Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Food and drink/Beverages Task Force/Archive/Mixed Drinks 1

Current Discussions
This page contains discussions that have been archived for historical preservation. Please do not edit these articles. If you wish to address a topic here or start a new topic, please do so only within the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mixed Drinks page. Thanks.

Sorting out what should be included under "Cocktails"
A cocktail is a distilled beverage mixed with another drink other than water. As such, beer mixes, shandies, and distilled beverages diluted with water are not considered to be cocktails. A spritzer is not usually considered to be a cocktail. Sangría is not a cocktail. It might be worthwhile going through all the cocktails and re-categorising those which do not belong in the cocktail category. SilkTork 15:40, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Strategy
Some policy proposals to discuss:


 * Drinks should only be classified as cocktails if they match the description "a distilled beverage mixed with another drink other than water" (as per SilkTork's suggestion above). Stelio 19:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Cocktails should be included into the appropriate categories according to their content (e.g. "Category:Cocktails with vodka"). This may include several categories. Only if there are no other appropriate categories should a cocktail be included in "Category:Cocktails" directly (to prevent duplication with List of cocktails). Stelio 19:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

What not to do
I'd like to point out that recipes are not considered appropriate for Wikipedia. See Wp:not point 8. The cocktails category gets lots of articles which are nothing but recipes for cocktails, lists of ingredients and instructions on how to mix them. All of these articles get deleted or turned into redirects, if there is no way to turn them into actual articles. We can and should have articles on notable cocktails, though.

A hint, to those considering writing cocktail articles. If you can't find anything to say besides the ingredients and mixing instructions, don't create the article. --Xyzzyplugh 20:26, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks
Another thing to point out is the Bartending book on Wikibooks which has a chapter on cocktails. You can use wikibooks to link to wikibooks (usually from the "See also" section, if available). --Swift 23:05, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

More books
When deprecating the old wikibookschapter I came across a number of cocktails which weren't part of this project. Since I'm not an active member of it, I'll refrain from adding them, but rather list them below: Another (slow) way to find missing cocktails would be to go to Cocktail and see what links there. --Swift 23:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Kamikaze (cocktail)
 * Gimlet (cocktail)
 * Ti'Punch
 * Irish coffee
 * Zombie cocktail
 * Hanky-Panky cocktail
 * Negroni
 * Mint Julep
 * Pink Gin
 * Singapore Sling
 * Daiquiri
 * Caipirinha
 * Brandy Alexander
 * Sidecar cocktail
 * Moscow Mule
 * Screwdriver (cocktail)
 * Rob Roy cocktail
 * Cuba Libre

Category:Cocktails with beer
Several of the items there do not fit the definition of cocktail mentioned above. -- Beardo 00:45, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * All had beer except Brass Monkey, which I removed. ReverendG 01:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 20:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

New Lists to Fix Problems
Several past discussions(1)(2)(3) were concerned with how to deal with the many drinks that do not neatly fit within the strict definition of a "cocktail" (i.e., it must contain a distilled spirits).

I have been doing a lot of work with this topic, cleaning up many of the articles, lists, and categories. I propose creating an article called List of mixed drinks and branch out from there to List of cocktails, List of beer mixes, List of wine mixes (is that the best term to use?), List of non-alcoholic mixed drinks (with a redirect from List of non-alcoholic cocktails (which currently redirects to List of cocktails), List of shooters (essentially what the Mixed drink shooters and drink shots article is this right now, just rename it), List of mixers (if we can improve on it), and a links to Drinkware and Bar tools (isn't there already an article on this?). This would also require updating related categories and maybe even the project pages.

If there is consensus in making these changes (and if it makes sense to those "in the know", such as bartenders with years of experience), I would like to make those changes soon (say within a week), so that I can continue cleaning up things and sorting them where they really belong.

Any thoughts on this change? Does it make sense? Does it satisfy both the "purists" (who think non-alcoholic beverages do not belong on a list of true cocktails) and the "average Joes" (who don't know or don't care that a beer mix is not necessarily a cocktail)? Any suggestions for different list names, or are those good? I don't want to break everything down so small we end up with lots of stubby lists, but the current List of cocktails is the opposite extreme. --Willscrlt 06:33, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

New Project Page Feedback
I rather boldly edited the Project's main page. Yes, it's loaded with things that I think are important. I am not the Project, however. I am only a member, only have one vote in matters, and I am very willing to go with the majority decision on what should and should not be a part of this project and its organization. That being said, I am currently doing most of the gnome work on cleaning up the Project's articles, lists, and categories. I have read a lot of the talk pages and understand many of the concerns that have been expressed. I hope that my current vision of the Project is well accepted by the other Project members. I also hope I have made it sound a bit more fun and enjoyable. The previous main page looked pretty much like the unedited template that it was. It needed help (like so many things around here), so I helped out. Please don't flame me fore it. Just speak up with your own suggestions, and let's change this from a one-person show to an interactive and fun Project in which everyone gets more involved. (I really do not want to do this alone. I have plenty of other interests on which I would like to spend my free time.) Thanks! --Willscrlt 12:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Taking a break
I've spent the longer part of a week cleaning up the List of cocktails article (along with many other related ones). I am going to take a break for a bit and resume my "normal" life for a while. Hopefully other Wikipedians will pitch in and continue the cleaning and improving of those articles while I am away. I plan to check in on the WikiProject Cocktails occasionally in case anyone has questions or comments for me. Thanks! --Willscrlt 05:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Speedy deletion
I am not clear that WikiProject Cocktails/Templates/WPMixedDB-merged meets the criteria in WP:CSD --Henrygb 01:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I have carefully reviewed the WP:CSD in that light, and I see you are definitely correct. Sorry about that. I have created a new template WikiProject Cocktails/Templates/WPMixedProd-merged, which will hopefully meet all the requirements for deleting such pages. Fortunately, it was much easier to make that change than creating the original template. :-) Thank you for catching that, especially before I started tagging a lot of articles with it. --Willscrlt 04:09, 29 December 2006 (UTC) (Cross-posted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cocktails/Templates/WPMixedDB-merged)

Possible resources
A couple sites that give information or history of or about cocktails which may be of use to the project, -- Ari 19:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Museum of the American Cocktail
 * Drink Boy: Adventures in Cocktails

Very nice resources to have. Thank you! :-) --Willscrlt 20:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

A parallal bartenders wiki has been in development for the last year by the bartenders over at Webtender. Its major value can be found in the exhaustive research on the history and origins of classic cocktails, (200+ full articles now, heavy on attribution) while the spirit entries are just copies or built upon the wikipedia originals. Bits of a bartenders handbook are also in progress. I encouraged finding some way to merge or at least cross-reference our efforts there with the resources here, and maybe now that some structure is being put in place we can find a way for that to happen. any contribution the editors here may have to the webtender forums may be appreciated -- Dan (Melonman)


 * Sounds good. I will have to check that out. :-) Is all the information at Webtender GFDL licensed, or at least something compatible with GFDL? I suppose so if some of it originally came from the English Wikipedia. Thanks for the info. --Willscrlt 23:16, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:39, 29 December 2006 (UTC)