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I just discovered the truffle tag.

Mushrooms and chocolate goodies

Apparently we've decided to manage questions about chocolate and mushrooms under the same tag. YAY!

Not really...

So, we have a few options.

  1. Make one of them "generic" and one specific - e.g. and (or the opposite)
  2. Make them both specific - e.g. and
  3. Consider whether both or either tag is necessary. i.e. do we have enough questions about chocolate truffles specifically to even warrant a tag.

Of the three, the first is my preference, with the deference shown to the mushroom, which is where the term originates... plus "chocolate-truffles" is more "normal" in my mind than "truffle-mushrooms". Yes, making them both specific reduces the likelihood of misuse but... meh. Also, as pointed out by Stephie in chat, option three may not be good for the mushrooms since the way they're used is vastly different from other types of mushrooms.

There may be other options I'm missing.

Discuss!

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  • 1
    Looks like of the 21 currently tagged questions, 7 are chocolate and 14 are mushrooms. I expect that there are more chocolate truffle questions that aren't tagged truffle as well, making the actual count look even more even.
    – Cascabel Mod
    May 16, 2016 at 16:56
  • @Jefromi Yes, there seem to be several questions like this one that are about truffles but don't have the tag. There are 39 questions that include the word "Truffles".
    – Catija
    May 16, 2016 at 17:04
  • Looking at the 18 questions containing "truffle" but not tagged as such, 5 are using it for the fungus and 13 are using it for chocolate, though not all are sufficiently about truffles in either sense to need the tag.
    – Cascabel Mod
    May 16, 2016 at 17:19
  • Yeah, I wasn't sure about the question about white truffle oil.
    – Catija
    May 16, 2016 at 17:22
  • #1. I dig it because chocolate truffles are named after the mushrooms for their shape.
    – Quinto
    May 19, 2016 at 17:18

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Got upvotes and no concerns, so went ahead and went with option 1, editing the tag wiki and retagging the chocolate questions as .

I'd probably favor option 1, and , revising the tag wiki/excerpt for to help people find .

I definitely don't like option 3; these seem like totally normal things to ask questions about and want to tag.

Option 2 is more awkward because no one really ever says "truffle fungus" (or "truffle mushroom" - they're not actually mushrooms), while people do say "chocolate truffles.

So option 1 seems the closest to natural language. Wikipedia has made the same decision: Truffle is about the fungus, and Chocolate Truffle is about the confectionery.

The one awkward thing is if someone wants to make dessert truffles that aren't actually chocolate, the tag no longer fits, but... I don't see much evidence of that being a problem in practice based on past questions.

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  • Interesting... I have always thought that part of the definition of a (sweet) truffle is that it's made of chocolate.
    – Catija
    May 16, 2016 at 17:28
  • @Catija I agree the normal/default definition is chocolate, but people do like to make variations on existing foods, and use existing names to describe them, e.g. watermelon carpaccio. Not sure what exactly that'd be for truffles, but I'm sure someone's made some kind of soft ball of sweet not-chocolate stuff and called it a truffle before.
    – Cascabel Mod
    May 16, 2016 at 17:50
  • @Jefromi: the people who insist that "white chocolate" is a contradiction in terms obviously think that a white chocolate truffle is "some kind of soft ball of sweet not-chocolate stuff ... called ... a truffle". (My attitude is "cool, that leaves more for the rest of us!")
    – Marti
    May 18, 2016 at 1:32

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