Talk:Coffee sniffers

A fact from Coffee sniffers appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 11 April 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that sniffing for coffee was once a highly paid job?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/April. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Coffee sniffers.

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The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

Weinberg, Bennett Alan; Bealer, Bonnie K. (23 November 2004). The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-95817-6 – via Google Books.
"A Cup Of Coffee". Harper's Magazine. Harper's Magazine Foundation. p. 241 – via Google Books.
Luttinger, Nina; Dicum, Gregory (1 May 2012). The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop. New Press, The. p. 43-44. ISBN 978-1-59558-724-4 – via Google Books.

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by MeegsC (talk) 13:35, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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Coffee sniffers

... that Prussia once employed soldiers to sniff for coffee (pictured)?
- ALT1:... that sniffing for coffee was once a highly paid job?
- ALT2:... that people sniffing for coffee were hated almost as much as people sniffing for wigs?

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/How Not to Be a Boy
Comment: I'll drop this here before I forget. I try to see whether I can also create an article on wig sniffers for a double feature. QPQ follows. Regards So Why 13:24, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Created by SoWhy (talk). Self-nominated at 13:24, 31 March 2021 (UTC).[reply]

Article is new, long enough, well and neutrally written and properly referenced. Sources are in German, which I cannot read, but using machine translation I am satisfied that they support the content and that there is no copyvio; Earwig also detects nothing. Image is PD, so fine. Hook is amusing, interesting and sourced appropriately in the article. Awaiting QPQ, then this will be ready to go. GirthSummit _(blether) 11:15, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Girth Summit: Thanks for the review. I added the QPQ. Regards So Why 11:01, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

QPQ now completed, AGF on the foreign-language sources (since I'm reviewing in machine translation), this is now good to go. GirthSummit _(blether) 12:14, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Changing 'War Invalid' to 'Disabled Veteran'?

Commonality

As far as I can tell, the term "disabled veteran" is a direct synonym for "war invalid" and vastly more common in modern speech. While it's a crude measure, searching google for the prior year shows 254k results for "disabled veteran" and 808 results for "war invalid", many of which contain content from older war documents.

Nationality

Dictionaries say "War Invalid" is chiefly British. Wikipedia says British English should be used for British topics, while US English should be used for US topics— and both are fine (as long as they're consistent) for general topics. This article is neither British nor US Centric. It does use the American spelling of license: '[...] it was to make sure people were wearing licensed wigs.' but that's not particularly persuasive.

A quick google search for "disabled veteran" "gov.uk" shows that the British government uses the term, so the change is not likely to confuse British readers.

Term of art

If "war invalid" connotes a technical distinction that "disabled veteran" doesn't, it's not obvious from context, and should probably be considered technical language.

From the style guide:

"Some topics are intrinsically technical, but editors should try to make them understandable to as many readers as possible. [...] Do not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader when more common alternatives will do."
— Manual of Style

My reading of that still points to changing it.

Takeaway

Overall, the term seems arcane and lacks meaningful distinction from more common terminology. This is not my area of expertise, so I'll let this sit here a while before changing it.

Andythechef (talk) 21:08, 18 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]