On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 22:57:53 +0000, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
dpbsmith(a)verizon.net wrote:
I've Been Bold and rewritten the message. It
now reads:
"Note: This page is 38 kilobytes long. Under current article size
guidelines, articles that exceed 32KB are considered to be too long. It
may be appropriate to restructure this topic into a related series of
shorter articles, or split off a section of it as a separate article.
However, these are major structural changes which should not be made
hastily, and should be made by consensus agreement among editors of the
page. See the guidelines for details."
I'd like it made harsher: see below.
> So what are the generally accepted criteria
for length of articles in
> encyclopedias?
People should be getting tired of my stock answer
to this, which is that
the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica contains articles
which exceed one megabyte in size. I need to get to the library and see
what size the juicier articles in the Britannica 3 Macropaedia are.
A vastly important consideration is that text is remarkably harder to
read on a screen than on paper. The 32K article that's a lot of work to
read on screen is a lot easier to read on a printout - but almost no-one
(comparatively) will be reading a printout. 32K is when your eyes fall off
the screen, if not well before.
- d.
So? We don't necessarily intend for people to read all the way through
an article on a country that is hundreds of years old for example.
People will skip to particular sections. If someone does want to read
through an entire long article, printing it out is probably the most
likely option!
32K is far too restrictive for major parent articles - no matter the
number of sub articles. Even just including an adequate summary for
each sub-topic results in quite a large article - summarising history
of a country alone is a massive task, nevermind adding short sections
on culture (sports, literature, food+drink, lifestyle), geography,
economy, government (!!!). No... any country article below 32K is very
likely to not adequately cover the swathe of articles that accompany
it.
Zoney
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