Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Institutional memory

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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 Keep (non-admin closure). Consensus forms that the subject is notable, and appropriate action is a rewrite. WilliamH (talk) 00:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Institutional memory

Institutional memory (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Original essay, offtopic. While institutional memory/ insitutional knowledge is a valid topic in organizational psychology, this article attempts to describe all of human culture. It's supposed to be about knowledge embedded in an organization. Squidfryerchef (talk) 19:01, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Keep. The article needs work: it needs cleanup, it needs some rewriting, it needs much better referencing, but it does not need deletion. The many hits on Google news, Google books, and Google scholar show that this term is fairly widely used and the concept is being discussed in scholarly writings and should, therefore, be treated here in Wikipedia. I favour cleanup and expansion, not deletion, in this case. OlenWhitaker • talk to me or don't • ♣ ♥ ♠ ♦ 19:20, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep Look around you. Wikipedia is a good example. Colonel Warden (talk) 19:56, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Is that the rationale for keeping it? JFW | T@lk 23:26, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak Delete As might be expected, this is not the first article about the subject; note collective memory, cultural memory and (cited in this article) corporate memory. Like the nominator, I agree that this is a valid topic, and an unencyclopedic essay. It asks rhetorical questions like "Is institutional memory fading?". It could be cleaned up and rewritten beyond recognition, but the end product would be redundant to similar articles. It's been done, and it's been done better. Mandsford (talk) 20:20, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Deletion is not the answer for such articles; rewriting is. JFW | T@lk 23:26, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
      • Comment: Does "weak delete" mean that when people go to look for the article, it'll be very faded and difficult to read? Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 08:33, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak Keep Article requires a lot of clean-up, but is still usable. Luksuh 21:43, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment I considered cleaning it up but there wasn't anything about institutional memory to keep. Perhaps the "corporate memory" article could be cut/pasted to here, and then "corporate memory" redirected (an extreme merge). Squidfryerchef (talk) 22:19, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. "Corporate memory" pertains only to corporations; institutions can take many forms. I had an attempt at NPOVing this article after it was created and populated by Ombudsman (talk · contribs), but got no further than the intro because it's not quite my field. There is just a need for NPOV, sourcing etc. JFW | T@lk 23:26, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep and rewrite. Institutional memory is a valid encyclopedic topic, but this article is largely unreferenced and unfocused. It needs to be improved, not deleted. --Eastlaw (talk) 04:57, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep and rewrite: Valid topic, but needs a lot of work, rewriting and referencing. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 11:45, 11 April 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.