Viajero wrote: 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 :),

--- Viajero <viajero(a)quilombo.nl> wrote: 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 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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.

On Sunday 27 February 2005 14:52, Viajero wrote: I see no reason why somebody would want to limit an article to 32Kb. -- NSK http://portal.wikinerds.org

Viajero 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