Wikipedia:文章长度

维基百科，自由的百科全书

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捷徑： WP:SIZE WP:LENGTH

Template:Guideline list

This page contains an overview on issues related to limits on article size, which are set by (a) technical issues, e.g. browser limitations, upload speeds, cellular connections, etc., (b) reader issues, i.e. readability, organization, information saturation, attention spans, etc., (c) editor issues, e.g. talkpage tensions, arguments over trivial contributions, debates on how to split up a large article, etc., and (d) contribution issues, i.e. articles stop growing significantly once they reach a certain size – this does not imply, however, that there is no more information on the topic to be contributed. If you need intervention or help splitting up a long article please contact the Wikipedia Extra-Long Article Committee.

目录 1 Overview 2 Readability issues 2.1 Science articles 2.2 What is and is not included as "readable prose" 2.3 Occasional exceptions 3 Technical issues 3.1 Which browsers have problems with long articles? 4 Splitting a page 4.1 No need for haste 4.2 Breaking out a controversial section 4.3 A rule of thumb 5 How to find long articles 6 If you have problems editing a long article 7 References 8 See also

[编辑] Overview

In the past, because of some now rarely used browsers, technical considerations prompted a strong recommendation that articles be limited to a maximum of precisely 32 KB in size, since editing any article longer than that would cause severe problems. With the advent of the section editing feature and the availability of upgrades for the affected browsers, this once hard and fast rule has been softened and many articles exist which are over 32 KB of total text.

Though article size is no longer a binding rule, there remain stylistic reasons why the main body of an article should not be unreasonably long, including readability issues. It is instead treated as a guideline, and considered case by case depending on the nature of the article itself.

For stylistic purposes, only the main body of prose^[1] (excluding links, see also, reference and footnote sections, and lists/tables) should be counted toward an article's total size, since the point is to limit the size of the main body of prose.

Even so, an edit warning is displayed when a page exceeds 32 KB of text in total, to act as a reminder that the page may be starting to get too long (see MediaWiki:Longpagewarning).

[编辑] Readability issues

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. Thus the 32 KB recommendation is considered to have stylistic value in many cases; if an article is significantly longer than that, then it probably should be summarized with detail moved to other articles (see Wikipedia:Summary style). For most long pages, division into sections is natural anyway; even if there is no "natural" way to split a long list or table, many editors believe that it should be done anyway, to allow section editing.

Articles longer than 12 to 15 printed pages (more than 30 to 35 KB of readable text) take longer to read than the upper limit of the average adult's attention span — 20 minutes. An important consideration is that attention span is lower for children, adults of below-average intelligence, and all those with attention deficit disorders (groups we would like to serve as well).^[2][3][4] Compounding this is that many of these groups also have a slower reading speed. Once the attention span limit is approached, most readers will start to lose focus and retention of the information begins to become significantly hampered. All but the most determined readers will quit reading once this starts to happen, so going over the recommended limit needs to be justified by the topic.

[编辑] Science articles

For science or technical articles, where higher concentration levels are needed — particularly those with numerous equations — extra prudence may be required. In other words, limitations to online reading may apply even more for technical articles.

Wikipedia is a process of evolution. People will add to articles when you are done with them. It will always grow. Wikipedia has unlimited storage space. A good rule of thumb, for science articles, is to begin to chop up the article after it goes past 10 pages (printed). There is no reason to bulk up science articles to the point where they put readers off.

[编辑] What is and is not included as "readable prose"

"Readable prose" is the main body of the text, excluding sections such as:

• Footnotes and reference sections ("see also", "external links", footnotes, bibliography, etc)
• Diagrams and images
• Tables and lists
• Wikilinks and external URLs
• Formatting and mark-up.

A more exact list, and a means of calculating readable prose, is given in the notes.^[1]

[编辑] Occasional exceptions

Two exceptions are lists, and articles summarizing certain fields. These act as summaries and starting points for a field and in the case of some broad subjects or lists either do not have a natural division point or work better as a single article. In such cases, the article should nonetheless be kept short where possible. Major subsections should use summary style where a separate article for a subtopic is reasonable, and the article should be written with greater than usual attention to readability.

Readers of such articles will usually accept complexity provided the article is well written, created with a sensible structure and style, and is an appropriate length for the topic. Most articles do not need to be excessively long, but when a long or very long article is unavoidable, its complexity should be minimized. Readability is still the key criterion.

[编辑] Technical issues

Reading long pages can also be problematic in a mobile browser because these devices usually have little memory and a slow CPU, and therefore long pages can take too much time to load.

Long articles can take too much time to load when using slow connections, e.g. a desktop computer with an analog modem dialup or the wireless connection of some mobile devices.

Current mobile browsers and some older PC web browsers cannot correctly edit long pages because they crop the source text to 32 KB.

[编辑] Which browsers have problems with long articles?

This last issue has been found in versions of Netscape Navigator up to 4.76 (the latest version is 8.x) and Opera up to version 6.04 (the latest version is 9.02). No other Microsoft Windows browsers are known to be affected. More recent versions should not have this problem. No versions of Internet Explorer for the Mac are affected.

Formerly (mid-2006), there was a problem with the latest version of Mozilla Firefox when combined with the Google toolbar (Bugzilla bug). This is no longer a problem.

For notes on unrelated problems that various web browsers have with MediaWiki sites, and for a list of alternative browsers you can download, see Wikipedia:Browser notes.

[编辑] Splitting a page

关于此话题更进一步的细节，參見Wikipedia:Summary style。

[编辑] No need for haste

Do not take precipitous action the very instant an article exceeds 32 KB. There is no need for haste. Discuss the overall topic structure with other editors. Determine whether the topic should be treated as several shorter articles and, if so, how best to organize them. Sometimes an article simply needs to be big to give the subject adequate coverage; certainly, size is no reason to remove valid and useful information.

[编辑] Breaking out a controversial section

A relatively trivial fact may be appropriate in the context of the larger article, but inappropriate as the topic of an entire article in itself. In most cases, it is a violation of the neutral point of view to specifically break out a controversial section without leaving an adequate summary. Consider other organizational principles for splitting the article. Be sure that both the title and content of the broken-out article reflect a neutral point of view.

[编辑] A rule of thumb

Some useful rules of thumb for splitting articles, and combining small pages (see above for what to exclude in size calculations):

Prose size[1]	What to do
> 50 KB	Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading time)
> 30 KB	May eventually need to be divided (likelihood goes up with size; this is less critical for lists)
< 20 KB	Probably should not be divided
<  1 KB	If an article or list has remained this size for over a couple of months, consider combining it with a related page; this does not apply to a redirect or disambiguation page. Alternatively, why not fix it by adding more info? See Wikipedia:Stub. If it's an important article that's just too short, put it under Article Creation and Improvement Drive, a project to improve stubs or nonexistent articles.

[编辑] How to find long articles

The size of a page in the main namespace (and when not disabled also in the other namespaces) can be found by searching for it (if the search isn't disabled); it is a by-product of that feature (remember to use the Search button, not the Go button!). For long pages it appears also on editing, with the message MediaWiki:longpagewarning – for example:

The section editing feature lessens some page length problems as long as each section of a page is within the limit. However, people with slow modems will still have to wait for the entire page to load for them to read it.

You can set your preferences to make links to pages smaller than a certain size appear in a different colour. "Size" in this context means the size of the source text seen in the edit box.

[编辑] If you have problems editing a long article

If you have encountered an article that is so long you can't edit it, or if your browser chops off the end of the article when you try to edit it, there are a few ways you can solve the problem.

The best permanent solution is to simply upgrade to a more modern web browser, if possible. No major modern web browsers, with the current (June 2006) exception of Firefox and the Google Toolbar (see above), have this problem, and there are many other benefits to upgrading: more recent versions will be considerably more secure, will do a better job displaying content written to more modern HTML (and other standards), and will have fixed many bugs, including this one. Many articles on Wikipedia are going to be longer than 32 KB on a permanent basis, so you will continue to have occasional problems with article length as long as you are using an older browser.

As a temporary solution, you should be able to edit the article one section at a time by using the "Edit" links you see next to each header in the article. This should work as long as none of the sections are longer than 32 KB, which they really shouldn't be. You can edit text before the first section by editing the first section, then changing the &section= part of the URL to say &section=0. (See bugzilla:156 and two javascript workarounds: 1, 2.) You can insert a new section either by using the "+" link (if there is one) in the "Views" section, or by editing an existing section and explicitly adding a second header line within it. See also Editing of individual sections.

If you find a section too long to edit safely, you can post a request for assistance on the Village Pump. Follow the "post" link for the assistance section, which will allow you to post a new comment without editing any existing text. Answering your request may take from an hour to a week, depending on the response of your fellow volunteer editors.

[编辑] References

1. ^ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Specifically, for stylistic purposes, 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.
2. ↑ The Training Brain - Accelerated Learning Techniques
3. ↑ Average Adult Tension Span = 15-20 Minutes - 6 Minutes for Safety
4. ↑ Quality vs. Quantity - Average Adult Attention Span = 30 sec to 20 min.

[编辑] See also

• Special:Longpages
• Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page
• Wikipedia:Summary style