Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison of knowledge management software

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The result was Nomination Withdrawn (keep). (non-admin close) – 74 19:14, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comparison of knowledge base management software

I nominated this article for deletion on the following grounds:

The article is an assessment of a limited number of software tools by the originating editor and is clearly OR
There are thousands of knowledge management software package at best the article could be "comparison of knowledge management software packages considered by editor XY's company" which is not really a WIkipedia function.

--Snowded (talk) 07:19, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've studied Wikipedia rules and examined similar articles and I consider that this article has the right to stay. I will prove my sight of view:

1. About "No original research". My article doesn't contain my opinion; there are no arguments for or against something. Article doesn't contain facts that are not proved by publications on corresponding resources. Technical information, shown in tables, is accessible and can be checked on websites. Links to these websites are shown in the first row of each table.

2. I'll give you an example of comparison article: Comparison of issue tracking systems. Here is the link to one of the first versions of that article: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_issue_tracking_systems&oldid=53029615

You can see that Comparison of knowledge management software does not differ from analogous articles and can be a perfect base for future development. I agree that many KB systems are not listed here, but we should start from something. And, as experience shows, everybody starts so.

3. Knowledge management software is a huge stratum that is not described in Wikipedia anyhow. My initiative to add this article is primarily due to the lack of information in the encyclopedia, which I have hitherto considered comprehensive. I'm sure that this is a worthy contribution to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_comparisons and to Wikipedia in whole.

PS. I understand that I'm just a newbie here. Taking into account your overwhelming experience, please advice how can I change or extend the article, to get it matching Wikipedia rules.

--Andygray.yo (talk) 18:18, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The list is neither representative or comprehensive. The sheer volume of KM software is numbered in thousands and is constantly changing so its not a matter of starting somewhere, the ambition of the page is not realisable (it has been attempted by several journals by the way. IBM's Institute of Knowledge Management had a large team working on the subject for a year and only partially touched the field and that was the best part of a decade ago, the number has expanded since.

While "issue tracking" is easy to define, there is no agreed definition on what counts as KM software. Here you have made a limited selection of information and document management systems. The dominant KM systems (Sharepoint) for example are not in the list. IBM's strategy of creating an architecture rather than a product would not even fit into the table. How would you fit social computing into this list? Its a major part of KM and none of its features are listed.

Comparison tables are always contentious, what you include and which boxes you tick is a matter judgement. The features you have chosen to include or not include as column headings are your opinion and does not represent the needs of the field as a whole.

My suggestion would be that you create a list of documentation management systems (which is what this is) in a sandpit and try and find cited material that would back up the evaluation criteria. You might look at Gartner or similar sources for that.

--Snowded (talk) 19:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Now that you explain your opinion in details, I agree with your initial conclusion.

However, let me make a suggestion. It may become a good compromise. When you mentioned Sharepoint, I've understood that I've positioned this article incorrectly. Now I see that recognized leaders of KM software were not mentioned in the article. However, if you look at information that can be find in google http://www.google.com.ua/search?rlz=1C1CHMB_uk___UA311&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=knowledge+management+software or Dmoz http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Knowledge_Management/Software/ you will see that classical integrated applications for knowledge management is the other niche.

All products listed in the article position themselves as knowledge management software. And I know it for sure, that such positioning catches on with the market.

Thereupon I want to suggest renaming this article to Comparison of _web_ knowledge management software or taking another, more appropriate name. As I have studied this subject field, this niche doesn't contain thousands of products, but slightly more than sixty. That's why my suggested article can cover the whole niche shortly.

About table fields' choice – good criteria can be gathered from the Document Management Software article. Although mentioned products do not belong to DM software, but used for knowledge management, comparison criteria looks objective as a whole.

--Andygray.yo (talk) 14:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some years ago everyone with an IM product moved to calling it KM. I think if you can list the 60 products as an action list at the front and find a new name then I would happily withdraw the nomination for deletion. I am not sure about "web based knowledge management". The list looks like document management to me, but open to ideas. --Snowded (talk) 15:50, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think I can add to this list all products of this class that are available on the market. This will be correct.

About new name. These applications do not belong to Document Management System class because they do not handle directly with documents. All information (MS Words documents, PDF, etc) is brought to inner application format and is saved to the database. I have an idea! Most applications of this class position themselves not as "knowledge management software", but as "knowledge base management". I.e. management of the information that is stored in the knowledge base, which format can be changed from application to application.

How do you think, does "Knowledge Base Management Software" or "Web based Knowledge Base Management Software" describe precisely enough the niche for products we discuss? --Andygray.yo (talk) 18:33, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

⬅ Knowledge Base Management Software does it for me. I suggest you just move it now. Would any monitoring admin close this AfD? --Snowded (talk) 18:39, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Thanks for your advices --Andygray.yo (talk) 14:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This AfD nomination was incomplete (missing step 3). It is listed now. DumbBOT (talk) 16:17, 20 February 2009 (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.