Wikipedia talk:Article size/Archive 1

message: Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump:
Propose change:
:"WARNING: This page is X kilobytes long; Ideal length for articles is between 30-50K. Should this page grow longer, please consider breaking the page into smaller sections"   -豎眩</Strong> p.s. will post to mailist..
::"Ideal length" would not be in the 30 - 50 KB range. Anything above 20KB of readable text tries the patience of readers and anything above 28KB has technical limitations for users on slow computers and/or use certain browsers. --mav 00:32 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)
:::I have since changed my mind about this per a very long discussion at Wikipedia talk:What is a featured article?/Archive 2#Size and common practice. The reasoning is summarized at Wikipedia:Summary style. --mav 16:51, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed change 

message: I've added an introductory section, basically saying 32KB isn't that important any more, and a section on restructuring and splitting articles, which basically says don't do it hastily, don't break out subtrivia as new articles, and exercise extreme caution when breaking out controversial sections as new articles. 
Comments welcome. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:06, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additions 

message: "The specific browsers that have problems with long pages are listed at Wikipedia:Browser page size limits (...)". This sentence (at Wikipedia:Article size#Technical issues) has a link to a page that, now, redirects to Wikipedia:Article size, which means, it is a link to the same page... :) Jotomicron (talk) ,    (UTC)
:That signature displays the current date, the issue was solved about a year ago. -- Omniplex 21:29, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cyclic Redirect 

message: I'm currently working on a list of Formula One drivers (here), which will have a lot more information than the current one (here). As you can see, I've only got up to C (179 of 783 drivers - see talk page), and I've reaced the 32KB mark. Is there a policy for splitting up lists? Making several pages like List of Formula One drivers (A to D) or something? I'd prefer not to split it up at all, but obviously there is the issue of people not being able to edit them. Thanks AlbinoMonkey (Talk) 04:43, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not simply split'em apart alphabetically? --maru   (talk)  contribs 01:46, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lists? 

message: I have this question too regarding a page I've started, which due to the great and overwhelming contribution of others is becoming large already and will become larger still, the List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States. The list is much more informative than a simple list of names would be, it contains the information people are interested in when trying to find out about a particular clerk, who they clerked for before the SC, their law school, and years of each. However even with the template reducing the size of formatting elements a bit, the article is already large and will grow. According to Wikipedia:What is a featured list?, desireable attributes of a list include comprehensiveness, but making this list comprehensive will make it quite large. Currently there may be up to 37 names added a year. Although many current and former clerks do not have seperate pages now, I believe that will change as the list matures. These represent the top-tier of legal minds and many go on to become SC Justices, Federal Judges, and influential legal scholars or government attorneys. Feel free to leave thoughts and ideas here or on my Talk page. Phil 05:03, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not simply split'em apart alphabetically? --maru   (talk)  contribs 01:46, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: List of SCOTUS clerks

message: In the computer world generally a consensus seem to have been just about reached that kb means kilobit and kB means kilobyte. The small k is universally used for kilo, and forms part of official recommendations.
But throughout Wikipedia there is total confusion, and I believe some of the statistics use kb when they mean kB. Here people keep using KB when it should be kB.  It seems a good place for me to bring the point up. Mention of 30MB pages has got me totally confused!  --Lindosland 15:28, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, these should all be in kibibytes (KiB).  ;-)  See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Binary_prefixes.  This is certainly a place "where the precise byte capacities are important to description". — Omegatron 15:14, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kilobyte = kB and kilobit = kb confusion 

message: While working on noise I came across a fundamental problem. Some wanted to turn it into a 'disambiguation page' because they perceived noise to mean many things. But doing this took away all the well thought out common structure of the article, leaving a collection of fragments that you would't go to unless you knew exactly what you were looking for. Furthermore, the germans wanted two pages because of problems over the fact that they use two words for noise. And then there was the problem that 'environmental noise' is a form of 'acoustic noise', which 'radio noise' is too, but it isn't if you are looking at the electronics! There's a complex hierarchy, based on two meanings (random and /or unwanted) and its futile to try to explain this on every page. 
I put the original page back, calling it a 'root page' and linked to specialist pages for all the detail. They each have a link taking you back to the root page. It taught me that 'disambiguation' is best kept for truly different multiple meanings, not for branching out. Is there a case for promoting the 'root page' concept here? --Lindosland 15:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A 'Root page' suggestion 

message: The justification for this division was originally technical, but now it seems to be a policy without a guiding principle, and a bit arbitrary.  Why are some 70kb+ articles (Hugo Chavez, History of the Jews in Poland, etc.) able to make FA status, but others are not?  Why should World War II be reduced to 30-50kb, when it already is in summary style, but still obviously covers complex history? I see these questions have been asked before, but I can't find any defenders of the present policy on the page.  I will make a couple of edits here, but think we should re-evaluate this. --Goodoldpolonius2 04:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is all about reading time and making Wikipedia most useful to the largest number of people. Providing summaries and linking to more detailed treatments is the way to do that. This is all covered in far more detail on the Summary style page. --mav 03:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

text: The persons providing the justification for limits on article size are predominantly "techies" for whom the writing part is a chore compared to the joy of formatting pages, blocking miscreants and otherwise engaging in the plumbing aspects of html page production.  These are the folks who theorize that readers will get bored with articles that are longer than x kb (notice how the limits are in kb and not words - very instructive) often because of their own inadequacies in that department.  What is lost in this discussion is that some articles are well written and can hold the readers' interest far longer than much of the mediocre prose found in other entries.  One look at the Harry Potter books belies the belief that people will not read long stories.  What I often see happen is many editors in obescience to the size limits create daughter articles that end up on AfD.  Once the daughter article is deleted, the text in the main article rises to compensate.  Then you find yourself back on the same merry-go-round.  Of all the rules on Wikipedia this one is the most counter-productive.  Its unsoken assumption is that people writing cannot do so in a literate manner.  That assumption is simply wrong.  Jtmichcock 14:44, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Reading time is still a very important part of readability of an article but, as you state, good writing can help mitigate for that (but only to a point ; wiki is not paper, but Wikipedia is not Wikibooks either). Also, some topics simply require more space than others. Thus the sliding scale used at Wikipedia:Summary style along with the mention of readable prose and approximate word count. Encyclopedia articles cannot grow to be book length. So some soft limits and stylistic guidelines are needed. The beauty of hyperlinks is that we can have summaries that lead to more in-depth treatments. Thus we can serve those who need varying levels of detail. --mav 15:21, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Justification? 

message: Is splitting a long article such as the History of PR China in subarticles (History of the People's Republic of China (1976-1989), scroll down for the "previous" and "continued" links) considered to be good style? --Abdull 18:24, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Only if History of the People's Republic of China sucks as a result. Yep, looks like that happened. That article should be in the 30-50KB  of prose range but it is little more than a stub. Nothing wrong with breaking out detail into daughter articles, but good-sized and functional summaries must be left. --mav 15:11, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles split over many pages 

message: Large pages are a nightmare when you're trying to access Wikipedia from a mobile phone or PDA. I think we need to be firmer about the 32K limit for this reason. Jammycakes 20:12, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Enfored limitations are a nightmare when you're trying to access a full, comprehensive Wikipedia from any regular device. I think we need to be firmer about expanding stubs for this reason. --maru   (talk)  contribs 02:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Note of sarcasm there, judging from your edit summary? I don't think mobile users are too much of a minority to be honest. And 32K is quite a generous limit too (4000+ words) so by the time you get to that size it does begin to get a bit large from a readability perspective too. OTOH what I did find to be more of a problem was trying to access articles of any size with the default stylesheet, though you can of course change that in your preferences. Jammycakes 13:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mobile devices 

message: What are the minimum and maximum limits on section size? I don't find anything at Help:Section. Perhaps there was more information at Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout#Structure_of_the_article? Hyacinth 19:09, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Section size

message: I've run into this problem (the edit box is not filled with the entire article, but I get the buttons and everything looks normal) several times in recent days, on 2 different computers and not necessarily with particularly large articles either. Both are running Firefox 1.5.0.4 (the latest version). What gives? Has a bug crept into Mediawiki or into Firefox? Some examples:    --kingboyk 13:44, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm surprised there was no followups to this, as it appears to be a problem with Firefox and the Google toolbar, hardly an unusual combination one would have thought. Anyway, here's the Bugzilla case:  --kingboyk 12:09, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem seems to be fixed, at least according to bugzilla. someone might change the text to reflect that. i don't do it myself, because i don't know if i should delete the sentence altogether or change it to say "some versions..."-- ExpImptalkcon 23:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles being split over last couple of days 

message: I've updated the intro slightly, for slight readability and clarity. I notice though that although we discuss how to split long articles, and how not to rush it, there isn't a real discussion about them.
Such a discussion should, I feel, cover these issues:
:* Some articles -- not many -- are by nature, sometimes long.
:* If so, do what can be done to keep them short, and pay above average attention to readability. But if it genuinely would not make sense as two articles, leave it as one.
:* Readers of such articles will probably expect them to be long. If they are easy to read, and well structured, and justify the length, then that helps.
:* Excessively long articles are not encouraged and should not be the rule.
:* Readability is the key criterion.
Realistically there are many articles over 30-50 kb, and will continue to be. So a section that at least covers when and why and when not, would be valuable. It's not long so I added it.
FT2 (Talk | email) 17:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Long article handling 

message: I agree the length of an article is important.  But how is the length measured?  If the article should not be more than 32kB, how do I know when it has reached that level?  This is frustrating for me because everyone else seems to know and I have looked seemingly everywhere for this information and cannot find it.  I would like to be able to look at an article or section and say "That text is only 17kB, so we can add more!"  or something.  I have no clue.  Can someone help me? RonCram 13:05, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A remedial question 

message: I've just seen a warning on a page that was only 30KB.  32KB is already too soon to be warning people, in my view. Are we reducing the recommended length still further? SlimVirgin (talk) 23:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 30KB

message: If you are sick of seeing long bulky articles, would like to help break up some long articles, and would like to join the break up committee please leave your name below.  Thanks and comments are welcome: --Sadi Carnot 09:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Breakup committee members

message: I would also like to recommend implementing the use of “long-page warning” banners unique to each category of long page, e.g. 32-63kb (extra-long), 64-96kb (super-long), etc.  Presently, the only warning pages have is the following, which pops up for pages longer than 32kb when users click on the edit button:
Note: This page is XY kilobytes long. It may be appropriate to split this article into smaller, more specific articles. See Wikipedia:Article size.
Now, for articles in the range of 32-64kb, I will admit, there is room for some gray area as to article.  For articles more than 64kb, i.e. twice the recommended maximal size, however, I would recommend that we code a page such that “readers” (not editors), in a quick and easy manner, can cast their vote as to whether or not they feel an article is to long, such as:
Note: This page over 64 kilobytes long. It is strongly recommended that this article be split into smaller, more specific articles. See Wikipedia:Article size. If you feel that this article is too long click YES if not click NO.
In this manner we can collect data as to which articles readers feel are getting too long.  Editors, conversely, usually have a thorough knowledge of the topics they edit and may never potentially feel that an article is too long.  Please comment.  Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 00:42, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 64kb extra-long article proposals

message: I've re-archived this talk page because 1) the old page included a dead/inaccurate link to the first talk page archive, and 2) part of the talk page archive was moved to another article page, which is at MfD.  Also, an unsigned quote had been added to the top of the page, which is now archived.  Here is the talk page version before I archived.  Sandy (Talk) 10:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Archiving

message: The article reads that by June 2006, Firefox is the only commonly used browser which cannot handle the bug with pages with more than 32KB of content. At the moment, I don't seem to have such a problem with Firefox (version 2.0) so I think that statement can be removed. Please reconfirm me about this prior to editing the text. huji—TALK 14:26, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  According to the fact that the article itself ruled out the mid-2006 bug with Firefox with Google Toolbar, I removed the statement in question. huji—TALK 18:28, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  32KB page size limitations