Talk:Haggis

See also's deleted

I've deleted half-a-dozen items in the See Also section with this edit, as none of the pages even mention haggis. Few of the rest are particularly similar either (they are mostly types of sausage), but they all claim to be akin to haggis, so I have left them for now. Any thoughts on how to proceed? Moonraker12 (talk) 21:03, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I'd agree it's largely a pretty arbitrary collection of products that have the loose connection that they contain cereals and meat, offal or blood but that's a very broad field. Haggis doesn't have blood so the blood sausages probably don't have a place. Some examples may be superficially quite similar - kaszanka for instance might just about fool you - but in regard to ingredients are only slightly so. I've whittled down the list a little in the past but thought it could be reduced further and wouldn't be unhappy to see this done. Mutt Lunker (talk) 22:51, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Per recent edits, these points are as relevant as ever. The section should not be a repository for every unrelated worldwide pudding/sausage-type combo of carbs and dead thing. Mutt Lunker (talk) 20:50, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

The very fact that many users in the past (and I today) have independently added several similar dishes to the See Also list should have been more than enough to alert you that your editing behaviour might not be in order and that your opinion on this is not shared by many other editors.

Of course, different people may have different opinions on something and it isn't always possible to convince the fellows, but collaborative editing does not mean that one user enforces his opinion by reverting other editors' valid contributions. Going through the edit history of this article it can be derived that you have a long track record of reverting other editors' valid contributions (and you did this twice today with my additions). This is not quality-assurance, this is a form of attempting to WP:OWN an article. This is counter-productive to the development of the article. By all means, remove junk, and, if you can, try to further improve on valid contributions, but otherwise leave other edits alone for other editors to improve on them later on.

The purpose of See Also lists per WP:SEEALSO is to link to other articles which may be in some way associated with and might be interesting to know about in the context of this local article. Such relations can be some form of similarity (on various levels, it could be the look, the taste, some ingredients, the cooking process, the history, the name, or a lot of other things) or even being the opposite of something - it all depends. It is in the nature of associations that different people may have different associations depending on their context, knowledge, experiences, interests, etc. So, something that you find useful might not be found useful by others (but should not be removed unless it is junk), and vice versa. I, for one, read the Haggis article and my first thought was "well, I've seen something similar in Germany called Saumagen". Yes, it also has differences (otherwise it would be called "Haggis"), but there are enough similarities for other editors to mention this in the Saumagen article (and also in the German article on Haggis). So, it is obvious, that I'm not alone with that association, therefore this link belongs here (even if you do not share this association). The article is not for you, but for a pool of readers, some of which might be very happy to learn that there are similar dishes in other countries as well. It is not up to you to preempt their decision.

Likewise for "Grützwurst", another German dish with similarities (and also differences). The similarities are mentioned in the German article, the English article only has a redirect to Kaszanka (a dish I do not personally know, so I can't comment on it, but apparently it is similar in some way as well given that it was added by another editor in the past and removed by you).

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 22:20, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, See Also lists, particularly for food items, are often magnets for similarly vast lists of ill-thought-out, tenuously-connected, if connected at all, items. If one was to add every food item that was as distantly-related to haggis as Sauamgen is, the list would be enormous. The main constituents of saumagen are pork meat, ie. muscle from pigs plus potatoes, whereas for haggis it is sheep offal, i.e.organs, and oatmeal. They do have onions in common but so does Scotch broth and it has mutton, so is that to go on the list? Even porridge is closer, largely consisting of oatmeal as it does. To add this kind of cruft is of no assisistance to anyone. I'll add List of sausages to cover the lot. There must be of the order of 100 entries therein with about as many closer, if not actively close, to haggis than saumagen than there are ones less similar. That is no justification for listing them all. Mutt Lunker (talk) 23:03, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

This is a red herring in several ways.

First, we are not talking about adding 100 entries, but a handful of entries, which editors, according to their valuable editorial judgement, added in the past. Obviously, those editors felt that the addition would be useful to readers, because it would have been useful for them to find these entries here in the first place. Who, do you think, you are to declare that these entries are "ill-thought-out, tenuously-connected" and of "no assistance to anyone"? That's exhibiting a denialist and article-owner mentality and is not only annoying because you are thereby wasting other people's time and resources, it is harmful to the project.

Second, your argument based on constituents is misleading as well, as (explained above) associations do not need to be in any way related to ingredients to be useful as See Also links. Nevertheless, I will give you some examples, why some of these entries were added: In the case of Saumagen, one obvious similarity is that it is cooked and served in the animal's stomach (from sheep in the case of Haggis, from pig in the case of Saumagen), another is the look. There are probably a few (but not many) other dishes sharing these properties, if they do, they should be listed here as well. In the case of Grützwurst, the look is typically different (but not always), but some of the ingredients are similar: offal (including heart, liver, lung, kidneys, other inner organs and intestines), and depending on the actual recipe various types of cereals.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 00:28, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Your reasons for adding these are sound enough. However;

• The reader is not told this, and may not know, so their association with haggis remains a mystery.
• The section itself does not establish any parameters for inclusion. So really, any foodstuff that vaguely consists/prepared/appears/tastes similar to haggis, according to any one editor's opinion, is fair game for inclusion. This could result in a long, useless list.

Adding something like your explanations to the links could address this, and discourage poorly related links being added. --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 10:20, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Re red herrings, I did not say there were 100 potential entries for the See Also but that saumagen was pitched no better than mid-table in the list, regarding supposed similarity. That still leaves an unwieldy amount, much more than a handful. (Incidentally, and I'm not inclined to count it exactly, my revised estimate is that there are upwards of 300 entries in the list, some possibly overlapping, so maybe there are approaching 100 as-or-more-similar dishes.) If such patently largely dissimilar dishes are to be regarded as eligible it's either going to be unhelpfully large and crufty or not-so-large and crufty but arbitrary. And drop the high horse stuff. Mutt Lunker (talk) 12:22, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:HAGGIS which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:03, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Is the stomach encasing eaten or discarded?

Images show haggis served on a plate without the stomach. Does this mean the stomach encasing is just for transport or presentation, and is discarded? Is the stomach edible? TechnophilicHippie (talk) 20:15, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Purely a casing. Mutt Lunker (talk) 22:46, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Can this be added to the article for people unfamiliar with haggis? I had thought that the casing was eaten like the intestine casing of a sausage is eaten. TechnophilicHippie (talk) 23:31, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Of course you can. Mutt Lunker (talk) 01:24, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

It's served without the casing. Traditionally it was a sheep's stomach, but today other artificial casings are often used. It isn't eaten. It's use is not for transportation or presentation, but for the steaming. Haggis is a steamed sausage (a pudding, like black pudding). It's already cooked before it is sold. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7C:CB92:F900:C03:7B8F:C2F1:9257 (talk) 15:42, 17 December 2023 (UTC)