Wikipedia talk:Splitting

Handling improper splits

According to the current version of Wikipedia:Splitting:

To conform with §4(I) of the GFDL, 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.

What should be done if that step was omitted? Would it be adequate to make a dummy edit with the split summary? Does the page need to be deleted and re-created with a split notice in the summary of the first edit? -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 04:24, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the very long delay in response. A dummy edit should be sufficient. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I think this should be mentioned somewhere in the procedure section. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 03:08, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

New template

I was bold and created a new template, {{Splitfrom}}. This can be placed on the talk page of an article from which material was copied. Comments are welcome. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 21:20, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Forms

Split (pres.), splat (pret.), splut (supine), splot (noun). Because I decided so. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 21:51, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

So articles that Jim splat are splots? And he should ask if he wants to splut more? Hm... intreguing. Let's see if others agree... Jubilee♫clipman —Preceding undated comment added 19:12, 30 September 2009 (UTC).

Does not actually explain how to split an article.

I don't know how to split an article, and Wikipedia:Splitting does not actually explain how to do so. It only explains how to format the edit summary to label the edit as a split, not what steps are required to actually produce the split. Request that an editor with knowledge of how to split articles improve this guide to make it a step by step guide to splitting an article.Librarylefty (talk) 23:47, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Although this article claims to be a "How To" page, it never actually explains "How to Split an Article." I get that I'm not supposed to cut and paste - so what am I supposed to do? It's very frustrating, and in my opinion is an example of why editors who don't have computer technical backgrounds find Wikipedia very frustrating. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 19:49, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Bump: Agreed, as a how to it is utterly useless. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:05, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I can't understand it. What is "the diff"? Afterbrunel (talk) 21:10, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Any better now ? DexDor (talk) 04:27, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

How to properly split an article

I just tried to follow this procedure, and as a newbie, I got totally lost at step 8:

Go to the destination article, click on 'View history' tab, select the edit where the copy was made, open it and copy the diff of the edit where the cut was made from the browser URL window. Note: If the new article is being created from scratch it's a bit more complicated - see Template:Split from.

Questions I had were:

1. "select the edit" What does this mean?? My guess was: "click on the date and time when the edit was made"
2. "copy the diff of the edit where the cut was made from the browser URL window." What the heck is the "diff of the edit"?? I see the word "diff" all over the place linking to all sorts of things. From looking at Template:Split from, I know I'm looking for a URL, and it says something about changing "oldid" in that URL into "diff". How I'm supposed to understand that from "copy the diff of the edit", I'll never know. It seems the author is too familiar with the process and assumes that you already know what he's talking about. It's not written for a newbie, and that is exactly who needs this help.

Then at step 10:

Add template {{Split from|page= |diff= |date= }} to source article talk page, and paste the diff into it, add the title of the new article and the date, add a descriptive edit summary and save the edit.

Question: "the diff" Which diff? The same one from Step 8?

Step 12: "the diff" again.

When I'm done, I've got a dozen browser tabs, I don't know if I'm coming or going, I don't know what I have done, and I certainly don't know if I did it right. I also don't know what the final result is supposed to look like, and I know, in the end, I really haven't learned anything, except how to get confused.

What I really need is for someone who's experienced in this process to re-write the procedure with a newbie in mind, so that I can learn how to do this and become as smart as you experienced guys. Right now, I'm just playing around with pages in userspace, but my goal is to be able to split live articles that are way too overgrown and in serious need of splitting. Unfortunately, this page really doesn't teach me how. Please help.

Thanks! Djdubay (talk) 22:05, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Valid complaints. Thanks for the detailed explanation of where you had difficulty. I, and hopefully others with better technical knowledge, will try to help.

I propose to work out the problems here and then once they have been sorted out to everyone's satisfaction (if that is possible) transfer the improved explanation to the article.

To avoid missing any of the details, I will break this up into sections as above.• • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:48, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• Agreed. We should certainly hash this out in talk and then update the live page for the world to share. I'm all in.

Djdubay (talk) 12:22, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Detailed explanation

1. Select the edit

Go to the history page, which is a list of edits in chronological order. Do this by clicking on the "View history tab at the top of the article. The edit you want is the one in which the content was split by cutting it from the article to paste it into the new article. There should be an edit summary to this effect.

At the start of each edit record listing there is a pair of links (cur/prev), followed by a radiobox (small circle that shows a green dot when selected). You can call up the difference (diff) between two versions (revisions) of the article either by clicking on "prev" for the record in which the edit is made, or by selecting the radiobox of the previous record of the article and the one in which the edit is made, then clicking the button "Compare selected revisions" at the top or bottom of the list (it is available in both places).

A page will open showing the difference between the two revisions made by the edit, and below this the actual page as of after the edit. The difference is shown by two columns at the top and is identified by line number. The old content is in the left column and the new content in the right column.

Your browser address box (URL window) at the top of the screen will contain an address (URL) linking to this specific page layout. Something like "http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3ASplitting&diff=323812598&oldid=317140360"

2. Copy the diff

I think that the diff for the previous example would be the number directly after the text diff= in the URL, ie. 323812598, but that is just me using logic. If anyone can confirm or correct this please do so. Select the diff with your mouse by dragging over it with left button depressed and copy by right clicking on the highlighted diff, then left clicking on "Copy" in the menu that will appear. The diff is now stored in your computer memory and can be reproduced by pasting at another place.

The bit about changing "oldid" in that URL into "diff" is utterly incomprehensible to me too, and I have done quite a few article splits. If anyone can explain what it means, please go ahead. Start by explaining the purpose of the edit, then how to do it.

I hope this helps a bit and that others will contribute to getting a comprehensible jargon free explanation that can be followed by an ordinary user. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:48, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• It's a start ... but in the end, it sounds like you're as confused as the rest of us as to how some of this was intended to work. But I really appreciate the start. Thinking about this further, I decided it's probably best to go to the template pages, see who the major contributors were, and invite them to this discussion. I think who would best know how this process was intended to work than the template authors. Even if they're not good at writing documentation, if they can help us understand how the final product is supposed to look, we can work together and re-write the documentation. Myself, I got the nagging sense that I was opening too many windows, and there had to be a smoother way about the process. But I have to understand exactly what I'm doing before I can find an easier way to do it properly. So guys ... looking forward to getting some insight on this, and let's get 'er fixed! Djdubay (talk) 12:22, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• Absolutely. I also find that if you start something it is more likely that others will pitch in than if you just wait for things to happen. Sometimes you just have to experiment a bit and see what happens while you wait. I found that I had about five tabs open while doing a split or a merge: the source article, the destination article, their talk pages, and the instruction page. Good plan with the template authors - some questions on the template talk pages may elicit some useful information. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:52, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• Agreeed. Looking further up the page, it looks this has been a sore spot for at least three years or more, but no one's taken more action than complain about it. Thanks for taking the bull by the horns and making that all-important first crack. I found I had, seriously, at least a half dozen tabs and was getting confused about which one was which. I understand that you have to create some pages first, before you can create references from those pages, but if we understand exactly what we're doing and why, we can find ways to streamline the process, or at least come up with a clearer way of explaining what and how to do it. Overall, WP's documentation is excellent, which is why this page caught me by surprise. It's actually the first weak documentation I've found. But the great thing about Wikipedia is that we can actually ask the original authors, "what did you mean by that?" and actually have them answer constructively. So I'm looking forward to figuring this out and getting this page up to the same high standards we have everywhere else. BTW -- Thanks for the suggestion on the template talk pages. I'll do that, too. Djdubay (talk) 13:29, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• The instructions have been significantly changed since the above was written in June, '13. Is anyone still confused with the instructions the way they appear now? If yes, please explain your difficulties the way User:Djdubay did above. -- -- -- 06:21, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Splitting tool

Would the procedures for splitting articles be amenable to automation by a tool? Something like the rename/move tool used on Commons. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:47, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposed change to first sentence of article

The first sentence states: 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. I believe this is too strong a statement, as there are other solutions that may be relevant in specific situations (e.g. removing inappropriate material, filling out the other sections of the article, or moving material to another existing article). I would suggest the following alternative: 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 often appropriate for some or all of the article to be split into new articles.

Thoughts? -- Dan Griscom (talk) 13:21, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Support. DexDor (talk) 20:26, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Support. Flyer22 (talk) 20:35, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Support, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:09, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks: done. --- Dan Griscom (talk) 05:11, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Notability standards for WP:SPLIT

I have started a discussion about notability standards for WP:SPLITs at Wikipedia_talk:Notability#Notability_standards_for_WP:SPLIT (because there is more traffic there than here).--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:40, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

How to properly split an article (again)

"Go to the new article, click on 'View history' tab, select the edit where the copy was made, open it ..." Can't "open it". That would normally mean click the "prev" link, near the beginning of the line for the selected edit. However, the edit that first creates a page doesn't have a "prev" link, neither in my page Responses to the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, nor in some random pages I looked at. Thus the rest of the instructions in step 8 are impossible.

Another issue is that perhaps most of the time I spent splitting that article is a step that isn't mentioned: Resolve cite errors that may occur when invocations of a named reference are separated from their definition. Art LaPella (talk) 19:40, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

I've made some changes to the procedure in response to these comments. Note: Step 8 is optional; I don't normally do it - and especially not if the split page is brand new. DexDor (talk) 20:54, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. Art LaPella (talk) 07:50, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Article on birth of Jesus created based on other Wikipedia articles

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Date of birth of Jesus of Nazareth. There it is argued that if several different articles contain similar sections, the section may be split out of all the articles without violating the principle from WP:V that the editor who adds a statement and source to an article should have actually read the source and verified that it does indeed support the added statement. The wording of this information page seems to only support the idea of splittiong out a section from one article, not merging sections from different articles. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:04, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Small but anoying difference between two sections

UnderWikipedia:Splitting#Procedure the article says:

The page receiving the split material must have 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"

while under Wikipedia:Splitting#How to properly split an article the article says:

Paste into the new article with edit summary "Contents WP:SPLIT from Source article name" and save the new article.

and in Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia it says:

At minimum, this means providing an edit summary at the destination page – that is, the page into which the material is copied – stating that content was copied, together with a link to the source (copied-from) page, e.g., "Contents WP:SPLIT from Source article name"

so what is the right edit summary?

"split content from article name

"Contents WP:SPLIT from Source article name"

or

"copied content from page name; see that page's history for attribution"

I prefer the "Contents WP:SPLIT from Source article name" if nobody objects I will edit Wikipedia:Splitting#Procedure in about a week WillemienH (talk) 13:00, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

They're all equivalent. The important part is "split" and the link to the article name, since it preserve the history and editorial attribution chain. Agreed the longer version you want to use is a good version to give consistently in all three places. Include an HTML comment after it that if changed in one place it should be changed in all three, so it doesn't WP:CONTENTFORK again. 01:19, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Splitting size guideline and TV articles

An issue has come up at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Television#List of episodes - when to split that has brought me to a realisation: the splitting guidelines here are based on the readable prose size of an article, but the readable prose does not include tables such as TV episode lists, which is one of the major concerns when discussing splitting TV articles. Is there any way of having another guideline that takes these tables into consideration, so when people start discussing a split at a TV article we can just point them to the guideline here? - adamstom97 (talk) 22:19, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

The desire to split them seems to be mostly a combination of fannishness (i.e. "I want to have lots of articles and a whole category for my favorite show"), WP:OTHERSTUFF imitation of what was (often misguidedly) done with regard to older show articles, and misunderstanding of WP:SPLIT / WP:LENGTH concerns, i.e. failure to account for the fact that prose conciseness expectations apply to items in a list not to length of the list (which is governed by WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE, the concerns of which don't arise here, since every episode is in fact pertinent in an episode list). Lists on a discrete topic shouldn't be split unless and until they reach technical limits, since doing so greatly reduces their utility (no longer in-page searchable or sortable for their entire content), and greatly increases the maintenance hassle and difficulty of finding information.

In short, if something like Glossary of cue sports terms can remain a single list (and we very much want it to), then so can the list of episodes of Castle (TV series), etc. We do often split lists into narrower topics (e.g. List of zoology journals, etc., themselves limited to genuinely notable entries, rather than a ridiculously huge list of science journals on every branch of science, whether the journals are notable or not). But that logic doesn't apply well to a single TV show. If we don't have non-trivial amounts of regular encyclopedia prose about a specific TV show season (production info, basically), which is too detailed to cover in the main article on the show, then there is no rationale for splitting off an episode list into separate season articles. It's just page profusion for no reader or project gain, and at considerable costs to both.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  01:16, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

That's nice, but I have really come here for a discussion on the number guidelines. If we can just say, 'if the size is above this then you can split, otherwise you cannot', then that removes any personal feelings or "fannishness" that could be involved. - adamstom97 (talk) 05:55, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

If we were going to have a "must split" size limit for lists, it would probably be around the 500 kB mark, I would think (see below for why), but it would be established at WP:SIZE; remember that WP:SPLIT is the guideline on how to split articles, not for determining when an article is too large. WP:SIZE, specifically Wikipedia:Article size#Technical issues ff., tells us: "Readable-prose size: the amount of viewable text in the main sections of the article, not including tables, lists, or footer sections." That main guideline is summarized here in Wikipedia:Splitting#Size split (with the similar caveat, "These guidelines ... apply less strongly to list articles" – i.e. the 100 kB readable prose limit doesn't really apply, because lists aren't read as prose paragraphs). Wikipedia:Naming conventions (long lists) explicitly defers to that main guideline: "split into subsequent pages (alphabetically, numerically, or subtopically) to adhere to the Wikipedia guideline on article size."

See also Wikipedia:Article size#Lists, tables and summaries: "Lists, tables, and other material that is already in summary form may not be appropriate for reducing or summarizing further by the summary style method." Yet that is precisely what people are trying to do when they keep forking off pointless season stand-alone list articles. Wikipedia:Stand-alone_lists advises that long lists be split into sections (which we're already doing by season), not into separate articles, except when creating a "list of lists" index page, and to avoid "too general or too broad in scope", which obviously doesn't apply to a single TV show, which is very specific and narrow. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Embedded lists is consistent with the above, just tightly summarized from it when it comes to list length. Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lists has no further input on size/length matters.

Finally, Wikipedia:Article size#Markup size – the real issue with long pages – doesn't set a specific "bright line" as a maximum article size. That's where we'd do it if we were to do it; that we haven't likely represents a consensus to not do it, though I suppose the issue could be raised at WT:SIZE. The "special" page that section points to, Special:LongPages, consists mostly of stand-alone list articles and articles with long lists, for the top 1000+ entries; if they are not so long that they must be split (though perhaps those above 500 kB should be), then neither are TV show articles. I think 500 kB is the "magic number" because >500 kB articles are all on the first page of LongPages search results (i.e. the top 40 or so longest articles). We have very few articles that size, and it's a probably manageable workload to split them. By contrast, there are over ten thousand articles in the >100 but <500 kB range. I.e., no case can be made that there is not a consensus that such article lengths are permissible, especially for lists, when there are so many and they're mostly lists.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  07:54, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

So the guideline on size for splitting has been copied from WP:SIZE to here, rather than the other way around? - adamstom97 (talk) 08:33, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Since this page is on splitting, not how long an article should be, that should be the case. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:34, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I think the biggest thing is people seem to disagree if splitting should be based on Readability vs Size vs Searchability. Does this fall into the 1 section too big when the article is under it? Does it become just too hard to read? Does the consistency of formatting trump the size? The guidelines are also of course based on prose, and since we are talking about tables its a little bit tricky too. I think if we were ever to come to a consensus the first thing to do is decide what criteria they should be based on. These guidelines would be way too complicated to incorporate everything but if there can be a consensus on the criteria to base it on, its a good start. - Galatz^Talk 13:53, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

People aren't reading the guidelines clearly. To summarize the detailed walk-through I did above: The readability argument applies to regular prose not lists (including lists formatted as tables). This is also true of the general size advice ("keep it under 100 kB"). For lists, we care about technical size limitations, but the guidelines are not identifying a hard limit; the Special:LongPages results that the WP:SIZE guideline points to strongly indicates that we should codify a limit of 500 kB (rendered wikitext size) for a list, because we have more than 10,000 articles in the 100–500 kB range, the vast majority of them lists, but only about 40 articles that are longer, which indicates that people are already doing maintenance to split lists that are longer than this, presumably in response to them actually being problematic, or perhaps as an arbitrary number. But again, this is not really the page at which to discuss this; it's a matter for WT:SIZE, the main guideline talk page on article size.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:04, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Split proposal at Second-wave feminism

Your feedback is welcome at Talk:Second-wave feminism, concerning splitting off the Timeline section into a new article. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:51, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

And a similar proposal has been created by Woodsy lesfem at Talk:First-wave feminism in case you'd like to opine there. Mathglot (talk) 09:08, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Splitting Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst Unlocked/Mystery Case Files

I think this article would delete instead of merging for when persons find more sources for it. Merging articles mean this thing is the same thing than the other article, but it’s an episode of this game series, so it is better to delete than merge. Thank you72.10.128.43 (talk) 15:33, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Does splitting require new articles?

Or may it pertain to one or more already existing articles? I'm wondering because of this by Mathglot. Chicbyaccident (talk) 10:01, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

There is a continuum of splitting into one or more new articles and splitting and merging into existing articles, and merging into an existing article, and merging more than two articles into one and a whole lot of similar reshuffling of content among articles, so occasionally a non-optimal term is used. The talk page discussion should clarify the intention and reason. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:57, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

So my application of the template was wrong, then? Chicbyaccident (talk) 14:23, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

"merger"

The article says "merger" 3x where it should say "split". --77.173.90.33 (talk) 13:14, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

 Done Izno (talk) 14:30, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Closing requested

Can someone close Talk:Self-hosting#Split suggestion. All editors who commented agree with the split, and the discussion has been open since October 2017. --77.173.90.33 (talk) 13:59, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks User:Trialpears. --77.173.90.33 (talk) 08:38, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Closing of Talk:Qajar dynasty#Split? requested

The discussion Talk:Qajar dynasty#Split? has been open since June 20, 2019, and editors have agreed on a split into "Qajar dynasty" and "Qajar Iran". --Orkhonien (talk) 13:06, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

 Done (administrator action not needed) Dan Bloch (talk) 16:12, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Size for splitting

Is it still reasonable to say that a 100k article should almost certainly be split? Doug Weller talk 12:28, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

What about Template:Split article?

It is written: "On the talk page of the new and old articles, include the template {{Copied}}." Why is Template:Split article not mentioned? Veverve (talk) 16:42, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Additions to WP:Splitting#Size split to cover Help:Template#Template limits issue

I added text to deal with pages that are "Too large after templates are expanded.

The gist was: Find the easiest-to-undo, least-controversial way to do an emergency fix to the page, then discuss how to fix the page permanently. You may wind up splitting the page either on an emergency basis or a permanent one.

This WP:BOLD change was prompted by Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Too many templates in one article(permalink). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:54, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Avoiding redundancy

We somehow ended up with two separate sets of instructions about how to perform a split. I've removed the one that (a) I've never seen any experienced editor use, (b) would create extra work for WP:AFC, and (c) didn't include the critical copyright/license information (which is the only thing in this process that we must get right). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:34, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Closing a split discussion

When an editor wants to close a split discussion (especially if they initiated), do they need to seek a non-involved editor to close it?

Can they close it themselves?

The closing instructions give no guidance:

• Wikipedia:Splitting#Step_4:_Close_the_discussion_and_determine_the_consensus
• Wikipedia:Proposed_article_splits#Discussion_complete

This compares sharply with closing a move discussion, which has many rules:

• Wikipedia:Requested_moves/Closing_instructions#Who_can_close_requested_moves

I note that a few editors requested closes on the talk page of WP:SPLIT (here) (rather than at Wikipedia:Proposed_article_splits), which seems very strange:

• Wikipedia_talk:Splitting#Closing_requested
• Wikipedia_talk:Splitting#Closing_of_Talk:Qajar_dynasty#Split?_requested

--David Tornheim (talk) 09:11, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Real-world example at Talk:Michael Flynn (diff of close); which is being discussed further at Draft talk:United States v. Flynn. Mathglot (talk) 09:45, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

You might want to read the more general Wikipedia:Closing discussions. If the discussion has reached a clear consensus with pretty much everyone in agreement, a formal close is not required, and any editor may summarize the discussion and act on it. If a close is needed (or desired), it is best if the closer is not involved in the discussion. A close can be requested at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure, but most discussions do not require an admin closer. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 13:34, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Thx for the helpful answer. --David Tornheim (talk) 01:09, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Italic and bold in example templates

What's with the markup in the quoted example templates {{ping |''USER1''|''USER2''|...}} and {{split|'''Article 1'''|date=December 2024}}? Those templates don't work if you include the apostrophes around the username or article name. --Lord Belbury (talk) 17:25, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Lord Belbury, agreed, can we remove the apostrophes in those examples? AngusW🐶🐶F (bark • sniff) 17:42, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I've removed this markup, encountering it again today and still seeing no reason for it to be there. --Lord Belbury (talk) 14:02, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Can splitting apply to non-article pages?

I've noticed that split notices are only for mainspace pages. Why does splitting only concern articles? Are there any other split templates for other namespaces? If not, can the current split templates be modified to apply to any namespace? JsfasdF252 (talk) 13:58, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Straw polls-- how should they be set up?

Step 3: Discuss

In many cases, a hybrid discussion/straw poll is used, but remember that polling is not a substitute for discussion. Example formatting:

 * '''Support''' – <insert reason for supporting split here> ~~~~
 * '''Oppose''' – <insert reason for opposing split here> ~~~~

I can't figure out what kind of straw poll setup is being recommended here. Could a link to an example in some real article's talk page be added? (or extra explanation) --editeur24 (talk) 23:10, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Updating section links

On step 7, "Check Special:WhatLinksHere", sometimes the number of pages is overwhelming. I recently had to do a big, complicated split and the method I used to find the inlinking section links was the following:

1. Use Help:Export to get the raw text of articles from Special:WhatLinksHere
2. Run grep to find patterns in the text corresponding to the links that need to be updated; I also grepped for <title>, so I could see the name of the article name where the pattern was found

This is very technical, but it is an option for some editors, and it may be useful to add to this guide. The export I performed returned a 127 MB XML file, which would break many text editors when trying to open it. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 10:57, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article size

There are discussions going on at Wikipedia talk:Article size about changing the recommended size. If you have any input to give, please do so there. We'll likely start an RfC on this soon. Thanks, VR _talk 15:09, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 October 2023

Please change the month for template dates from September 2023 to October 2023. 99.209.40.250 (talk) 15:19, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

 Fixed: I'm not sure why, but the use of {{#time:F Y}} was still producing "September" in this page, and changing it to {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}} fixed it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:34, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Splitting categories

Is it possible to automatically split categories? I wish I could do this using {{category redirect}}, but I don't think it can redirect a category to more than one other category. Jarble (talk) 16:59, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Numbers and changes

There's been a really long series of discussions at WT:SIZE about what critieria, on what rationales, should actually be used, to arrive at what modern size recommendations. This page doesn't seem to be keeping up with the (presently maybe nebulous) consensuses forming over there and changes to WP:SIZE.

In particular, here at WP:SPLIT, I see "> 15,000 words (> 100 kB) – Almost certainly should be divided or trimmed." But this seems like a much too low pair of numbers. We have many, many, many articles far larger than that, and they are almost always already split and full of sections that start with {{Main}} or {{Further}} because numerous side-articles have been spun off of them already. Almost any article on a country or major city is such an example. Los Angeles is 236K. Munich is 184K. Australia is 221K. Even Botswana is 145K, despite not being a country that attracts so much attention from English-speakers in the West and Global North.

While this page maybe need not change right this second, it is clearly badly out-of-step with actual practice, and whatever the numbers are changed to should be consistent with what is determined at WT:SIZE.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:01, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

You're making the very common mistake of getting confused between total size of page (in history) and readable prose of page. The guideline is about readable prose, and therefore much less strict. For instance, Botswana is 9,364 words and 60k of readable prose, and falls squarely within the guideline (see xtools). Similarly Los Angelos has 9,596 words and 60k readable prose, and not much wrong with it according to the guideline. This is why there is a current discussion to omit the kb. Putting it in kb of readable prose is confusing given that article history displays something else. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:53, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Agree with Femke re common mistake here, and that it's unhelpful to split this discussion from a guideline page to an essay page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:25, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

That is asking the wrong question. Keep as guideline, but correct the numbers, and avoid use of 'prose size', as it leads to incorrect assessments about article size wrt splitting. See § below. Mathglot (talk) 01:00, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

The term 'prose size'

Related to this discussion, is the issue of the use of the term prose size in the column headers, or in the body. The term prose size has a specific meaning that is not the same as word count; it is calculated by various tools such as Xtools articleinfo, which is linked from the top of every history page.

The term prose size cannot be used in isolation as the sole condition of evaluating page size for possible splitting; it can only be used in combination with other terms, such as "prose size > X OR word count > Y" or perhaps: "prose size > X OR raw pagesize > 300kb". Otherwise it leads to absurdities such as the article [[List of Glagolitic manuscripts]] (not linked; I'll explain why in a second), whose prose size is 45 words. So for that article to be in "probably-split" territory under current conditions, it would have to grow from 45 to 9,000 words, i.e., a 200-fold increase. However, extrapolating from current size, that would result in an article of 138 mega-bytes, as its current raw size is already 690kb (that's why I didn't link it above). Clearly, it is absurd to evaluate that article for splitting on the basis of prose size alone.

In my opinion, we should not use the term prose size (or implied equivalents such as readable prose, etc.) on this page at all, but if we do, it should be accompanied by a note explaining that it can be radically different from the actual number of readable words on the page. (My software counts 32,790 words on the rendered page above the "See also" section, not 45 words.) Since the current version is untenable, I've restored SMcCandlish's rev. 1187194448 of 00:27, 28 November 2023, which mentions word count without alluding to prose size, and which leads to the proper conclusion when evaluating List of Glagolitic manuscripts and similar articles. Mathglot (talk) 00:50, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't actually aware of this technical problem, but it does seem to be, well, problematic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:20, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Splitting an article into two new titles

Seeking quick advice: I'm seeking to split an article into two articles with two new titles and leave behind a DAB at the original title (per this proposal). Is there a recommended way of doing this with regards to preserving the old edit history? (E.g. instead of leaving the history behind at the DAB, should I move the current article to one of the new titles first and create the other article from scratch? Or is there a way to copy the edit history to both new titles?) Thanks, R Prazeres (talk) 02:17, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

PS: I've gone ahead and followed my own suggestion above (see Talk:Anatolian Seljuk architecture), but if anyone sees this belatedly and thinks there was something wrong with this method, let me know. R Prazeres (talk) 20:47, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Splitting procedure needs a re-write

As a documentation writer of long experience, I know a poor procedure from a good one, and the Splitting Procedure in the WP:Splitting page qualifies as the former.

• Some steps - for example, Step 1 and Steps 8-9 - are not steps but either conditions or options that should be set apart to shorten the main procedure.
• Most steps need to be rewritten/restructured. For example, Step 3 should begin "In a new browser window or tab, open the section or full article", followed by bullets for each action or by new short-and-to-the point steps.
• Step 5 is decent in having a short intro followed by a series of bulleted actions. An alternative, though, would be to move Cleanup to a subsection below the main procedure.

The general principle here is simplify-simplify-simplify, which leads to rules on wording and structure. For example, keep sentences and steps as short as possible. Place "locators" at the beginning of steps (as in the Step 3 recommended above). If a procedure becomes too lengthy, break it into a series of sub-tasks.

I'll gladly re-write the procedure at an admin's request and then post it in a sandbox for reviewing and further editing. Allreet (talk) 14:43, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, but please don't. This procedure may not follow the rules you're familiar with but it's very effective and easy to follow. In particular, the fact that it's all in one ordered section is a strength, not a weakness. If it were split into multiple sections, people wouldn't read them all. If you want to make incremental changes like rewording Step 3, sure, that's the way Wikipedia progresses, but a rewrite is not indicated. Dan Bloch (talk) 18:48, 1 November 2024 (UTC)