It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.
The article size impacts usability in multiple ways:
Reader issues, such as attention span, readability, organization, information saturation, etc.
Maintenance, such as articles becoming time-consuming to maintain when they are very long.
Technical issues, 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 it into another existing article. When an article is too small, it may be merged with one or more other existing articles. Such editorial decisions require consensus. Guidelines on the size of articles, and detailed solutions, are provided below. The licensing policy mandates that whenever any content is copied from one article to another new or existing article, an edit summary containing the required copy attribution must be used.
