From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This page is a how-to guide detailing a practice or process on the English Wikipedia. |
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If an article becomes too large or a section of an article has a length that is out of proportion to the rest of the article it is recommended that a split is carried out.
[edit] Article size
There are no hard and fast rules for when an article should be split. A guideline for article size is:
| Readable prose size |
What to do |
| > 100 KB |
Almost certainly should be divided |
| > 60 KB |
Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading time) |
| > 40 KB |
May eventually need to be divided (likelihood goes up with size) |
| < 30 KB |
Length alone does not justify division |
| < 1 KB |
If an article or list has remained this size for over a couple of months, consider combining it with a related page. |
[edit] Procedure
If an article meets the criteria for splitting editors can be bold and carry out the split, although discussion on the article talk page or associated WikiProject is a way of seeking a consensus. Alternatively, adding one of the templates below will list it at Category:Articles to be split. This will bring it to the attention of editors who check this category. If a comment is added on the appropriate WikiProject talk page editors who can carry out the split would be advised.
To conform with Wikipedia's licensing requirements, which require that content contributors receive attribution, the new page should be created with an edit summary noting "split content from [[article name]]". (Do not omit this step or omit the page name.) A note should also be made in the edit summary of the source article, "split content to [[article name]]", to protect against the article subsequently being deleted and the history of the new page eradicated. It may also be helpful to place the {{Splitfrom}} template on the talk page of the source article to further safeguard against deletion.
If a section is split from the original article, a summary section should be left in the original ("main") article. At the top, it should contain a link to the newly created page, easily achieved with {{main|Newly created page name here}} template.
[edit] Templates
- {{split dab}} - for splitting disambiguation pages
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It has been suggested that portions of this section be moved into [[{{{1}}}]]. (Discuss) |
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Material from this page has been split to another page; NOTE: please specify pagename when using this template} on [{{{diff}}} {{{date}}}]. The page history of this page now serves as the attribution history for part of the contents of that page. |
Adding the date parameter |date=July 2009 is recommended so that articles can be sorted for maintenance purposes.
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This article has been split multiple times. Click [show] for further details. |
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Material from this page has been split to another page; NOTE: please specify pagename when using this template} on [{{{diff}}} {{{date}}}]. The page history of this page now serves as the attribution history for part of the contents of that page. |
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Material from this page has been split to another page; NOTE: please specify pagename when using this template} on [{{{diff}}} {{{date}}}]. The page history of this page now serves as the attribution history for part of the contents of that page. |
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[edit] Articles needing splitting
A list of articles that require splitting are at Category:Articles to be split.
[edit] See also
