Talk:Cheese

European cheeses

Does that plural even exist? Any way if not I just made it exist, 'cause English lacks a Duden or Real academia de la lengua to tell me otherwise... That being said, I think we could (and should) mention at least some of the types of cheese (or cheeses) listet on this here WP article. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 13:19, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that plural does exist. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:19, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up ;-) Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:42, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Back to topic though... I think our coverage of England is now rather comprehensive, but that of most other countries is still lacking. (do we even mention Parmigiano Reggiano or how it's spelled?) I like cheese, but am by no means a connoisseur. Also at some point we will have to get an article on bread to go with the cheese... Hobbitschuster (talk) 08:16, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Germany has the best bread I've ever tasted! Sure, Parmigiano Reggiano is a famous and delicious Italian cheese. Add any cheeses you like. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:22, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

As a German I have to agree to that;-) In fact it's said, that most Germans tend to miss bread the most when they are abroad for a long time. Hobbitschuster (talk) 09:00, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I completely understand why. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:29, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

A bread article will be quite a challenge. The variety of bread here in France alone is bewildering, I shudder to think how many exist in Germany and elsewhere in the world. Still, at least there won't be much to talk about for England, most of our bread is quite awful.

Back onto cheese, I'm about to add a bit more on France, without listing too many specific examples as the cheeses are so regionalised here with only a couple that are popular nationwide. For example, in my experience teaching primary school English here if you ask almost any child in the Touraine what their favourite cheeses are, they'll say fromage de chèvre (the local goat's cheese, of which there are at least a dozen varieties produced in this department alone) and Babybel, in that order! --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:15, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Just add the content. If this article gets too large (and I kind of hope it does) we can still brake it down into Cheese in France Cheese in Italy Cheese in Europe Cheese in the rest of the world etc. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 12:44, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Done :) --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:50, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Expansion: Dairy products

There is a lot to write about other dairy products than cheese. To limit the number of articles, the name could be changed to cheese and dairy products. /Yvwv (talk) 02:27, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

If we're going to make it about dairy products as a whole, I'm not sure "cheese" should be in the name, but "milk products" might not do it, and "dairy", if freestanding, could mean a farm, rather than or in addition to the food and drink it produces.

However, before we expand the scope of this article, I think we'd better agree on what we'd include. I figure you'd want to include yogurt and labane, but do you also want to include ice cream? Whipped cream? Sour cream? Creme fraiche? And how about the milks of different mammals that are drunk by people throughout the world, themselves? Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:37, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Why would anyone want to read a general travel article about Dairy products? It makes no sense.

Cheese is a pretty diverse subject, and if you want a Cheeses of France then that itself would be valid as a free standing article.

Add all the other possible combination of dairy products in the world and it will make this article meaningless. Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:00, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I rather agree. "Dairy products" is better as a parent article, which might be useful if we also have articles about a few other types of diary (but the only other one that seems somewhat interesting to me is Creams and yogurts, which could also encompass almost all of the other things I mentioned above, though I have doubts that topic really merits an article). Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:17, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm really not onboard with this at all, to be honest. People don't pick up a travel guidebook to read about cheese, and they won't open Wikivoyage to do so either. I was happy to contribute to this article before, but now I read that you want to expand it to cover milk and yoghurt and God knows what else, I just don't see the point. This is not a gastronomic encyclopaedia.

If a destination is particularly well-known for a certain food, then that information should be in the destination article. I can see the need for the wine article (wine tourism is actually a thing), and maybe a generic cuisine article, and articles about specific cuisines that are justly famous. But I emphatically don't see how this type of generic 'food that comes from the udders of various animals' article serves the need of the traveller. Since when did anyone travel anywhere based solely on the types of meat, bread (oh, that doesn't exist yet. Hallelujah!) ice cream and cheese available to them? Certainly, there are foodie holidays, but foodies are interested in whole cuisines of a particular region, not just food groups.

Sorry if this comes across badly, I just think this is completely the wrong thing to be spending time on for a travel guide --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 07:26, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not against someone creating a food article. I'd agree that there are generally more valuable things to be doing here than creating articles for milk and bread, but if someone really wants to do it then more power to them.

I was just saying that Cheese would be somewhat relevant to travel (as a product people travel to seek out). Milk would not be, therefore I'd be against a merge. Andrewssi2 (talk) 09:06, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I did say I have doubts that a topic about any other dairy products would merit a Wikivoyage article. I don't think I agree that foodies travel only for "whole cuisines", though. And connoisseurs absolutely do travel to have great Kobe beef in some specialist restaurants in Japan. I have a friend who travels for such things. Or to go to a ramen house that specializes in a particular type of ramen, or a sushi house that specializes in a particular kind of sushi, etc. As for bread, I think the point is less that people travel to try particular types of bread but that once they're there, they might benefit from knowing there are x, y, and z breads that are great that they can look for. To be clear, I won't start a Bread article, and I think that, for example, German breads can be covered quite adequately in Germany#Eat. But there are a lot of reasons why people travel and a lot of things that people enjoy while traveling, and trying different cheeses is definitely something that a lot of travelers love to do in countries like France, Italy, Switzerland and some of the others covered in this article. If you're not interested in participating in an article about cheese, you are completely free to work on other articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:18, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I just reread my last post, and lest it sounds a bit rude, I'd like to clarify my point: All of us have different interests, so if some people are relatively enthusiastic (as no-one is really that enthusiastic, I think, given the lack of tremendous work on this article lately) to create and add to an article about cheese and you're more interested in soccer, no problem. On the other hand, if you couldn't care less about sports and prefer to work on a travel topic about Romanesque architecture, wonderful. And if you find all the topic articles boring and would rather concentrate exclusively on destination articles, terrific, as those are above all the lifeblood of this site. Sure, there's a limit to what could be considered topical, but I would rather let 1,000 flowers bloom than be a killjoy unnecessarily. The upshot being that questioning the topicality of articles that haven't been created is great, but questioning this topic seems ungenerous to me, as well as not right, given, for example, the number of Americans who travel to France in large part to enjoy a lot of cheeses and, um, try to bring some home (I haven't done that, and we are not recommending smuggling on this site, but I know it is done). Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:47, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I didn't think either post sounded rude, no worries :)

My point is that connoisseurs know to travel to France for (French) cheese, and they travel to Japan for sushi and ramen noodles etc. I know people travel to enjoy food; I certainly do that. What they don't do is go read an article of all the good cheeses in the entire world (which must surely be this article's end goal, or else it's just a list of some cheeses in some countries) and then decide where to go based on that. I think a lot of this information is valuable, but having an all-encompassing cheese article (and any other food piece) is the wrong way to execute it. In my view, it would be much more worthwhile to have individual articles for various (celebrated) world cuisines than an article on dairy products around the world. We could have an article on French cuisine that would include all the 'France' information here, plus the many other highlights of French cooking.

I don't think I'm being a killjoy in suggesting a (in my view, better) alternative to the current model, but if it turns out nobody agrees with me, then sure I'll move on and focus my attention elsewhere. No biggie --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:44, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well we do have an article on Nordic cuisine for instance. Ultimately it seems to me that this is mostly a question akin to whether we should cut a pizza in slices or stripes... It still stays the same pizza. What I do agree with however is that non-cheese dairy products should better be handled in the regions where they are prevalent. Usually there is not more than a handful per area. Cheeses on the other hand, there are many. As Charles de Gaulle so eloquently said way back when... Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:49, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

And seriously, you can't legally take French cheese home with you to the U.S.? That sucks. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:46, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

On the French cheese issue: Yes. Along with some other European food, they don't meet certain regulations in the US. In the case of French cheese I think it was the living microbes in it... Kinder Surprise is also verboten in the US afaik... Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:50, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

The suits in Washington must be heathens of the highest order... --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:20, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it's quite annoying. Young raw milk cheeses are illegal here. Which is a major reason for connoisseurs of them to travel to France. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:22, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

It is interesting that such a simple idea gets such a lot of feedback. The issue seems not to be just about dairy products, but also about the basic principles of Wikivoyage. As said before, the project is experimental by nature. No one of us knows everything about any topic; in many cases we don't even know what there is to know about something. Starting articles such as toilets, urban rail or Ancient Greece was a bit of a chance as I am no expert on either topic, and the first drafts could have fit well into existing articles. In any case, these pages, as well as many others, have grown beyond expectation, to useful articles which give Wikivoyage a competitive edge before traditional guidebooks, Tripadvisor, and The Other Site. Yoghurt and kefir might not have enough merit to make up a travel topic, but it is important to suggest and consider all kinds of ideas how to develop Wikivoyage into something more readable than the Yellow Pages. /Yvwv (talk) 15:19, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

You make a terrific point. I'm not sure Urban rail is that good an article, but Toilets is definitely useful, and some of the articles about ancient civilizations have turned out well. I think Exhibit A of that is Roman Empire, which I hope eventually is good enough to be made a Guide and featured. That might be possible for Ancient Greece, too, which is quite a nice article already. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:07, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

In other words, go to Wikivoyage:Requested articles and post your article ideas. If you have knowledge about a topic beyond the trivial, and believe that the topic has merit for an article, plunge forward and create it. Later, articles can of course be merged, split, or reorganized. /Yvwv (talk) 17:29, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of the ancient civ articles; the editors who are working on them are doing a great job. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:57, 26 November 2015 (UTC)