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 be carried out. In some cases refactoring an article into child or sister articles can allow subtopics to be discussed more fully elsewhere without dominating a general overview article to which they are non-central (but only if the new articles are themselves sufficiently notable to be included in the encyclopedia).
Article size
There are no hard and fast rules for when an article should be split, but the guideline suggests the following:
| 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. |
Always keep in mind that many users use low speed services, have unstable connection or must pay a fixed rate for each KB downloaded. As well, users frequently access Wikipedia through a mobile phone or smartphone, and these mobile browsers may truncate pages at as little as 32KB. See the article size guideline for further information.
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]]", so that users can follow the content trail and to protect against the article subsequently being deleted and the history of the new page eradicated. It may also be helpful to place the {{Copied}} template on the talk page of both articles to make attribution clear and 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 of the section, it should contain a link to the newly created page, easily achieved with {{Main|Newly created page name here}} template.
Templates
For use on main page
- {{Split}} - used to convert the original page into a disambiguation page and all material added to the new pages
- {{Split2}}
- {{Split-apart}}
- {{Split section}}
- {{Splitsections}} - can specify multiple destination articles
- {{Split dab}} - for splitting disambiguation pages
- {{Move portions}} - for migrating portions of a section
For use on talk page
- {{Copied}} (for both source & destination) - {{tl|Copied|from=|from_oldid=|to=|to_diff=|to_oldid=}}
- {{Split-to}} - {{Split-to|page= |diff= |date= }}
- {{Splitfrom}} - {{Splitfrom|page= |diff= |date= }}
- {{SplitfromBannerShell}} - collapsing multiple {{Split-to}} and {{Splitfrom}} notes
| This article has been split multiple times: | |
|---|---|
Articles needing splitting
A list of articles that require splitting are at Category:Articles to be split.
| Articles to be split | |
|---|---|
| September 2009 | 31 |
| October 2009 | 18 |
| January 2010 | 28 |
| February 2010 | 22 |
| March 2010 | 26 |
| April 2010 | 31 |
| May 2010 | 19 |
| June 2010 | 29 |
| July 2010 | 30 |
| August 2010 | 51 |
| September 2010 | 33 |
| October 2010 | 31 |
| November 2010 | 33 |
| December 2010 | 38 |
| January 2011 | 54 |
| February 2011 | 46 |
| March 2011 | 64 |
| Undated articles | 4 |
| All articles | 588 |
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