Forum:CT:Length of Articles

Forums > Consensus track archive > CT:Length of Articles

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The result of the debate was lengthy articles should not be split. Green Tentacle (Talk) 14:23, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Having read or skimmed through a number of our major topic articles—particularly Luke Skywalker, Jacen Solo and Han Solo—I have become concerned about the length of the pages. Now, don't be mistaken. I am not advocating trimming articles to 30 or 40KB. By the nature of the amount of the topic's usage in Star Wars media, the article has to incorporate more information in order to keep up to date with new sources.

For example, let's take the Luke Skywalker article. As the character is still actively used in Star Wars media (ie. the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force novel series and the upcoming Outcast and Blood Oath novels), the article will have to be continously expanded. Already its 219,838 kilobytes and the article is so long that it makes it harder to read and to edit especially for those with small computer browsers. Now, I'm not an active user but I am around enough to have reason to voice these concerns.

Should we make such long articles easier to read by making the current article a disambiguation page linked to sub-articles which deals with different times in their lives or with different aspects of the topic, ie. separate sections on the topic's role in the Galactic Civil War, the New Jedi Order and the Legacy eras. Now this idea may have some flaws including being harder to maintain due to the widespread nature of the topic and being more susceptible to vandalism. Please give me your thoughts. Andykatib 13:22, 12th January 2009 (UTC)

  • Some previous thoughts on this were discussed at Forum:CT Archive/Splitting long articles. Still, I think it's been long enough to revisit this discussion, especially with us getting even longer articles in that time. jSarek 23:12, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
    • FYI, Luke Skywalker's article is a fraction of what it should be. A small project dedicated to making Wormie his proper article length has already put up 310 KB of content with estimates of actual size ranging from 600 to 800 KB on completion. Another major character article, Lando Calrissian is also a bit over 300, while Corran Horn is largest, coming in somewhere in the 330s. These increasingly large articles aren't going away—in fact, there will be only of them, especially if WP:NEGTC has its way. The strict requirements of FA demand that articles on big topics be this size, and a hallmark of Wookieepedia has long been that we don't restrict article sizes, so as to provide a large sum of information for the users. Don't even get me started on how long articles such as Expanded Universe, Jedi Order, and Lightsaber should be.

That said, I see several inherent challenges and questions with any ideas of splitting up articles that would need to be addressed were any serious proposal to be considered.

  1. How long must an article be before splitting it?
  2. Where to make the splits? Especially for character articles, splitting the biography is an undesirable choice. Furthermore, there should be some sort of guideline for splitting an article, should that action be allowed,
  3. How would one feature an article in multiple pieces? I don't want to see Palpatine, prior to becoming Emperor featured separate from the rest of 'ol Palps.
  4. How would referencing work? The <ref> tags that we use AFAIK only carry to one page. It would be an utter pain to have to re-reference everything multiple times, especially on articles like Wraith Squadron, which has at least three works that are referenced more than one hundred times each.

Until there's a good answer for these, I'm opposed to the idea of splitting articles. Atarumaster88 Jedi Order (Talk page) 23:29, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

  • I'm just opposed to it, period. Sheesh, what a mess that would be. Graestan(Talk) 23:38, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Thankyou very much for your input to this discussion, I respect your views. Now I myself have second thoughts about this move. For starters, I don't want this to become a heated debate or referendum. This is my response to Atarumaster's questions:

  1. At least 300 KB before a partition.
  2. Separate where a major development occurs or where a new era or media series begins. Eg. separate Luke Skywalker's role in the early years of the Rebellion from the Jedi Praxeum years, the Yuuzhan Vong War years and the Legacy of the Force years.
  3. An article will only be featured if all sections are up to standard. Even the presence of one non-FA section will disqualify the whole article.
  4. Anything is possible if we put in the effort—I live in New Zealand though I come from Malaysia. In NZ, they elected a new prime minister John Key after eight years of Labour rule. Meanwhile, in Malaysia, the opposition parties won such a victory that the ruling govt party lost its two-thirds majority after more than 51 years. The govt coalition is still in control but at a much reduced strength.

Here is my response to your questions. Andykatib 23:52, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

  • Per Graestan. "Mess" doesn't even begin to describe what would happen. I can think of words that can describe it, but they'd be in violation of the civility policy. I can think of no legitimate reason to split articles. The only reason anyone would want them split is to cater to lazy readers, and I don't see why we should ever do that. One subject, one article. It just works. -- Darth Culator (Talk) 00:01, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
    • Having read your input, I must apologise for bringing up this topic in the first place. I now see how selfish and time-consuming my suggestion force. Should this forum be closed then. I am not taking the easy way out, I have come to the realization that this is a logistical nightmare. Andykatib 00:05, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
    • Culator, to be fair, it's not so much about lazy readers as slow load times on many computers, especially the older comps that public facilities tend to be stuck with. jSarek 00:45, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
      • I agree, but at the same time, while I want our content to be accessible to all, it's worth mentioning that we don't base our layouts by maximizing appearances for IE 5 in 800x600 resolution. Atarumaster88 Jedi Order (Talk page) 00:51, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Put this issue to a vote. If it passes, start a WookieProject to do it. If not, everybody forgets about it.GAdmiralPawn 05:03, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Voting

In favor of splitting large articles

Opposed

  1. It would be more trouble than any possible benefit would be worth. Graestan(Talk) 05:14, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  2. Please no. Toprawa and Ralltiir 05:14, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  3. Coming from a person in the Stone Age. No. NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 05:21, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  4. For the love of Kyle, please no. Atarumaster88 Jedi Order (Talk page) 06:29, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  5. Per Graestan, plus it would require extensive policing that people wouldn't want to do anyways. And it'd just end up a mess. JorrelWiki-shrinkableFraajic 06:33, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  6. I have realized the errors of my way, I apologise to all of you. Andykatib 09:45, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  7. While I can see the benefits, it would be way too much work and would make things look messy. DarthDragon164BlackdragonDragon's Lair 20:24, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  8. Having contributed here for the first year using dial-up, I understand where this idea came from. And I sympathize with those with slow connections. But this just is not a practical idea. - JMAS Hey, it's me! 20:44, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  9. Per Grae. Grand Moff Tranner Imperial Department of Military Research (Comlink) 20:46, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  10. While there are many wonderful online professionally-written encyclopedias that do this, I am going to have to say 'no.' Other than possible accessibility "benefits," it creates other accessibility disadvantages. — Fiolli {Alpheridies University ComNet} 22:54, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  11. Thefourdotelipsis 23:18, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  12. I think something should be done to make longer pages easier to read, but this isn't the way to go. Maybe text-only versions? SoresuMakashi(Everything I tell you is a lie) 01:11, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
  13. If it caused a significant amount of people not to be able to view it at all, it would be something worth looking into. But causing a small amount of people a bit of time when editing long pages (and probably not even that much more than they'd be used to, simply to view those pages), the troubles far outweigh the benefits. Plus I'm just opposed to splitting articles for organizational reasons anyway. Wildyoda 01:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
  14. Call me a computers-made-after-1998 elitist. -- Darth Culator (Talk) 02:13, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
  15. @ Culator: you're a computers-made-after-1998 elitist! And I guess this makes me one too. DolukTalk 03:52, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
  16. Cavalier OneFarStar(Squadron channel) 09:21, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
  17. Per Culator. Green Tentacle (Talk) 19:13, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
  18. Wookieepedia IS NOT Paper. -- Riffsyphon1024 04:12, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
    • No, but it IS bandwidth and bytes, both of which have their own limitations. jSarek 12:48, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
  19. Until a pleasing solution is presented and this becomes a serious problem for a good portion of our members. —Xwing328(Talk) 02:22, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
  20. IFYLOFD (Come with me if you want to live.) 03:37, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
  21. I think the disadvantages outweigh any benefits, and we needn't cater to the lowest denominator of internet access anyway, or we make the site less useful for the 90% of people who have decent connections. Havac 22:55, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
  22. This is problem can be fixed easily by other means. For example, we could pressure Wikia into providing the Header Tabs extension. --Michaeldsuarez Infinite Empire (Activate Holocron) 18:57, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments

  • Put to vote per user request. Graestan(Talk) 05:14, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  • One possible way to do this is to have a "main article" that covers the entire person, with smaller sub-articles detailing various parts of their life. For example, Wikipedia's Barack Obama article is shorter than 23 of our articles, but they have sub articles for, say, his time in the Illinois Senate. Attach a carefully constructed template, and you've got yourself an easier navigation situation than our giant Luke article. -LtNOWIS 04:02, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
    • Yes, that I would agree with. Keep the main article as a summary of his exploits, but have subs going into more detail. It would also help fix uncomprehensiveness problems with our longer articles, since users seem to be less afraid to go into detail on shorter pages. As our articles get longer and longer, we're going to eventually do something about it. But until then, tell them to get Firefox. I use IE sometimes, and long pages (Palpatine, QOTD etc.) are a pain to edit and even read. Firefox does it with hardly any lag. Perhaps that is the best solution for now. SoresuMakashi(Everything I tell you is a lie) 04:28, 17 January 2009 (UTC)