 | This is anessay on thedeletion policy. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not beenthoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Articles may be improved during adeletion discussion, which may make them more likely to be kept. |
The Heymann Standard has two meanings.
It is invoked during deletion discussions to point out that an article has been significantly improved since it was nominated for deletion, as the originalDavid Heymann article was; in such cases an editor might say "Keep per WP:HEY"
Or it can be used to describe the amount of work that an editor feels a page needs to change their!vote (not-vote) from "delete" or "neutral" to "keep" in anArticles 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 a standard that originated from the early years of Wikipedia. It is named after the David Heymann article, which was first proposed for deletion, thentaken 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 likethis. Three days later, it had fourteen independent sources and had becomethis. A short time later it was listed as aGood article.[1] Following aGood article reassessment three years later, the article was delisted to C-class[2] 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: