing every single beer article into the scope of F&D. While F&D defines its scope as "everything relating to food and drink", the entire reason for having a child project dedicated to beer is to deal with the beer minutiae, including but not limited to beer styles, beer brewing (including such minutia as beerstone and homebrewing), beer glassware, beers by region, yeast strains, etc, etc. This adds up to so many articles that while technically these are F&D topics, it really isn't practical for all of these articles to clog up the F&D lists because this would greatly decreases the signal to noise ratio, making it far harder for for WP:F&D to improve the articles most relevant to food and drink in general. Allow me to draw a parallel using other existing projects: Wikipedia:WikiProject Science, which has Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology as its child, which in turn has a Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology as its child. WP:MCB has about 11,000 articles, mostly proteins and genes histone and cytochrome P450 reductase, but also articles with a broader interest like protein, carbohydrate, DNA, and cell (biology). The latter two articles are also tagged as being in the scope of WP:Biology, not because protein and carbohydrate have nothing to do with biology, but because WP:Biology also includes vital articles like ecology, botany, and creation and evolution in public education. In this sense, WP:Biology is concerned with the forest, allowing WP:MCB to deal with the trees. WP:Science also has identified about 500 articles, including DNA, but also articles like atom and star. If WP:Biology included all WP:MCB articles, it would have a list of about 25,000 articles. If WP:Science tagged all of its childrens' articles, its list of articles would be over 100,000 articles in size, far too large to be useful. For this reason, I highly recommend that F&D just tag the most relevant beer articles (such as beer, brewing, yeast, and most of the various beer styles), and allow BEER to work on the details. – ClockworkSoul 20:07, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

There are a number of objections, and some have blurred together in a general reaction against what has happened.

*The lack of consultation.

*The problem with the template which placed talkpages in the main Beer cat (that's what caught my attention!)

*The lack of appreciation and understanding of the Beer cat system, so that the template would have placed all beer articles in the main beer cat rather than sorted into the subcats that we have.

*The attempt without consultation to subsume the WikiProject Beer tag into the F&D tag which makes it appear that Beer has no autonomy and takes direction from F&D

*The appearance of a lack of appreciation for the organisation and structure of the Beer project, and a lack of understanding of what we do

*The accusations of WP:OWN when we have never to my knowledge objected to any other tagging of beer articles. If there are to be claims of ownership problems, that would seem to apply more fairly in the opposite direction.

*The mass, indiscriminate tagging.

*And on the point, directly, of crossover of interest between F&D and Beer: If you look at the Projects in the same manner as categories for the purpose of organisational structure (and that's the best way of doing it, because Projects are based on the category structure) then this statement is pertinent: "Usually, articles should not be in both a category and its subcategory." Horizontal cross-over categorisation is encouraged, but vertical cross-over is not as it is unhelpful, confusing and makes a nonsense of the categorising system. What is the point of having a specialist Beer project if F&D feel that beer is directly their responsibility?

Objections tend to incorporate some or all of the above points. SilkTork *^YES!

Silk, to address your points:

1. This has been and still is the consultation. I admit should have communicated better when I came up with the idea, but at no point did I ever start deploying this without consulting any of the projects first. I should have asked for a proper RfC before just dropping it in your laps.
2. This issue was corrected almost immeadiately, it was a misunderstanding in syntax of the template on my part. When I realized the issue, I asked for, and received, help in correcting it.
3. That is why I put the notice above: Other modifications can be made to the template to allow for custom alterations to the template. In other words, I was soliciting the project members for their needs and wants in regards to customizations to the tag.
4. As per the previous, I am asking for your input and have been from the beginning, but due to poor communications on my part that was not made clear. That is the reason for the latest suggestion I made above.
5. At no time did I ever try to subsume, absorb, takeover or any other verbiage that you choose this project, its banner or anything else. All I ever intended was what I have stated before and that is to help foster a sense of community between the projects and simplify the act of rating articles.
6. I have never accused you or anyone else of WP:Own. To paraphrase the warning found on the editorial pages of most newspapers: The opinions of commentators on this page are not my personal opinions, but those of the contributors. I take no responsibility for them and should not be held accountable for them. What others think of you is their own business, not mine. Please do not ascribe their feeling as that of me or others in the WP Food group. Do not use their comments as a counterpoint to my proposal as they has nothing to do with the merits of it or its creator, Me.
7. I will not comment on this as I believe it has no merit on the discussion. All I will say is that it was not indiscriminate, but poorly planned, again on my part.
8. As for cats comment, the template does not add any categories except for those related to Wikipedia's ratings system, e.g. C-Rated Beer articles, C-Rated Food and Drink articles.

The following is my opinion

• I am personally, highly aggravated at the chosen terminology that has been put forth by you and, to a lesser extent, others have used to describe my proposal in this discussion. The phraseology utilized is inflammatory and reckless, to me it seeks to make my intents look unsavory. It fails to assume good faith and goes against every thing that WP stands for. That is my feeling on the subject and not my opinion of you or the others in this project, for whom I have a great deal of respect because of your dedication to the subject.
• You are aggravated with me, that is obvious in your tone, and, to me, you are not arguing your point in the discussion but against me personally. Your repeated mention of the things I have done wrong as counterpoints as opposed to serious points of contention with the proposal diminishes the weight of your argument. Additionally, the continued assailing of me in this manner is rude and disingenuous.

BTW, the preceding commentary was not aimed at the members of this project, but the specific commentator mentioned in the opening. I appreciate the chance to get this right that the others in the Beer project have given to me in this endeavor and do not wish to offend them.

All I have asked for is the chance to be legitimately heard based upon the merits of the proposal and not shouted down because I screwed up. Because of my missteps in regards to making this proposal, I believe that to be impossible at this point. I withdraw my proposal from this group.

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 22:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

The examples provided strike me as being perfectly suited for inclusion in WP:FOOD. Implying that articles like homebrewing are somehow too narrow for WP:FOOD is absurd. I mean, it's not even a beer-specific article! It might be unwieldy to have tens of thousands of articles within the same project, but it's nothing compared to the complexities of having to negotiate with each individual child project where exactly to draw the line.

The horizontal vs vertical argument is not a standard (look at WP:MILHIST, for example), and project inclusion is not analogous to article categories. Considering that banner inclusion doesn't actually interfere in any major way with WP:BEER's article improvement, I get the feeling that we'rve created a tempest in a teacup. There are no issues of "direct responsibility" or anything that basically amounts to ownership. All the accusations of teeling WP:BEER come off as paranoid strawmen arguments to me.

And I certainly understand Jeremy's frustration. The high-pitched tone, exaggerated accusations and fierce territorial behavior over minor issues have created a pointless prestige dispute between two projects that should be cooperating, not bickering over who's stupid banner gets to be on top.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:25, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Peter, you asked for a reason why all beer articles shouldn't necessarily be tagged as F&D articles, and although it looks like we got a little side-tracked, I gave you the best reason I have: that it would be bad for F&D. This is obviously degrading into something non-productive, so this'll be my last post issue on the subject (at least until something new is said, or need be said). Frankly, I don't really care about that issue all that much. If you want to bloat yourselves, feel free, but keep us out of it. – ClockworkSoul 01:00, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Your concern about bloating is valid, but even enlarging one's scope as a project might have certain negative aspects, it still seems better to me than trying to keep the child projects almost completely separate. What I wish we could agree on before we decide to leave this conflict behind us is that WP:FOOD can do as much for WP:BEER as vice versa. No one is denying that you beer aficionados have a lot of specialized knowledge, but I really don't want to walk away from this with a general feeling that I and other members of WP:FOOD belong to some abstract and distant umbrella project that wouldn't know a porter from a lager.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:09, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Peter, I too would like to put all of the ugliness behind us and move forward. I don't think that either of us wants F&D to be an abstract and distant umbrella project, and equally neither of us wants complete exclusion of BEER articles from the scope of FOOD. Like I said above, I think that the best solution is for us to cross over at a number of beer articles, but not every single article. I highly suggest that the members of F&D ask themselves whether all beer and wine articles should be tagged by F&D instead of the most relevant, say, 10 to 20%? What would the advantages and disadvantages of such mass global tagging be? Can you really manage and improve 20,000+ articles? What's the point of having child projects if you're going to take on their workload as well? What you tag doesn't really affect us here at BEER (other than making us feel redundant), but as a group you should really consider the ramifications of what you're doing, and I highly recommend you have a very serious conversation about the limitations of your scope. We can't decide for you what your criterion for inclusion should be, but please let us worry about the more obscure stuff, and collaborate with us (i.e., tag) on the somewhat more general interest articles. – ClockworkSoul 13:42, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

My spontaneous reaction to such a suggestion is that separation of very specific beer or wine articles from a food and drinks project will be very arbitrary. However, if this is how it's supposed to be done, there needs to be a decision that will be at least similar to all child projects, and that needs to be discussed over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Food and drink, not here.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Jeremy. I hear what you are saying, and I do apologise for my tone. Much of the frustration which comes through in my tone I think has been built up by the actions and comments of Tinucherian, who instead of listening to the genuine grievances that the Beer project has with this, has been aggressive in accusations of ownership, of removal of tags, and in creating drama with pointy actions this this: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Council#Issues_with_WikiProject_Banner_Tagging. My first communications on this matter were neutral: [3], [4], [5]. And I supported unblocking Tinucherian's Bot: [6]. I'm looking through the various comments I've made on this issue, and I suppose my tone may start to sound frustrated when there is continual and aggressive arguments coming from Tinucherian rather than an attempt, like yourself, to listen to what we are saying. I suppose you have become conflated with Tinucherian in this issue, and for that I do apologise. It is wearisome to put forward legitimate concerns about an action, and then to be accused of having ownership problems, and of being obstructive. I suppose in Tinucherian's defence, the block of the bot must have been frustrating, and some of that frustration has spilled over in dealings with everyone involved in this issue. However, we did not block the bot, all we are doing is - like yourself - talking, and putting forward our concerns. If some tetchy language has slipped in I do completely apologise for that. SilkTork *^YES! 07:48, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the apology. Just a note, I have been tagging spices articles, and have been manually putting the WPFood tag below the WPPlant tag as most are listed by taxonomy not common name. Please feel free to put the beer tag first, I should have had that done to begin with. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 22:38, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Pub Task Force

Anyone interesting in working for a while on improving the pub articles? Sorting out the stubs. Organising the categories. Creating a Pub InfoBox. Drawing up some kind of notability guideline, and checking that pub articles are meeting the guidelines. Drawing up a Style guideline. Working on the editing of the main articles - Public house, List of public houses in the United Kingdom, Bar (establishment), etc. Considering how to integrate all the drinking establishments around the globe. Perhaps create a new parent article: Drinking establishment. I've started working on the pub articles, but I would really like to work with other people to bounce ideas and keep within consensus. SilkTork *^YES! 18:46, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Tell me exactly what you want me to do, and I'll try to help out. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE 18:51, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I've actually been thinking of this myself. Should we perhaps expand the scope to include breweries? – ClockworkSoul 18:53, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The Tavern article would seem to encompass drinking establishments (which could be a redirect to Tavern). There are of course many synonyms for what is essentially the same overarching item. The telephone Yellow Pages still uses the heading "Taverns" to list drinking establishments. Badagnani (talk) 19:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The main category appears to be Category:Drinking establishments. It's usual, but not mandatory, to have the main article name match the main category. However, "drinking establishment" is not a widely recognised term. The main terms are likely to be "Bar" and "Pub", though Tavern or Inn are also possible. It might be worth considering having Drinking establishment as a disambiguation page to save this happening on various pub/bar articles. SilkTork *^YES! 21:13, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Did you mean brewpubs Clock? I think we would need a separate task force for breweries themselves. SilkTork *^YES! 21:13, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you're right. I'm thinking that we should organize two taskforces that overlap at brewpubs. Both subjects are certainly worthy of their own taskforce. – ClockworkSoul 21:16, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

That sounds sensible - brewpubs are both pubs and breweries. SilkTork *^YES! 21:26, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Founders. A quick and helpful start would be to go through Category:Pub stubs making sure all the articles there have a {{beer}} tag on the talkpage, that they are appropriately cataloged within Category:Drinking establishments, that the pub stub is removed if the article is a start size, being bold and redirecting where seems most appropriate - as per WP:PRODUCT, Wikipedia:Places of local interest and WP:NOTGUIDE, or listing at AfD in hopeless or doubtful cases. SilkTork *^YES! 21:13, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd say go ahead and start a Drinking establishment dab page, with wikilinks to distinct varieties of drinking establishment such as pubs or brewpubs. Badagnani (talk) 21:19, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Nice one Badagnani! SilkTork *^YES! 21:25, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

 Done See Drinking establishment. Badagnani (talk) 21:26, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I've started a Pub Taskforce page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Beer/Pub Taskforce. And I have made an attempt at creating an Infobox, but it's not very good: {{Infobox Pub}}. SilkTork *^YES! 11:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Could I make a suggestion? Used the {{Infobox company}} as a starting point and go from there. I did this for the {{Infobox Burger King}} and {{infobox McDonald's}} templates that are used on their associated articles. You can add or subtract the various parameters the TF requires, while using a format that is already known to the general Wikipedia populace. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 16:19, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Reference section

After discussions and advice from other editors, especially those on the Film Project, I have been using this style of ref section as standard:

References

{{refbegin}}

Notes

{{reflist}}

External links

{{refend}}

I use this even where there are no notes/cites, external links or books/articles as it sets up the section properly to start with and hopefully encourages others to use references or list helpful books. I use to use {{unreferenced}}, but ceased doing so as I thought the reference section itself was enough of a reminder.

What do others think? SilkTork *^YES! 21:34, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I still use REFIMPROVE and UNREFERENCED myself. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE 03:34, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a system for this and WP:BEER should stick to it. Also, empty sections are the visual equivalent of dead air. --Thetrick (talk) 20:44, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

What is that system? SilkTork *^YES! 21:44, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Brewery cats

There was a brief discussion last year -[7] - in which it was decided to change the structure of the beer cats in the United States from "Category:Beer and breweries in ***" which nested in "Category:Beer and breweries in the United States" which nested in "Beer and breweries by region" to a system of "Category:Beer brewing companies based in ***" which nests in "Category:Beer brewing companies in the United States by state" which nests in "Category:Beer and breweries in the United States". The previous Beer and breweries cat system was deleted and replaced by the new one.

There were only two people in this discussion who agreed to this change - User:Vegaswikian and User:Hmains, and the change they agreed to was not the one proposed by the nominator.

I came upon some of these changes last year and had a discussion with Vegaswikian [8], and undid some of the changes I discovered. I explained the history of the cat system and how it was based, and directed him to this and this in which it can be seen that there was a wide consensus for the system he wanted to delete, and that the system replaced the varying cat systems used up to that time. Going back to a varied system doesn't seem wise. I also suggested that if Vegaswikian wanted to continue with the change that he had proposed, that we could talk it through here on the project.

He didn't get back to me, nor take up the offer to discus it here, so I felt that was the end of that matter. But today I found more changes, and discovered in fact a quite widespread changing of the cat system. I started to work my way through and make changes, but discovered it was quite widespread, and based on this discussion, which took place after I had spoken with Vegaswikian. He didn't inform me or any of us that he wanted to pursue the changes. His explanation on the CfD was: "This was approved by a previous discussion. In trying to do the changes, one user has been undoing the changes citing a previous discussion. So I'm bring this back here again. The notice for the previous discussion was posted on the the beer project page."

Again that discussion involved very few people (three agreements) - yet it resulted in a decison to delete a significant proportion of our category system and replace it with something else.

If there are to be significant changes to our Cat system I feel we should look at the implications. There may be some merit to what Vegaswikian is proposing, though without him explaining it here with the Project we don't know. When faced with a change that we don't know has taken place we may end up reverting because people do from time to time create odd cats that don't work, and we need to keep the beer category system clean and simple. Communication is important. I'm informing BeerProject members of these changes. Let's talk. SilkTork *^YES! 13:51, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I think I'm getting a little lost in what is being proposed to change to. I've been out of touch for a bit on the WikiBeer scene, so perhaps I've missed some of the discussions. Overall though, I'm partial to the City --> State --> US architecture. Having regions was OK in some settings, but in others it just didn't pan out, where there was discussion of a brewery was considered in the region or not. --Brownings (talk) 15:01, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that with the ever expanding amount of articles on breweries this will be a more precise way to keep track of them. Jmcstrav *^YES! 10:59, 14 July 2008 (CSTC)

Sorry, I didn't make it clear. The change that has taken place has been to replace "Beer and breweries in Alaska - Washington" with "Beer brewing companies based in Alaska - Washington". These changes only taking place in USA, leaving the USA with a different category system to the rest of the world.

It is essentially a renaming of the cat, but only in the United States, and a renaming that doesn't take into account that beer is a product of a brewery and is mostly dealt with in the brewery article. So if someone wanted to read about a beer that was from Alaska, there is no clear place.

I think that Vegaswikian created Category:Beer brands with the intention of holding all the articles on beer brands. We had that before, named Category:Brands of beer and it didn't work because it was unnavigable and didn't work in harmony with the brewery cats we had in place at the time, so we decided to get rid of that in favour of the Beer and breweries system.

However, I have been making use of Category:Beer brands for holding articles dealing with the brands produced by the major breweries (Category:Heineken brands, Category:Anheuser-Busch beer brands, etc), and that seems to work fine, so as long as we can keep that cat under control, then it does serve a purpose.

I am quite happy with the "Beer and breweries" system and I see it working fine. Though if there are suggestions for improvements and amendments I am all for discussing those and implementing them if they are seen to be helpful. SilkTork *^YES! 17:31, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what "beer" articles are in these categories? I looked through a few, and I only saw breweries. For accuracy, I don't see a problem with the rename. If someone wants to read about beer in Alaska, we could, I suppose, create Category:Beer brewed in Alaska. --Kbdank71 19:14, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I was the one who (inadvertently) instigated this mess. My original goal was to rename various US state categories to be consistent with the rest of the tree, eg. Alabama breweries to Beer and breweries in Alabama. At that time some were consistent, some were not. The discussion promptly got out of my control, and I was pulled away from WP at the same time. I feel that 1) the tree should be consistent top to bottom, and 2) that most of the Beer and breweries by US state categories will always be on the sparse side, and that it is pointless to chop them up further into brewing companies, brewing plants, brewery buildings, and whatever else. --Thetrick (talk) 19:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that the current discussion was more directed at Category:Breweries (buildings) which is a member of Category:Buildings and structures by type part of a rather large classification system for Category:Buildings and structures. Breweries is an ambiguous name in that it refers to the building or the company so the category names need to make this clear. With breweries there are many notable companies but a smaller number of notable buildings. But clearly they need a category that fits into the structure of Category:Buildings and structures. Also there is a well established category of by state classification. Likewise there is a well established Category:Companies based in FooUSstate or Category:Companies of country. Regions are problems since for some countries it is not clear what region they are actually in. I think that several countries are even listed on multiple continents within the wiki. Classification by country is generally a safe way to break up larger groups. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:55, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

The category tree does break down into by country. It is organised in the same manner that Wikipedia organises geographical articles. That is what we based it on. The name of the holding cat is Category:Beer and breweries by region, within that are the same six regions that Wikipedia uses: [9] - that is: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Oceania. (We added Middle East. Geography have since changed the name of South America to Latin America - we could consider doing the same.) Then, within those regional cats, we have the "by country" cats - check out Category:Beer and breweries in Europe in which you will see the countries cats, such as Category:Beer and breweries in the United Kingdom which holds Category:Beer and breweries in England, etc, as well as Category:Defunct brewery companies of the United Kingdom and Category:Public houses in the United Kingdom. The Category:Public houses in the United Kingdom cat holds Category:Grade I listed public houses. The system was designed to be flexible and absorb any future needs. So if people wish to have an article on a beer, a brewery, a brewing company, a pub, a building related to the beer culture of a region then the system can take that, and can hold and organise it in such a way that it is easily found. Cross categorisation can still be used, so that if someone wishes to have articles on once notable, but now closed brewery companies, they can be listed within the system, and if people want to have articles on notable brewery buildings they can also be listed within the system. A cat which is to hold notable brewery buildings as pieces of architecture would be separate from the beer classification system - those brewery buildings which relate to beer would already be within the beer category system anyway and there is normally no need to hold an article twice within the same cat system.

I do hope you'll look more closely at the system we have and recognise that we didn't arrive at the system by accident, but that it was carefully designed after a wide consultation period. Even before the two discussions linked to above, there was a period of research and consultation in which a number of options were considered. What was offered up for public debate was the finalisation of that period of planning. SilkTork *^YES! 07:46, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

However, it is not common to group unlike things in categories. That does not make it wrong. And I don't think you have really addressed how your system groups companies and products in any appropriate by country categories. If it is acceptable to have Category:Beer and breweries in Foo then there should be no objection to a category for companies in Foo and products which can have as their parent Category:Beer and breweries in Foo. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Is the propose change back to a previous catagory system, similar to wine categories? --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE 23:42, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Wine producers are not as numerous worldwide as beer producers, and the set up is not as complex, though both systems do roughly follow a by country system, yes. SilkTork *^YES! 07:46, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Decision:

1. Return United States back to "Beer and Breweries in A-Z"

• Yes. SilkTork *^YES! 20:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

2. Change the rest of the world to "Beer brewing companies based in A-Z"

3. Restore "Beer and Breweries in A-Z" for the United States and nest "Beer brewing companies based in A-Z" inside.

I favour option 1. Option 2 is a lot of work for no gain. Option 2 would be a compromise, but better than option 2 and better than leaving things as they are. SilkTork *^YES! 20:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

And exactly how does any of your options address the larger issue of syncing up with the larger category structures mentioned above? You also left off the option of the status quo where by country decisions can be different as long as the line up at the country level in Category:Beer and breweries in Foo to match with all other countries. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I've had a look at your comments above, and I am not sure what point you are making. The Beer and breweries by region cat system DOES follow the "by country" route (see Category:Beer and breweries by country}. Though where it diverges is that it doesn't finish at "by country" but goes on up through the continents which are held in Category:Beer and breweries by region. It seems appropriate to have cats by continent as there is a degree of connection historically, culturally and stylistically between beers in a continent. We also have a cat for multi-regions to cover those instances where breweries are either global or cover more than one country, continent or other region: Category:Beer and breweries in multi regions. I'd like to work with you on this as there may be some mutual misunderstanding going on, and it might be useful for us to work together as there may be merit in what you are saying that I'm just not getting at the moment. SilkTork *^YES! 13:10, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay, it needs to be said

Sure, it's a huge faceless corporation, but it seems to me that only good can come of InBev buying out Anheuser-Busch. They're Belgian, after all! – ClockworkSoul 03:36, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

If the Belgian takeover of A-B leads to the flavor of any of its flagship beers being "improved" in any way, they may lose customers (who think they know what "real beer" is supposed to taste like) in droves. Badagnani (talk) 03:48, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I doubt that they will for that very reason. If they did make any changes though, it might not be such a bad thing: if it encourages people to explore and some tiny percentage discover actual beer as a result, then that great. Let's face it though: if the price of Bud just goes up a tiny bit, many people will switch from macro brew X to macro brew Y in a heartbeat. – ClockworkSoul 04:01, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

♠ Nothing will change about the beer; not a single thing. Budweiser is a global winner. You don't mess with that. However, the Busch parks is something I worry about. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE 19:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Redbach

I heard last December that Redbach is no longer being imported into the US: RodenbachUSA.com seems to be defunct; does anyone know whether it's still being brewed? — Robert Greer (talk) 23:29, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Rodenbach, the brewers of Redbach, no longer list it on their variants page. That's not definitive, but it suggests they're not brewing it anymore. – ClockworkSoul 01:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I didn't know this was exported (but I'm not surprised). You do realise this is an "alco-pop"? Mikebe (talk) 09:50, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Is it? By its description I thought it might be a kriek, but I couldn't be sure without experiencing it myself. – ClockworkSoul 21:14, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Can't be a kriek, it's not based on a lambic. Sounds more like one of the Sam Smith's "fruit beers". --Stlemur (talk) 12:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is an "alco-pop". It is fruit juice (or an artificial version) mixed with sweetener and a beer-like beverage. It is (or was) marketed at young people. A wonderful beer from the same brewery is the foederbier, but that is not sold in bottles and is available from very few outlets even in Belgium. I live in Amsterdam and am very, very lucky to have one outlet here, though the best is in Roeselare (where the brewery is located) where it is served from the cask by hand pump. If you visit Belgium, it is worth the trip to Roeselare. Mikebe (talk) 13:24, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 726 articles are assigned to this project, of which 206, or 28.4%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 14 July 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place a template on your project page.

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:08, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I've just checked it out, and it looks good. The data appears on a subpage and gives people a sorted list of articles that need attention. I'd say yes to this. We would, however, need to get around to tagging more beer related articles, we certainly have more than 726 articles! SilkTork *^YES! 07:41, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, we certainly do. I've recently decided that I'm going to be putting my free time and resources (what little I have) into improving beer and then the various beer styles. Quite a few of the latter are actually missing. It's quite a shame. – ClockworkSoul 14:42, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Beer styles

Be aware that beer styles are a contentious issue and have been the cause of a number of strong and heated debates. It might be appropriate for us as a project to have a discussion as to how we approach writing about beer styles. I would suggest, as a starting point, that for an article to be created on a beer style, there would need to have been a book on that style. There are varying sources on the internet which give different accounts of beer styles, but without at least a full book on the style I think we could end up with articles on different beer names for the same styles, and some rather rather dodgy styles! Also, some beer style lists are for homebrew competitions and will include groupings such as Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer or Specialty Beer, which are not beer styles, but groups into which a beer can be entered for the purpose of judging. RateBeer has a list of beer styles, some of the descriptions have been written by Josh Oakes and some have been written by me. They are not all proper beer styles, some are simply useful groupings into which people can enter a beer they are adding to the site. So I would not recommend using RateBeer, BJCP, BeerAdvocate or any other web based source. Michael Jackson is seen as an authority - especially as he was largely responsible for creating the notion of "beer style" - but even he sometimes changed his mind as to the naming of a style and as to which beers belong! Minor or questionable beer variations can be dealt with in a parent article, such as Premium lager, Oktoberfestbier, and Kellerbier (sorry, check out German_beer#Filtering - there is another editor who feels that unfiltered German lager is a separate style that is worthy of a stand alone article and has reverted the redirect). Good luck! SilkTork *^YES! 19:52, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Good grief. Well, we are the beer project, and since there is no standard, we probably should buckle down and come up with our own. Disputes can be dealt with via the usual giant dramatic discussions if need be. I myself have been looking over various ways of arranging beer styles for some time, and I think that it's an achievable (if difficult) goal. Kind of like the Apollo Project for beer ('"...because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills..."). I'll take the first step (and likely receive the opening salvo) and create a ridiculously rough draft of a "list of beer styles". We can begin the melee after that. – ClockworkSoul 23:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

We can't come up with our own...if there's no clear scheme then we say that and do our best with what the primary and secondary sources say. This means overlap, this means side-by-side comparison of one author against another -- so be it. --Stlemur (talk) 00:42, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Nice one! Patience and soft pillows for this one I think! How are you defining "beer styles"? Along with Category:Beer styles I created a Category:Types of beer as there are beer variations that are not accepted as "styles". Even though I am the major editor of Beer styles and have a considerable interest and knowledge of the subject, I'm not sure I could put my finger on exactly the difference between a beer that falls into a "beer type" and a "beer style", except that Cauim is a primitive beer, Cask ale (like [[Kellerbier) is not a style, Trappist beer is a marketing term, etc. Is Kvass a "style" or a "type"? I have just written an article on Kvass for CAMRA's Beer magazine (the November issue), but I couldn't say for sure. I think some people would argue it is a style, while others would say it's not. I don't think a book has been published on it, but there have been articles (such as [10]). I don't have a firm opinion, but I would tend to lean toward kvass being a form or type of beer rather than a style, simply because it isn't written about as a style. And I think that would probably be the defining feature - has a beer been significantly written about as a style by reliable sources. This list [11] is a good starting point, but it's more a list of terms rather than styles, and you need to click on the links to see if Jackson regards the term as a distinct and recognisable style or simply a brewing term, such as krausen, or a general local grouping, such as kruidenbier. Beer styles is fascinating, and I always enjoy a good discussion about them. There is much to learn! I look forward to this. SilkTork *^YES! 00:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Stlemur that we can't come up with our own beer styles, and need to look at the reliable sources, but I don't think Clock was saying that we actually create our own list of beer styles, but that we need to come up with a "standard" - a guideline if you like - by which a beer style can be judged to see if it deserves a standalone article. SilkTork *^YES! 00:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't saying that that's what Clockwork was saying...what I'm saying is, we can't come up with a consensus list. Beer style is viewed differently by American, British, German, and Belgian brewers and it's a disservice to the brewing traditions of all countries to try to create a "consensus" list. Otherwise we end up with (another round of) arguments like "it can't be a lager, it's top-fermented". Any writing we do needs to give due weight to a wide range of approaches, and some of those approaches will not be compatible with each other. --Stlemur (talk) 01:41, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly what I was saying. It's hardly our role to come up with beer styles. I think, however, that it's well within the real of possibility for us to reconcile the differences between the various sources to come up with a what can be regarded as a "consensus list" of sorts, for lack of a better term. – ClockworkSoul 01:10, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

"Trappist beer is a marketing term", "kvass being a form or type of beer rather than a style", etc: I agree on all counts. I'm looking at a few sources now, some good and some mediocre but with some merit, including Beerhunter, Brewers Association 2008 Beer Style Guidelines, Beerstyles.com, BJCP, and BeerAdvocate. None is definitive, but all agree on a number of points. The best way to start this, I figure, would be those common points, leaving us to hash out the remaining bits afterward. – ClockworkSoul 01:40, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, this argument I know has been had already -- all of those sites talk a big game but none of them are even close to being reliable sources. --Stlemur (talk) 01:42, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Could not agree more, nor have said it better. Mikebe (talk) 12:46, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that there is no such thing as a reliable source regarding beer styles, since all efforts in that regard are little more than a system of organizing a complex system of somewhat similar and somewhat dissimilar items. For that reason, it seems the best way to go about this is to evaluate the similarities between the myriad way of arranging beers, and not take any single one as gospel. – ClockworkSoul 01:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Again, I agree completely. Please see my comment below in response to SilkTork. Mikebe (talk) 12:46, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

It might be worth noting that those sites used to be listed as external links in the article Beer style but were removed by a couple of particularly outspoken participants who didn't agree with their beer style definitions (over the protests of other participants who thought they should stay). At present there are only three sites linked, and two of those are part of a webpage maintained by one of said participants and probably should be removed under WP:ELNO #11, but for whatever reason are still there. --Mwalimu59 (talk) 02:41, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I've been looking over all of those sites very closely over the past hour or so, and I'm finding that many of their classifications are a little... well... questionable. For the most part, though, they agree on the basics, so that's where I'm starting. If you want to take a look, I have the in-progress version here until it's minimally ready to put into mainspace. – ClockworkSoul 02:50, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I was one of the people arguing for their inclusion a year ago. I've changed my mind since. There are two big reasons for this: first, the origins of the style classifications on those sites seems to come from nowhere, with nothing traceable back to any particular beer scholar or brewing tradition; second, a lot of the style guidelines they propose just don't match what's on the ground. Here's one example which is a favorite: I have before me the 2008 Good Beer Guide, which says under the section for India Pale Ale: So-called IPAs with strengths of around 3.5% are not true to style. Now go to User:Patto1ro's blog: he's going to the original brewing logs from the breweries, primary source material, and finds: Whitbread IPA in 1923 was only 3.5% ABV. Yes, that was during a period when gravities were crashing, but it's still a real IPA as it was drunk before anyone had ever heard of Stella Artois. At the other end of the spectrum we have these 14% ABV American hop monsters. So what can we definitively state about IPA? "IPA is an ale, which is pale compared to things which are not pale, and which may have once been in the same room as a map of India", pretty much. What do we do? Teach the controversy, I guess. --Stlemur (talk) 04:20, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I actually rather like your definition, in part because according to it I may be an IPA! :D Yes, this will be a challenge. It's a good thing I'm only trying to list the generally agreed-upon styles, and not trying to classify each obscure brew. – ClockworkSoul 05:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Something like IPA should have a standalone article because it is written about by very reliable sources and has several books devoted to it. That's a given. What we actually say about it is a different battle! But, of course it should have a stand alone article.

I agree with Stlemur that the web sources that Clock has listed above are not reliable. That was the caution I gave earlier. But as a starting point for getting together a list, that's fine. I think we should make clear in any guideline/standard that we draw up, that we are not attempting to create a definitive beer style list, but simply guidelines to indicate which styles are notable enough (that is have been written about authoritatively by reliable sources) for standalone articles, and which should be dealt with in a parent article.

As for the articles themselves. I'd like to see the articles contain the views of Europeans and Americans in a balanced manner. Sometimes the beer styles articles have ended up being battlegrounds between these two camps as one opinion or the other has attempted to dominate. There is more than one IPA for example, the modern American IPA is not the same as the historic English IPA which is not the same as the current English IPA - a full awareness of the situation with conflicting views is the best approach, even if that appears less than neat. A prescriptive, closed description - such as that adopted by BJCP, or a purely local or historical perspective as adopted by some Europeans is not helpful, and has been the source of much conflict! Balance and inclusion is the way forward. We are not here, after all, to put forward our own opinions, but to sum up the information that is available out there. SilkTork *^YES! 07:35, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I agree with many of your points. If I may propose that we broaden this discussion: instead of talking only about beer styles, what we need is a system of classification that we can all live with. I think this should begin with beer types and then move to beer styles. IOW, once we have the general outline of types (which, I would hope, would be less contentious), we could start trying to fill in the styles. Furthermore, I don't see how it helps the general reader to be confronted with a long list of styles, many of which seem to be minor variations on each other. Mikebe (talk) 12:46, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed guidelines

Until we actually have definitive, scholarly, reliable sources which say "these are what beer styles there are, this is how they're related", I propose the following arrangement:

1. The beer style article deals with the idea of beer style, discussing the various ways that beer styles are classified.
2. list of beer styles is a simple list, without any hierarchy. Linked articles have one-sentence descriptions, redlinked articles have longer ones, mindful of the fact that there will be frequent and broad overlap between beer styles.
3. Articles on particular beer styles note only the few (no more than a handful) most important examples of a style, that notability determined by a mix of overall sales and awards by established organizations, not just recently but going back in time as far as we can.
4. These few most notable examples give, descriptively, the characteristics of the style.
5. Those characteristics are given both quantitatively (ingredients, color in SRM, bitterness in IBU, alcohol in ABV, attenuation in percent...) whenever possible. Qualitative descriptions come from recognized scholarly sources -- published beer journalists (e.g. Michael Jackson or Roger Protz) rather than reviewing websites.
6. A beer is in a style if either it's been awarded a major award in that style's category, or if it's sold as being in that style.
7. We edit without mercy any statement that isn't backed up by a source. --Stlemur (talk) 13:03, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm OK with points 1 & 2. Points 3, 4 & 6 are tricky. The whole notion of examples has been problematic in the past. If examples are used, they need to be backed up with references and integrated in the text. Simply listing beer brands as examples causes problems because people will see the list as an invite to add other examples. And as most beer brands win some award or other, which awards would we accept? Also bearing in mind that beer awards can be split up into categories that wouldn't neccessarily match the style being discussed. I think that we would be better off avoiding selecting by awards. If two or three recognised and reliable beer writers mention beer brand xxx as an example of style yyy, then we could safely mention that beer brand in the article or section describing the beer style, and link to the appropriate source. I agree that any descriptions should come from reliable sources. That's at the heart of Wikipedia and is a given. It saddens me that we have to remove descriptions which we agree with but which have no sources, but that is the way we have to go, especially when describing a beer's flavour! So, yes, of course, the last point is very important. As Wikipedia develops and strengthens we need more and more to challenge unsourced or poorly sourced statements. Articles on beer styles should encompass the accepted knowledge about beer styles both "right" and "wrong", and should neutrally leave it to the reader to assess the material and make up their own minds. We are not preparing arguments for the defence, we are aiming to simply lay out the evidence without editorial comment. SilkTork *^YES! 14:15, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

The list

List of beer styles. I like it. Very good start! SilkTork *^YES! 07:44, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I would like to suggest several corrections here. In the Belgian and French ale section, dubbel and tripel are not beer styles and should be removed. "Flanders red ale" is a name created by the BJCP (style 17B). In Belgium, old brown and red are considered local variations on the same style: old brown is brewed in the area around Oudenaarde and red is brewed in the area around Roeselare. I hope these will be fixed. Mikebe (talk) 19:53, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Styles Part 2

Seems the list of beer styles and beer styles articles have a lot of redundancy. Here is one article that illustrates the complexity of "style". I find the word "style" to be a poor choice for what it's used for; however, we are stuck with it out of tradition. Style seems a bit ambiguous, and I think that is the crux of the issue that causes most debate. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE 13:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I personally dislike the term "beer style" and wish that Jackson and Eckhardt hadn't used it. But it's a given. That's what it is. People see "beer style" so they come to Wikipedia to learn more. We attempt to summarise all the known, reliable information on "beer style", even if we disagree with some of it! Mostly "beer style" refers to beers in the developed/Western world. Ethnic beer variations in Africa and South America are never or rarely referred to as "styles"! SilkTork *^YES! 14:29, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you both that style is not really the best term. What's wrong with "beer type" or "beer sort"? "Sort", btw, is used in both Dutch and German. And I do not agree that we are required to use "style". Mikebe (talk) 16:02, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Pub Taskforce tag template

{{TaskForce Pubs}} creates {{TaskForce Pubs}} This is simply a reworded Beer template with a different image, so all links remain as for the main Beer template. SilkTork *^YES! 01:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

The usual way to handle task forces to to add a flag in the primary group template. Something along the line of {{WikiProject Beer|pubs=yes}}. Perhaps we should go that way instead? – ClockworkSoul 01:12, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Ooops! *Blushes* But how about the image? I kinda like the pub image in the template - it more closely identifies with the topic than the glass of beer, is more eye-catching and attractive. SilkTork *^YES! 07:41, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I love the image! When I get back from lunch, if I have time (hey, it's possible) I'll add support for the TF into the Beer banner. It's a piece of cake with the WPMetaBanner. – ClockworkSoul 16:07, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

What do you think?

{{WikiProject Beer|pubs=yes}} The image is a bit small, but I may be able to fix that. Besides that, what do you think? – ClockworkSoul 20:55, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

There, I blew up the image a bit. It's also adding the importance to "X importance Pubs articles". – ClockworkSoul 21:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Superstar! SilkTork *^YES! 09:46, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I just tried it, and it doesn't appear to allow the assessment to impact on the assessment category. The article remains in Category:Unknown-importance Pubs articles even when the article has been assessed. Unless there is a different assessment procedure for taskforces? SilkTork *^YES! 10:03, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry - I must have missed your reply. Let me see if I can fix it. – ClockworkSoul 16:12, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

There - that should do it! – ClockworkSoul 16:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Just a note, I tweaked the template so that it rates the pubs articles using the full WP 1.0 scale and created the categories. I also set it up so that they get tabulated under the bubs articles WP 1.0 Assessments guides. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 03:39, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Community forum on standards

Based upon a discussion on the WP Food talk page, a community forum has been set up for the various Food and Drink projects develop a set of Manual of Style guidelines for use in articles under the auspices of the related Food and Drink WikiProjects and their task forces. These guidelines would be similar to the MoS guidelines for biographies or legal topics.

The following pages have created these pages for this purpose:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink/Article guidelines

Once a consensus has been reached, this page is where we will post the standards.

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Food and drink/Article guidelines

Please discuss the development of the standards on this page.

Upon a general consensus has been reached for each set of standards, we will submit it to the appropriate discussion board for a ratification discussion.

All members of this project are invited to participate.

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 02:53, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Ron Pattinson

This comment had been deleted - I have restored it. I can't see a valid reason to remove it as it is not a personal attack, it is an appropriate comment. I respect Ron, I have met him, and I would consider him a friend. I refer to his website as it does contain some excellent research findings. However, I am aware that there have been concerns and questions about the use of his website as a reliable source or external link. And even more concern when Ron places links to his site himself. The recent source that had been removed was this from the Beer style article. Anyone with an interest in beer and beer styles can see from a glance at that link that the value of the material there is immense. I'd like to stand up and support the use of links to Ron's website as an external link in appropriate articles, and I have no problem with Ron placing those links himself. It is a wider question of the use of www.europeanbeerguide.net as a reliable source, and on that I am less certain. SilkTork *^YES! 07:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I have again deleted the comment. And yes, Silktork, there is a perfectly valid reason to remove it. The reason is that person who wrote it has been declared a troll and been "indefinitely blocked" from Wikipedia. You can read it yourself on his talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Editor347

Secondly, I find it bizarre that you ask if Ron's site can be used "as a reliable source." Have you ever looked at his site? Does he ever make statements without citing relevant historical or notable sources? Does ratebeer ever cite its sources (notable or not)? Does beeradvocate ever cite sources? Does the bjcp ever cite sources? Does allaboutbeer ever cite sources? Does the "german beer institute" ever cite sources? And yet, all of these sites have been or are still used as primary sources in beer articles. Mikebe (talk) 11:41, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

There's a little more to this Kontroverschen. Some have complained that Ron's links represent a conflict of interest, since allegedly he profits from banner ads. There's validity to that, I suppose (although who actually clicks on those!?). And I have a solution: I don't mind adding the link myself. (To help prove I'm not Ron, I'll point to my Texas-oriented contributions.) Dunkelweizen (talk) 23:25, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I know from some other posts you've made that you are not one of those who have complained, so I'm a bit surprised that you bring this up. You wrote "some have complained"... I can only think of two people: one is the troll mentioned above and the second is an editor who likes to refer to me as a "bully". Is there anyone else who has complained?

Secondly, of the sites I listed above, only the bjcp is a non-commerical site, as far as I know. Why has this question never come up in regard to those sites? Mikebe (talk) 06:23, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

On your first point, I think you're right, although they might have the sympathy of heretofore-non-posting bystanders. I brought this up in defense of the europeanbeerguide links, actually. In classical rhetoric, it is good form to acknowledge and refute possible counterarguments. It's called "confutatio." And as for your second point, I only brought up the europeanbeerguide link because it's the topic at hand. We could talk about other sites, too, but it might help to put those discussions under a new heading, for the sake of clarity. Dunkelweizen (talk) 11:25, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I understand now. Mikebe (talk) 12:17, 21 August 2008

This thread was prompted by a comment made by a user, in which the user said "He is the owner of several beer websites and he continually replaces valid links with links to the websites that he has a financial interest in." All comments made on Wikipedia remain on the database for ever unless they are oversighted. The comment needs to be addressed and cleared up, not swept under the carpet - however well meaning.

User:Patto1ro - Ron Pattinson - writes the europeanbeerguide.net website. Ron added links to his website when he first joined the site. I feel sure he hasn't done it since he became aware there is a guideline against editors linking to their own website. He has been accused of making these links for financial reasons. However, europeanbeerguide.net is not a commercial website.

I think we can clear the air of any suggestion of wrong-doing by Ron by anyone reading the history of this page, including the person who made the accusation. I strongly support the use of Ron's site as a resource to be placed in the External links section of the appropriate beer articles. The Wikipedia:EL#What_should_be_linked guideline says: "Links to be considered... 4. Sites which fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources." (my emphasis) and Ron's site meets this fully.

However, I am less sure that Ron's site meets the requirements for Wikipedia:Reliable sources, in which we cite europeanbeerguide.net as an authority for a statement in an article. SilkTork *^YES! 19:00, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

You're right about using it for citation. If it were published in an academic historical journal or by a peer-reviewed press, it would be another matter. Dunkelweizen (talk) 11:32, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Wishing they would do so won't make Wikipeia policies against using Wikpedia to promore Ron Pattison's website go away. — goethean ॐ 02:43, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Kvass, soft drinks & alcoholic beverages

Hi, I'm just looking at the recent edits to Kvass and its inclusion on Template:Alcoholic beverages. While it is fermented and it does contain a fraction of alcohol...where do we draw the line between a "soft drink" and an "alcoholic beverage"? Many traditional soft drinks, such as ginger beer, root beer, etc. contain a small measure (typically .5% ABV) of alcohol. --Killing Vector (talk) 22:57, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

There is kvass the beer, and kvass the soft drink. Kvass is a traditional and historic beer which fits with all requirements of the definition of beer. There are also commercial soft drinks which use the name kvass but are not beer. It is awkward when there are two products which share the same name - but the article itself does explain this, and as the two products are related it seems appropriate that they are discussed together. However, when there is enough material, it might be more helpful to have two articles - one on the beer, and the other on the soft drink, with appropriate linking comments within each article. SilkTork *^YES! 18:30, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Beers of the world articles renaming proposal

I'm currently doing some work tidying up the Beers of the World articles which are linked via the {{Beers of the world}} template. I'm adding an Economy section to each article using www.euromonitor.com as a reference source, and creating new articles, such as Philippines beer where needed and appropriate. I renamed Thai beer as it should have been Thailand beer - but in doing so I renamed it Beer in Thailand. I then realised that all the articles should be renamed "Beer in Foo" as that is the naming convention. Either "Beer in Foo" or "Beer of Foo" or "Beer from Foo". As our cats are already "Beer and breweries in Foo" it seems logical to rename the lead articles "Beer in Foo". If there's no objection to this in the next 7 days I'll make the changes. SilkTork *^YES! 22:26, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Its me, the annoying food guy, and I would like to comment.

1. Would you consider moving this to the standards discussion page? This is clearly a candidate for that board.
2. I would favor the Fooish/Fooian beer name because it follows the format that the Foodies use in naming national cuisine articles, which this is clearly a subset of. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 22:57, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

That's fine. Where is the standards discussion page? SilkTork *^YES! 09:01, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

The community standards forum is here. I mentioned it a couple of sections above, you already have left comments on it. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 18:09, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah. That's just moving the discussion from the Beer project to the Food & Drink project. I don't quite follow that. I thought you were suggesting I seek the consensus of the Wiki community. The consensus of the Wiki community is that articles follow the naming convention I linked above, which is "Beer in Foo". In order for us to break with that community-wide consensus we would need the agreement of that wider community. I was mentioning it here so that if there was a legitimate reason against following the accepted convention it could be raised - but really this is something we need to do, unless there is a compelling reason not to. I'll take a look at another arena for the discussion. SilkTork *^YES! 18:50, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

No that is not moving to WP:F&D, but moving it to a discussion board for this subset of the WikiProject Culture/Wiki community as a whole. Just because it is hosted under the WP:F&D project page does not mean it is exclusive to the F&D project, that is why I posted the notice about the standards board on all related projects talk pages.

Currently we don't have any established WP:MoS standards for articles under the auspices of food and drink related WikiProjects, including naming conventions. I was asking you to include this in the discussion on the page that was set up specifically to establish those MoS standards. Once all of the F&D projects have hashed out a set of standards, they will be presented to the whole Wikipedia community for a broader discussion. I believe the WP:Beer's input is necessary in putting together the whole MoS standard, hence the request.

Beyond that there is a MoS proposal that has already been submitted for review by Peter Isotalo for naming conventions (cuisines) that basically covers this topic. Developing a standard for one project that differs from the standards of the others could be problematic in the long run.

Using the Korean cuisine family of articles as an example:

Proposed unified naming:	Your proposed naming structure:
Korean cuisine → Korean alcoholic beverages → Korean beer → Korean noodles → Korean temple cuisine → Korean royal court cuisine → Korean tea → Korean vegetarian cuisine → Template:Korean cuisine → Category:Korean cuisine	Korean cuisine → Korean alcoholic beverages → Beer of Korea → Korean noodles → Korean temple cuisine → Korean royal court cuisine → Korean tea → Korean vegetarian cuisine → Template:Korean cuisine → Category:Korean cuisine

As you can see there is a smooth progression in the flow of naming of these articles, which fall under the auspices of most of the Food and Beverage WikiProjects (WP:F&D, WP:BAR, WP:MIX, WP:SD/WP:C&T and WP:Beer). This former is a logical formatting structure, while the latter throws the naming system off.

I really do think this needs to be thought through fully before renaming the beer articles to your proposed naming structure. By bringing the WP:Beer naming and categorizing structures in line with the other projects would be adventitious to all Wikipedians as well as the visitors to Wikipedia. Renaming and recategorizing them would not be very difficult, it could be done with a simple bot fix. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 00:05, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I can see the sense in what you are saying given your current structure. However, that structure has developed away from naming guideline and policy - Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Country-specific_topics. Consensus can and does change. I also see the sense in the current naming guideline that the name of the articles should be Cuisine of Korea rather than Korean cuisine, as that is clearer and more direct. What we have here is usage that has drifted away from policy and guideline - for whatever reason - and that drift needs to be ratified. The naming conventions (cuisines) proposal is a good place to start. I have been there and given my view (oppose). What I suggest is that a better rationale is given at the proposal for why the naming convention should change. One argument that may sway people is evidence that the Korean cuisine method is more widely used than Cuisine of Korea, and bring in WP:COMMONNAME - though bear in mind that other wikimedia projects appear to be following the appropriate naming convention: Cookbook:Cuisine_of_Korea, and Category:Cuisine_of_Korea.

Out of interest - why do you think the usage has developed away from the guideline? SilkTork *^YES! 10:51, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the current WP:F&D convention is correct according to the full policy found here: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics), specifically referring to the "caveats" section:

It is important to be able to differentiate when a topic is actually country-specific. Often what may look like a country adjective is really describing a set of people or a language. Notice that "Polish" may mean "From or related to Poland" or "referring to the Polish people or language." For example Polish language, Polish people, even Polish literature (since these articles most often deal with the literature of the set of people, not the country necessarily). By contrast, Culture of Poland, Politics of Poland and Economy of Poland are all describing the country itself.

Thus subjects that have their origin in a certain country, but are no longer confined to that country use the xxx-ish subject, xxx-ean subject, ad infinitum formats.

I will use Germany as an example. Historically Germany has changed its geographic borders a great deal over the course of history, with Poland and France being on the receiving or taking end. As a result there are parts of the latter two countries having a German culture with a history of German cuisine, German wine and German beer. Thus German beer, the techniques and recipes used to produce it are not only confined to Germany, but is part of these other countries as well. Additionally, according to Modern Marvels, History of Brewing parts 1-3 on the History Channel, German-type beer styles can be found natively in Mexico, Brazil, the US, Canada, Australia and other counties. So in keeping with the MoS guidelines Breweries of Germany is properly named, but the article Beers of Germany would only be correct if the topic was confined to solely to Germany, which it is not. The category Beers of Germany is dead on when classifying beers produced in the country, but again not the subject as a whole.

Unless the article's subject is very narrowly focused, the beer project should probably be using the xxx beer format when dealing with national styles beer, per the MoS.

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 14:36, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

This discussion is now taking place at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (cuisines). SilkTork *^YES! 19:05, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Great Wiki beer can image

I love it! SilkTork *^YES! 11:36, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup list

We have our cleanup list. Wikipedia:WikiProject Beer/Cleanup listing. If anyone is bored..... SilkTork *^YES! 22:32, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Beer GA checklist

I've just looked at the criteria for GA status for the Beer article, and I feel that it has a good chance of making it. I have put up the checklist on the Beer talk page - Talk:Beer#Tidying_up_the_article_so_it_can_be_nominated_for_a_GA - and I'll be looking to tidy up the article and see that it meets requirements over the next week or so. Anyone who fancies helping out is most welcome! SilkTork *^YES! 00:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Beer

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Lager is in a poor state and should not be included. SilkTork *^YES! 16:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Brewery needs tidying up. That can be achieved within a reasonable length of time. SilkTork *^YES! 20:58, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Ale needs some consideration. SilkTork *^YES! 21:01, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Brewing is a decent article that needs a little polishing and some refs. SilkTork *^YES! 21:04, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Cask ale could be a much better article with some proper sculpting and referencing. SilkTork *^YES! 21:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Featured Article

A beer related article, noitulovE, is today on the main page as an FA. It was essentially written by one person - User:GeeJo. It's about the Guinness advert. SilkTork *^YES! 10:40, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I saw that. If that article is the overall work of one person, then they've done a hellva job! Good to see a beer related article back on the main page. --Brownings (talk) 11:07, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Beer is now a Good Article.

Beer has been promoted to GA status. Talk:Beer#GA_Review. I'll be looking at what other major article we have that could be promoted to GA with a bit of work. Perhaps Brewery? SilkTork *^YES! 18:12, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

1. Support: Yeah. Why not? -- MISTER ALCOHOL ^{T C} 14:29, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Beer Judge Certification Program article

There is some "content discussion" taking place over in the Beer Judge Certification Program article. Some participation from other members of the project would be appreciated. --Mwalimu59 (talk) 17:34, 24 November 2008 (UTC)