Help:Page size

PD Note: When you edit this page, you agree to release your contribution under the CC0. See Public Domain Help Pages for more info. PD

There's a debate about how big pages should be because editing large ones is hard. Articles should be as long as they need to be, but if they're too big, there are ways to make them smaller.

  • Using transclusion - Transclusion simplifies articles by using template macros like {{template}} or {{template|parameters}} to include standard text or text modified by parameters in articles without directly coding that text in each page. It also ensures all articles have the same header or footer for consistency. This reduces the page size since the texts are saved centrally and only referenced in the article.
  • Using subsidiary articles - When an article includes extra details or related topics that aren't the main focus, you can create separate articles for them. For instance, in an article about w:chess, detailed rules can be placed in a separate article titled "Rules of chess" with the heading Main article: w:Rules of chess.
  • Place relevant items in a See also section for easy reference.

Computing the wikitext size of a page

A parser function called PAGESIZE is available.

Some examples:

  • {{PAGESIZE:Help:Template}}28
  • {{PAGESIZE:Help:Dummy edit}}5,606

File size

The size of an uploaded file is displayed in:

See also