[WikiEN-l] Re: article size

Mon May 23 17:54:29 UTC 2005

dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

> Incidentally, article size is one area in which "Wikipedia is not 
> paper" serves us poorly. In the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia 
> Britannica, the article on the Bible is approximately one megabyte in 
> size. That decision was presumably made on the basis of style, 
> organization, and readability. You can riffle through twenty pages a 
> second or more and still glimpse running heads. And the articles in 
> the old Britannica are so well-written that you can sit down with them 
> and read them from beginning to end.

I think Britannica goes for a different style than we do, largely 
because it *is* paper.  In a paper encyclopedia, cross-references are 
much more of a hassle, and the reader can't flip between articles and 
volumes in the click of a mouse.  Thus, articles tend to be longer and 
fewer.  With Wikipedia, there's no trouble breaking up a major topic 
like, say [[United States]], into an overview article with separate 
articles on [[History of the United States]], [[Economy of the United 
States]], and so on, because it doesn't place much of a burden on our 
users to click through if they want the long articles.  Even the way we 
format it---"Main article: [[History of the United States]]"---really 
only makes sense in a hyperlinked encyclopedia.

It does bring up the interesting point that perhaps there should be a 
little more editing in making a paper version besides just validating 
articles.  For example, it might make sense to collate these all into 
one article for print publication.

-Mark