Wikipedia:The Heymann Standard

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 subject 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 and 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 was an unsourced, two-sentence stub that looked like this. Three days later, it had fourteen independent sources and had become this. A short time later it was listed as a Good article. Following a Good article reassessment three years later, the article was delisted to C-class but this does not affect the principles discussed here.

Debates involving possibly non-notable 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:

• Belief in a reasonable standard of notability
• Demand for compliance with WP:Verifiability, an official policy
• Desire to see quality content on Wikipedia
• Respect for contributors willing to improve articles of questioned notability

See also

• WP:Deletion to Quality Award