[WikiEN-l] Re: article size

Tue May 24 17:08:49 UTC 2005

--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> That's my own intuition, but I have trouble figuring out how to actually 
> distinguish between what we do now and that eventuality.  I'm not 
> altogether *sure* it's a bad idea either, especially if things can be 
> broken down into useful chunks.  For example, [[George Washington at 
> blah]] or [[Controversy over the color of George Washington's 
> slippers]].  I mean, if we collated all our Pokemon-related pages 
> (pardon the obvious example), we probably have a small books' worth of 
> material written on Pokemon already...

I think that is fine, so long as the 300+ pages you talk about are organized as
a set of verifiable encyclopedia articles covering their own sub topics and not
as parts of a hypertext book (or, heaven forbid, all on a single page).  We can
have a great deal of detail so long as we do not overwhelm readers with too
much detail at any given point through the use of summaries where appropriate
and links to articles that cover a sub topic in more detail. So by navigational
choices readers should be able to zoom to the level of detail they need. 

Many need quick overviews, most need a mid-level of detail, and some need a
good deal of detail on particular aspects of a topic. Serving all those
different user types is the goal of summary style. 

-- mav

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