Stan Shebs wrote:
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.
Hi again all,
I read with interest the various remarks of Stan, Mav, and others in
support of keeping articles from getting too long, because it mirrors my
own instincts. [[Wikipedia:Summary_style]] is a very useful page.
A quick look at the hefty [[George W. Bush]] (72Kb) suggests that some
of the material might indeed be profitably spun off into ancillary
articles, along the lines of what Mav described with Reagan (some
already has), such as those lists legislation or that list of transcripts...
By the look of it, the Berlusconi article (now around 50Kb) is also
getting unwieldy and needs some reorganization. It now has a very long,
very dense, very heavily referenced section on his legal problems,
including a complete list of court cases, the whole of which seems
reader-unfriendly. However, efforts on my part spin some of this
material off was met with stiff resistance by a user named Mattamamanos,
apparently Italian, who has edited approx. 20 times in EN, all of them
in this article, and who has gotten quite possessive about it. He says
these legal matters are very important, and I can believe it, but
disagrees quite pointedly that any of the material should be spun off.
He may know a vast amount about Berlusconi but perhaps he is unable to
see the forest for the trees.
Taking heed of dbpsmith's comment the other day about letting the text
"stew and mellow" and reach a stable state, it might be too early to
consider refactoring Berlusconi. That being said, surely it must be
possible to draw on strategies developed for long articles on other
heads of state, ie Reagan?
As a closing aside, I recall a few years ago, during the year or two
period when all its material was freely available, printing out the
Encyclopedia Britannica article on the history of Spain. It was more
than 95 (!) pages long (>250Kb?); covered prehistorical period to late
20C. I can see how such a format might be appropriate in that kind of
environment, where one author/editor has final responsibility for the
text and can create an organic, static whole. But imagine trying to
maintain a 250Kb article on Wikipedia -- it would be nightmare.
V.