[WikiEN-l] POV forks, and "the 32K devil made me do it"

Mon Feb 28 00:34:35 UTC 2005

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I too would like to put in a word for article length limits.  Whether 
> 32K is still the optimal length would still be an open question; perhaps 
> it could be increased a little.

I don't see a need. Here are two Featured Articles I've worked heavily on
that are at almost 32KB:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System

(The second of those has a long section that's actually been split to a 
separate article (one which needs a lot of work but will probably end up
longer than 32KB itself with several subarticles).

I really can't imagine either being longer and being of that much use as
a general article. Really. By the end of several thousand words of dense
text, your eyes are going to be falling out.

There are exceptions (172 successfully argued that [[History of Russia]]
was difficult to meaningfully summarise without going well over it), but
32KB is a fortuitous technical limit that makes a very good editorial
limit in my experience.

- d.