Talk:Baker

Article Quality

This article's quality is low. Several grammatical errors in the first section, such as the use of the novel word "Bakering," are unacceptable. The information is dubious, such as Egyptians being the first bakers (how could this be if they learned their skills from the Babylonians?) and the number of bakers in Rome around 0 AD. This pages needs an overhaul by someone with real knowledge of the history and practice of baking. --Offchance (talk) 06:25, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

More Information, Please (6/18/2005)

As a baker, I'm dissapointed! This page needs more information, perhaps a description of the history of the baking profession. Anyone up for the challenge?

I could not agree more. My wife is a baker who takes great pride in her art. If no one else does a decent job on this article, then I will get her to write it! Dankru 11:05, 19 October 2005 (UTC)dankru

Older Discussion

I consider reducing the amount of information on a page (just for the sake of ... well, for the sake of what really??) an incredibly silly thing to do. What's more, who decides which Bakers are particularly notable and which aren't? A single user called Jerzy?

As I tried to point out several times, there are basically two types of lists: those that aim at completeness (all countries that have a monarch) and those that could never do so (remake).

Well, we have lists of all Allens or Millers who have entries in Wikipedia. Here we might include those we would like to have entries about. But again: Why take people off a list and refer to another list? In an encyclopaedia, how often will you come across the same piece of knowledge on different pages? <KF> 17:48, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I just had a look at the alphabetical list of people and the Bakers there. I admit I was surprised to find all the deleted Bakers there. Considering this (which I hadn't done before), I withdraw my above comment (just leaving it here for the record) and apologize to Jerzy. In many cases which I've come across, the alphabetical list of people was faulty and incomplete.

The only question that remains: Who decides which Bakers are especially important? <KF> 22:08, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I feel a little like i'm "piling on" after your gracious reconsideration, but i am going to add my long would-have-been-response rather than throw all these thots away, even tho, e.g., i don't know that we need a wider discussion at this point.

I also should point out (i'm vague abt whether you understood it) that in many cases the only reason of a Baker being on the List of people by name tree is that i found them on Baker. LoPbN is far from a list of all bio articles! Thanks for helping improve it. --Jerzy 01:05, 2004 Feb 12 (UTC)

---

I think thot [see just above] this is worth discussing, and in a larger forum than just people who are watching Baker. I'm not sure what that would be, but i'm guessing perhaps Wikipedia:Peer review, with the moribund Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Biography as the discussion site, since a list of names is pico-biography and a list like List of people by name is nano-biography. IMO wider discussion is mandatory, if only bcz i have done or plan similar links (and in all cases but one, move operations) from:

Baker

to List of people by name: Ba#People named Baker piped as "People named Baker"

Thompson

to List of people by name: Tf-Th#Thompson as "List of people named Thompson"

(discovered, similarly, from the link from within the List of people by name tree), and
from:

Bradley

to List of people by name: Br#Brad as "People named Bradley"

Brown

(eventually) to List of people by name: Br#Brown

which i found some other way.

And finally,

Stein

to List of people by name: St#Ste as "List of people by name: Stein"

which was the work of User:Docu, who pointed it out at Talk:List of people by name#Layout of 26x26 table (and which i later broke and just repaired the link to).

Points i would anticipate defending include:

• Docu's approach, making a link only rather than including even the handful of Steins that the link points to is at odds with your position.
• If NPoV meant "never make a subjective decision", WP would be a worthless project.
• The only lists of all articles of a given type are "What links here" lists and the (future) lists that will eventually be automatically maintained using the upcoming Category tags.
• Other lists of people:
  • with articles,
  • linked from other articles or lists,
  • mentioned in articles or lists,
  • famous enough for one of the above, but not yet even mentioned elsewhere,
  • non-famous yet useful to have listed, as a means of keeping facts about them from being erroneously added to articles with similar names
  • satisfying Boolean expressions based on those criteria

are high-maintenance, and duplication of effort should be avoided by avoiding duplication of data. (Without impugning your diligence in maintaining Miller, i note that George Miller (politician) has been both an article, and linked from George Miller, since 2003 Dec 20 without getting into your two increments to Miller. (And he's #18 of about 1,420; how often can anyone hope to go thru to the "similar hits left out" point?)

• Whether a list could "aim at completeness" as one of those kinds of list is irrelevant, unless there is a way of knowing that, and knowing which criterion is involved.
• Identifying lists that can (and/or should) aim at completeness, or not, is important, not because those that can't are worthless or unworkable, but bcz different decision-making processes are fruitful in the two cases. E.g., for the second, you can't expect to look up a clear rule, and if no one goes away grudgingly accepting the result, the discussion of including an item wasn't worth having.
• Dab pages have a specific purpose, namely solving the problem of articles where the most common names for the respective subjects are identical. Miller and Allen "exapt" dabs for quite different purposes: almost no one (IMO Hegel is an exception) is normally referred to primarily by a last name, so none of the Millers and Allens are on those pages for dab purposes. (My inclination is to tolerate those two, tho i could also support a consensus for "strict construction" of dab. IMO Brown is well beyond the pale, probably from size alone even if the enormous block of names is moved to the end.) The question is not if including the last names has some use, but (at the least) whether the burdens of physical size and comprehension effort on dab use are justified by the non-dab usefulness.

--Jerzy 01:05, 2004 Feb 12 (UTC)

<KF> asks, above:

Who decides which Bakers are especially important?

That's easy: A single user called Jerzy and a few thousand of his closest editing colleagues. Put back any you'd like, and i'll be happy. Even if you put back all who were there and the ones on LoPbN whom you didn't already have (perhaps just red links?), i've had my say and won't revert you, tho i hope you'll credit some of the arguments i made that suggest limiting the quantity. IMO, this is an art to some extent. --Jerzy 01:05, 2004 Feb 12 (UTC)

---

I won't comment on each point made above, basically because I largely agree with what has been said. I think it is important to have a complete alphabetical list of people who have their own entries in Wikipedia. And I'm thinking of users not familiar with how Wikipedia is organised: If a casual browser is interested in information on a specific John Brown, what will they type in? Brown? Brown, John? John Brown? John Brown (disambiguation) (ha!)?

Most likely it will be Brown. This is why I've been looking after some of those pages. They should be kept I think.

Also, whenever someone writes a biography they should be encouraged to add the name to the alphabetical list (and probably also to the year and date pages?). I don't know if it says so anywhere.

All the best to you, <KF> 21:34, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This seems an extremely poor view of what a baker does! Although I agree in part, that many bakeries now use pre-mixes, I feel that the explanation of this term subtracts from the level of knowledge and skill that genuine master bakers hold.

Bakeries

Although I agree in part - that many bakeries rely on pre-mixes, I am disappointed by this explanation. I feel that it neglects to detail the immense skill and knowledge of true master-bakers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vjforsy (talk • contribs) 15:38, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

haha..bakers look cool=] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.121.127.94 (talk) 20:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

History

"The first group of people to bake bread were ancient Egyptians, in 2600-2100 BC. It was believed that they learnt their skills from the Babylonians."

Doesn't this suggest that the Babylonians were first? I don't have any reason to believe that they were, but the above passage does confuse the issue. Jdtapaboc (talk) 09:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Men

Just from a quick Google, there seems quite a lot to be said about how bakers are mainly guys, and how TV is keeping it "macho", despite cooking traditionally being a woman's job. Women bakers were once called baxters, did you know? I don't want to build the section, but someone else might, and now you're thinking about it. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:19, 28 May 2015 (UTC)