Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Customer relationship management

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 of the debate was Keep. Tyrenius 01:05, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Customer relationship management

There are quite a few things wrong with this page. First of all, several editors can't tell if it's a copyvio or not. This text is so many places around the net, that we can't tell who copied from who. That aside, it reads like a strategy guide (WP:NOT), and the article made up of original research (WP:NOR) --lightdarkness ^(talk) 03:12, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• Delete - As nom. --lightdarkness ^(talk) 03:12, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Naconkantari 03:13, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• Comment I agree with LD, cleanup is greatly needed if this article is to be kept. Naconkantari 03:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Keep Important topic, well-known in the business world. Article has been around since 2001 and edited hundreds of times. If the current article is bad, slap a cleanup tag on it. To give a general idea of just how notable this topic is, "Customer relationship management" (in quotes) gets 46 MILLION GOOGLE HITS. Wikipedia needs an article on CRM. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

  Comment Well, it needs a lot of cleanup. The content of the article is unsourced, and there are tons of instances of the exact same text on the net, it's extremely unclear of who copied who. I'll withdraw my nomination if the article is greatly cleaned up, but a lot of it is WP:OR in my opinion. --lightdarkness ^(talk) 03:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

  If you're finding other instances of the same text on the web, are you sure it's not other websites mirroring/quoting WP's article? This article has been around for five years and received loads of edits and attention, I find it hard to believe it's a copyvio. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:31, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

  That's what I've been saying, I'm not certain. The dates of the content from the various websites (doc files, and ppts) do not give a clear cut date of when the content was published. --lightdarkness ^(talk) 03:38, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• Keep I was on the fence about this article until I saw Andrew's keep vote. Now, I'm sure. -- Kicking222 03:22, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep for cleanup + referencing + rewrite and all of the other things this article needs. The subject is verifyable, encyclopediac etc.., just that this article reads like the sort of University essay that gets failed for lack of references. Peripitus 03:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Significant topic in business world. Cleanup wouldn't hurt, but I've actually found this article useful in work to help cut through CRM hype. Paddles 04:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep.Too significant an article to be deleted.Bharatveer 04:59, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep but remove any copyright violations found. --MarsRover 06:11, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per MarsRover. --Arnzy ^{(whats up?)} 06:58, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, eminently notable subject. If there is a copyvio in there, let the copyright holder assert it. Sandstein 07:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete/probable copyvio. We don't need to wait for the copyright holder to assert it, if it's obvious. See http://www.thecomdaily.com/crm.html . — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 09:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

comment - anyone have any objections to it being culled to a referenced stub with some external links. Like this version with today's external links ? Peripitus 10:18, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

comment. That copy seems better than the current one, although I would hesitate to revert that far back. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:49, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

• Nope. That site has many articles mirrored for wikipedia (although I don't see any attribution of that fact, which might be a GDFL violation. They've even copied Wikipedia's article on Wikipedia! Many Wikipedia articles are copied and pasted all over the web, both GDFL-compliantly and otherwise. This does not make Wikipedia's original article a copyvio. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 13:36, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• Changing vote -see below. Vizjim 13:19, 22 May 2006 (UTC) I've worked in CRM. The reason the article's confused is probably because CRM "experts" spout (usually TLA) BS 24/7, FYI. Keep the article, trim out copyvio, slap cleanup notice on it. Vizjim 11:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I see a lot of people commenting "cleanup and keep", which I'm fine with, HOWEVER, what worries me is that this article will be thrown into a backlog (similar to the one this was found at (WP:CP)), and never get taken care of. I'll withdraw the nomination of drastic cleanup occurs, but the article really does need a TON of work. --lightdarkness ^(talk) 15:29, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep. Yes a cleanup is needed. But delete? That must be a joke. CRM is a very significant marketing concept. --Sleepyhead 17:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Comment (Note, my employer was previously in this space, but does not market itself that way any longer.) Any proven copy-vios where it is proven that the other version is oldeer should, of course, be removed... but to prove such a copy-vio will be an arduous task, as you must ascertain the original date of the relevant content in both places. Not trivial with a five year old article. GRBerry 01:09, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Delete? Maybe not necessary, but we need to remove the copy-vios, unsourced comments, and BS (even if sourced), and see if anything is left. If not, then deletion is appropriate. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:19, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep in its entirety as there is no copyright violation. This serious charge, which does not assume good faith, has not been substantiated. The only article linked above has obviously been copied from here, not the other way around (look around their site and you'll see information from all over Wikipedia, as well as other sites). The article does its best to cover a bloody confusing topic, and does it pretty well. Vizjim 13:19, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

  I was acting on a report filed on WP:CP, and have followed through with it as such. Please AGF on mypart aswell. --lightdarkness ^(talk) 13:27, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

• Oh crikey, yes, didn't mean criticism of any one person, just the charge itself. You're great. Vizjim 13:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

• If there's no copy-vio (which, as noted many times, is difficult to tell), then I suppose the article should be kept. The topic is notable, although we still need to delete unsourced comments and BS (even if sourced). My vote is still delete as probable copy-vio, but I have difficulty reading marketing-speak. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:45, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

• Comment Reading through the article it is clearly in need of extensive rewriting. It seems as it is original research og copyrighted material. I suggest that the entire article text is removed and replaced with a stub. I can write a brief article for this topic. --Sleepyhead 14:49, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Hugely notable topic. Aguerriero (talk) 18:38, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, came here from a stub sort, had no idea what a CRM company was. Looks like it links to over 100 articles, so a deleate would break a lot of links.Rayc 02:42, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep: Important topic. Shouldn't have to start again from scratch. Edit: but we could start again from a much smaller version Stephen B Streater 12:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep: Very Important topic. Edit: should be revised: the content structure and content should be changed - will be happy to revise the new content having worked a long time in the CRM space - Jmeriaux 12:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete: even if it isn't a copyvio, it strikes me as original research and borderline advertising. I am unconvinced that "customer relations management" isn't just an excessively abstract jargon phrase for "keeping your customers in a database," only here this mundane process is described with halo words like "holistic." Prior versions of the article were full vacuous prose such as "In today's competitive business environment. . .": but the closer it gets to plain English, the less seems to be there. Vizjim's remarks suggests that those who speak of "customer relations management" are charlatans, and nothing here really suggests otherwise. There is an awful lot of this sort of buzzword-laden process cruft in business articles recently, and we need to draw a line somewhere. Smerdis of Tlön 13:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the article needs an extensive cleanup. But please vote on issues that you have knowledge about or do at least some basic research on the topic before you vote for deletion. CRM is a very significant topic in marketing and IT. The term has been around since the beginning of the 1990s. --Sleepyhead 16:55, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I second that comment. I work for one of several very large corportations that make CRM software, including Siebel and Microsoft. How about magazines like CRM Magazine with a circulation of 85,000+? Or, books like Microsoft CRM for Dummies? Please, at least do a rudamentary amount of research before coming to AfD and slinging around baseless statements. CRM is a global business. Aguerriero (talk) 18:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Some time ago, someone added the following text to the article:

There is not much new about CRM, it is just a piece of new jargon with some useful, money making, side effects. First it lets a load of academics and consultants pontificate about nothing and pretend they have invented a new discipline. Second we can write lots of expensive software to help you "do" CRM. Of course astute business men have applied the concept of “customer relationship management” for hundreds, probably thousands of years. Ever since they recognised the value of a special relationship - “To you my boy I got a special price for this flint axe, not even two cows, ‘cause you buy so many of these fine weapons it is just one cow and a bushel of gain.”

Obviously, this needs to be reworded before being reincluded into the article, but it does suggest that my perception of the kind of prose in the article is not completely idiosyncratic. When an article is proposed for deletion, I tend to go through a two step process. First, is the subject worthy of an article? I am defiantly liberal about this step. Second, is the existing text at the page helpful to someone who wants to whip it into a good article? I have had my eye on this article for some time now, and I am still not convinced that it is. Smerdis of Tlön 19:02, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment. I agree with you on those two points. It is clear that much of the article has either been written by industry wonks who are full of marketing fluff, else cynics. There is a middle road. I'm not willing to re-write the article, so I guess my argument for notability is strong but myu argument for keeping the article is inherently weak. Aguerriero (talk) 19:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment. I don't know enough about the topic to tell what or how much of the current content of the article is BS, which is why I'm not going to cast a vote on this one, but I think the subject itself is keep-worthy. Yvh11a 00:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

• Really obvious KEEP extremely notable concept - known to most in the corporate world by now. I'm honestly not sure if it is a copyvio or not, though. RN 10:14, 26 May 2006 (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.