Talk:Campfire

Talk moved from How to light a fire upon merging

As well as the three methods of building a fire which the author describes, I would add a fourth, which I would call the funeral pyre method. This is because this is the method used for building funeral pyres.

The method is to lay layers of equal sized kindling laid horizontally. Each subsequent layer is laid horizontally but at 90 degrees to the previous layer. Most importantly, the space between the kindling pieces must be at least as much as the width of the kindling in that layer. As the layers build larger kindling is used. This type of fire build collapses in a controlled manner without restricting the air flow.

Contributed by Andrew Ballantine andrewballantine@btconnect.com

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I propose merging back into campfire. This article is:

1. not specifically about lighting campfires, but also building them, finding places to build them, etc
2. not generally about fires, but specifically about campfires

I also think that the advice should be attributed to specific organisations - it will sound more authoritative that way. Martin 17:39 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hm. I actually started writing this article before I ever looked at campfire - I don't exactly remember why. I guess it's a good idea. The second paragraph of campfire would be merged into the section on safety, and the final paragraph would become a new section titled Campfire activities or something to that effect. I want to get someone else's input before I go through with the merge, though.

What advice are you talking about exactly? -Smack 17:45 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Things like "Do not leave a fire burning unattended!". Now, I'm sure this is good advice, but it sounds like my encyclopedia is telling me what to do! I'd rather have something like:

Unattended campfires cause 15,365 casualties a year, worldwide. The Association of Campers and Caravaners gives this advice:

"Do not leave a fire burning unattended! Any number of accidents might occur in your absence, blah blah blah, leading to property damage, personal injury or possibly a wildfire. Blah blah blah. Pour water on all the embers, and continue pouring until the hissing noises stop. Blah blah blah.". [link]

It's not bad as is... I just think it would be better like that. Up to you, though. Martin 21:19 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

This goes back to the unresolved dispute of Wikipedia talk:How-to articles, but I think you're right. I won't bother looking up an authoritative quotation, but a partial de-mandatification is in order. -Smack 04:08 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I've begun a full conversion to the declarative mood in preparation for merging this back into campfire. -Smack 19:42 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

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We learned how to make a campfire in Girl Scouts. First, your tiny candy kindling goes in a pile. Very flammable candy like spicy Jolly Ranchers or Hot Tamales are best, because you want to use something that will burn for a long time. A few mini marshmallow firelighters won't hurt either.

Next, you make a little pile of all your pretzel sticks around the kindling. The perfectionistic eight-year-old will balance them together the way she imagines a teepee to look. That's the tinder.

Before you're allowed to eat it, you have to take a tiny pretzel stick, strike it on the table, and carefully reach inside to light it. If you have a really gung-ho troop leader, they may make you light it by rubbing two little pretzels together. Presumably the rock salt is flammable.

The nice thing about the teepee or cone style of pyro-architecture is that as the kindling inside burns, the pretzels will fall inward toward the jolly ranchers and catch on fire, or burn more, depending.

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Some anonymous individual has removed the reference to toilet paper and tampons as excellent tinder. I'm not responsible for its insertion into the article, but I would like to know exactly what is wrong with it.

Removed much of content following transwiki procedure

I've removed much of the content of this article, it still exists at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Transwiki:Campfire and is linked to in the article. Wikipedia articles must be encylopedic and cannot read as how-to guides. --Xyzzyplugh 23:17, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

A bit more explanation: from WP:NOT Wikipedia articles are not "Instruction manuals - while Wikipedia has descriptions of people, places, and things, Wikipedia articles should not include instruction - advice (legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s. This includes tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, video game guides, and recipes. Wikibooks is a Wikipedia sister-project which is better suited for such things".

The removed content, while informative and useful on the subject of campfires, was all "how-to" material and therefore is not appropriate for wikipedia. As I mentioned above, the how-to sections still exist, having been transwikied to wikibooks, and are linked to within the article. --Xyzzyplugh 15:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, you did start the talk, so you got me on that one. But I totally disagree with you. The rest of us like this stuff here...I do not see how the ash tradition is against policy. Furthermore, you've not contributed to the article so for you to cruise by and excise all this without notice and time to talk beforehand is wrong. Simply slapping a talk entry and doing it doesn't cut it. Edit the wording if you want, but please don't cut out sections wholesale. Rlevse 19:56, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I got involved with this article because it is listed on Wikipedia:Transwiki_log, due to unencylopedic content which was transwikied to wikibooks. I was doing a bunch of cleanup on some of these articles, including this one. I understand that some people involved with this article like having the how-to content here, but that doesn't make it acceptable to have it here. WP:NOT is official policy, and the section on instruction manuals which I quoted above clearly describes the content I removed, or at least much of it. Quoting again, "Wikipedia articles should not include instruction - advice (legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s.". The sections I removed were almost all instruction, suggestions, how-to's. The "Finding a site, and other safety measures" section is a how-to guide to finding a site for a campfire. The "Building the fire" section is a how-to guide to building a campfire. The "Lighting the fire" and "Without matches" sections are how-to guides to lighting a campfire. The "Extinguishing the fire" section is a how-to guide to extinguishing a campfire. The "Ash tradition" section is not a how-to guide, but it doesn't belong in this article because it is not about campfires, it's about a tradition within certain Scouting organizations. A campfire is a fire people have in a camp or while camping, and campfires are used by many people outside Scouting and have been used for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, I assume. An "ash tradition" section would belong in an article on scouting perhaps, or an article on "campfires in scouting", if one existed. --Xyzzyplugh 23:17, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Wholesale removal of content without discussion is wrong. You could have rewritten those sections to make them not be "how-to" sections if you truly cared about the article instead of being a deletionist. You even admitted not all of it was covered elsewhere in transwiki/books. I could care less about Wiki's "how-to" policy because including this stuff will not get wiki sued and it provides people more info. How on earth can you say the ash tradition "is not about campfires"? Campfires cause the ashes and the ashes are a representation of the event (songs, skits, memories, etc), not the mere wood buring. I see no reason the ash section can be in both the campfire and Scouting articles. I've met people outside of Scouting who partake of this tradition. Rlevse 11:18, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Whether or not I should have removed the content without discussing it first is really not the issue here. If you want to discuss that, leave me a message about it on my talk page. The question at this point is what the future nature of this article is going to be. As to your comment that you don't care about wikipedia's "how-to" policy, this is a potential problem. If you don't care about wikipedia's policies and intend to make this article what you personally want it to be, regardless of the views of the overall wikipedia community as to what a wikipedia article should consist of, this will make it highly difficult to come to some sort of agreement as to the future of this article.

At the moment, this article is a useful and informative instruction manual on campfires. This is a problem, because wikipedia is an encylopedia, and instruction manuals, no matter how useful, are not enyclopedic. There are many useful things which wikipedia is not, much useful content which is not considered acceptable for wikipedia articles. This is why we have wiktionary and wikibooks, so that dictionary definitons, food and drink recipes, textbook type content, instruction manuals and how-to guides and all sorts of other content can have a place to go.

My opinion is that much of this article is unencylopedic, consisting of instructions, how-to material, and therefore doesn't belong in wikipedia, but instead should go in wikibooks. So, questions for you. First, do you agree that much of the content of the article consists of instructions, suggestions, how-to material? Second, if you agree that it is, are you willing to have it changed so that it meets with the guidelines of WP:NOT, or do you believe that the article should remain as it is, even though it may violate WP:NOT?--Xyzzyplugh 15:32, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't think it's unencylopedic. I think it should stay as is. Rlevse 22:51, 26 March 2006 (UTC)