[WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

[Delirium]

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>How many non-trivial independent sources are there for fleshlight?
>Mainstream publications?  Has it been reviewed in Loaded?  Or is it
>just advertising plus a load of "hur hur, look at that, that's so
>smutty, hur hur"?
>
>The inflation of this to the level of some product of transcendent
>global importance is patently absurd. 
>  
>
Nobody is claiming it's of transcendent global importance, merely that 
it's important enough to merit a mention, either in an article by itself 
or in passing in a larger article about male-targetted sex toys (I favor 
the latter, unless more verifiable material turns up).  It's been 
mentioned relatively recently (the past two years) in _Wired_, _The 
Village Voice_, and a few Seattle-area local papers, all of which claim 
that it's famous/infamous.  I don't have good access to a good archive 
of media going back further than 2 years (my university's Lexis-Nexis 
subscription only covers that period), so I don't have data on whether, 
for example, it was discussed in media of the 1990s.

You also seem to be focusing on how interesting the object is, which 
neglects the fact that sociology is a legitimate and integral topic for 
encyclopedia articles.  The object may well be boring, but if it's 
caused an interesting response in society, that's worth writing about.  
(See [[moral panic]] for some more straightforward examples of that sort 
of thing.)

>>Personally, I have no idea whether Fleshlight is notable or not without
>>doing further research I probably don't care to perform. But that's what
>>talk page debates, AfD, RfC and such are for. We have ways of reaching
>>community consensus on such things.
>>    
>>
>
>Sure.  Debate it.  But let's wait until we have all the facts before
>starting, rather than second-guessing Danny and crying that the sky is
>falling because one wank-o-matic got deleted.
>  
>
The disagreement is that Danny unilaterally deleted it, without first 
engaging in *any* discussion, and after it had actually come up before 
on AfD and kept.  There are occasional articles that I think should be 
deleted but which most people disagree with me on, but I don't go around 
unilaterally deleting them, because that would be a misuse of my admin 
status.

-Mark