[WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

[Bryan Derksen]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 10/9/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>> 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.
> 
> Unilateral deletions are performed hundreds of times a month by
> Wikipedia Admins on the basis of their own judgement.

The big difference is that such deletions can be overturned on the basis
of other admins' judgements, and that the basis on which those
judgements are made can be reviewed and debated publically.

In the case of Office actions, on the other hand, the basis on which the
deletion was made is secret and any attempt to overturn it by other
admins would result in Bad Things. So this is inherently a much bigger deal.

> It appears to me that in this thread we have seen numerous complaints
> about HOW this was carried out masquerade as complaints about what was
> done...  The reality is that the claim that the deletion was clearly
> inappropriate can not be supported by fact:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Fleshlight

> no answer was given to the
> point that we lack articles on the numerous similar devices which have
> an equal claim of notoriety,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBuzz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realdoll
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneros
(these were just a result of a quick survey of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sex_toys for articles that
appeared to be on specific companies' products.)

(PS, I'm so glad that this mailing list isn't publically archived and
accessible, so that web searches will never associate my name with that
list of products. What? It _is_, you say...? :)

> nor has our oh so violated community
> bothered to even write  a section on this oh so notable product in the
> article it was later redirected to.

The redirect was just done TODAY. And, since the article's deletion was
done by Office action, it's no wonder that people are hesitant to risk
digging anything out of the deleted article's history (GFDL problems
with attribution to deleted versions aside) or even have the appearance
of doing so.

> I think this thread is just further demonstration that the English
> Wikipedia is no longer a community in any sense beyond a collection of
> people which are nearly located in 'space'...  and the resemblance to
> an actual community appears to becoming more superficial as time
> passes.

Actually, it looks to me more like a community reacting against outside
interference with community affairs. If there was a copyvio or libel,
that's one thing - it's widely accepted that such stuff has to be dealt
with outside of community consensus for legal reasons. But this deletion
appears to have been a result of an individual deciding that the subject
wasn't "notable" enough to have an article, which is a decision reserved
for the _community_ to make (sometimes-flawed though the decision-making
mechanisms may be).

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