Last modified: 2006-06-22 17:28:03 UTC
Some articles have extensive footnotes, which is good in some subjects for verification purposes and solid grounding. I'm not convinced that footnote length should be counted in warning users about article length. Footnotes are optional, individual, and read as supplements to specific points. A well cited article should be of readable length, with "footnotes as needed."
It's got sweet bugger all to do with editorial standards. It's got a lot to do with browsers that choke on reams of text.
That doesn't sound like the impression [[WP:SIZE]] gives. Can you correct that page if it's in fact wrong? It reads as follows: "In the past, technical considerations because of some now rarely used browsers prompted a firm recommendation that articles be limited to a maximum size of precisely 32 KB, since editing any article longer than that would cause severe problems. With the advent of the section editing feature, and the availability of upgrades for the affected browsers, this once hard and fast rule has been softened." (That's the point you are making, only it seems that WP:SIZE considers it no longer an issue for the most part) "However, there are still stylistic reasons why an article should not be too long. For stylistic purposes, external links, further reading, references, see also, and similar sections; tables, list-like sections, and similar content; and markup, interwiki links, URLs and similar formatting should not be counted toward an article's total size since the point is to limit readable prose..." (That's the point I'm discussing, simply that the 32k warning count probably should not include cite.php footnote elements as well as these elements)
