[WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

[Phil Sandifer]

On Oct 9, 2006, at 1:02 AM, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> Okay, this has gone far enough.
>
> It is remarkable that people have built all these theories on  
> hypotheses as
> to what happened with Fleshlight, without actually knowing the  
> facts. It is
> just  ludicrous to think that I succumbed to pressure from a company.

Nobody has suggested that you did. Quite the contrary, it appears  
that you very deliberately pissed off a company as a way of dealing  
with the unreasonable demands they tried to place on the project by  
doing the exact opposite of what they asked.
> For all those expressing indignation, I invite you to think about what
> should be included in an encyclopedia, even one the size of  
> Wikipedia. Once you
> define that, consider what the definition excludes.
>

Danny, the Office does not and should not be determining inclusion  
criteria on its own and imposing them without the consent of the  
community. Fleshlight survived AfD three times.  For the Office to  
declare "Sorry, community - you're wrong" is a new approach for the  
Office, and one I think is a very, very bad one.
>
> Considering all this, I asked if Fleshlight really needs an article  
> of its
> own. I consulted with people too. The overwhelming response was  
> that this is
> spam and should be nuked.

Which is flatly untrue, looking at the article history. It may have  
become spam, but the article was not inherently spam, and had good  
versions in its history.
>
> Once again, I hope that this whole incident helps to clarify what the
> criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia are. At least let it launch  
> that discussion.
> But to do that, we have to avoid all the rhetoric and be willing to  
> make real
> decisions based on the underlying principles behind what Wikipedia  
> is all
> about.

One of the underlying principles is deference to the community on  
content issues, and to a defined system of appeal upwards from that.  
The Office does not historically enjoy a role of roving court of  
appeals. In the past, in cases like this, Office members, including  
Jimbo, have started AfDs and made it very clear that they are asking  
the community to rethink inclusion on this one. The switch from that  
to nuking is, I will repeat, a significant turn, and a very bad one.

-Phil