I just want to clarify my statement that it is best to divide topics into digestible bits. I think this should only be considered for most articles once they reach the 20 KB (minus markup) size and the resulting daughter articles are not stubs. Although some articles demand a larger size just to summarize all the main points and clearly link to daughters that have move detail on each of those points.
An example article that I really like in this regard is [[Germany]] (especially its history secton and the [[History of Germany]] daughter article): http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany
There the parent article, [[Germany]], has several paragraphs giving a very broad summary of German history. A prominent link is given to [[History of Germany]]. The daughter article [[History of Germany]] summarizes each of the major periods of German history. Each section has a prominent "Main article" link to grandchildren articles about those specific periods of German history. And of course any distinct subjects like people, places or things have inline links to articles on those things.
This is the type of organization I like. However preemptively making stubs to follow this structure is a really bad thing to do; let each article grow until it starts to reach a size where readability and editability would be improved by summarizing certain areas and moving the detail to daughter articles.
I absolutely /hate/ it when people just cut an entire section out of an article like ==History== and only leave a [[History of X]] link in that section. In those cases, it is /far/ better to leave in the detailed history even if it pushes the article's size way above 32 KB. A summary of the history must accompany any "main article" link like that, IMO.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Daniel-
I just want to clarify my statement that it is best to divide topics into digestible bits. I think this should only be considered for most articles once they reach the 20 KB (minus markup) size and the resulting daughter articles are not stubs. Although some articles demand a larger size just to summarize all the main points and clearly link to daughters that have move detail on each of those points.
I agree with you, except for the 20K ;-). I hope we can formulate a standard policy for this.
Regards,
Erik
On Friday, December 19, 2003, at 01:57 PM, Daniel Mayer wrote:
I just want to clarify my statement that it is best to divide topics into digestible bits. I think this should only be considered for most articles once they reach the 20 KB (minus markup) size and the resulting daughter articles are not stubs. Although some articles demand a larger size just to summarize all the main points and clearly link to daughters that have move detail on each of those points.
I'll agree with that, and amend my previous opinion to do so (for all of you keeping score at home).
Sometimes it's appropriate to have a long article, sometimes not. I think it's foolish to set a definite size limit as a 'rule', but as a rule of thumb I agree.
I don't like the idea of daughter articles, though. Sounds too much like another word for subpage to me. If it doesn't work out of context, it should be a subpage, or, if we don't want subpages, we should include it in the main article. Personally, I'd rather use subpages in this case, but the consensus seems to be against me.
Peter
--- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show
Daniel Mayer a écrit:
I just want to clarify my statement that it is best to divide topics into digestible bits. I think this should only be considered for most articles once they reach the 20 KB (minus markup) size and the resulting daughter articles are not stubs. Although some articles demand a larger size just to summarize all the main points and clearly link to daughters that have move detail on each of those points.
I think I have the same opinion than yours as regards this issue Mav, as I explained here : http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:The_Cunctator/Agglomeration
This is very much what I try to do with these "portal" pages I work on.
Only but...I put the limit much higher, around 30 kb size, essentially for technical reasons. That is where I draw the line. But even though I choose to separate part of the article, I always leave an introduction in the main article. Just a link is not informative enough.
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