[WikiEN-l] Re: article length: =<32Kb?

Sun Feb 27 14:54:03 UTC 2005

Viajero wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Perhaps I have been out of the loop on this development, but when I 
> started contributing to WP, limiting article length to 32Kb was 
> considered an important consideration. Lately, though, I've been 
> encountering articles considerably longer. Yesterday, I wanted to 
> refactor some material in one to tighten it up and another user 
> objected, saying that [[George W. Bush]] was 72Kb in length. Has the 
> 32Kb threshold effectively been abandoned?
> 
> FWIW, I thought the 32Kb limit served as a useful stylistic constraint, 
> as it encouraged a a measure concision in unwieldy topics. I am going to 
> take a look at the Bush article in a moment to see what I think of such 
> a long article.
> 
> 
> V.

In the recent village pump revisting of this very topic, all that was 
established was that

1) the hard 32kb limit due to technical reasons has been abandoned since 
the inception of section-editing.

2) Softer limits due to readability and editability should be left for 
editors to work out on a case-by-case article-by-article basis - though 
good practice such as summary style tends to spread quickly.

The GWB article is the hardest "case" I've seen -

i) We've already spun out sub-pages on many aspects
ii) Trying to be even-handed on contentious topics tends to create a lot 
of words

GWB is one article where we have too much colloboration :),