Wiki143:Articles for deletion/Cuisine of Dominica

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:27, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Cuisine of Dominica

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Non-notable cuisine, The article has existed for over two years and is not much more than a start. The only citation is a blurb from a travel guide. As a major contributor to the food and drink wikiproject, I can say that not all national cuisines are notable. In cases such as this, we usually provide a link to the culture section of that country's article (example: Culture of St. Kitts and Nevis#Cuisine) or to an article about regional cuisines. As such, this article should be deleted and folded into the home country's article, Dominica or the Caribbean cuisine article. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 03:16, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Food and drink-related deletion discussions. —Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 03:40, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep Compare Cuisine of France. --Mr Accountable (talk) 04:03, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
    • Huh? - what do you mean? --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 04:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
      • I mean, there's no point in discriminating between France, Dominica, Mexico, Cuba. --Mr Accountable (talk) 04:46, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
      • Article could sure use some expansion. --Mr Accountable (talk) 04:49, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Merge and redirect. As a search phrase, it has its value, but the article has no legs to stand on. In response to Mr. Accountable, there is plenty of reason--some cuisines are more notable than others; this one doesn't seem to have much. I think Caribbean cuisine (an article that needs some help, incidentally--where's ChildofMidnight when you need him?) is a good target for a merger here. Drmies (talk) 05:23, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep I can't believe that the food traditions of an entire nation are not worth an article. True, more material is needed. Steve Dufour (talk) 07:20, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep Of course it is notable, it only needs expanding Warrington (talk) 10:46, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Merge and redirect: Keep The title Cuisine of Dominica must not be deleted: it should kept to ensure comprehensive encyclopedic coverage of all world cuisines -- large and small alike (see List of cuisines). Work is needed to expand the article and bring it to the level of other cuisines. Until that time, Cuisine of Dominica should be merged and redirected to a Cuisine section in the country article Dominica. --Zlerman (talk) 11:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Speed Keep Non-notable cuisine? I'm sorry, but I don't understand the rationale. Maybe we just don't have as much interested editors in the cuisine as editors in French or other cuisines, but the article is about "national cuisine" which can potential to be expanded.--11:54, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Speedy keep this national cuisine. We don't eliminate articles about nations simply because they are small geographically or population-wise. Badagnani (talk) 12:24, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Caribbean-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 13:21, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep Many "Cuisine of" articles are on WP, and drawing a line seems rather unrewarding. Collect (talk) 14:17, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Speedy Keep - National cuisines are by nature notable and this AFD is unnecessary. Additionally, when magazines like Cooking Light and the country's own tourism authority feel it is worth noting, then it's notable enough for inclusion here. Here are some sources with good information that could be added to the article (no time right now to do it myself, but this is a good start for someone): Wikia Recipies Wiki (GFDL licensed), Cooking Light article, Discover Dominica Authority, Bradt travel guide excerpt, tourism site, travel site, A Taste of Nature Island Cooking: Dominican Cuisine ISBN 978-0333719701, Recipe blog. --Willscrlt (Talk) 14:29, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep--"The surest way of knowing a country and its people is to study their eating habits, the food they eat and the way they cook it", 1 --J.Mundo (talk) 14:46, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment. Not all nations are per definition endowed with a cuisine that is readily identifiable. Cuisine tends to ignore national boundaries to a great extent. Just because it has its own flag doesn't mean it's unique and requires a separate article. (Just imagine the silliniess that would be cuisine of the Vatican City.) If you want to keep this article, you shouldn't try to save it with by referring to travel guides and tourist propaganda. A Taste of Nature Island Cooking: Dominican Cuisine is the only thing that looks half-way reliable in explaining what it is that distinguishes Dominican cuisine from that of the neighboring islands. Peter Isotalo 15:52, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
    • Comment. Vatican is not a nation, it is the Vatican City, a city in the city, in Rome. .
    • Travel guides are reliable sources from well known publishers that can help establish the notability of the subject. The Vatican is a sovereign state, but it can't be compared to Dominica because the majority of the residents are clergy and have dual citizenship .--J.Mundo (talk) 17:15, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
      • The Vatican is a sovereign state, no matter its size, format or location. It was an example to disprove the idea that all nations can be associated with a particular national cuisine, not to delete this article. And tourist guides are only authorities on tourist-related issues. They're not written to serve as neutral descriptions of cultures, and should be used with great caution. Peter Isotalo 18:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
      • Excuse me? Since when is it necessary to have "neutral descriptions" of the cuisine of a country? Yeah, I suppose an article that talks about a country's food tasting like roadkill or having blatantly false information would be bad, but most legitimate travel guides (such as the ones I included) are not the type to take great liberties with their information. The travel site I mentioned, would be a less reliable type of source since its goal is to gain hotel bookings. A legitimate travel guide is designed to entice people to travel to the country, but that doesn't make it inherently unreliable. As to the silly example of the Holy See (as it is properly called), IF it had a distinctive cuisine (apart from Communion wafers and wine perhaps), then it would deserve an article. Dominica appears to have a cuisine distinctive from its neighbors, albeit similar due to its location and resources. I think it is pretty clear that this article should be kept and also that it needs expansion. All the references and information found here should be copied to the talk page to help editors improve the article, but it's fine as a stub and does not need deletion. --Willscrlt (Talk) 20:45, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
    • Actually, it is not a silly idea at all, it is a quite interesting idea. Vativan cuisine would be a very interesting culinary article, with culinary traditions and regulations since the 12-th century.. Warrington (talk) 18:52, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep - The Caribbean cuisine article is too broad. All the Caribbean countries have different distinctions and flavours from one another. The only problem with the article is that it's a stub and needs to be expanded upon. Thricecube (talk) 17:50, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep - It is notable enough for a tiny little article - Yet one that would be too much if merged into the Caribbean cuisine article, which, as has been pointed out, covers islands that are all distinct from one another. To fulfil the mission of an encyclopedia you have to include a lot - not just the highlights or the exceptional. --Steve (talk) 18:42, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Delete and merge into countries' main article, unless it is renamed "Food and drink of Dominica", as after review of the countries' website, it seems the country itself does not have a cuisine, more a set of dishes and ingredients. Not all cultures have a cuisine, the term cuisine is used too loosely. If the article could be expanded (how easy would it to be able to find more info?) then I would support the creation of the article by the title I suggested here.--Chef Tanner (talk) 18:30, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Snowball keep. Not just because it's a national cuisine, but, really—how does the encyclopedia benefit from the deletion of this article? There's clearly a cuisine of Dominica distinct from that of other Caribbean islands. The problem is finding sources, not notability. I don't want to bring the concept of "inherent notability" into this, but you really should have thought twice about this. Anyway, here are some sources:

Et cetera, et cetera. Snowball keep this baby. Graymornings(talk) 20:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

  • Keep - There should be no discrimination between cuisines of different countries. If Cuisine of Japan or Cuisine of Germany is notable, so too should be Cuisine of Dominica. Scapler (talk) 21:52, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep How could a national cuisine not be considered notable? Pastor Theo (talk) 01:56, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
    comment - As of this point, no one has provided a single policy based reason to keep. No one has provided a single source that proves its notability, the sources provided do not show anything about the cuisine of the country. They mention meals had at restaurants, but that is it. A cuisine is the historical and cultural significance of the dishes and customs of the people who reside in a nation or as stated in the linked article A traditional cuisine is a coherent tradition of food preparation that rises from the daily lives and kitchens of a people over an extended period of time in a specific region of a country and which has notable distinctions from the cuisine of the country as a whole; it is not dishes, recipes or other such fare. As stated by Chris Tanner, this article is not about the cuisine but about its food and drink.
    Further, the sources being provided do not establish notability of the nations cuisine. The tourist bureau is not a reliable source, it is primary source that is inherently NPOV and cannot be used to establish notability, only existence of foods. The other quoted sources are a combination of tourist guides or travel sections in newspapers. They have only the smallest blurbs about what someone had for dinner while on vacation, basically a summary restaurant review. The problem with them is they are not about the subject of the article, they are about Tourism in Dominica. They do not establish notability of the cuisine, the just establish that the writer had a dish at a restaurant. It is my belief that you will be hard pressed to establish true notability.
    Several contributors have commented that all national cuisines are notable, that is however not the case. A notable cuisine would have some impact on cuisine as a whole or establish itself outside a region or country. Have you seen a Dominican chef on "Iron Chef"? Can you provide a link to a Dominican (Not Republic) cookbook that has been published beyond the borders of the country? How about a text book on the subject? Can you find a Dominican restaurant in your city?
    This article does not stand on its own. It needs to be merged into the main Dominica article and turned into a redirect. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 02:57, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
    • Jeremy makes good points, but an encyclopedia also has to have a degree of completeness. It has the national flags of all countries, not just those flags that are notable in design or historical event. It has (or should have) an article on every country - not just those judged to notable. If we toss out all cuisines or all foods that have not been represented on "Iron Chef" we will be busy doing AfDs -- and have chosen a funny kind of standard. I believe that notability here resides solely in that food which is of Dominica and that it is reasonable to have an article on the cuisine of Dominca... if it differs from the region - which it does. So, I am saying this article IS notable and that is the policy for keeping it. Is Wikipedia running out of disk space for storing articles? Will the presence of this article harm another? Do we know that people planning a visit to Dominca, or the people who live there, have decided not to ever look at this page in the encyclopedia? Is the link to that article going to diminsh the knowledge of the person who wants to know about food in Dominica? The rush to use some arbitrary or subjective measurement of notability to remove an article does not improve the encyclopedia - improving the articles does. --Steve (talk) 03:26, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
    • I am not saying that countries are not notable, what I am saying is that every single aspect of those those countries is not necessarily notable. Every aspect of the country does not deserve its own article, some subjects can be equally covered in a blanket article about its culture, history or economics. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 05:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
      • I can see that, but if there is some uniqueness to the African-creole cuisine that is Dominican, that is notable (even though I can't imagine it being anything but a small article.) --Steve (talk) 05:56, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment - I have found some possible books on the subject from Google books, but cannot look at them, so if anyone can find them somewhere at a library to look through for info that could be used, and adding it as a solid reference, please do. A Taste of Nature Island Cooking: The Cuisine of Dominica By Hyacinth I.R. Elwin, Loye Barnard, Sylvia Duckworth, and Lennox Honeychurch and Food Culture in the Caribbean By Lynn Marie Houston
I followed up somewhat on one of the books in the comment above. It gives some interesting hints on the base cuisine being African fused with local influences (Taino) and colonization (Spanish), and changing with the passage of time. There is a solid source in Jean B. Harris (she has even been on some cooking shows - no, not Iron Chef :) I put the info on the talk page of the article. --Steve (talk) 05:15, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment - At last, something that establishes a bit of notability! But my question still stands, does it make the article of standing on its own? It still needs a history of its traditions to truly qualify as a stand alone article and nothing more than a list of ingredients. I still believe it does not warrant a separate article, it still should be merged into the main article or the Culture of Dominica article (preferable). I am not saying that it isn't worth covering as a section in one of these articles, only that it does not deserve its own article. Follow up please and this goes the way of the dodo... --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 05:28, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
  • The history of its traditions that you refer begins with the African dispora where slaves took with them their native tastes and understandings of food to a new land. Different parts of Africa had different cuisines and different parts of the Caribbean were populated with different African tribes. (I can still remember a Cuban-African lobster bisque with some coffee beans in it - I wish I knew more of that dishes pedigree). Dominica's imported creole cooking fused with the spanish colonial power's cooking traditions and changed with the influence of the local indians (and I understand that only in Dominica are they still an influence in this area) and all was adapted to the local produce. Islands in fact produce islands of cuisine - a degree of separation. But the article doesn't absolutely need that history to be viable - it only needs to be notable (there is no requirement that I know of saying such a history is required.) --Steve (talk) 06:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Responses: It's like the entire concept of cuisine in smaller locales is on trial here. I did look through many pages of policies for anything that helps clarify the situation, either for or against keeping this article. Except for the very general notability guidelines, there doesn't seem to be anything to provide clear guidance here. Looking through recent AfDs on Cuisine, it seems that largely there has been no consensus (resulting in Keep by default). Back in 2005, Ecuadorian cuisine was AfDed for some of the same reasons as this one. Looking at the article today, it's pretty hard to imagine that there was ever an issue with it. Likewise, Cuisine of the United States was used as an illustration of a sparse page that was pretty much nothing other than a list of foods; today it's a pretty decent article. Lithuanian cuisine just survived an AfD with even fewer sources than given here, but with a better written article.
    I also tried to determine how travel-related sites have been viewed as sources in the past in similar topics, and I couldn't really find anything except that national tourism sites (like the Discover Dominica Authority) seemed to be considered as reliable and one tour operator's site was blasted for being unreliable commercial junk.
    Jeremy asked "Can you find a Dominican restaurant in your city?" Sacramento doesn't have a large Caribbean population in general, and a Dominican population specifically. Without a culture to support it, it's unlikely that there would be one in my city, regardless of its notability. For example, there is no Ecuadoran restaurant either, but obviously the Ecuadoran cuisine is notable. A quick Google search did reveal a few Dominican restaurants (Uniondale, NY; NJ; NJ; FL; RI) and several people asking around if there was one locally and listing specific dishes they were seeking that were specific to Dominica ([1]). I assume that the "Have you seen a Dominican chef on Iron Chef?" question was just to make a point, but since Iron Chef primarily features chefs from throughout Asia, why would they have one from a Caribbean nation? Likewise, Iron Chef America should really be called "Iron Chef USA", because they really don't include chefs from throughout America, but rather only from within the USA. Given Dominica's population, I'd be surprised to see more than a handful of Iron Chef worthy chefs ever coming out of Dominica, let alone being invited to participate in the program. Jeremy asked for "a link to a Dominican... cookbook that has been published beyond the borders of the country", and I already gave one (A Taste of Nature Island Cooking: Dominican Cuisine ISBN 978-0333719701); I am sure there are more. The New York Times has been used as a reliable source for many, many articles herein, even if the topic was only mentioned in the "travel sections in newspapers".
    In summary, this article is a stub with considerable potential. The "Cuisine of X" is a common subarticle of the main Culture article for many countries when the cuisine is unique (which it appears to be from the given sources), interesting (proven by the fact that travel writers do write it up in huge metropolitan newspapers and major cooking magazines like Cooking Light), and has reliable sources (to which there seems to be a bit of disagreement here, but several sources have been found after only quick searches, and more will be found). --Willscrlt (Talk) 10:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
    • Comment Yes, indeed. And this is not an article about Dominican cuisine in US, it is an encyclopedical - article about the world’s different cuisines. Warrington (talk) 11:32, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment - Just wanted to state that the term "creole" denotes a cuisine derived from Spanish descent, so stating it merged with "Spanish colonial power's cooking" is improper. I think this is where people so not realize the significance of the term cuisine. Similar to Louisiana, USA where Creole cuisine is derived from Spanish descent, while the Cajun cuisine which most people mistakenly call Creole is a mix of Creole with African and Caribbean island influences. I'm not sure this island nation has enough of its own indigenous influence other than using local ingredients to be able to support a full article, but a section on the main article on its "culinary practices" seems more appropriate to me. Also, make sure when you look up information on this countries' cookery style, you are looking up this country and not "Dominican cuisine" as they are two different countries.--Chef Tanner (talk) 12:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
    What exactly is "Dominican" cuisine? There is the Dominican Republic, and that probably confuses things terribly due to the similarity in names. The CIA World Factbook entry states that when referring to the nationality of people from Dominica, use noun: Dominican(s) and adjective: Dominican. The book A Taste of Nature Island Cooking: Dominican Cuisine uses the term, but "Nature Island" appears to be a nickname (or probably a marketing phrase) for Dominica promoting the fact that the island has preserved so much of it's nature areas. Perhaps this is like saying "American" cuisine, in which there is a common understanding that it means "of the United States", but really it could (and sometimes does) mean "of any part of North, Central, or South America". So "Dominican cuisine" would seem to be an appropriate term for both countries. As Chef Tanner stated, it's important to be careful when checking sources. Thanks for pointing that out. --Willscrlt (Talk) 14:37, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep - wrong forum (forum shopping?). The nomination was for merging the article back into Culture of Dominica - AFD is not the place for merge proposals. The merge proposal should have been made on the relevant articles' talk pages. The Transhumanist 23:23, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
Good point. You can't delete and "fold" back into the Dominica article as the nominator mentioned—there's no such thing as "delete and merge." This isn't the place for a merge proposal, although I think we've gained a pretty clear consensus that it shouldn't be merged. Graymornings(talk) 10:01, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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