Talk:Halfbakery

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[edit] Square Brackets

Writing names of users in square brackets is a convention you will find on the HB quite a lot, please do not change them to links. I have corrected the names. Daniel 21:26, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Writing user names not in square brackets is also something you will find on the halfbakery quite a lot. (Jutta 21 February 2006)

[edit] Halfbakers

There is no need to have the name of every single 'Baker on this article. If the reader cares that much he (or she) will just click the link at the bottom. Please restrict yourselves to adding users that are on po or UB-like status. Daniel 13:13, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

There is no need to name any halfbakers at all. This is just yet another vanity list that doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Do you really want to make this a forum where halfbakery users get to judge whether they have enough "status" to be "listed"? (Jutta 07:42, 22 February 2006 (UTC))
I agree with Jutta. The only person who should be mentioned in the article is Jutta, because she created and runs the site. 207.180.160.12 02:31, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
You have a point, but some users (UnaBubba comes to mind) are such an integral part of the HB that I felt they ought to be included somewhere. It does seem to have attracted lots of additions, though. Daniel (☎) 19:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Never mind, I have deleted the list anyway. I took a look at it and decided that I agree with the above points, not to mention the difficulty of having 'bakers add themselves and others, with unencyclopedic material. The replacement paragraph is a bit iffy, though. Improvements would be loved. Daniel (☎) 18:10, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Describe Site?

Should the Halfbakery be described in detail in its entry here? Jutta got rid of a huge chunk of the article, saying that it is not necessary. However, I would say that the purpose of an encyclopedia is to give as much information as possible, not to redirect users to a website. People should be able to research the Halfbakery using Wikipedia, theoretically without having to visit at all (although they would have to, for idea content etc). I don't think that the deleted section contravened any particular copyright or gave anything secret away. I am reverting it, and would appreciate discussion. Daniel (☎) 20:26, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

"Giving as much information as possible" does not an encyclopedia make. It's also the choice of information - you want to say things that are relevant to people unfamiliar with the described subject. Knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to describe.
Compare the description of the halfbakery to the description of a site like Slashdot. Slashdot is incredibly more complicated than the simple halfbakery site, yet its entry is short, and focuses on the things that are remarkable about slashdot - the community it engenders and its moderation system. Note the absence of remarks about Slashdot's choice of fonts, or the obvious layout of the site, or (for that matter) the absence of a list of slashdot users. There are things about the halfbakery that are remarkable, but my choice of fonts or the menu items are simply not among them.
(Jutta 07:42, 22 February 2006 (UTC))
You have a point here, and I agree that listing the fonts was a bit over-zealous. However, I maintain that it is important to list some of the features, which are what make the Halfbakery unique - its simplicity yet its functionality. Daniel (☎) 18:00, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I would welcome a re-write/removal of the site features section - there are many things that are important features of the halfbakery that have been missed - and I don't think the current format (of copy/pasting sections of the meta/help sections of the bakery) does much by the way of providing useful information about the site. Further thoughts?

[edit] February 2006

The text I deleted was this: "Until around February 2006 all moderators where extremely cooperative, but a dispute between some of the heavy contributors and the bakesperson caused unsatisfied notes to be posted, and many of these contributors to leave the site. Here on Wikipedia, the extremely favorite entry on Halfbakery.com was edited in a sour way. Still Halfbakery.com is a widely appreciated site on the web, and continues to show interesting and many times funny ideas."

Play by play:

As far as I know, a total of two users who were heavy contributors left after I had criticised the writing style of one of them in a one-line critical comment. This happened long before February 2006. Nothing of it has anything to do with moderators, or the site operation.

A little later, I edited the "extermely favorable" entry on the Wikipedia to be less detailed. less embarassingly smarmy, and less filled with made-up rules; an edit that was reverted wholesale by the original author of the entry. Since I am the operator of the site that is being gushed about, I'm just about the last person who has any rights to fix the wikipedia entry, so I tend to leave it alone, try to not look at it, and gateway my remaining frustrations into a newfound appreciation of Wikipedia's critics.

This has nothing to do whatsoever with the people who left the halfbakery frustrated with my criticism of one person's writing style. They didn't edit the entry, they probably don't know and don't care about its existence.

Finally, whether or not something is "widely appreciated" really doesn't belong into a neutral point of view write-up.

Jutta, 19:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] There used to be

The text I removed was this:

"There used to be an interesting list of halfbakers and some information about them here, some of the information not contained in the halfbakery site, but since the beginning of the halfbakery dispute in early 2006, this list was erased and a remark saying that "the list got too long to be useful" was inserted instead."

Oh, c'mon, it wasn't that interesting - this was mostly a vanity list, which really has no place on the Wikipedia.

The "halfbakery dispute" had nothing to do with the list's creation or deletion. I'm not sure where you get this.

Anyone interested in the editing history of a wikipedia page can look it up. You don't need to give people an explicit timeline (and if you did, it sure would be nice if it were factually correct.)

Jutta, 19:14, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No need to delete page

As of today, the page was marked for deletion by someone!

I'm the one who wrote about the dispute. I do think it was an important moment for halfbakery, and the history of the site IS interesting, especially since it was a place of felt democracy, suddenly this feeling came to a halt. It was the first time that several heavy halfbakers left. (Yes the dispute was with two of them). Halfbakery WAS tarnished by this dispute, where till then it was a non-disputable fantastic site.

Jutta, take a good look at the page just before I edited it. You'll see and cannot deny the heavy attack on Halfbakery and the change from the original version.

Of course I still do NOT think this is a reason that the entire Wikipedia Halfbakery entry should be marked to be deleted.

In any case I had edited the entry, after it said that Halfbakery was run as a dictatorship, and I felt I could not leave it at that.

So, Jutta, I do not think you should be editing the Wikipedia entry about halfbakery, but rather give your remarks as to the accuracy of the entry. All others, please allow the halfbakery entry to continue as that of an outstanding website on Wikipedia, into history. And if anyone can describe the dispute in less loaded words, please do. halfbakery dispute

The dispute page is just completely unneccessary, and I've marked it for deletion myself. However, I contest the deletion here on the grounds that the Halfbakery is in fact notable. I recall that it was mentioned on TV once (please put the link here if you know it) and it was also mentioned in Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. Daniel (‽) 20:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
I think those media mentions were rather superficial. Probably the most substantial were a few minutes on "Tech TV" where they had built three inventions from the site. That doesn't exactly amount to a "documentary on the site", but it is more than just saying, "here's this site, this is its URL, next". Lynn Truss (and some other printed books as well) mentions the halfbakery, but that doesn't mean that the halfbakery is the subject of her book (it obviously isn't.) I'm happy to leave this decision to people who are not halfbakery users or owners and are more familiar with the intentions of the notability criterion. Jutta 20:48, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


Speaking as a long time H a l b a k e r y regular I have to say that if you added something to this article everytime a regular 'baker got the hump and stormed out then this page would pretty soon fill up the whole wiki. You'd also have to amend the entry every time they came back again. Unless an argument results in some distinct change in the content, format, popularity or perception of the site then I really don't think it needs to be covered here.[DrBob]

[edit] patents

Has any patent disputes used the Half-Bakery as evidence?