[Wikipedia-l] Limits to the non-paperiness of Wikipedia?

[Daniel Mayer]

 Oliver Pereira wrote:
> Clearly I don't have Erik's attention span. :) But do we *really* want
> articles that are over 10,000 characters long? And if so, why? I'm sure
> I'm not the only one who finds it a daunting task to try to edit long
> articles, especially if there is major restructuring to be done. If we
> want Wikipedia to be open to everyone, and easy to edit, I think we should
> seriously consider aiming for shorter articles everywhere. A reader who
> wants to read 30K of information about a subject would still be able to;
> they'd have to read three articles instead of one, maybe, but it would
> only involve two clicks of the mouse...

I agree that the 20,000 - 30,000 size is a bit much for most situations. IMO 
we should aim to have articles in the 10,000 to 20,000 range unless they are 
a "history of" or similar daughter article where detail is expected. This, of 
course, excludes tables (which can often add 5,000 or more bytes to an 
article). 

So in general, any article above 20,000 bytes of prose should be broken-up 
into more digestible bits and pieces.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)