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

Sun Feb 27 16:33:51 UTC 2005

--- Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:
> 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?

Yes, this is still a very important consideration but at the same time it is no
longer a hard and fast rule due to the existence of separately-editable
sections and the extreme rarity of browsers that have issues editing articles
over 32KB. 

However, some topics are so expansive that they do need 40 to even 50 KB of
text to be a comprehensive summary (such as a 'history of' article for a
country that has existed in one form or anther for a 1000 years) while the
great majority of topics can do the same job with less than 32KB of text. An
article about a single person, even such an important person as a president of
the United States, really needn't be longer than 32KB to be comprehensive
encyclopedia article about that person. 

The example you give is way longer than is appropriate for the subject and
should be divided into a set of articles; at the top would be an article about
George W. Bush divided into sections. Any one section could be a summary of an
article that goes into more detail on that aspect of his life. Almost all of
the material about the Bush Administration and policies thereof could be
summarized at [[George W. Bush]] and spun into [[George W. Bush
Administration]] (now just a redirect). 

The existing foreign and domestic policy articles along the first and second
term articles could be similarly organized from [[George W. Bush
Administration]] (the host of other articles are a disorganized mess that I
don't know what to do with; it might be best to have some of them be stand
alone articles; such as articles on single events or people). 

[[Ronald Reagan]] was 65KB until I summarized the massive ==Presidency==
section there and moved the detail to [[Reagan Administration]]. Both articles
still triggered the 32KB warning, but both were at a much more manageable size
as a result (I see that [[Ronald Reagan]] is up to 55KB again ; time for
another refactor).

The point of this kind of organization (which I call summary style) is to not
overwhelm the reader with too much detail up front. This is done by summarizing
the most important aspects of a subject and going into further detail with
daughter articles (repeat this as many times as you like until all aspects of a
topic are very thoroughly covered). 

The best way this works, however, is to let articles grow into the 40 to 50+ KB
range and *then* start to look for areas that could logically be summarized and
the detail moved to daughter articles. Splitting articles prematurely can
create a disorganized and illogical mess unless it is part of a well-organized
and well-thought-out WikiProject scheme (such as WikiProject Countries). 

Encyclopedia articles need to stay closely on topic ; going into too much
detail on any aspect of the topic up front tends to lose this tight focus on
the subject (such as going on and on about the Bush Administration in an
article on the man - the two are really different yet linked subjects). 

More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Summary_style

-- mav

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