Wikipedia:The Heymann Standard
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This is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it. |
The Heymann Standard describes the amount of work that an editor feels a page needs to change their vote from "delete" or "neutral" to "keep" in an Articles for deletion debate. For example: If a voting editor deems a nominated page to be non-notable, or believes it could be notable but does not see sufficient evidence in the article "as is", the voting editor could comment that "This page would need a Heymann Standard (or WP:HEY for short) improvement to get my vote".
The Heymann Standard is named after the David Heymann article, which was first proposed for deletion, then taken to AfD very shortly after it was created. The author (Johntex), helped by others, did a great deal of work on the article while the debate was taking place and the article was both vastly improved and overwhelmingly kept. When first nominated, the page looked like this: [1]. Three days later, it had become this: [2]. It has now been listed as a Good Article: [3].
Debates involving possibly unnotable subjects or articles lacking verification sometimes see a number of "keep", "weak keep" or "keep and expand" type votes, but little willingness to actually improve the article or demonstrate its notability. Invoking the "Heymann Standard" is an expression of:
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- Belief in a reasonable standard of notability
- Demand for compliance with WP:V, an official policy
- Desire to see quality content on Wikipedia
- Respect for contributors willing to improve articles of questioned notability
