Wikipedia talk:Article size/Archive 2

message: This page contains the advice: "To quickly estimate readable prose size, click on the printable version of the page, select all, copy, paste into an edit window, delete remaining items not counted in readable prose, and hit preview to see the page size warning."
But where? Where is the page size warning?
qp10qp 05:13, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The page size warning will be above the edit window, but only if the raw text exceeds 30k. See User:Dr pda/prosesize.js for a javascript tool. Instructions are on the talk page. Gimmetrow 00:40, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I followed the instructions found in reference 2, but no page length warning appears on the preview page. Perhaps some Wiki code needs to be not deleted for it to function? I had to copy and paste it to an email draft to get the Kb size. The article for psychokinesis gives a erroneous warning for 54Kb, but the body of the article (as I write this) is actually only 13 Kb long. So this warning system is not perfect. 5Q5 14:26, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

text: The source code? Try following the instructions given below on this Project page, which is what I flagged as not working. The source code is full of just that: code. Explain why the body of the article quantum physics (41Kb) is at least three times longer than psychokinesis (54Kb)! the Quantum physics article has a small References section, while the one at PK is very lengthy. I think Wiki is miscalculating the extra material in the References on the PK page because it is just outside the {{ }} template tags but still inside the   tags. The instructions below refer to pasting the material from the Printable version into the Wiki editor and then hitting Preview. When I do that, all I get is the Preview warning, but no length notice above it. Something in these instructions need to be tweaked. Anybody else experiencing this? 5Q5 19:05, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The MediaWiki message is based on the size of the code, not on the size of the readable prose. —Centrx→talk • 00:12, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Doesn't anyone see the contradiction? The page size warning that appears during a full page edit click refers to the entire source code. But the Project article here says that only the readable prose should be considered for when it's time to split up pages. People can erroneously believe they should begin splitting up an article when the readable prose; i.e., the main body of the article, is not that long because they are considering the source code total, most of which will not print out. This is what is happening at the psychokinesis article, of which I wrote over 95%. It is giving out a consider breaking up warning, even though once all the references and other material are excluded, the readable prose is moderate in size. I just want to point this contradiction out. Being the primary author of the PK page, I will have to deal with people chopping it up when it's far from time considering the length of other articles. Thanks. 5Q5 13:32, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not a contradiction, that's an ambiguity. Many articles exceed the size at which the too-long message is shown, and it is generally understood that is okay. If you want, the size at which the message is shown can be increased. —Centrx→talk • 02:35, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: How do you find the readable page size?

message: I believe the section Problems editing a long article needs some revision, as the problem is not solely limited to older browsers. I have the very latest, top-of-the-line BlackBerry 8700 and find that it truncates long articles over 32k when doing an edit. The suggestion to avoid the problem by doing section edits is fine, but that solution doesn't apply for an Infobox or lead paragraph edit, nor for vandalism reverts. JGHowes talk -  02:12, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Add "non-standard browsers" or "browsers on embedded devices" or something. It's not a problem for PCs. —Centrx→talk • 03:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems editing a long article 

message: ...but I'll ask it anyway: how can you determine the size of an article without using an external application? --Howard the Duck 03:02, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If an article is greater than 32KB a message appears above the edit window if you edit the page. If the page is less than that size, you need to copy and paste to an external program. —Centrx→talk • 20:40, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Probably off-topic... 

message: Someone has changed the messages we get when we edit so that it no longer gives the page size. It was very, very useful to know the size. Does anyone know who changed it and why, or where it was discussed? SlimVirgin (talk) 02:05, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: . Rather silly. —Centrx→talk • 23:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Page size messages

message: It seems to me that there's a correlation between the degree of jumble and disorganization in WP articles and the length.  So it seems that another reason to keep pages short is to facilitate effective communal editing.Ccrrccrr 02:38, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I personally have not seen any evidence of this. Andysoh 18:29, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Manageability 

message: At present, when editing FA status article 'Belgium', one sees "This page is 108 kilobytes long. It may be appropriate to split ...". But let's have a look at the origins of these > 100 KB which according to the guideline "Almost certainly should be divided up":
country infobox:                                                                                                                      	4,440 chars.
section titles,  'main' & 'see also' immediately underneath those titles,  image links,  and actual article text:      	35,322 chars.
'see also' section                                                                                                                    	602 chars.
indexed footnote references (mainly for WP:V):                                                                                        	32,957 chars.
three roughly equally sized (sub)sections:  'general online references',  'bibliography',  'external links' (together):	8,892 chars.
bottom page v.d.e.-boxes,  categories,  and FA status template:                                                             	892 chars.
links to the article on other language WPs:                                                                                           	2,089 chars.
                                                                                                                                      	
total:                                                                                                                                	85,194 chars.
This character count total of 85 KB does not match the reported 108 KB well (probably having a technical cause like spaces and/or carriage returns not being counted as characters by my editor program, I did not look into it), but I think the general picture is clear: in particlular the exceptionally large footnotes section (more than 90 differently numbered indexes to well over a hundred linked proper references). Since many index numbers are repeated within the article, and each [??] index takes about 4 bytes, the main part of the article is in fact only about 34.5 KB and the footnotes take 33.8 KB. Whereas other references and a 'See also' section can be assumed to serve as "further reading" and thus a normal part of the article, the indexed footnotes for WP:Verifiability and the links to WPs in other languages, together about 36 KB of the 85 KB total, should not be counted as length of an article (unless if purely wikitechnical problems would be caused). I think the project page should explicitly mention such (possibly also for other elements such as the collapsable v.d.e. boxes at the bottom of an article, which usually occur on articles that belong to a much standardized category like here 'countries'). At an earlier FA review, the size had not been considered a problem precisely because of that extremely lengthy footnotes section. — SomeHuman 31 Jul2007 00:35 (UTC)
:The recommendations listed on the page here are supposed to be for "readable prose", that is excluding formatting and perhaps footnotes. The software message given when editing a page is only good enough to have a simple bytecount, and oftentimes pages that do have such a large bytecount do warrant splitting up. —Centrx→talk • 03:48, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggest less rigid byte counts 

message: This user's page gives my computer a lot of trouble even though the page is reportedly only 3,365 bytes. In fact, nearly all of that is code for templates which themselves include more templates and images and scripts totaling untold amounts of data. In this particular case, there are hundreds of images associated with that page.   --Mud4t 00:33, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article size not indicative of total bytes downloaded 

message: I followed the instructions in your footnotes and it doesn't seem to work. I couldn't see a thing about article size anywhere. Has this process changed? Fainites barley 18:12, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Calculation of article size

message: I'm gonna suggest that List of placental mammals be split into lists based on each order, with the main page retained as a pointer to all the sub articles.  Is there a tempalte to formally propose this?  Mbisanz (talk) 07:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed Splitting

message: The shortcuts WP:SIZE, WP:LENGTH, & WP:LIMIT show up as redlinks when they worked yesterday.  Any idea what happened?  Thanks. -Fnlayson (talk) 22:42, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shortcuts removed 

message: I know the Guidline proposes an upper limit of 100Kb and mentions that pages over 400Kb might have trouble being displayed and should have arbitrary breaks.  It might be nice if this was codified more into a rule like "No pages over xxxKb".   Some pages like Line of succession to the British Throne and List of Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom, 1991 are almost certainly in need of an arbitrary break. Mbisanz (talk) 03:14, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Upper limit 

message: Should we warn users against splitting a long article if there's a chance the split article will be deleted?  When an article is in one piece, the overall article is governed by WP:N, but the contents are governed by WP:NNC.  That means things like Lists of Characters, Episodes, etc. are generally safe if they're part of a whole article that is sourced and notable, but are likely to be AfD'd if they're separated out.  I've argued that split articles should be judged for WP:V and WP:N as a whole, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon. Torc2 (talk) 08:05, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh good, I pulled up this discussion page just to see of there was mention of this concern.  Perhaps it is discussed elsewhere (if so, someone please be so kind as to link to it here), but there does seem to be a conflict of splitting due to size concerns and concerns of notability (particularly in cases of WP:FICT).  Since there is no way to tightly link pages with eachother, content can be removed simply because those watching only the main page aren't automatically informed of an AFD for a forked page so they might provide argument for the page's existence.  My point is, Some mention of WP:N should be made in the section explaining how/when to split an article.  I'm quite confused on WP policy/guideline/consensus on the subject. -Verdatum (talk) 07:11, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Please continue this discussion at []UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Warning against splitting 

message: The central point of this article needs some work. It currently states
:Readers may tire of reading a page much longer than about 6,000 to 10,000 words, which roughly corresponds to 30 to 50 KB of readable prose. If an article is significantly longer than that, it may benefit the reader to move some sections to other articles and replace them with summaries (see Wikipedia:Summary style). One rule of thumb is to begin to split an article into smaller articles after the readable prose reaches 10 pages when printed.
The difference between 30 and 50 is large. And there is no guideline as to what significant means. If no one objects I'll try a rewrite of this section in a couple of days. Mccready (talk) 06:23, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The 30 to 50 range works fine for all purposes I know of; what changes did you have in mind?  I think the page is fine.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: OK yes 30 to 50 is ok but why not limit it to 50 except for the type of cases mentioned. This would be clearer and avoid the need for the ill-defined "significantly".Mccready (talk) 12:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Because WP:IAR always comes into play.  There are scores of featured articles that have significantly more than 50KB readable prose.  User:Dr pda/Featured article statistics I've opposed many of them, but they always pass.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:08, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

text: I agree, this is a case where setting an explicit guideline detracts from the intent of a good article.  It can be decided on a case-by-case basis if a split is warranted or appropriate for a range of article sizes. -Verdatum (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree entirely with SandyGeorgia and Verdatum.  WP:NOTPAPER certainly applies.  Additionally, I smell some WP:GAME in the air with : he has a history of trying to use the article length guideline as an excuse for selective, biased deletions from acupuncture.  Most recent example:  25 January 2008: "bold rewrite of head. article is 86kb long and this stuff is covered below.".  From March '06:removes large chunks based on V RS's, argues OK because "article is too long".  Some things never change. --Jim Butler(talk) 00:08, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Central point 

message: What if there's a dispute about how to treat a topic neutrally? 
*(current) It may also violate the neutral point of view policy to create a new article specifically to contain information that consensus has rejected from the main article.
In some cases, "editorial consensus" has suppressed one side of a controversy. This, itself, is a violation of NPOV. It can happen when a preponderance of contributors to a controversial article are supporters of one of the sides in the controversy. By violating WP:OWN they can create a "tag team" which operates to eliminate any positive mention of the opposing POV.
I think the above sentence should read:
*(proposed) It can help defuse an NPOV conflict by creating a new article specifically to contain information which is too controversial for the main article.
Note that the arbcom has specifically ruled that "removing well-referenced information" on the grounds that it "advances a POV" is against policy 
Some people disagree with that. They disagree with the idea that Wikipedia should include "all significant points of view regarding any subject on which there is division of opinion."
But it would be odd indeed to enshrine this objection to policy in a guideline! --Uncle Ed (talk) 13:23, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this topic should be wordsmithed elsewhere, not in this relatively obscure guideline.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV dispute

message: I propose the following changes:
From:
to
and
From:
To:
Background:  Last year I split Wikipedia:List of missing journals for purely technical reasons.  I wound up using a 4.x version of NetScape to make the initial split then I was able to use a modern browser to clean it up.  Earlier today I verified that my very-modern web browser still chokes on the old long versions.
The above changes are meant to be consistent with Wikipedia:Article size#Technical issues.
Comments?  Objections?
davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:11, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What about mobile browsers? —Torc. (Talk.) 19:04, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Got numbers?  If any major browser hangs on articles above a certain size, we should consider a "hard" cap at that size or below.  If it's just inconvenient then it should be a style decision but not a make-or-break issue.  By the way, large-number-of-pixels pictures are probably a bigger problem for users looking at tiny cellphone screens than an article that's 350KB long.  I expect that the "List of Missing Journals" article would be rendered as well as a typical 30KB article in a mobile browser. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:33, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No, actually it was a Real Question™ - I have no idea how much data mobile browsers can handle on a single page.  I only have an old Sidekick II, and I doubt anybody would use that for a yardstick on how much the average mobile browser can handle.  Mainly I just thought I'd bring up the topic because I don't see it mentioned, and I know plenty of people who use their mobiles for looking up answers here. —Torc. (Talk.) 00:18, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's really several questions in one.  How much data can they hold in a single web page, how much html can they handle on a single web page, and how big a table or whatever other constructs wikipedia uses can they handle?  I'm not sure why 400KB of WikiCode breaks modern browsers, but most modern browsers CAN handle simple web pages in the multi-megabyte range.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidwr (talk • contribs) 15:38, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed change and factual correction:  Large articles DO confused modern browsers 

message: The guideline states we can look to MediaWiki:longpagewarning for the size of a long article. From observation, it measures something other than the raw bytes of data the text constitutes (compare its warning to a version of the article's script saved as a text file). However I have noticed it considers citation templates as raw text. Heavily referenced articles will be rated longer than they are Ninja Gaiden (2004 video game) yields a 73k warning; but if we removed all references (i.e. [...]), the unreferenced article yields a 40kb warning. It is not the displayed reference list which contributes to the size (removing the  without removing all references still yields 73k). Since the guideline is supposed to be for "readable prose", is there a way to get the script performing the longpagewarning to exclude all references in its calculation? Jappalang (talk) 01:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The script also considers commented out statements () as part of the text. Jappalang (talk) 13:59, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The guideline advising "use a modern browser" and only "readable prose" matters is flat out wrong. There are hundreds of millions of English speaking web users and many are still on dial-up and are using older computers. The most important count actually is just a byte count of the text in the edit window when you hit the "edit this page" tab. I couldn't figure out why the article Barack Obama was hanging up my web browser (and I am using the latest update to Firefox by the way), until I looked at the source (I can't edit it anyway because it is protected), and found that it was 141 kB - which you can see from the byte count in the history. The article has recently been trimmed about 13 kB, and loads a little bit quicker, but still hangs the browser for a looong time. I would like to see a hard limit of 64 kB in place of the hard limit of 32 kB. Over half of the featured articles are less than 32 kB. There is no reason for just eliminating the limit completely, as if "well theoretically someone might be able to edit it". 199.125.109.28 (talk) 16:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

text: By the way, talk pages can be twice as long - up to 128 kB. For example the much longer Talk:Barack Obama does not hang up the browser. Probably because of the lack of images. The full byte count transferred to the browser for the article is something like 484 k 199.125.109.28 (talk) 16:45, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

text: In the "Technical issues" section, is it possible that "over 400 kB" refers to total bytes transferred, not text bytes? 199.125.109.28 (talk) 17:07, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I was the one who added (diff) the 400KB info last year.  The 400KB refers to the size reported by Wikipedia when you edit an article.  This came about because editing List of missing journals (hist) other than one section at a time was nearly impossible before I split it.  davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:36, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a text only article. Have you done any tests to see if it refers to total byte count or not? Barack Obama is 480kB with the photos, and locks up Firefox, which seems oddly suspicious considering that it could be only because it is over 400 k. Seriously, with the attention span people have on the internet, do you really expect anyone to actually read any article that is over 10k? Wikipedia really needs to go back to a more reasonable guideline. 199.125.109.28 (talk) 22:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia needs at least two guidelines:  A guideline for people, a hard and fast rule for typical desktop computers with modern browsers, and possibly another guideline for cell phones, older browsers, and other special cases.  I didn't have any problem editing and previewing changes to Barack Obama using a modern Firefox.  Editing Barack Obama gets a warning This page is 126 kilobytes long. It may be appropriate to split this article into smaller, more specific articles. See Wikipedia:Article size.  When I save the wikicode as plain-ascii, it shows up as 127KB.  When I save it as Unicode, it's twice that.  By the way, with the new edit-top-section setting you can set in user preferences, big articles are no longer as harmful to logged-in users as they once were.  davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:07, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

text: What web browser do you use and how much spare RAM do you have?  If you are already starting to use your memory swap-file or close to it before you open the page, it could crater some browsers.  davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 07:59, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not a very modern computer. It is running 98SE, has 480 MB Ram, and performance currently says "System resources: 15% free". I'm using the latest version of Firefox (2.0.0.12). I currently have three programs running, two Firefox windows, with a total of 17 tabs open. Closing everything has little impact on opening large articles. I'm on a slow dial-up that seems to sometimes slow to a few bytes per minute. 199.125.109.28 (talk) 01:05, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  True length of article text? 

message: Please note that Barack Obama while meeting size guidelines if you only count readable prose size balloons to 484kb and is very difficult to read for anyone on dial up. This would be remedied by simply referring to the more important and more easily obtained edit byte count in classifying whether the article should be split. 199.125.109.100 (talk) 21:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks to me like this entire discussion has more to do with someone wanting to cut down Obama than with actual practice on Wikipedia articles.   I Oppose the proposed change to this guideline, which does exactly what it's intended to do; hold article size to something within the average reader's attention span, which is 6 to 10,000 words, or 30 to 50KB of readable prose (while referring still to the older, technical limitations).  Please take the Obama discussion over there; it's not even remotely close to being one of Wiki's longest featured articles, and has plenty of room to grow.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:04, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope. I'm not suggesting removing anything. I'm only suggesting making it readable by moving it into separate manageable sections. And it has nothing to do with Barack Obama. Barack Obama just happens to be the first horrendously long article I tried to read. I could talk only about Manhattan, or United States, or Bob Dylan, or Billie Jean King, or Paul Wolfowitz, or General relativity, European Union, or Byzantine Empire, none of which I have ever tried to read, but all of which are in the top 250 biggest pages on Wikipedia. And you must read faster than me, unless you meant that the average attention span was from 6 words to 10,000 words. Since the average attention span on the internet is from about 20 seconds to 3 minutes, you would have to read 3,000 words per minute to read 10,000 words. If you really want to know the average attention span you can look at the server logs and see how long each person stays at one page before they move on to another page. It isn't very long. There are four reasons for splitting an article, as outlined on this project page, reader issues, editor issues, contributor issues, and technical issues, and within them a total of 11 items, and attention span is only one of them. Someone has lost sight of the forest for the trees, and it isn't me. 199.125.109.122 (talk) 02:06, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia is written for people who still read.  It doesn't have jazzy visual layout and its fair use doctrine means that it often doesn't have a lot of pictures.  It doesn't look like a modern magazine with changing fonts and lots of colors.  It's not meant to capture flighty-minded people hoppin' round the net.  Consider Wikipedia a throwback, a digital version of the shelf-long encyclopedia sets people used to buy for their homes.  It's for real readers, not the people you describe.  Wasted Time R (talk) 02:24, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually one source emphatically states that "the average attention span of most Internet users is 8 seconds". And yes, most people do not read at all. The average person does not own even one book, unless it is a bible. I think it's great that Wikipedia is providing a repository of information, and while there actually are people who read dictionaries cover to cover, and encyclopedias the same way, most people use them as a reference source, to look up some factoid they need for something. Instead of creating long articles that take three minutes to load you can allow them to find that factoid four times quicker by splitting up that article into pieces and letting them click on the one that has the information they are looking for. Clearly some editors seem to think that the goal is to create humongous articles, but it isn't practical to do that. You make the material much more accessible to take an article that has ABCDE sections and split it into A B C D E subarticles. 199.125.109.122 (talk) 03:22, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

text: I couldn't agree more. 199.125.109.100 (talk) 21:46, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Oakwillow (talk) 17:14, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

text: The above facts suggest otherwise. Oakwillow (talk) 17:47, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

text: However, it is much better to discuss things instead of just changing them, as was done in March. I agree that the first edit adding "overall" was ok, but changing "article size" was not. Oakwillow (talk) 17:54, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Oakwillow, you seem to be focusing on the March 2008 change.. What about the October 2006 change to "prose size" that remained the active guideline for well over a year until the January 2008 edit back to "Article size". Even if you acknowledge the 2 month period it existed as "Article size" on this article, the operating understanding of this guideline has been that it is readable prose that determines if/when an article is split up, not the article size.  It's also pretty obvious based on the result of the above proposal that readable prose is the determining factor...--Bobblehead (rants) 18:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You can read all about it in the above discussion, but to summarize, there are four main issues affecting size and twelve factors, some of which relate to readable prose and some of which relate to edit byte count plus other factors. Oakwillow (talk) 18:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Further, I would like to note that I find the actions of Oakwillow somewhat inappropriate. We had an ongoing discussion at Talk:Go (board game) about the size of that article, and when pointed to the guidelines at WP:Article size, Oakwillow made the change from "prose size" to "article size" above, despite the fact that the majority of responses had opposed that change, and the fact that prose size had been the guideline for a long time. HermanHiddema (talk) 09:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You are misreading the proposal. The proposal was to change from Readable prose to Edit byte count, which is still under discussion. It was later determined that Article size was inappropriately changed to Readable prose, and that revert was requested, unapposed, by Ottava Rima. I simply implemented it. Oakwillow (talk) 13:19, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, but you're wrong. It was never determined that Article size was inappropriately changed to Readable prose. Only suggested. The text was changed from "Article size" to "Readable prose size" on March 3. But before that, it was changed from "Prose size" to "Article size" on January 7, without discussion. It is the first change that is inappropriate, not the second one, which only reinstated the correct formulation of a policy that had been in effect for years. These limits have been on prose size since basically forever. Eg, see this version of exactly 3 years ago, where the lead section identifies two issues. a) technical issues, and b) considerations of readability and organization. These technical issues were with older browsers that could not edit text over 32kb in length. No current browsers have this limitation, and the ability to edit sections invalidates most "dialup speed" issues with editing long text. So what matters is b) readability and organisation. There was discussion on that over 3 years ago over here. Clearly this policy is and always has been about readable prose. HermanHiddema (talk) 14:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I believe I read every revision of the guideline. That particular version, in my opinion was clearly referring to edit byte count except for in the one occasion that it called out a number for readable prose, saying that "readers may tire of reading a page in excess of 20-30 KB of readable prose". They may also tire of reading a page that is a lot shorter than that too. Since most people use encyclopedias for reference (duh), making information more accessible is more important than writing 500 page articles that only a few have the attention span to read. Oakwillow (talk) 15:06, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Article size has always been edit byte count. It is a perversion to think otherwise. However, it allows anyone who wishes to think so, and is the preferred wording for that reason. Oakwillow (talk) 18:23, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: So the March 3 edit is inapproprioate because it conflicts with your opinion on the issue, while the one on January 7 is not inappropriate because it agrees with your opinion on the issue? HermanHiddema (talk) 18:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It conflicts with the content. My opinion is neither here nor there. This is an encyclopedia, not a blog. Opinions are not very important. Oakwillow (talk) 18:54, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: On the contrary, it is supported by the content. HermanHiddema (talk) 22:09, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion