Wiki143:Articles for deletion/Knowledge networking

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 delete. Stifle (talk) 08:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Knowledge networking

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This is a very poor article that contains nothing of value which is not already present on other articles such as Knowledge Management. It has been marked for improvement for some time and while some citations have been inserted no improvements have been made to the content. Further the one editor who seems interested has inserted long and meaningless use cases. In general this seems to be a article about one aspect of one author's (Skyrme) work with a few other quotes that mention knowledge or networking thrown in for good measure. --Snowded TALK 18:39, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

• Strong Delete --Snowded TALK 18:39, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. I don't get the impression that this is a subject in its own right and it does not need an article in its own right. It has had enough time and opportunity to prove otherwise and it hasn't. The author was going to do some work on it when it was tagged for deletion some time ago but since then it hasn't addressed the key problems and I can't see it going anywhere in the future. I wouldn't object to a redirect to Knowledge Management. --DanielRigal (talk) 19:25, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
• Delete and set redirect to Conversation. Sheesh. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 22:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
• Weak delete In contrast to DanielRigal, I think that this is an important topic and worthy of note. Social networks are expanding to more commercially-focussed networks like LinkedIn &c. and these are often heavily focussed on "the personal networking of knowledge". That's a notable topic, distinct from Knowledge Management. However this article just doesn't cut it. There's nothing in there worth saving. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:16, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

• You could be right but it certainly isn't clear from the current state of the article. Could you could hack the article back and try to make it into a coherent stub article explaining what the core subject is, how it is notable and what distinguishes it from the other related subjects? --DanielRigal (talk) 22:30, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

• improve We should distinguish between two discussion topics:
  • Is Knowledge networking a own topic or part of Knowledge management? Knowledge networking is a separate topic: check the 211.000 Google-search results of "Knowledge networking" just for the English term. Check the related 137 Wikipedia articles like Trade Knowledge Network or the more than 9700 search results within Wikipedia for knowledge networking or all the books cited in the article Knowledge networking. Knowledge management is defined as: "Knowledge Management (KM) comprises a range of practices used by organisations to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable adoption of what it knows, and how it knows it. Knowledge networking supports many of these KM tasks". Nevertheless, knowledge networking includes topics, which are not directly related to knowledge management: e.g. the social aspect of Social computing, the Innovation management aspect, the Technology Management aspect like technology breeding to mention a few.
  • Is the current article about Knowledge networking good enough? No, it is not good enough and needs to be improved. It was written by a student as I do not have the time to write one but I need a wikipedia article on this topic in order to refer to it. My understanding is that wikipedia is a community project, where everybody is invited to improve an article which is not good enough. I understand that it is important from the very beginning, that no wrong information or no unverifyable information is covered in the initial version of an article. The proposal by Snowded to start with a sandpit and write a perfect article is not applicable for me as I do not have the time to manage a community project on this topic. Everybody is welcome to to do it and we got already valuable contributions from people we do not know. If you delete the article completely, you will have no information about this important topic in Wikipedia. I wonder if this is better than the current first draft. I have also difficulties to understand the reason to delete all the use cases without any notice. Is this the way how the wikipedians should communicate. Use cases are a best practice in defining requirements and the style of use cases should be as direct as possible. I know that it is unusual for a Wiki-page to use the direct "I was..." style, but it is appropriate for use cases. Is it desired to have nothing unusual within Wikipedia? For my understanding, deletion is no solution. Heisss (talk) 13:33, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

* Comment. You have had months to improve it with virtually zero activity. Social Computing is already in the Knowledge Management article (and could be extended) and would certainly not be defined by Knowledge networking. You mention it here for the first time! The fact that you define it by Skyrme and Probst, places it firmly in the KM space of the mid 1990s and all the language (and jargon) comes from that period. The use cases were dire, they read like bullet points from a consultancy sales pitch. --Snowded TALK 13:53, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

• Weak Keep as a briefer article. This afd is essentially an attempt to force improvements of a very low quality article that could not be effected through normal editing. Attempts to do so have repeatedly failed. Most recent there was the revert of Anthere's removal of a list of see alsos to several dozen equally over-expansive Wikipedia articles on very closely related concepts (which at the moment remains in the article). There was also the revert of her removal of a long section of "Use cases"-- a method of presentation in a didactic style appropriate if anywhere to in-service management education, not the least suitable to an encyclopedia. (It has just been removed again, and not yet replaced, but it is still being defended. The attempt to justify it above shows the difficulties that have been encountered.) Based on the comments above, an editor with significant COI seems to be admitting having asked a student to write the article for him. We need a better way of breaking OWNership than deletion, but in extreme cases like this I do not see any present way of getting the appropriate community attention. A RfC on an apparently esoteric topic like this often will not work very well, though it should have been tried. So why do I say keep at all--- (1) because it is a real topic of study. True, there is an unfortunate tendency perhaps spearheaded by some publishing companies and academic departments to proliferate the terminology of almost identical subjects in management related fields, using the currently fashionable jargon of information science. It's not nonsense exactly, but rather unproductive fragmentation and duplication. One new field per journal, one new speciality per professor. But still this one is a genuine subject. (2) because this isn't actually the way we are supposed to do things, & it shouldn't be encouraged. I have for long had my eye on this group of articles, and only hesitated for fear I would not have sufficient support. Most of the walled garden should be merged, some eliminated--a guide to the necessary work is that list of see alsos. DGG (talk) 22:05, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

* Comment: there are just too many KM related articles as you have probably seen. Best to focus efforts onto creating a couple of good ones which can then spawn additional ones when the material is mature enough. If there is to be an article on social computing, linked in et al, then this is the wrong title. A session of merging and elimination (possible a task force on the field) would have my complete support - great idea. Keeping this article would be a retrograde step which would enhance "fragmentation and duplication" to use your words! --Snowded TALK 22:13, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

• Comment: I can't claim to know very much about this stuff but it all seems a bit nebulous and maybe different people have different names for more or less the same ideas. This could lead to a lot of unnecessary similar articles. If it is clear that there really is a separate subject here then I would advise the people who think so to boldly hack the article down to a stub which clearly and concisely set out what this separate subject actually is. Failing that, a redirect to a a better article on the same subject would seem reasonable. --DanielRigal (talk) 22:30, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

*Reply. Its my field (I hold a three visiting Chairs in KM) although that doesn't give me any special rights here but it informs my comments. I'd happily accept a redirect to Knowledge Management where the valid content of this article is already largely covered. If a stub makes sense then it should be under another name, knowledge networking is a tired concept from the 1990s. (which means deleting it). Actually I really like DGG's idea to get all of the "KM" related material into some form of task force, list the current articles and set some action plans. There are no good ones at the moment. Also its a constant war to prevent people setting up new promotional pages or pet theory pages and linking to the more popular articles. If that is on I can probably recruit others into the WIkipedia to get engaged. --Snowded TALK 22:38, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

just want to mention that if it was notable in the past, it remains notable for our purposes, and should get a short article. DGG (talk) 23:34, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

It was never notable in the past. Yes the word "networking" is used in the literature, but it was never and has never been a distinct field. It's a generic word used in articles. --Snowded TALK 05:08, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

agreed on that; just wanted to remind people about that factor.DGG (talk) 21:43, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

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.