Just a random question but is there some kind of limit to how much info can be included in a Wikipedia page and/or topic?

I know that anyone can try and add info to Wikipedia but it can also include a kind of public review by others who may object to the validity of the information being added by some random person.

That said, I UNDERSTAND that there is some review/editing process that can limit what is added to Wikipedia but is there also some kind of limit to quantity?

Why is there not more info on some/most/or all of the pages? As long as the information is legit and no one can prove the information about a particular subject is not legit (has legit sources), why is there not more information on Wikipedia? Do they have some kind of limit on a particular subject because of data space on their website?

Wikipedia, I get, is kind of like an online encyclopedia but does that also mean they try to limit the amount of information that can be added to a particular subject page, even if the information is legit?

I don't think there is a page on Wikipedia that couldn't contain more information about the said subject than what you find there. Unless they have some kind of algorithm limiting the amount of data on their website due to space issues (which I understand can be an issue online), change my mind.

Slightly off topic, but whenever I try to access wikipedia I get the following error message: "Your connection is not private. Attackers might be trying to steal your information from en.wikipedia.org..."

I started getting the error message about a month ago. Is anyone else having the same problem?

Ex-CultMember, sorry if I hijacked your thread.

It's a security warning. Look up at the address bar, does it start with https? You might be on an older, less secure version of the page. IMO there is no particular danger for a website that you are just viewing. If you are entering personal information onto the page, then you want the increased security measures.

Thanks!

If there is a limit, how do they determine that? Just curious. I know they ask for donations, so there must be some kind of data limit they can hold on their website, so there must be some kind of limit assigned to each topic, right?

I copied and pasted the information the Elvis Presley page into a Word Document and it's about 40-50 pages of text. Obviously, there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of pages that could cover Elvis Presley but the data on Elvis amounts to a short, summarized biography.

I'm guessing Wikipedia must limit what someone could add to a subject, right? If I really wanted to, I could easily write a biography/autobiography about myself that would be larger than Elvis' Wikipedia page and could be backed up with reliable sources but how does Wikipedia determine what can and cannot be added to it's website (assuming the data is well sourced and no one can legitimately counter the accuracy of the data)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_size


The maximum limit for Wikipedia is set by the MediaWiki software default article size limit, 2048 kibibytes (specifically, 2,097,152 bytes).

Also see this section in link:

Size guideline

More isn't always useful, better, or more complete. Sometimes it pays (better) to be concise.

Encyclopedias are not supposed to be every last word on a topic, and I have no idea how you would determine whether any article anywhere contained “every last word”.

In particular, Wikipedia has an explicit policy of not allowing original research to be published. The information is supposed to be published somewhere else first, and a reference to the original source given in the Wikipedia article. That is what the “citation needed” message is about that you will sometimes see in an article. This is how an encyclopedia is supposed to operate.

If there is a 2 gigabyte physical limit, that is the size of a very very large book. Even then, there is nothing keeping an author from subdividing an article into additional pages. Even very short articles typically have links to related pages. For a long article like the one on Elvis, I’m sure you would not be able to read the entire tree of linked articles in a lifetime.

I see this in my study of Tudor history for example. It gives you directions to head for further study but doesn't give you the facts on if Henry VIII really exploded after death.

That's a story I'd like to hear more about, Susan :-)