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[GoblinCookie]

What always annoys me about the way that likes and dislikes are generated is that way that they have absolutely no relation to the kind of environment that your beings live in.  That is to say they have an equal chance of liking monkeys if they live in the artic as if they live in a tropical jungle.  Although I would not wish to rule out liking monkeys completely, they should have a far greater chance of liking say penguins if they live in the artic.

That way we ensure to keep likes/dislikes relevant to the kind of stuff that a member of a given civilization would actually be aware of and more importantly would be more likely to have an impact on the game.

[LMeire]

It would be nice if the preference lists were at least restricted to plants or animals they've heard rumors/legends about, then it could keep weird trends like the RL tradition of adding lions to European heraldry despite a distinct lack of lions native to Europe.

[vjmdhzgr]

There's a bit of a problem with this though. Specifically, is your favorite animal native to where you live? Is your favorite material produced nearby? Probably not, and I don't think it's very realistic to say that people only like things that they live near.

[dwarobaki]

But it's very realistic that people like things that they at least heard of. I bet that 15th century europeans didn't like kangaroos for their great leaps or jaguars for their spotted coats.
Edit:
It would be even better if dwarves could change their favorites: first time seeing aluminium - wow, it's so light, I want my new chair out of it. Giant Tiger kills our militia? Now I like both giant tigers and cats.

[utunnels]

Yeah, I agree.
Currently they are just random materials, items and colors.

[GoblinCookie]

There's a bit of a problem with this though. Specifically, is your favorite animal native to where you live? Is your favorite material produced nearby? Probably not, and I don't think it's very realistic to say that people only like things that they live near.

Generally speaking the things you like or dislike are things that you actually have some familiarity with.  Having a strong opinion about something you will never ever see takes up space and contributes nothing to the game.

[Ops Fox]

I think having more dynamic list of likes and dislikes would be good, possible have a set of mundane/local things they like with the occasional exotic thing based on them having heard about it from trade. Someone on here suggested libraries where dwarfs can learn skills and made mention of dwarfs learning about new things and updating their list of likes and dislikes that would be cool.

[AceSV]

It would be nice if the preference lists were at least restricted to plants or animals they've heard rumors/legends about, then it could keep weird trends like the RL tradition of adding lions to European heraldry despite a distinct lack of lions native to Europe.

There actually used to be such things as European lions, but they went extinct around the time of the Roman Empire, so their existence in heraldry is more substantial than just hearing rumors from Africa and India.  Otherwise, you would probably see heraldic crocodiles and elephants, but those are not so popular. 

[Vattic]

Made a suggestion similar to this myself only a couple of months back.

Nice ideas. There was discussion of similar for animal preferences so a dwarf could like primates or spiders generally rather than specific species. It was related to the Ark Project, not sure if a suggestion was made.

I would like to see dwarves born with no detailed preferences and to have them form based on experience of different creatures, food, materials. Then you wouldn't have a dwarf preferring something they don't even know exists. It could be based on the civs knowledge for generated creatures, but ideally be more regional than that. This would help against mandates for items made of inaccessible materials. It might mean preferences are linked to events leaving room for story telling (likes a stone common in the mountain home of their childhood etc.). Also a dwarf could develop more detailed preferences over time and especially so for craftsdwarves working certain materials.

There are more related suggestions and ideas in the same thread.