Book talk:Everyday Anarchy

Editing large pages

Since there were few wikilinks in this article with respect to its size, I thought I'd try a little editing. It is indeed unwieldy while editing to navigate through a page that is 162 kilobytes, as this page is. Further, I am unsure if this article has not already been separated into smaller sub-articles, so I might be editing unnecessarily and I am stopping here for the time being.

At the very least, a page as large as this needs to be separated into significantly smaller sections, even though they may all still be part of the single larger page, just so the editor can first find the spot that needs to be fixed!

As I tried to preview my edits with the Show preview button, my browser (Firefox 4.0b7) warned me at the top of the previewed page:

Warning: This page is 162 kilobytes long; some browsers may have problems editing pages approaching or longer than 32kb. Please consider breaking the page into smaller sections.

So in effect, a private, free market third-party that I had previously chosen voluntarily was telling me--well, suggesting to me--to make the page smaller! OK, it made me smile.

So, perhaps here and/or in another arena as well, there might be further discussion & suggestions about overall page size and/or the size of the sections and sub-sections to facilitate editing and overall article management. -- RayBirks 00:06, 3 December 2010 (CST)

• An update to the above, with some oversights on my part: I recalled several hours after the above post, that I had edited this article by clicking on the “edit” tab above the title of this article’s main page. On larger articles in my busier Wikipedia days, I used that tab only for changes in the introduction, located above the first section of the article of the moment. Ordinarily, I was looking to make one or two changes after reading something in a smaller section of the article, so it was uncommon for me to be editing the entire article. Then again, I don’t recall ever looking to wikify a big chunk of a large, not-yet-wikified article before, which I started to do here. Even as I made my changes, scrolling past section headers, it didn’t quite click: This article is/was already in sections! The page was nevertheless still large at 162 kilobytes.

• Further, in my late-night stupor, when I noted the “Warning” on page size in Show preview mode, it was not my browser notifying me directly, it was the wiki software. D’oh! Firefox was readily accomplishing the full-page editing & was simply showing me that the wiki software was announcing that general warning. When this occurred to me, I also recalled how these warnings have gone by before on other past articles in my 6 years of wiki editing, but they usually went “in-one-eye-and-out-the-other.” In this case, the article’s size was already on my mind, so I took note more than usual.

• So, mea culpa. All that said, larger pages can still be more helpful and workable if they are reduced in size. Sections themselves will be more workable if they, too, are “smaller.” I note that, of course, “large” and “small” are relative terms, but the present reality of the wiki software and the potential limitations of existing browser software are the order of the day.

• Further, if you yourself are editing (old hands likely know this), you might consider what I had not, which was initiating your editing session by clicking the little edit button off to the right of the title of the section you wish to edit. Your system won’t have to work as hard, as it will only load that section into memory. Use the edit tab at the top of the main page only when you are certain you need to use it and no other. Remember to use the Show preview button before committing to the Save page button!

• Another tip for newer folks: If you are making more than “a few” changes and/or are supplying large additions to an article or other page, you might consider making and saving your changes first in a separate application, such as a text editor, word processor, etc. Then copy and paste your changes into the wiki article at hand and use the Show preview button. This could save a big chunk of your time & work, should anomalies occur. – RayBirks 18:36, 4 December 2010 (CST)