Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Extra-Long Article Committee

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ELAC site map
Reports Page for Wikipedians to report long articles.
Incidents Page for Wikipedians to report long article related incidents, reversions, conflicts, etc.
Projects Page for committee members to discuss short-term project goals.
Conduct Page for committee members to discuss conduct guidelines.
Reverts Page for committee members to discuss revert guidelines.
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Contents

[edit] Archives

[edit] Origin of project

This project essentially developed from various talk page discussions, such as here, here, here, and at the Village pump, and particularly at Wikipedia talk:Article size a discussion now archived above. --Sadi Carnot 12:59, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ELAC userbox

Once you begin to participate in the project please feel free to paste an ELAC userbox to your user page using the following code:

{{User WikiProject Extra-Long Article Committee}}

[edit] ELAC issues list

Aside from those listed on the ELAC report list, here are few issues or concerns users have reported to us:

[edit] GABA A receptor

Note: I wish we could prove it, but this one has clear copyvio problems. Patstuarttalk|edits 17:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
We'll have to look into this; it looks like last month this article was only two page long (click here) Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 17:49, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
It looks like User:Dr inkfish did a 150kb paste (45pgs) on Nov 29. There was also a major deletion by User:58.78.199.193 on Nov 12. I suggest we revert back to Nov 09 (the original three page version). Any objections? Including myself, User:Patstuart, and the two people on Talk:GABA A receptor, there seems to be a consensus to revert the paste. I will tag that article for now and post a note to User:Dr inkfish. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 19:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

At exactly what point does it go from "We strongly recommend you split up the page" to "You must do it now or we will do it for you"? -Amarkov blahedits 15:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

At this point, being that this project is young, and from the consensus of the archived and related talk pages, there is not yet a final uniformly agreed upon decision in regards to these few and unlikely types of junctures. If a page of editors strongly resists committee attempts to improve the size of the article, I would suggest that these articles go into a special ELAC category list in which further discussion would entail as to what would be the best direction to follow. This will have to be a learn-as-we-go process. If a committee team faces severe resistance, it would be a good idea to retreat on that particular article, for a time, until a better plan or more consensus is formulated. --Sadi Carnot 15:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
One possibility would be to start with the longest item (a list) and break it up. Then the next and so on. This group would gain experience, face smaller resistance with lists, and by the time you got to non-lists, the argument that "this is the longest on wikipedia" would carry considerable weight. 4.250.201.99 22:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, this is a good idea. Presently, there are about 700 articles over 85kb, 80 over 150kb, and 17 over 200kb with the longest being List of states in the Holy Roman Empire at 256kb. I would suggest that as a present reasonable goal, we work to get all lists below 150kb and all articles below 85kb. This should keep us busy for a while. Any comments? --Sadi Carnot 23:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I would not be happy with arbitrary sizes, just as I am not happy with the arbitrary warning than intrudes on everything longer than a stub, and I came here in the hope of a better approach. The appropriate size of a list depends on the nature, and the subject. Is a long list divided alphabetically when people will be reasonably sure of recognizing the right name a problem? They load very fast. The size in List of states is because of the table(s), and I would not want to disrupt it unless we had something better to propose. I certainly would not even consider trying to enforce anything where the consensus of the current editors disagreed.DGG 05:24, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Any comments on this Top 17 project? --Sadi Carnot 15:53, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
A list namespace would be cool. Oh, you meant related comments? -Amarkov blahedits 23:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean "list namespace", like a page showing the list of all the lists at Wikipedia? --Sadi Carnot 00:21, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Category namespace = Category:blah, template namespace = Templah:blah, list namespace = List:blah. Or more succinctly, WP:NAMESPACE. --TheParanoidOne 06:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Difference in approaches

In some articles, the contributors seem to want to cut them down. My example is George W. Bush, which seems to want to prune itself. In other articles, the people seem hostile. So should I add Bush to the list? -Patstuarttalk|edits 20:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is a good I idea, add it to the list; however, we will need more team members before we tackle the Bush article. As I recall, it is the most edited (or viewed?) article in Wikipedia. In general, I would suggest that any article in the Top 700 longest article group (aside from lists) is fair game for committee action. I would suggest that the ELAC focus should be on cutting rather than pruning. Once an article is cut up, people can separate per topic of interest and prune away on those separated side articles. The “pruning effect”, however, usually subsides once article division is achieved, where afterwards the “growth effect” takes over again. --Sadi Carnot 20:37, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
This group's efforts will be seen as a threat if it deletes content; therefor I recommend that regardless of what may be eventually deleted, this group solely concern itself with breaking up big articles into smaller articles and leave deleting to efforts outside this group's charter. 4.250.201.99 22:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC) (WAS 4.250)
Yes, of course. I’ve done my fair share of page breakups, and we always make it very clear that nothing gets deleted during the process, i.e. except for trivial duplicate words or sentences, little grammar details, continuity flow necessities, etc. The main problem is not with the potential for losing material, but rather with the loss of the bonding “effect” of having everything one page and similarly all the editors on one talk page. Some editors, for example, may have just spent the last three months building up an article with material and references, etc., and by no stretch of anyone’s imagination do they want do see their special article broken up into pieces. The real issue is getting all of the regular editors to come to an agreement or understanding that this is just one article out of 1.5 million plus total article and that it needs to be broken up for the sake of the reader and for the sake of having a uniform encyclopedia. --Sadi Carnot 23:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The "long article vote" template.

I don't see how this is going to work. The only way I can see to implement it, barring changes in thesoftware, would be to link up a pageview counter. Unfortunately, all pageview counters I can find are copyrighted, and the only ones that have any sort of license for use without payment require putting up ads for the site as part of the agreement. I tried to see if I could get anything by tweaking around with the HTML code for forms, but I'm not sure how much of it Mediawiki handles, and I'd need developer access at the least to set it up properly, anyway. I've done a bit with JavaScript, but I don't think it has enough functionality for full GUI stuff, and there's still the problem of actually storing the results, which I can't do. So someone's going to have to think up another plan, unless I missed something. -Amarkov blahedits 23:12, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Amarkov, I really don’t know how to do it myself either, but I sure where there’s a will there’s a way. With almost 3 million registered Wikipedians, I’m sure that someone around here knows how to do it. My plan is to find someone who knows how; although it may talk some time. I’ve left a message on Jimbo’s talk page; hopefully he’ll have some input for us. In the mean time, do you know of anyone might be able to do the coding, i.e. possibly something like they do at Wikipedia:Statistics? --Sadi Carnot 23:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Hm, Wikipedia:Statistics didn't occur to me. Regardless, I still think there are going to be technical impossibilities. If I actually had a working, public domain pageview counter to start with, I could probably get it to work, but I don't, and I'm not sure there are any. -Amarkov blahedits 23:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
That's a good idea, if we could set up a visitor statistics counter for both the YES and NO pages of each long article we decide to poll, then we could have a crude vote counting method. We'll have to dig around for a counting program. Can you do it with something like this? --Sadi Carnot 23:49, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Not that I can see. That gives the graph of overall activity, which, although interesting, isn't what we want. Just a public domain hit counter, that shows like "XXXX views", is the only way I can see to do anything easily. -Amarkov blahedits 23:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

We'll have to work on this week-by-week. One thing to note, is that we have to code the vote counter so that the random overzealous user isn't aloud to submit multi-votes, which thus skews the poll. I've set up many online voting polls, such as this one, and I've seen this happen where one person will submit 20-30 votes in one sitting. --Sadi Carnot 00:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but page view counting is not feasible, at least at the moment. MediaWiki is capable of counting and displaying the number of page views for a page, but this feature has been disabled for performance reasons. (In other words, we have too much traffic and too little hardware to use it) – Gurch 15:10, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:MfD

I urge sensible people to prod this page. Best, Ghirla -трёп- 07:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

What the heck are you talking about? -Amarkov blahedits 15:11, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I can only say this is the most logical project that came to be lately. The articles on WP are too long and for one to read a 50kb+ article it is impossible to remember more than 10% of what you read in one sitting let alone skipping parts that are just pure prose and no pictures. We need this, I don't know how it will be percieved but anyway, it will have its use in the future. Lincher 00:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you Lincher, I agree with you. It looks like Ghirlandajo won't be contributing to the project? He has a bunch of 180kb+ archived talk pages; maybe he likes long articles as well? --Sadi Carnot 05:21, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I see this page is an exercise in trolling. Please stop chit-chatting and start writing articles. That's what we are all here for. --Ghirla -трёп- 09:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Again, what are you talking about? Patstuarttalk|edits 15:17, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Ghirla, I agree with you in underlying principle. Yes, we are all here to write articles. People join WP, read a few loose guidelines, and then off they go. One useful guideline is “please don’t vandalize” pages, yet people do it anyways. Another useful guideline is “please don’t write articles over 32kb”, yet people do it anyways. Should we, as based on your suggestions, also go over to the Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol and tell them to stop what they’re doing and to start writing articles.

It is an inarguable fact of writing online that at a certain point in length an article will turn from good to bad. The question is: when to divide so to keep articles from going into the bad range? Optimal dividing occurs whenever articles are divided such that they never go into the bad range. One goal of this project is to facilitate uniform optimal dividing in Wikipedia. --Sadi Carnot 15:07, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

This reminds me of one person who decided to complain about my AfD nominations, telling me to go write articles. Who got the idea that we're all here to write articles? I've written some minor contributions to articles, but by far, I prefer upkeep to writing content. -Amarkov blahedits 15:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
The sole purpose of WP's creation is to write decent articles so that people that don't have blingbling can afford knowledge at a low cost. If in anyway you are doing something for the betterment of articles then it is already of some use encyclopedically, OTOH, if your wole purpose is not to write or help in getting articles better then, please explain to me why are you still here (this is not to offend you in anyway). Lincher 15:28, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
My haughty opinion is that, when you come to read an encyclopedia article, and the thing is 30 pages long, that's too much. An encyclopedia article should be more brief and easy to access. If you want to read a book on the subject, you can go to the library and get one. But encyclopedias state things in more brief terms precisely so that they can be easier to understand. About every article that I've seen that's really long could easily be split off into daughter articles. For some reason, people like to add stuff to the parent article, even when it doesn't belong there. About a month ago, the Iraq article had a brief statement about the current war, and most stuff was in the Iraq war article. But people kept on adding stuff to Iraq; but that's precisely the problem: if I want to read more than a paragraph or two about the war, then I should go to its corresponding article. I've seen this happen often, from Hugo Chavez to Saddam Hussein. Patstuarttalk|edits 18:46, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, Hugo Chávez is a mess, and has been since it was FA, and even worse since it lost its star - that's a POV issue. But, what concerns me here is that I see no recognition of the need to calculate prose size on articles, rather a reliance on overall size, which doesn't account for referencing. The idea is that a reader not have to sit down to read a 20, 30, or 40 page article, as some of the truly out-of-control articles (like Chavez) are, but, a well-referenced article can have 30KB of prose, and still be 60KB when you include references, and the inline citations don't impede readability. Imposing these arbitrary tags - without looking at prose size - will decrease verifiability (citations) and comprehensiveness. And, if you all are going to start tagging 53KB articles with 38KB of prose (such as the one I just removed), then you might as well go ahead and tag all the Featured articles. I see no recognition of prose size versus overall size in any discussions here. (And fixing Chavez will take a lot more than addressing the size.) Sandy (Talk) 07:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Sandy, a common question is: should we let, for example, five or six anchored and seasoned editors on some particular page drown out the appeals of the anon contributor who makes the suggestion “hey, this page is kind of long, could some one fix this?” Editors are usually smart people, and can surely handle reading a 20-50 page article no problem. We have to remember, however, that there are two sides to the Bell curve – some people can’t read that much or that fast, especially with online reading.

And, no we are not going to go around tagging all the FAs. Currently, we are testing things out and feeling the water so to see how this project will function in the future. At present, there are only three articles tagged:

  1. List of Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom, 1991
  2. List of registered political parties in Spain
  3. Psycho (1960 film)

We are currently studying these with aims to develop “new” long page formats among other possible concerns. We picked two extra-long lists and a one shorter article to practice with. Digging into a tensioned, controversial, extra-long, and "locked" article like Hugo Chávez is not a good started project. To note, the Psycho film was submitted to us, we did not seek it out. I have implemented a new tagging method with the inclusion of the WP:ELAC-R notice, so to prevent further tag-revert incidents. We are currently discussing the use of the “new” long article tab method for use in the Psycho article. If it goes well, it could function as a catalyst for other long articles. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 10:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The Wizard of Oz (at least) is also tagged, so your information above is not correct. Psycho is not a long article: Wizard of Oz would be a better place to experiment. It appears that your "committee" has no regard for how much size is taken up by references and other overhead. Of greater concern is the extremely negative and un-Wikilike tone this "committee" has set, with strategies for dealing with reverts, conduct, tag-teaming, etc. WIki is based on consensus, and some articles, by nature, will need to be longer than others. To wit, I removed the Psycho tag with a good justification (and calculation of prose size), and one of the ELAC cabal reinstated the tag with 1) no talk page discussion, and 2) no edit summary. That isn't Wiki-like. The tone set on all of your committee pages and templates is not a good one, and the idea that you plan to revert anyone who disagrees with your limits is misguided. WP:LENGTH explains that 30 - 50 KB of prose is readable, and it doesn't appear that any one on your committee even considers calculating prose before tagging articles. If you start out deceiving people they will feel, well, deceived. I'm been trying to get the article size down on Chávez for a long time (and it wasn't locked when Stuart started there); now I see Pat Stuart's appearance there as contrived, and unWikilike - others will see it also. If you assume it's "dirty business", it will become dirty business, and that is the feel your "committee" already has assumed. Sandy (Talk) 10:54, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
  • This project is not a good idea. Each page has to be as long as necessary to comprehensively explain a subject. So long as it is written in an interesting and factual way, length is immaterial. So long as the lead summarises the content for those with limited attention spans. Giano 16:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] looking at the longest

Looking at the longest, they are are not really that long, but they are large--usually from incorporating tables, which add greatly to the KB count. If this were 3 years ago, I'd suggest table-free versions for slow web browsers. But this is not quite as necessary now, and we should find some way of distinguishing them so they don't show up on our lists if no work is appropriate.DGG 05:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, a lot of the longest articles are lists some of which I think would be less useful if they were split up. For instance I think List of states in the Holy Roman Empire could benefit with being broken up into smaller articles whereas List of Formula One drivers (a featured list) is best left alone. CheekyMonkey 12:31, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
CM, I disagree. I’ve set up and run non-WP lists, such as this 51-page glossary, and what I have found is that after a list or word-glossary goes over 20-30 pages (printed) that it becomes irritating to manipulate and search. Once the main page is broken up, however, e.g. with links to separate pages: A, B, C, etc., that it becomes mentally pleasing again to search, manipulate, and add to. The tensions associated with long lists, to note, do not build up over night. Once you start to become a regular visitor to a list you then tend to notice the length irritation. --Sadi Carnot 15:59, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
DGG, I just finished dividing up the "longest" article in Wikipedia: List of states in the Holy Roman Empire (135 pages); it felt pretty long to me. You might want to compare this version (8 pgs) to this version (135 pgs) to see what I'm talking about. Talk later: --Sadi Carnot 00:45, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
(copied from article talk page)
Well, this is experimental, and, frankly, came out better than I thought it would. I would suggest:
  1. The main page properly has the definitions at the top. (But the table is more readable if circles &c are mentioned before the table.)
  2. That in addition to the A to Z at the left, there be somewhere a complete alphabetic list so people can recognize names.
  3. All the links in the WP will of course need to be redone.
  4. Now that they are on separate pages, there is a need for internal links in the hundreds of cases where the info on one state refers to another, and this has to be distinguished somehow from the links going to the main WP pages for those states. They were needed in the single page also, but not quite as badly.
  5. I understand the rush so we can see if what we are doing will work, but: the comments of the regular editors have made it very clear at least to me that we should absolutely never do it this fast again unless there is true consensus early on from everyone we know to be a regular editor from the page history. In addition, we should notify each individual editor, as in other actions.
    1. (added here) What's more, we have just now necessarily gotten involved with all the discussions about the presentation & possibly the content of the page. DGG 02:10, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Treading carefully

Moved to: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Extra-Long Article Committee/Conduct

[edit] Out of date

A lot of the sources cited on this page seem to be rather out-of-date, dating back to 1997/1998 or even earlier. That may not seem like a long time ago, but in Internet terms that is a geological age away from where we are today. For example "the average user still has a 28.8Kbps modem" is nonsense; we should certainly still cater for 56Kbps dial-up speeds but these statements are placing an unnecessary emphasis on download time. I'm not aware of any more recent studies, but I'd be very surprised if the number one complaint of Web users is still the download time of pages. The download time of files, by all means – programs and videos tens of megabytes in size – but not a page of 50Kb or so. I agree that articles should be kept short, absolutely, for reasons of clarity, readability, structure and the ability of average reader to get through the thing, but let's not place too much emphasis on "technical limitations" with ever-decreasing significance – Gurch 15:06, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Gurch, I researched the internet and put in all of these sources. If you would like to add more updated references to the article that would be great. As for your comment "the average user still has a 28.8Kbps modem” (is nonsense), I find it quite hard to believe that the majority of the English speaking world uses high-speed internet. From what I can remember, the majority of the English speaking world still lives in poverty. I use both dial-up (PeoplePC) as well as high-speed (Yahoo). --Sadi Carnot 15:33, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't suggesting that the majority of people use high-speed internet; I think dial-up connections are still in the majority in many areas, just not the slower speeds. Certainly the majority of the English-speaking world lives in poverty – unfortunately, they don't have an Internet connection at all. Optimizing our articles for them is therefore rather difficult; the best way to go about it would be creating a printed version of Wikipedia, or possibly funding the One Laptop Per Child project. Anyway, all I'm saying is we should really be focusing more on the length of an article than its actual size. A few kilobytes of complex markup to create a relatively small (in terms of size on the page) table or diagram is much easier on the reader than a few kilobytes of text (though probably not easier on the editor!) – Gurch 15:45, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I agree to a certain extent. Some 50-60kb pages, for example, have a super-long list of references attached, but they really aren’t that bad of a read. I suggest that we use the article division focus formula of: 60%-(length):40%-(size) aims, or this approximately. This, meaning that trying to read too long articles is a problem, but also a slow upload speed is also a factor (especially for dial-up users). In other words, we should aim at pleasing a multi-user perspective. --Sadi Carnot 16:08, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Conflation of readability and download time issues

One reason that editors will object to this push for shorter articles is that it attempts to address two quite separate problems, download times and unreadably long articles, with a single solution that is overly simple. If there is a problem with download times, then WP might develop article formats that break single articles over multiple web pages. Otherwise there is a danger that information which should be presented within the same article will be needlessly forced into separate articles. Also, I question the claims about the majority of users downloading with dial-up modems. Anyone have recent evidence on this? Nesbit 16:58, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Here you go: More than 1/2 of Americans still using dial-up (Nov 22, 2006) and Only 25-28% of Americans use broadband (Nov 20, 2006). --Sadi Carnot 18:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. And don't forget that in other countries the proportion using dial-up is even higher. The idea of splitting articles over multiple pages is an interesting one. It's never been tried, as far as I am aware, on Wikipedia before – the standard has always been "one article = one page", and to deal with excessive size by either rewriting them or splitting them into multiple smaller articles, rather than retaining the larger article but splitting it across pages. It's sort of been done for some of the project pages – Wikipedia:Introduction, for example, which is now split into several sections, each a separate page, that can be navigated by a row of links at the top of each section. I'm not convinced this exact method would work well on encyclopediaic articles, but I guess it's something to consider – Gurch 02:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Those tabs on Wikipedia:Introduction are nice, I think they would work well on many long articles. How do you make them? Do users need to have special access to build those kinds of tabs/pages? --Sadi Carnot 15:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I now see how they work, i.e. Template:Please leave this line alone; these might be very useful for extra-long articles. Pages needing 4-6 or more tabs, however, might need to go with the “main page header bars” as discussed below (or use side tables, such as I am doing here, for list divisions). --Sadi Carnot 15:42, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Starter project

I originally had “long articles” in mind when I started this project, but it seems to be hard to ignore lists. In this direction, I’ve skimmed through the Top 17 longest articles, one might go to Wikisource, as for the others it looks like it will involve a lot of tedious copy and paste edits (24 times or so per article). All of these at once might be too much to do. Thus, as a starter project I propose doing the top 3 longest lists and one article over the next few weeks. This will give us practice. I will tag them all now and post notice on their talk pages and we’ll see what happens. All ELAC members are encouraged to participate. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot

[edit] ‎List of states in the Holy Roman Empire ‎(262kb, 135pp)

I am going to begin making a subfolder table, i.e. Template:List of states in the Holy Roman Empire, for the upper right hand corner. --Sadi Carnot 11:48, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Finished A-G so far (page down to 190kb presently). Please chip in. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 12:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Done (below 32kb, 8pp)

The page is now divide up. The main page is now only 8 printed pages and less than 32kb. Please comment here with your opinions of the final result. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 00:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom, 1991 ‎(255kb, 66pp)

I cannot think of a more troublesome place to start. Do you realise there is one of these pages for every single year? This is going to multiply the list of such pages by 10, and I rather doubt that will come to much of an improvement. What these pages need is content, or at least links, not subdivision. If more articles cannot be written--and obviously they can't because there are 1000s to go, maybe it would be possible to link to some UK index instead? We'd do better to seend our time trying to figure out how to make a bot to link to the actual documents. DGG 02:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
DGG, if you say this one will be difficult, then I'm sure it will be. I feel, however, that the Top 3 longest will be good practice and a good learning experience, whatever problems we encounter. Maybe it will just take long to do? --Sadi Carnot 10:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of registered political parties in Spain ‎(247kb, 74pp)

[edit] Psycho (1960 film) (53kb, 15pp)

Added per Philbertgray nom. --Sadi Carnot 14:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello, I am responding to the ELAC flag recently placed on Psycho (1960 film). It was recently featured as the Cinema Collaboration of the Week (COTW), and a lot of work was put into the article to improve its body and especially the references. When the length of an article is calculated, are those references included? Many cinema fans worked hard to make this article great and carefully referenced their information to the standard that Wikipedia expects from its articles. You can see that as a result of Psycho's showcase as the COTW, the references section grew a tremendous amount, as is part of our goal. I don't think anyone would immediately expect a film entry to be more than 1 article long. As we do expect contributors to continue referencing their material, I would hope that ELAC takes this into consideration. It is my thinking that a carefully referenced, 53kb article like Psycho shouldn't be judged too long in the same way as a 53kb article without references, and I hope the ELAC would agree. As you would know more about this matter I'm hoping you can tell me and the COTW contributors before fellow, well-meaning editors start butchering our most recent accomplishment. --Hondo 16:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Hondo, no worries. I'm sure your page is near-to GA quality. This is a new project for everyone involved. Our goal is to act as a pleasant mediator between anonymous readers who want shorter "main page articles" (an article can have, to note, as many subpages as the imagination desires) and core editors who want longer main pages. We mean you no harm, all we wish to do is to open up some new pages for your article so that the main page is the best-of-the-best and a quicker read, say 10 printed pages for example, for those short-tension spanned readers and light topic readers (with the other 5 pages going on the new pages); or something like this. In this manner, articles won't stagnate in growth, but can keep expanding. We are working on some new "test" options that you might like, such as:

  • Use main page tab (templates), such as is done here: Wikipedia:Introduction.
  • Use main page header bar (templates), such as is done here: Wikipedia:Contents.
  • Use short summary-style paragraphs with main article links; see, for example, thermodynamics, chemistry, or love.
  • Add new pages to the “see also” section and copy material into those pages (for really long pages).

Sooner or later, as is the case with all articles, your article is going to be 60kb, then 70kb and so on. Thus, it is good to be proactive on this issue. People usually like the result when it’s done. If worst comes to worst we can always revert everything back. Moreover, if there is a strong multi-editor objection to committee involvement, then the ELAC team can always pull-out. I would suggest that we toss suggestions around for a while. No rush, thanks: --Sadi Carnot 17:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I just came across this tag and removed it. 53KB is not "extra long" for an article that hopes to attain FA or GA, and is referenced. Are the editors who are placing these tags aware of how to calculate prose size versus overall size, by deducting the references and other overhead? It is quite common for FAs to run to 70 or 80 KB these days, considering the requirments for inline citations, and what the size guidelines aim to control is prose size. The prose size of Psycho is 38KB, which is well within the technical limitations. If you want to focus on extra long articles, please have a look at something really long, like Hugo Chávez or History of Russia. Sandy (Talk) 06:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tab method

Hi, the ELAC team is presently trying out new test methods on how to facilitate the use and growth of long articles. Admin Gurch suggests that “tabs” might be a useful tool in the growth of large articles. Unless there are any major objections, over the next day or two, I am going to format this page with tabs. This will only be a test run. According to Gurch, it has never been done before with articles. Thus, I will implement the changes (which can be reverted in the weeks to follow if need be) and then we can all debate the pros and cons of the new format method. Please leave comment as to suggestive tab names (four in total) or if you have major objections to this move. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 23:22, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Mirror from Article talk page:
This sounds cool. I would love to see an article that I worked on possibly break new ground on Wikipedia. Green451 02:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC) After seeing some reasons why tabs are not a good idea below, I am striking my support unless a better tab design is used. Green451 17:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
My suggestions for tab names are:
  1. Overview/Story (would contain the lead, plot synopsis, and cast list)
  2. Production (would contain Production, Pre-Production, Filming, and The Shower Scene)
  3. Release (would contain Censorship, Promotion, Reception)
  4. Legacy (would contain Innovations in Film, Interpretation, Sequels and Remakes, Popular-culture references, shower scene parodies, and Trivia)
What does anyone else think about the above names? Green451 02:10, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Good suggestion. I also contacted Hondo, we'll see what he says. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 10:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Main page header bars

Hi everyone, I found this interesting template: Template:Contents pages (header bar) as used on Wikipedia:Contents. I think this might be a useful tool, e.g. if we make a unique one per each long page, in dividing up extra-long articles. In other words, for example, we could put one of these at the top of a long article and then copy articles per section into the header bar, thus leaving the main page as a general overview/introduction page. What does everyone think? --Sadi Carnot 15:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A suggestion

I would highly recommend that this project take into account that inline citations (and other "hidden" wikicode such as tables, etc.) often contribute significantly to page size. For example, Psycho (1960 film) was recently tagged as "extra-long" due its 53KB length. However, much of the size was due to the many inline citations. Strip those out and you have a respectable 38KB of actual prose. I would suggest that participants in this project calculate prose instead of just overall article size. It might also be helpful to note this on the project page. Gzkn 08:22, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I've now read more of the pages associated with this Project, and they all set a very negative, conspiratorial tone. At any rate, some numbers (based on some of the pages here) that will hopefully illustrate the difference:

On the Wikipedia:WikiProject Extra-Long Article Committee/Reports, we find two, dramatically different films:

  1. The Wizard of Oz (1939 film) has 81KB overall, but no referencing (one inline cite), so almost ALL of that article size is in prose. The prose size is 72KB - WAY too long for a reader to digest.
  2. Grouped with it is the newer, better cited Psycho (1960 film). Psycho has 53KB overall, but almost 100 inline citations, so that the prose size calculation results in only 38KB - a size that a reader can digest.

There is a big difference between these two articles; please do take prose size into consideration when tagging articles. The Wizard of Oz needs attention; Psycho doesn't. I suppose I'll soon show up on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Extra-Long Article Committee/Incidents page for removing the Psycho tag. The tone of this Project is very un-Wiki-like; I hope it will turn around quickly, and find more Wiki ways of dealing with the truly problematic articles, not involving team-tagging or sneakiness. Sandy (Talk) 09:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

As mentioned at WP:LENGTH, "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." 38KB of prose is readable, and the Article size guideline needs to be rewritten to account for the KB taken up by inline citations, which are *not* part of readable prose. A 32KB overall size is no longer reasonable, considering citation requirements and better computing capabilities. Sandy (Talk) 09:54, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tag

Since the tag specifically refers to "regulars" I can't see that having an tag at the top of the article page is particularly helpful. Any regulars will be watching the the talk page, and discussion is required before acting on the suggestions made in this tag anyway. The only purposes I can see it serving on the article page is to make the page look worse, discourage readers from starting to read it, and to make it even longer. It isn't like a "category needed" or "fact" tag where a casual reader can help fill any deficiency.

Many FAs are above the size at which Psycho was tagged, will they be tagged too? Yomanganitalk 11:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The wording on the tag is also very off-putting. As I said above, if you start out assuming this "is dirty business", it will become dirty business. (And since I work at WP:FAR, I know the hard business doesn't have to be "dirty".) The tone on the tag should be adjusted, and it belongs on the talk page, where our readers don't have to see it. It's one thing to tell our readers an article might not be accurate (fact tags) or might be POV - they need to know that - they don't need to know that "regulars" are encouraged to reduce the size of the article, in very unfriendly terms. I suggest a re-orientation of the tone of this project. Sandy (Talk) 11:11, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Another user also brought up the off-putting tone of the tag at its talk page. I've put forward a rewording there. I too, believe the template should be used on the talk page, not in the mainspace. Gzkn 11:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
The tag belongs on the talk page, if anywhere: proposals to split a page need to be discussed. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:44, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, thank you everyone for your comments and suggestions. I have amended the ELAC tag as follows. I hope this is an improvement:

This article is XY kilobytes or more in size and readers have pointed out that this page may be too long to read.
It is strongly suggested that the editors of this page consider splitting it into multiple sections; see: division options.
Wikiproject involvement may follow in the coming weeks.

As you will see from our reports list, we encourage Wikipedians to submit articles to this list that they feel are too long to read. These are the primary articles, aside from those in the Top 1000 longest category, that we will likely target. Thank you again. --Sadi Carnot 12:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

This tag is as bad as the previous: it's not the tone used on Wikipedia, as three editors have now stated on the template talk page.Sandy (Talk) 12:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC) Struck, better template now, thanks to ALoan <whew>. Sandy (Talk) 13:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
ALoan, please do not change project templates. Discuss possible changes first. Let the situation filter for a few days, and then we will go from there. Again, this project is new; we are only involved with two lists and two articles; please give us a chance to work out the bugs. Thank you: --Sadi Carnot 13:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I was just being bold, having seen the negative comments. This is a wiki, after all. Feel free to revert and discuss. Do you think there is something wrong with the new version? Some people seem to prefer it, but we can always try to reach consensus. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tag removal

The committee revert page suggests that removing or keeping the tag must be discussed on the "committee", and not on the article talk page. Consensus about the article should be discussed and reached on the article talk page, among all involved editors. A separate process to request removal of a tag (Wikipedia:WikiProject Extra-Long Article Committee/Reverts) is instruction creep, and ignores consensus. I left my comments about the revert proposal on the talk page there. Sandy (Talk) 12:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I have clear administrative-recommended instructions that repetitive removal of Wikipedia maintenance tags will be considered vandalism. I have only tagged three articles, certainly with good intentions, and I plan to enforce these three tags so to see how the project functions. Put simply, if when a reader stumbles upon an extra-long article, such as a 135 page (260kb) list, I'm sure that a main page ELAC tag is not going to detract from the already tedious page read. As for shorter articles, such as in the 32-84kb range, we are in the water testing stage. The point of putting a tag on a main page is to wake-up the editors to the fact that many readers feel the page is too long. Please discuss these issues here rather than attempting reverting what four trivial tags we have. Thank-you: --Sadi Carnot 12:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
The article talk page might be a more appropriate place for both the tag and the discussion. Samsara (talk • contribs) 12:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Comment Putting rude and offensive comments on an article page, regardless of the truth of the words, has been ruled by the Arbitration Committee to be disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point. Please refrain from doing so. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" (Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality) 20:20, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
(after ec) Consensus changes, especially when exposed to the broader community. You have a number of users here saying the tags should go on the talk page, not on the article page, where they only distract Wiki readers. "Many" readers don't feel the article is too long: if you refuse to allow consensus with respect to removing the tags, you don't know how many readers think the article is too long. So far, it appears that two of you think Psycho is too long, yet everyone approving FAs will say it's not. Another example of how misguided the application is here: Bacteria is a recent FA, very extensively referenced, at 83KB, but prose is only 39KB. Your committee isn't considering that it's not possible to write such an article without extensive cites, and that the citations don't impede readability. EDITOR consensus is the process by which we decide when an article is too long: Psycho (1960 film) is not too long, and Bacteria is not too long. Hugo Chávez is too long: The Wizard of Oz (1939 film) is too long - they have prose sizes in excess of 70KB. Please respect consensus: you have multiple editors asking that you remove the tags to talk pages, and adapt the horrific tone in the tag, which is very un-Wikilike. Sandy (Talk) 12:52, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
First of all, if an article is too long to begin, then nobody is really reading it; hence, arguing about a tag on a page that nobody is reading is pointless. Second, the point of doing main page tagging is to stimulate the editors to get going; they have obviously seen the long page edit warning for possibly months or years on end, every time he or she does and edit, and obviously ignored them just as we all do. It is, however, hard to ignore such an out-in-the open ELAC tag, but that is the point. The sooner the page is divided by the regular editors the sooner we would remove the tag. Main page tagging speeds the process. Talk page tagging slows the process or in many cases simply gets ignored. I've seen long page tags, such as {{verylong}} or {{long}}, sit at the top of the articles for weeks or months, and in most cases these get removed or moved to the talk page, thus not having the effect for which they were designed. As for moving to certain article talk pages, maintenance tag removal is an issue that has been going on all over Wikipedia and needs to be addressed on a community page, not on random individual articles. Thank you: --13:11, 12 December 2006 (UTC). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sadi Carnot (talk • contribs).
[edit conflict] I am sure that most admins will agree that "repetitive removal of Wikipedia maintenance tags will be considered vandalism". But then repeatedly adding or removing tags may also breach the WP:3RR.
As for "administrative-recommended instructions" - there are over 1,000 admins (/me waves). All Wikipedians generally work by gathering consensus, rather than by the fiat of a small group. When a small group implements its consensus and discovers dissenting opinions, it is time to discuss with a view to forming a new, wider, consensus. Which is what we are doing now.
Having said that, first, there has been some debate about whether "Wikipedia maintenance tags" should appear on the article page or the talk page. Historically, reader-directed tags (like {{afd}} or {{merge}} or {{copyedit}}) have appeared on the article page, and there has been no consensus to change that; however, there is pretty wide consensus that such metadata templates in articles should not proliferate, and that editor-directed templates should usually appear on the talk page (like {{fac}} and WikiProject notices).
These tags are are not reader-directed "Wikipedia maintenance tags" - they are project tags (this is Wiki_Project_ Extra-Long Article Committee). If they are used anywhere, these tags should appear on the talk page. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
ALoan, can you show me where in Wikipedia it states that “long article” tags do not go on the main page? --Sadi Carnot 13:14, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
It would be better if you explained why you think it is necessary - in what way is it helping the reader? If the aim is to scare regular contributors into splitting the page then you may have a point, but I'd venture to say it's not a very collegiate way of going about it. Overtagging of pages is already a problem, why add to it just because there may not be a rule which stops you? Yomanganitalk 13:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Seconded. Samsara (talk • contribs) 13:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Third. Sandy (Talk) 13:54, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Just because it is not written does not mean it is not thus. But anyway, you could start looking at Wikipedia:Template locations and Wikipedia:Templates. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:06, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Overtagging is becoming one of the biggest problems at wikipedia. If they are needed at all, they should go on the talk page with accompanying discussion. Tagging a featured article is a definate poor show.--Zleitzen 14:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ELAC team members

Hi everyone, please let's not over extend ourselves. Please do not tag any more articles until we work out the bugs of this project by practicing with the said starter articles. I suggestively nominated the 3 longest lists (the Roman list has been done now with good success, so far) and the Psycho article as practice, but also User:Philbertgray added, certainly with good intentions, a tag to the 81kb The Wizard of Oz (1939 film). So that makes four articles that we are now involved with, see: list. The Roman states article took me almost two hours to do. Hence let's not commit to more pages than we are willing to get involved with. Let's give these four articles (only these four) a test run month to see how it works out. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 12:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unclear about how this project will help readers

Length of article depends entirely on the subject matter and the organisation of the material. Overlong articles are self-evident because they contain non vital material that would be better moved elsewhere. On articles which cover broad and diverse subjects, and are potential gateway articles to other pages, such restrictions will impede information and diminish the credibility of the page. If the articles are well organised, going above 30-50KB is not an issue for readers. To attempt to apply a rule as an absolute would be disasterous, ignorant and should be resisted.--Zleitzen 13:11, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Calculating readable prose size

WP:FAC and WP:FAR regulars know this info, but it seems some committee members here may not:

Readable prose excludes: External links, Further reading, References, Footnotes, See also, and similar sections; Table of contents, tables, list-like sections, and similar content; and markup, interwiki links, URLs and similar formatting. 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. By using the printable version as a starting place, inline citations and images are automatically left out, and you only have to delete info from the top and bottom of the article. Sandy (Talk) 13:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent contrib

User:SandyGeorgia recently added the following, as copied from WP:Article size, to the main page: "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." Aside from the fact that this statement is unsourced, it does not align with the goals this project. A page with 50kb of text may likely have 20-30kb of references and possibly 20kb or so of images files, and other possible kb details. This statement would essentially state that we favor 100kb pages, which is clearly not the case, as is well referenced on the main page. --Sadi Carnot 13:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand something fundamental about Wikipedia: policy and guideline pages are not sourced - their source is Wikipedia consensus, developed on talk pages. That statement has been on WP:LENGTH for a very long time. It is there because the consensus of Wikipedians is that 30-50KB of readable prose is manageable. Before we extensively cited articles, we had essentially 30KB of prose in articles - now we also have inline citations, but computers are also faster. The 32KB overall is outdated, based on older technological capabilities and computing, and needs to be updated, particularly since we now require better sourcing on articles. This committee should focus on articles with more than 50KB of prose - those are the problem (besides some of the outlandish lists, which are the real problem) - but on talk page, not with tagging articles. 50KB of prose, for some articles, is not a burden, either on the reader, or technologically. The Project page needs to be rewritten to focus on readable prose, rather than overall article size. Leave the statement out if you want, but then your numbers are wrong, because you are erroneously looking at overall size, rather than readable prose. Sandy (Talk) 13:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
The longer lists are definitely the place to start, whether alphabetical, or chronological, or some other sensible system of organisation. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Sandy. I was one of the first persons to weigh in on this whole thing with a support vote for splitting up the Psycho article with tabs. After seeing the possible drawbacks, I have striked my support. I used to have dial-up internet, and I now have high-speed. Unfortunately, I don't remember how slow it was on Wikipedia, but, when downloading files from other sites, I would say the transfer rate was between 4 kb/s and 7 kb/s. For an article that's only about 50 kb, that's only going to take about 15 seconds or so to load a page (not including images, but those are loaded after the page's body text is loaded, if I remember). Anyone know how old the 32 kb guideline is? Green451 17:11, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
As an additional note, about articles over 32 kb being too long to read? Well, in my view, if I'm interested in a subject I will want to read as much as possible about it. With an article about a film, it would be somewhat cumbersome to split up (using the summary style). I mean, you'd have page titles like, "Story of Psycho", "Production of Psycho", etc. It just doesn't have the same ring as Military operations of the Iraq War, to choose a random sub-article. I've sort of gone to rambling here, so I'll let some other people talk. Green451 17:17, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MfD (again)

The possibility that this project needed to be deleted was raised above.[1] I've just read the archive where consensus for this project was supposedly developed, and it looks like there are more people against it than were in ever in favor of it. [2] I'm not really seeing the utility in this committee, unless their goals are completely reformulated to focus on the truly very large articles (which are mostly lists), and to work within consensus, completely reformulating all of the Project pages to adapt a more Wiki-like tone and approach. Sandy (Talk) 14:22, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

As to goals, our well-minded intentions are to get long articles into a more readable format. I have seen dozens if not 100s of readers complain about this. As to tone, I have already suggested that you join this Wikiproject to help us in this direction. I just formatted, for example, the main page tag we are using per your suggestions:
This article is 150 kilobytes or more in size and readers have pointed out that this page may be too long to read.
It is strongly suggested that the editors of this page consider splitting it into multiple sections; see: division options.
Wikiproject involvement may follow in the coming weeks.
But, with that said, as to MfD, I wish you would: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. You have my blessing. --Sadi Carnot 14:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
To be fair, I think it's okay for Sandy to comment on the project without joining. Samsara (talk • contribs) 14:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I think we are all agreed that there are various long articles that could do with being reduced in size, either by being split (like the lists, into sub-lists) or spun out in to daughter articles (following Wikipedia:Summary style). This issue here is how you are proposing to go about it.
To be frank, it seems like you want to slap aggressively-worded templates on any articles that you think are too long, and terrorise the editors of those articles into complying with your requirements. That is just not the way we work. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
NB on summary style: Wikipedia:WikiProject Modular Articles Samsara (talk • contribs) 14:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
This project seems unnecessary and redundant. If an article is too long and unclear then any editor can edit the text to improve it. Excessive, wordy length is just one of the problems that require editing. Should we also consider a Wikiproject:Run-on sentences or Wikiproject:Misuse of apostrophes? TimVickers 17:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I could support this project if it were to work within Wikipedia guidelines, policies, and practices. The 30 - 50KB readable prose at WP:LENGTH has been around for a long time, and has been a guide at WP:FAC and WP:FAR (noting that my objections to a featured article with 100KB prose - eventually reduced to 86KB of prose - was voted down by consensus of other editors). This committee didn't define the scope/focus of its work based on the existing guideline of readable prose. The focus could have been to deal with articles with more than 50KB of readable prose, proceeding based on consensus with other editors, who may agree that some topics will exceed arbitrary limits. Most troubling - to me, at least - is the tone that is set on every page and template associated with this project. Dealing with those massive 200+ KB lists, and 60+ KB readable prose in articles, might be a worthy goal, but the approach needs more Wikipedia culture. Sandy (Talk) 19:44, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree. I see no problem with the 30-50KB articles, and even some of the longer ones are OK. I can see the value in trying to do something about the extremely long articles, and certainly some of the endlessly long lists are a problem. I'm concerned at the tone and attitude conveyed in pages associated with this project. I see sarcastic language used in comments related to editors who may disagree, language throughout that is threatening, and a general attitude that seems to advocate bullying as a suitable tactic, all of which contrasts with the project's assurance that it is benign and well-intentioned. The main thing I see is a disrespect and disregard for the opinions of any editors who may disagree with the goals of the project. Rossrs 21:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Sandy, and find the tag extremely detrimental in some cases to be honest. LuciferMorgan 22:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Where is the deletion discussion? I can't find it in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion TimVickers 22:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't believe an MfD was submitted: the concern was raised earlier on this talk page. Sandy (Talk) 22:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
The extra-rude template must go. There must have been a consensus amongst article editors that an article on the subject requires a certain length. The course to take if someone feels that an article is over-long is to raise the issue on the talk page, not to plant this execrable template on the article. Dr Zak 23:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
And to whoever who was inquiring about the MfD: the discussion for the dubious subpages is here. Dr Zak 23:54, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
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