Template talk:Buzzword

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[edit] What this is all about

For quite some months, I have been gravely concerned with the content of a number of articles. To be frank, they seemed to be borderline spam. They were written in the vague and highly abstract, buzzword-laden style associated with business consultants. This, in my mind, is categorized by:

• Extreme vagueness (i.e. abstraction seemingly inappropriate for real work)
• Slogans
• Platitudes, often about decision making, which is broken down into long lists containing multiple steps and criteria. The abstract and vague items on the list appear to be confected to lend the appearance of system or rigour to obvious statements.
• Oftentimes, the articles seem to be euphemisms for processes in which employers increase the demands on their employees and add more bureaucracy and paperwork for closer micromanagement. Piffle about "quality", extreme abstraction, and inspirational slogans and worship-words are used to conceal the actual intent of these plans.

This sort of thing falls between the cracks. One problem is that there is some market for literature in this vein, and even some academic teaching of this sort of thing. It does teach business managers to speak evasively about plans to increase their employee's work burdens, and to dress up downsizing and more intrusive management with vaguely luminous descriptions. Given this literature, this sort of writing can be "referenced" and "verified", even if the sort of prose it comes wrapped in strikes me as a form of obscurantism. Frankly, I am concerned that the articles themselves may be part of a campaign by people who trade in this sort of ware to lend the appearance of legitimacy or importance to what they are selling.

I've become increasingly concerned about this stuff for several months now. My comment at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Method Engineering Encyclopedia made back in April is here. I will not hide my own POV here. This kind of writing strikes me as an ethical problem as well as a spam problem.

I created this template to call attention to this sort of thing, initially as a cleanup issue. I would also eventually hope to test the waters to see if a consensus can be mustered that this sort of thing does not belong in an encyclopedia. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:00, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Management disciplines

Seems to me the problem is not that the article on "business process engineering," or "knowledge management," etc. exists. A user might very well want to look up "knowledge management." Shouldn't they be able to? It seems to me that a valid Wikipedia article would explain what knowledge management is: where and when did this discipline originate? What are its claims? Who made them? How has the field evolved? What are the criticisms? The real problem is that many of these articles about management theories do not really describe the theories -- instead, they make claims about how businesses operate (or how they ought to operate), from the standpoint of their adherents.YeahIKnow 23:50, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

My personal suspicion is that the sorts of information you (and I) would like to see is unlikely to be forthcoming for many of them, because these sorts of articles are too often borderline spam. To describe the subject concretely and in helpful detail would be to let the secret escape. Potential clients could learn all the slogans and figure out the method here, and if so the books and seminars and consulting job market would dry up. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:53, 15 September 2006 (UTC)