Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/List of Fresh Mex restaurants

Response to Jerem43
In reply to this post by Jerem43:

Okay, you asked for it... >;-)

Misc. points first: USPTO didn't actually say that; failure to find X via a crappy search interface does not mean that X does not exist. But let's pretend (I note that someone else has already settled this, above) that "Fresh Mex" is not a Chevy's trademark; it's a minor point anyway. I have no "like" or "dislike" to bring to bear here, as I have no particular opinion about the cuisine (I eat Mexican–American food right along with everything else), and, as I already noted, trademarks are frequently made-up stuff, so this one is no different. I don't have anything against Chevy's or any competitors. "There at least [sic] four companies that have the term fresh mex as part of their trademarked name". Hmm. Interesting assertion given that none of them appear in this list! Things like Baja Fresh Mexican Grill obviously do not qualify since they say "Fresh" and "Mexican" not "Fresh Mex", and like many other restaurants with "Fresh" in their names cannot be shown to be identifying with this alleged "fresh Mex" style, rather than simply asserting the freshness of their ingredients or the rapidity of preparation; a "Chan's Fresh Mongolian Grill" is no evidence of a supposed new and distinct "Fresh Mongolian" style either. Also, the fact that someone asserts a trademark is not the same as having a registered one; many companies assert trademarks and then get their butts sued off by registered trademark holders for infringement after trying to actually use them in practice. Of course it's short for "fresh Mexican"; I never asserted otherwise. Ignorance of restaurant industry terminology? How many restaurants have you managed? You didn't actually "fix the 'national' issue", you simply changed the wording; the list still doesn't match the article title. OR violation: What you do here on a talk page and what is sourced in an article are not the same thing; this AfD is about the article, not about how clever you are.

NYT: New York Times has not been categorically shown to be any more reliable than any other newspaper. I've caught them in factual errors before myself (cf. Rudolf Wanderone and William A. Spinks for two examples; got the former's death date off by 3 days, and the latter's name wrong). The NYT article cited, a "lifestyle" opinion piece, not a work of investigative journalism, gives no less than 5 terms for this alleged style, mentioned the character string "fresh Mex" only once, and never mentions Chevys Fresh Mex (which if you have ever eaten there, does not match the profile suggested by the article, since Chevys does not specialize in low-fat food); if anything we have stumbled upon a parallel usage that has nothing to do with the trademark in question, and conflicts with other usage! It is apparently a rather uncommong and inconsistently applied term, given the number of other terms in the article, the lack of other sources, and the fact that the article itself says this is only an emerging style, making up "but a small segment" of the Mexican–American restaurant market, which is actually dominated by Chevys along with Taco Bell, Chi Chi's and Chili's, with few other serious non-regional entrants. To the extent an article (even a list) could be written about this alleged trend, it is not clear at all that it should be called "fresh Mex" (or "fresh-Mex" - some of these sources hyphenate it), and (more to the point of this AfD) there are no sources at all for the list in question, making it definitively original research; it is simply the random opinion of editors of the list article that the businesses in the list qualify to be in such a list. Which badly fails WP:SAL, since it has no inclusion criteria, and necessarily cannot since the term itself is vague; the NYT sense of it is pretty much diametrically opposite that of half the other sources.

Google: Your Google search results are invalid (not to mention a questionable source of information anyway), since it matches anything with the character strings "fresh" and "mex" in any context, whole or partial words, so long as the other terms are present. Looking over the first two pages of results, it is almost all "Mexican"; there are only 4 hits that have "mex" by itself. And the usage is inconsistent. The first, a simple list of articles produced by a Mexican restaurant, uses the character string without saying anything about it, and yields nothing but links to one of the other hits (below) and a press release by same entity as produced the list. The second one mentions a side-project of the aforementioned Baja Fresh (whose name, again, is not sourceable so far as meaning anything but "Mexican" and "fresh"), and says nothing about the food style; it does however indicate that it is a fast food restaurant, strongly supporting the interpretion that "fresh" here simply means "made right now" (it even says so: "made-to-order fresh-Mex"), not "a unique low-calorie American re-interpretation of Mexican food", as you appear to suggest. The third mentions the term only in passing, with no implications as to its meaning, but is an article titled "Fast-casual franchising" in a publication called Fast Casual – i.e., it is talking about fast food generally. The fourth makes is abundantly clear they are talking about "Hispanic"-influenced fast food, with no further implications; it is also not a reliable source, as it is from a restaurant in that much broader category, not an independent one. Very very interestingly, the second of the 4 articles mentioned here provides a list of top "fresh Mex" restaurant chains, and not one of the major Mexican–American chains is listed there! Obviously the term means something quite particular to editors of that publication.

Conclusion: The character string "fresh Mex" does "exist in the wild", divorced from Chevys, but means radically different things to different users of it, ranging from fresh-made fast food (a notoriously high-calorie food source), to self-consciously low-calorie food, and the only thing in common is (naturally) the Mexican influence. Ergo, this list article, even with sources, will be meaningless and confusing. It's not "a name that the nominator doesn't like", it's a meaningless name for encyclopedic purposes, with no rational inclusion criteria, and with two meanings that cannot reasonably be separated, nor reconciled, except through original research and the advancement of a personal opinion. I.e., it is not "a viable sub segment [sic] of the restaurant industry", but a pair of words that means at least two radically different sub-segments of the industry. The "poor definition" advanced by Fast Casual isn't a definition at all – read it – it is a string of food marketing terms that indicates nothing objectively factual. Your CSPInet source even confirms this conflict of meanings; they interpret it to mean "low-fat Mexican-style or -influenced food", to paraphrase (and they then say that often it actually is not), despite the fact that other sources clearly advance the meaning "quickly-prepared Mexican-style or -influenced fast food in a 'casual' [i.e. Wendy's-like rather than McDonald's-like] atmosphere". These two overall definitions have zero in common other than the "Mexican" connection.

Finally, your point #2 that an old "fresh Mex" article was successfully merged into something else and all that is left is a bare list of chain restaurant names is an enormous pair of points in favor of deletion.

PS: It is quite possible that the term will some day have a single, explicable definition that can be reliably sourced, and that the trademark will become diluted, and that this style will use that term as it's name, instead of one among at least 5 terms for it according to a source that you hold in higher esteem than it deserves. If and when that happens, then there's a good opportunity for articles on the topic.

PPS: If there is somehow something salvageable here, it might be plausible to have separate lists of Mexican–American or Mexican-influenced (or whatever) fast food and health food (or low-calorie food or whatever) restaurants. With sources, reliable ones. I stress this point, because you made it clear (here) that you believe that list articles are somehow exempt from WP verifiability policy. They aren't.

—  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 12:51, 4 October 2008 (UTC)