[WikiEN-l] Article size consistency 32k

Sat May 21 21:19:31 UTC 2005

On Fri, 20 May 2005, Fred Bauder wrote:

> The issue is always download speed when we serve a diverse international
> audience and at least make noises about serving the poor and the third
> world. Serving up articles over 100kb long with several images each over
> 200kb will basically stop a slower computer with limited memory operating
> with a modem in its tracks, sometimes even requiring a reboot. Essentially
> the site becomes unusable.
>
It's not only the third world that needs to rely on dialup; the majority
of Internet users in the US -- which, last I checked, was still counted as
one of the developed countries -- still have dialup connections (like
yours truly).

And the primary problem I have with accessing information from Wikipedia
is not the article length (although a concise well-organized article is
always better than a long discursive one, no matter the amount of detail
contained), but the size & number of images.

Maybe I ought to squawk more about those pages where someone has stuffed
into it as many images as they can find about the subject. After all,
EN-Wikipedia isn't the only archive available for usage-free graphics --
even on Wikimedia.

Geoff