Talk:Craven A

Consistency in naming

This article uses Craven A, Craven 'A' and Craven "A" interchangeably, almost at random. Vintage packaging and advertising consistently seems to use Craven "A", but contemporary material from British American Tobacco uses Craven A. Which should be used? 16:09, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

History - missing material?

The History section reads as if there should be a preceding paragraph or two. Whois 'Baron' for example? Any ideas about how to address this? jxm (talk) 13:56, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

This refers to Bernhard Baron. I have adjusted the text based on his article and Carreras Tobacco Company. Verbcatcher (talk) 11:48, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Wiktionary links to Craven

The links to the Wiktionary entry wikt:craven are unhelpful. We say that the brand was named after George Craven, 3rd Earl of Craven. His title appears to have originated from the surname of his ancestor William Craven, see Earl of Craven. There does not appear to be any connection between the cigarette brand and the Wiktionary definition of 'craven'. I will remove the Wiktionary links again, please do not restore them without giving an explanation here. Verbcatcher (talk) 18:01, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

An unregistered user has reinserted this Wiktionary link with the edit summary Seems relevant, and it's supportable, so I'm being WP:BOLD and re-inserting it, with a reference. This reference was provided:

• Corbeil, Busby (August 1967). Higher-Order Etymology in Product Branding: A Cross-Market Study. University of Iowa Archives: University of Iowa. p. 173. The British Craven A cigaret brand serves to illustrate this type of post-facto intersected marque denotational ambiguity; the dictionary definition of the adjective 'craven' standing in stark contrast to what one presumes is the positive connotations of the Earl of Craven for whom they were (officially) named.

Firstly, please clarify the nature of this source. I have been unable to find it online. If it is a published book then please give the ISBN. If is a student dissertation then please give the degree it is for, ideally using Template:Cite thesis. An PhD thesis has more credibility than a piece of undergraduate coursework.

Adding the Wiktionary link implies that the brand name refers to the dictionary meaning of 'craven'. This is unlikely and is not supported by the quote. If we are going to refer to the dictionary meaning of craven then we should do so explicitly, either in a new sentence or a footnote. I envisage something like:

• After the end of World War I, the cigarette market resumed its normal competitive spirit with the Carreras Tobacco Company once more well to the fore. Bernhard Baron, a director of Carreras, knew that to compete successfully his product had to be better than his competitors' and in 1921 Carreras launched Craven A, a brand that became a household name in over 120 countries with the slogan "Will Not Affect Your Throat". It was the first machine-made cork-tipped cigarette, and. It used the name of the Earl of Craven; presumably its name did not refer to the normal meaning of the word 'craven' (cowardly).. The unfiltered version of the cigarette was unusual in that, there was at one end a cork tip in place of the paper.

(I put the new citation at the end of the paragraph as it is not clear what text is supported by the victoriancollections source; inserting a citation in the middle of a paragraph effectively separates the preceding text from the citation at the end of the paragraph.)

References

I will not add this text because I have not inspected the source, and because in my view it is only peripherally relevant to the cigarette brand – it might be better to add it to the 'Brand' article. But I could live with something like this.

I will revert the edit. I encourage you to discuss it here. Verbcatcher (talk) 00:32, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

I appreciate your summary characterization of my edit as "good faith" (even as you reverted it), but I find it troubling that your very first three words in discussing it were "an unregistered user". That creates an appearance of a headlong dive into problematic waters. Now, I don't think you really intend to dismiss my work (you didn't just say "that was by an unregistered editor, so I'm nuking it", and you seem to be engaging sincerely), but then why lead off with "an unregistered user"? Why even bring it up?

Anyway. The Corbeil source is indeed a PhD thesis. It's a hard copy, possibly the only hard copy, kept in deep storage at UIowa. It's weirdly happenstantial that I read it at all, but I did, in the course of doing some (paying) work completely unrelated to this or any other article on Wikipedia. That piece of it stuck in my mind when I saw the Wiktionary reference and then a few days later it was gone. You know how the Wikipedia rabbit hole effect is; I just couldn't resist tugging at the string! As far as I know there is no online/electronic version of the publication, and I doubt if anyone else had read it since it was defended. But WP:SOURCEACCESS says the source just has to exist, not be easily accessible, so I went ahead and used it. I can see both edges of the sword formed by that policy: on the one hand it leaves an opening for possible abuse. On the other hand, it maximizes the likelihood that someone, somewhere will have access to a snippet of information that can be useful in some fashion to a project like this, and allows her or him to contribute it.

I'm not picky or dogmatic on exactly how this snippet should be incorporated. Your proposal looks fine to me, in fact it looks much better than just a quicky Wiktionary reference because your proposal directly aligns with what the Corbeil thesis says and makes it clear that the cigarettes were not branded with a synonym for cowardly! (I suppose we could get into a far-flung philosophical discussion about how tobacco companies have always behaved in a "craven" manner, but that would be way outside the scope of an article like this).

Thank you for taking the time to discuss this in a productive/professional manner. 97.126.90.207 (talk) 01:45, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. By 'an unregistered editor' I did not intend to be dismissive of the contributions of unregistered editors. If it had been a registered editor then I would have named them.

You are correct that offline sources are acceptable. I was seeking more information about the source to gauge its reliability and to make it easer for anyone who wanted to follow it up. Good sourcing is particularly important for offline sources. It is unsurprising that a 1967 thesis is not available online, but it might be listed in an online catalogue of the university's archives. Verbcatcher (talk) 19:15, 16 December 2019 (UTC)