Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jam sandwich (police car)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. There is no realistic consensus for delete. If there is a desire to take forward the question of merging, that can be done on the article talk page. Stifle (talk) 15:49, 10 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Jam sandwich (police car)

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Article merely defines a local neologism with no encyclopedic content, and Wikipedia is not a dictionary. No sources at all even verify the existence of this usage of 'jam sandwich', no evidence that there are any good sources, and no evidence that the term is important or interesting in any way. No claim to significance in the article, merely the banal fact that the color on the car made someone think of jam in a sandwich. If calling the cars grey-and-reds or ketchup-on-rye had caught on, the article would have just as little insight to offer. A topic is encyclopedic if learning about it broadens or deepens your understanding of the world rather than explaining that a fireplace is called that because it's the place where fire goes. Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:00, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:00, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions. Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:00, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:00, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:00, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I think the nominator needs to look up the term "neologism" (and probably "local" as well). This term has been around for about fifty years, was once extremely well-known (certainly when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s everyone in the UK knew what it meant) and is in fact rarely used today as police car colour schemes have mostly changed. And why not propose Black and white (police vehicle) for deletion as well? Otherwise it rather looks as though you're singling out a particular country, since the two are very similar slang terms used in different countries and for an equally "banal" reason. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Don't be a dick, OK? Telling someone they need to go read a defintion is not civil or respectful, it's condescending. Why is your link to the "definition" a link to an encyclopedia article? A good place to find the definition of neologism would be a dictionary, which is not what Wikipedia is. The OED is kind enough to inform us that it's "A word or phrase which is new to the language; one which is newly coined." You think 50 years is not "new". Good for you. That's merely a subjective opinion. As is this "50 years" you mentioned. Source? As the policy on this question, WP:NOTNEO, mentions, "An editor's personal observations and research (e.g. finding blogs, books, and articles that use the term rather than are about the term) are insufficient to support articles on neologisms because this may require analysis and synthesis of primary source material to advance a position, which is explicitly prohibited by the original research policy."

Slang usages coined in the last 50 years include groovy and boogie. These neologisms, unlike jam sandwich, meet Wikipedia's policy on neologisms, which matters far more than what the dictionary or encyclopedia definition of a neologism is. The policy says to justify an article about a neologism, it "must cite what reliable secondary sources say about the term or concept, not just sources that use the term." It doesn't say, "if the word is 50 years old, keep the article".

I'm not going to tell you to go read Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary because that would be rude, and so I assume you have read it. I suspect you might not fully understand it. I think any of us can, oftentimes, benefit from reading such a policy a second time, myself included. --Dennis Bratland (talk)

I apologise if you thought I was being offensive. It was not my intention (although calling someone a dick is clearly intentional!). But honestly, a "local neologism" suggests a term that has been made up in the last few years in a particular small area, not a term that entered common usage throughout a major country fifty years ago! OED: Neologism: "A word or phrase which is new to the language; one which is newly coined." Fifty years ago is not new by any definition! -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:47, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

New Zealand has been so since 1643 and yet it is still apparently "new". Don't get me started on the "New" Testament. "New" is relative. The current geological epoch is named the Holocene, meaning "entirely new"? Can we call anything entirely new after 12,000 years? And Pleistocene means "mostly new"! Scandal.

How can you be so assured that neologism is limited to a "few" years but not 50 years, when you haven't cited anything that says anything of the kind? No dictionary says that. You linked to neologism, but that says nothing about whether we're on an impatient toddler's timescale or a dog years timescale or a geologic timescale. I think of linguistic change in terms of hundreds of years: speakers of a language separated by from 1-2 centuries could understand one another easily, but increase that to 3-5 centuries and it's not so easy. Fifty years isn't that long in that time scale. Neologism does give this criterion: "has not yet been fully accepted into mainstream language." So we know jam sandwich has not fully been accepted in mainstream language because it is only applicable to a subset of Britain where these particular cars even existed. The term has no chance of becoming accepted outside that area. You can't even say the term could be common across British English-speaking countries; only one of country ever had these police cars. And on top of all that, the cars are gone from the one place where they did exist, meaning the term is, if anything, on its way out. How much more local can you get?

I'd suggest before you can expect other editors to apply a time limit of 50 years or 20 years or any number of years to the definition of a neologism, you need to propose changing WP:NOTNEO to say so. But really, in the larger context of the Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary policy, it's moot whether a word is or isn't a neologism. A neologism that appeared 3 years ago and disappeared 2 years ago could very well merit a Wikipedia article if the subject met the encyclopedic criteria that really matter: secondary sources giving us in-depth information about the word. There are words that have been in mainstream usage for untold centuries that we won't have articles about until sources have something important to say about them beyond just telling us the defintion.

And saying don't be a dick is not calling anyone a dick, any more than telling someone "don't cross the tracks" is accusing anyone of having crossed the tracks.. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:02, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would also be happy with merging to Police vehicles in the United Kingdom#Livery and lighting as proposed below, but not simply redirecting. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:52, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 12:48, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. As mentioned directly above, this is an old turn of phrase which at the time was the livery of 'traffic' (highway patrol) vehicles with high performance capability, as distinct from Panda cars used in urban locales at low speeds. This latter article is poorly referenced, too, but nonetheless of encyclopaedic interest. The larger vans were often plain dark blue or black (Black Maria). Where I live, traffic wing was disbanded probably 10 or more years ago, with vehicles redeployed into ARVs and Road policing unit including Motorway patrols.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 21:18, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Add the Daily Mail article that WP will not allow as a citation, for anyone not seeing it in the article edit summary.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 22:12, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You know the Daily Mail is unreliable, but even if it was, it doesn't support anything except that the neologism exists. We have zero sources about the term. The policy on neologisms says need secondary sources that give depth and insight, that explain something about the role of the word in society. Panda car fails WP:NOTNEO as well. It would be the function of a dictionary to catalog all these local slang terms -- and jam sandwich, black maria, and panda care are all merely local British slang. There is the much longer, but equally unencyclopedic Black and white (police vehicle), which suggests a solution where a new article title for local slang for police vehicles can all be merged, along with paddywagon and the rest. List of slang for police vehicles would fail WP:NOTNEO but it doesn't matter because it could meet the criteria at Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:41, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This new source also fails to tell us anything about the term. It's merely an instance of the usage of the term. It doesn't even give us a defintion. It's a good example of synthesis and original research which the WP:NOTDIC policy warns against. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:57, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Retro-application of recent standards with contrived Wikilawyering is clearly against the previous consensus - people who think it's important to write it, to restore the vehicles, convey them to public displays, people who image them and upload to a third-party, people who transfer to Commons all have a common perception of what is important.
The sources - however old they are - will never withstand forensic-analysis of what they could contribute to an encyclopedia - they don't, and didn't, write with that as a criterion. I'm only here from a similar recent experience, where half a dozen drive-bys from the North American continent were determined to de facto delete a stand-alone bio of an Englishman, when I included a list of eight similar that should also be deleted or otherwise manipulated using the same rationale, for Wiki-consistency. None have been nominated, so far.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 15:12, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Police vehicles in the United Kingdom#Livery and lighting, using that source to cite the fact this term was used. (This could have been boldly done, I'll note, but since we're here...) - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 07:29, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect per Bushranger. Nightfury 11:14, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - it appears to be a well-known phrase, and once notable, always. Bearian (talk) 21:33, 9 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.