I was thinking that if you could present a "value-neutral" alternative you might have a better chance of surviving the review? Present such an alternative during the trial?

The comment on notability puzzles me. Aren't almost all articles in an encyclopedia about "just another" something? I would never dream of deleting an article on bonobos because they are "just another chimp" for instance? If a bonobo article claimed that they're better than other primates I'd want it edited though.

Notability should at any rate be connected to what claims you're making. If you claim that Colemak is the best layout you should need solid evidence with references for it. If you claim that it's a keyboard layout created with so-and-so design choices, all you should need ought to be a link to Shai's statements on that. This is a pedia, not a patent bureau, dammit! If the pedia demands strong evidence that something is more than something else for each article in there, that's absurd.

It doesn't have to be a stub to be without unreferenced claims. It just has to be without contestable details (such as the alleged effect of Colemak on RSI - other than possibly in a mention of Shai's intents).

Wikipedia is not a place to go to for research results, if that's what you mean. Being a lexicon, it is a place to go to look up research and facts. This means that no original research can be posted at Wikipedia first, but has to be backed by strong support in the form of references/sources before making it. You cannot present your data and findings directly on Wikipedia for the first time.

It's the balance between this restriction and the need to prove your topic's "merit"/uniqueness that I don't understand.

OK I've started a new draft Colemak article in my Wikipedia user space. You can get away with more in your user pages (which are intended for things such as writing draft articles and the like) though they are not part of the main encyclopedia. Once we get something that makes a good case for notability we can perhaps put in our deletion review request.

The article is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jammycakes/Colemak

Chip in and edit it then - anyone can, and I don't mind :)

Can I encourage everyone who has an active Wikipedia account and uses Colemak to put the userbox on their user pages? It would give some indication of support for Colemak within the Wikipedia community. However, please don't create multiple throwaway logins for the purpose. This is called "sockpuppetry" and while it can't always be proven beyond all reasonable doubt, there are telltale signs that raise warning bells. A lot of accounts whose only edit is to add a Colemak box to their user page would look rather suspicious, for example.