Wikipedia:Potential, not just current state

The concept of potential is recognised in the guideline under #Articles not satisfying the notability guidelines. It suggests that if an article does not demonstrate notability, editors should make a good faith search for sources before deletion or merging.

There are several simple methods that can be used to help determine if an article has potential, even if it is relatively short. An article could have potential if:

Note however that an article should have immediate potential, as . In cases where an article could have potential in the future but does not now, it should be merged or redirected appropriately if possible, so it can be easily re-created when potential is gained.

These options help navigation and allow the encyclopedia to flow, while also encouraging long-term article expansion.

If you have just created an article and it is nominated for speedy deletion, it can be sensible to state on the article's talk page that you are still working on the article. It can also help to explain your aims for the article and its potential notability. Often adding context to the article will help in the short-term to establish the potential of an encyclopedic entry on a topic.

If an article is proposed for deletion and you think the article has potential to address the concerns raised, such as notability, then you can simply remove the {{}} template from the article. It is polite to state (often on the article's talk page) why you think the article should be kept; such as citing sources (often those on the internet) that the article can use giving the topic notability and making deletion unnecessary. If an article is deleted by the proposed deletion process, it is possible to make a request to an administrator to undelete it, based on its potential for improvement and expansion.

Articles are frequently nominated for deletion because of their current state, not their potential as an encyclopedic entry. These nominations can often result in de facto time limits of about seven days (changed from five in April 2009) for an article to either improve, or be deleted and sometimes merged. This can cause problems, as frequently editors simply do not have time to fix articles within such a short time period. In these cases it is helpful to alert the discussion that the article has potential to be made into a successful encyclopedic entry, and that more time is needed to improve the article. It can also be helpful to quickly remove content of an article which is causing problems, and to add templates to the article as necessary.

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