How Long Would It Take to Read Every Wikipedia Article
 | This page in a nutshell: Articles should be neither too big nor likewise small. |
This folio contains an overview of the key problems apropos article size. At that place are iii related measures of an article's size:
- Readable prose size: the amount of viewable text in the main sections of the article, not including tables, lists, or footer sections
- Wiki markup size: the corporeality of text in the full page edit window, as shown in the character count of the edit history page
- Browser page size: the total size of the page as loaded by a web browser
Usability considerations apropos the size of an article accept been adamant to include:
- Reader bug, such as attention span, readability, organization, data saturation, etc.
- Editor issues, such as talkpage tension, arguments over trivial contributions, debates on how to split up up a large article, etc.
- Contribution issues, such as articles ceasing to grow significantly in one case they reach a certain size, fifty-fifty though there is still information on the topic that could be contributed
- Other technical problems, such as limitations of mobile browsers.
When an article is too large, consider breaking it into smaller articles, spinning part of it out into a new article, or merging part of information technology into some other existing commodity. When an commodity is too small, it may be merged with 1 or more other existing articles. Such editorial decisions crave consensus. Guidelines on the size of articles, and detailed solutions, are provided below. The licensing policy mandates that whenever whatever content is copied from one article to another new or existing commodity, an edit summary containing the required copy attribution must be used.
Readability issues
Each Wikipedia article is in a process of evolution and is likely to continue growing. Other editors will add to articles when you are done with them. Wikipedia has practically unlimited storage space; however, long articles may exist more difficult to read, navigate, and comprehend.
An commodity longer than one or 2 pages when printed should be divided into sections to ease navigation (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style and Wikipedia:Layout for guidance). For most long manufactures, segmentation into sections is natural anyway. Readers of the mobile version of Wikipedia tin be helped by ensuring that sections are non so long or so numerous every bit to impede navigation.
A page of almost 10,000 words takes betwixt xxx and 40 minutes to read at average speed, which is close to the attention span of most readers.[1] Understanding of standard texts at boilerplate reading speed is effectually 65%. At 10,000 words (50 kB and higher up) information technology may be beneficial to move some sections to other manufactures and replace them with summaries per Wikipedia:Summary style – see Size guideline (rule of thumb) below.
Articles that cover especially technical subjects should, in general, be shorter than articles on less technical subjects. While proficient readers of such articles may accept complication and length provided the article is well written, the general reader requires clarity and conciseness. There are times when a long or very long article is unavoidable, though its complication should be minimized. Readability is a key criterion.
Readable prose
Readable prose is the main trunk of the text, excluding textile such as footnotes and reference sections ("come across also", "external links", bibliography, etc.), diagrams and images, tables and lists, Wikilinks and external URLs, and formatting and marking-upwardly.
XTools shows prose data, including number of characters (under "Prose" in the "Full general statistics" section). It may be used for an article currently being looked at by selecting the View History tab for the folio, then Page Statistics from the line near the top headed External Tools. The prosesize gadget is likewise helpful for estimating readable prose size.
Lists, tables and summaries
Lists, tables, and other material that is already in summary form may not be appropriate for reducing or summarizing further by the summary mode method. If there is no "natural" way to split or reduce a long list or table, it may exist best to get out it intact, and a decision made to either proceed it embedded in the main article or separate it off into a stand-solitary page. Regardless, a listing or table should be kept equally short equally is viable for its purpose and scope. Too much statistical data is against policy.
Technical problems
Total article size should exist kept reasonably low, particularly for readers using slow internet connections or mobile devices or who have slow computer loading. The text on a 32 kB page takes almost five seconds to load for editing on a dial-up connectedness, with accompanying images taking additional time, then pages significantly larger than this are difficult for older browsers to display. Some large manufactures exist for topics that crave depth and detail, but typically articles of such size are split into two or more smaller articles.
Mobile browsers can be a problem if these devices have lilliputian memory and/or a dull CPU; long pages can take too much time to process, if they can be fully loaded at all. When using slow connections, e.thousand., a desktop computer with an analog modem dial-upwardly or the wireless connection of some mobile devices, long manufactures can take as well much time to load. For notes on unrelated problems that various web browsers have with MediaWiki sites, and for a listing of culling browsers y'all tin can download, see Wikipedia:Browser notes.
The maximum limit for Wikipedia is set by the MediaWiki software default article size limit, 2048 kibibytes (specifically, 2,097,152 bytes).
Exceeding the post-expand limit will upshot in templates in the commodity appearing incorrectly.
Splitting an commodity
Very big manufactures should be split into logically separate articles. Long stand-alone list manufactures are carve up into subsequent pages alphabetically, numerically, or subtopically. Also consider splitting and transcluding the split parts (for example with Template:Extract).
When you split a department from a long article into an contained commodity, you should leave a short summary of the material that is removed along with a pointer to the independent article. In the independent commodity, put the {{SubArticle}} or {{Summary in}} tag on the talk page to create a imprint that refers back to the chief article.
To conform with Wikipedia's licensing requirements, which permit modification and reuse but require attribution of the content contributors, the new page should be created with an edit summary attesting proper copy attribution, such as "carve up content from [[article name]]". (Do non omit this stride or omit the page name.) A note should also be made in the edit summary of the source article, "split content to [[commodity proper name]]", to protect against the article later on being deleted and the history of the new page eradicated. The {{Copied}} template can likewise be placed on the talk page of both articles.
No need for haste
As browsers have improved, at that place is no demand for haste in splitting an article when information technology starts getting large. Sometimes an article but needs to be big to give the subject adequate coverage. If uncertain, or with loftier profile articles, start a discussion on the talkpage regarding the overall topic structure. Determine whether the topic should exist treated every bit several shorter articles and, if so, how all-time to organize them. If the discussion makes no progress consider adding one of the split tags in guild to become feedback from other editors.
Breaking out trivial or controversial sections
A relatively trivial topic may be appropriate in the context of the larger commodity, simply inappropriate as the topic of an entire article in itself. In near cases, it is a violation of the neutral point of view to specifically break out a controversial section without leaving an adequate summary. It too violates the neutral signal of view policy to create a new article specifically to comprise information that consensus has rejected from the main commodity. Consider other organizational principles for splitting the article, and be sure that both the title and content of the cleaved-out article reverberate a neutral point of view.
Breaking out an unwanted section
If a section of an article is a magnet for unhelpful contributions (such equally the "external links" section or trivia sections), be aware that while moving information technology to another article may help to clean up the primary article, it creates a new article that consists entirely of a section for unwanted contributions. If an commodity includes large amounts of material not suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia, it is better to remove that content than to create a new article for information technology.
Size guideline
Some useful rules of thumb for splitting articles, and combining pocket-size pages:
| Readable prose size | What to do |
|---|---|
| > 100 kB | Almost certainly should exist divided |
| > lx kB | Probably should exist divided (although the scope of a topic tin sometimes justify the added reading material) |
| > 50 kB | May demand to be divided (likelihood goes up with size) |
| < 40 kB | Length alone does non justify division |
| < 1 kB | If an article or listing has remained this size for over a couple of months, consider combining it with a related page. Alternatively, the article could be expanded; come across Wikipedia:Stub. |
Please note: These rules of thumb apply just to readable prose and not to wiki markup size (as found on history lists or other means), and each kB can be equated to 1,000 characters. Number of characters in an commodity can be establish with the assist of Shubinator's DYK tool; or Prosesize.
The rules of thumb employ somewhat less to disambiguation pages and naturally exercise not utilize to redirects. They also employ less strongly to listing articles, especially if splitting them would crave breaking up a sortable tabular array.
Content removal
Removing appropriate content, especially summary style, and/or reliably sourced and non-tangential information, from an article simply to reduce length without moving that content to an appropriate article either by merging or splitting, may require a consensus word on the talkpage; encounter Wikipedia:Content removal#Reasons for acceptable reasons.
Markup size
Markup or markup linguistic communication is the lawmaking used to organise a document and make it readable. Wiki markup is the codes used on Wikipedia. Markup size includes readable prose, the wiki codes, and any media used in the commodity, such as images or sound clips. Markup size will always be greater than or equal to the readable prose size on which the above size guideline is based.
You can find the size of the markup of a page in bytes from its page history (near the bottom). Too the search box entry: intitle:Article title will show both number of words in the article and the size of the article in kilobytes. In well-nigh cases these are non reliable indications on their ain of whether an article should exist split.
The largest articles by markup size are listed at Special:Longpages.
Note that the power to edit a section rather than the entire page decreases wait time, removing some of the many, oversized-page problems for editors; yet, readers with irksome modems will still have to await for the unabridged folio to load.
You tin can fix your preferences (past changing the "Threshold for stub link formatting" under the "Advent" card) to brand links to pages smaller than a certain size appear in a different colour. "Size" in this context ways the size of the source text seen in the edit box.
If you have problems editing a long commodity
If you have encountered an commodity that is so long you can't edit information technology, or if your browser chops off the end of the article when y'all try to edit it, there are a few ways you can solve the problem.
The best comeback is to simply upgrade to a more modern spider web browser, if possible. There are too many other benefits to upgrading to their latest version, such equally amend security, amend displaying of content written to more than modern HTML, and bug fixes. Many manufactures on Wikipedia may be longer than 32 kB on a permanent footing, then older browsers will continue to take occasional problems with long articles.
Oftentimes yous tin can edit the article 1 department at a time by using the "Edit" links you see next to each header in the commodity. This should work equally long as none of the sections are longer than 32 kB, which they really shouldn't exist. You lot can edit text before the offset section by editing the first department, so changing the §ion=ane office of the URL to §ion=0. (See T2156 and two JavaScript workarounds: 1, two.) Y'all can insert a new department either by using the "New section" link (if at that place is one) in the "Views" section, or by editing an existing section and explicitly adding a 2d header line inside it. Run across also Section editing and Editing earlier the first section.
If you lot find a department also long to edit correctly and safely, or accept a trouble otherwise relevant, yous can post a request for assistance on the aid desk. Follow the "New section" link, which will allow yous to mail a new annotate without editing any existing text.
Run across also
- Special:LongPages
- Wikipedia:Affluence and back-up
- Wikipedia:Commodity series
- Wikipedia:Content removal
- Wikipedia:Database reports/Long pages
- Wikipedia:Database reports/Long stubs
- Wikipedia:Database reports/Talk pages by size
- Wikipedia:Featured articles/Past length
- Wikipedia:Out of scope
- Wikipedia:Template limits
- Wikipedia:Too much detail
- Wikipedia:Writing amend articles#Stay on topic
References
- ^ John V. Chelsom; Andrew C. Payne; Lawrence R. P. Reavill (2005). Management for Engineers, Scientists and Technologists (2nd ed.). Chichester, W Sussex, England; Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. p. 231. ISBN9780470021279. OCLC 59822571. Retrieved 20 February 2013.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_size
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