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

Sun Feb 27 18:40:30 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.

Yes, the 32K limit should still be encouraged. Not only is there
still the risk of old browsers mangling long articles, but this
is the encyclopedia, not wikibooks. People delighting in long
articles should consider that 99% of readers will drop off long
before they get to the end of a 5,000-word article, so it's as
if the material at the end doesn't even exist; better to make
several shorter articles interlinked so readers can steer to the
desired details more quickly.

Stan