Hi all,
Perhaps I have been out of the loop on this development, but when I started contributing to WP, limiting article length to 32Kb was considered an important consideration. Lately, though, I've been encountering articles considerably longer. Yesterday, I wanted to refactor some material in one to tighten it up and another user objected, saying that [[George W. Bush]] was 72Kb in length. Has the 32Kb threshold effectively been abandoned?
FWIW, I thought the 32Kb limit served as a useful stylistic constraint, as it encouraged a a measure concision in unwieldy topics. I am going to take a look at the Bush article in a moment to see what I think of such a long article.
V.
Viajero wrote:
Hi all,
Perhaps I have been out of the loop on this development, but when I started contributing to WP, limiting article length to 32Kb was considered an important consideration. Lately, though, I've been encountering articles considerably longer. Yesterday, I wanted to refactor some material in one to tighten it up and another user objected, saying that [[George W. Bush]] was 72Kb in length. Has the 32Kb threshold effectively been abandoned?
FWIW, I thought the 32Kb limit served as a useful stylistic constraint, as it encouraged a a measure concision in unwieldy topics. I am going to take a look at the Bush article in a moment to see what I think of such a long article.
V.
In the recent village pump revisting of this very topic, all that was established was that
1) the hard 32kb limit due to technical reasons has been abandoned since the inception of section-editing.
2) Softer limits due to readability and editability should be left for editors to work out on a case-by-case article-by-article basis - though good practice such as summary style tends to spread quickly.
The GWB article is the hardest "case" I've seen -
i) We've already spun out sub-pages on many aspects ii) Trying to be even-handed on contentious topics tends to create a lot of words
GWB is one article where we have too much colloboration :),
It is the section editing that ended the technical need to limit an article to 32K using Internet Explorer. Now unless it is the first section you need to edit you don't need to edit the whole article or change browsers. I have no idea why you can't edit the first section. Ability to do that should be added.
Fred
From: Viajero viajero@quilombo.nl Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 13:52:35 +0100 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] article length: =<32Kb?
Hi all,
Perhaps I have been out of the loop on this development, but when I started contributing to WP, limiting article length to 32Kb was considered an important consideration. Lately, though, I've been encountering articles considerably longer. Yesterday, I wanted to refactor some material in one to tighten it up and another user objected, saying that [[George W. Bush]] was 72Kb in length. Has the 32Kb threshold effectively been abandoned?
FWIW, I thought the 32Kb limit served as a useful stylistic constraint, as it encouraged a a measure concision in unwieldy topics. I am going to take a look at the Bush article in a moment to see what I think of such a long article.
V. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
If you mean just be able to edit the lead section: you can. Edit the page and then add section=0 onto the end of the edit page URL.
TBSDY
Fred Bauder wrote:
It is the section editing that ended the technical need to limit an article to 32K using Internet Explorer. Now unless it is the first section you need to edit you don't need to edit the whole article or change browsers. I have no idea why you can't edit the first section. Ability to do that should be added.
Fred
I find it quite amusing that the sections with separate articles, such as ==Foreign policy and security== and [[Foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration]], are extended to over 1300 words. Surely they could be summarised futher?
~~~~ Violet/Riga
--- Viajero viajero@quilombo.nl wrote:
Perhaps I have been out of the loop on this development, but when I started contributing to WP, limiting article length to 32Kb was considered an important consideration. Lately, though, I've been encountering articles considerably longer. Yesterday, I wanted to refactor some material in one to tighten it up and another user objected, saying that [[George W. Bush]] was 72Kb in length. Has the 32Kb threshold effectively been abandoned?
Yes, this is still a very important consideration but at the same time it is no longer a hard and fast rule due to the existence of separately-editable sections and the extreme rarity of browsers that have issues editing articles over 32KB.
However, some topics are so expansive that they do need 40 to even 50 KB of text to be a comprehensive summary (such as a 'history of' article for a country that has existed in one form or anther for a 1000 years) while the great majority of topics can do the same job with less than 32KB of text. An article about a single person, even such an important person as a president of the United States, really needn't be longer than 32KB to be comprehensive encyclopedia article about that person.
The example you give is way longer than is appropriate for the subject and should be divided into a set of articles; at the top would be an article about George W. Bush divided into sections. Any one section could be a summary of an article that goes into more detail on that aspect of his life. Almost all of the material about the Bush Administration and policies thereof could be summarized at [[George W. Bush]] and spun into [[George W. Bush Administration]] (now just a redirect).
The existing foreign and domestic policy articles along the first and second term articles could be similarly organized from [[George W. Bush Administration]] (the host of other articles are a disorganized mess that I don't know what to do with; it might be best to have some of them be stand alone articles; such as articles on single events or people).
[[Ronald Reagan]] was 65KB until I summarized the massive ==Presidency== section there and moved the detail to [[Reagan Administration]]. Both articles still triggered the 32KB warning, but both were at a much more manageable size as a result (I see that [[Ronald Reagan]] is up to 55KB again ; time for another refactor).
The point of this kind of organization (which I call summary style) is to not overwhelm the reader with too much detail up front. This is done by summarizing the most important aspects of a subject and going into further detail with daughter articles (repeat this as many times as you like until all aspects of a topic are very thoroughly covered).
The best way this works, however, is to let articles grow into the 40 to 50+ KB range and *then* start to look for areas that could logically be summarized and the detail moved to daughter articles. Splitting articles prematurely can create a disorganized and illogical mess unless it is part of a well-organized and well-thought-out WikiProject scheme (such as WikiProject Countries).
Encyclopedia articles need to stay closely on topic ; going into too much detail on any aspect of the topic up front tends to lose this tight focus on the subject (such as going on and on about the Bush Administration in an article on the man - the two are really different yet linked subjects).
More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Summary_style
-- mav
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On Sunday 27 February 2005 18:33, Daniel Mayer wrote:
issues editing articles over 32KB.
Why the whole article gets into a single field? You can use one field per paragraph.
FWIW, I thought the 32Kb limit served as a useful stylistic constraint, as it encouraged a a measure concision in unwieldy topics. I am going to take a look at the Bush article in a moment to see what I think of such a long article.
While the limit is sometimes helpful stylistically, I think it was more related to the editing limits of certain (now generally obsolete) web browsers.
Jay.
There was a pretty complimentary article published about Wikipedia in the Saturday National Post (a national Canadian newspaper). Unfortunately, you need a subscription to see the whole article online:
http://www.canada.com/search/story.html?id=df1fbe7e-c310-47c8-98af-ddd72928b...
Jay.
On Sunday 27 February 2005 14:52, Viajero wrote:
started contributing to WP, limiting article length to 32Kb was
I see no reason why somebody would want to limit an article to 32Kb.
NSK stated for the record:
On Sunday 27 February 2005 14:52, Viajero wrote:
started contributing to WP, limiting article length to 32Kb was
I see no reason why somebody would want to limit an article to 32Kb.
...which, of course, has no bearing on whether or not such limits should or do exist....
Viajero wrote:
Hi all,
Perhaps I have been out of the loop on this development, but when I started contributing to WP, limiting article length to 32Kb was considered an important consideration. Lately, though, I've been encountering articles considerably longer. Yesterday, I wanted to refactor some material in one to tighten it up and another user objected, saying that [[George W. Bush]] was 72Kb in length. Has the 32Kb threshold effectively been abandoned?
FWIW, I thought the 32Kb limit served as a useful stylistic constraint, as it encouraged a a measure concision in unwieldy topics. I am going to take a look at the Bush article in a moment to see what I think of such a long article.
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. People delighting in long articles should consider that 99% of readers will drop off long before they get to the end of a 5,000-word article, so it's as if the material at the end doesn't even exist; better to make several shorter articles interlinked so readers can steer to the desired details more quickly.
Stan
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. People delighting in long articles should consider that 99% of readers will drop off long before they get to the end of a 5,000-word article, so it's as if the material at the end doesn't even exist; better to make several shorter articles interlinked so readers can steer to the desired details more quickly.
Stan
Stan, those readers will probably drop off after 32KB anyway. Best to fixup the lead section and let them read that.
TBSDY
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.