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The Wikipedia Intensive Care Unit is a place for articles written about a subject that one or more editors believes is likely notable, but the article itself is in such poor condition that it may face deletion on other grounds. It is an effort to turn bad articles about good subjects into those that meet Wikipedia standards.
The ICU came about through an idea by Realkyhick, a self-described deletionist who spends quite a bit of time on new-page patrol. He had nominated some articles for AfD which were about subjects that were possibly notable, but the articles themselves were sorely lacking in many respects such as reliable sources. During the AfD process, other editors improved the articles to the point where they then met Wikipedia standards. Realkyhick then withdrew the nominations, satisfied that the issues prompting the nominations had been fixed. Some editors criticized him for what they saw as an abuse of the already-overloaded AfD process, so Realkyhick came up with the idea of the ICU for such articles, to perhaps take some strain off of AfD and put these articles in a place where those with expertise in specific issues such as references, citations, verification, style and copy editing, and so forth.
Editors would first place an {{icu}} tag on the article page, and then a {{icu-triage}} tag on the article's talk page that lists the problems that need to be fixed (in a parameter to the tag), in a process similar to triage in a hospital or emergency room.
The ICU concept was created on September 2, 2007. The concept is very much a work in progress. Any and all suggestions and help are most welcome. This cannot succeed as a one-editor project, so round up all the friends and neighbors. Let's put on our surgical masks, scrub up and get to work. (We may need a screen shot from an episode of M*A*S*H here.)