Okay, I can give a bit of insight into why this isn’t just a shitpost on behalf of Wikipedia’s editors. For various important reasons, we have guidelines on article size, and while it’s not hard-and-fast, 10,000 words is generally the point where most editors will start wanting to trim material from the article or branch it off into more specific subarticles. An article with more than 15,000 words should “almost certainly be divided or trimmed”. For context, the article on “World War II” has 13,000 words, and that’s because there are literally tens of thousands of other articles about that war containing offloaded details within details within details.
The article “False or misleading statements by Donald Trump” currently has 21,000 words. It’s utterly giga-fucked compared to any other article I’ve ever seen on the English Wikipedia. And when e.g. the “COVID-19 pandemic” section already has the listed “further information” articles of: “COVID-19 pandemic in the United States”, “COVID-19 misinformation by the United States § Trump administration”, and “Communication of the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic”, what are you even supposed to do? It’s fucking impossible.
what are you even supposed to do?
Easy. Break it up into separate articles.
False or misleading statements by Donald Trump on January 1, 2025
False or misleading statements by Donald Trump on January 2, 2025
False or misleading statements by Donald Trump On January 3, 2025
…
Nah, by category could be funnier. “Statements contradicted by science”, “Statements contradicted by basic economics”, “Statements later directly contradicted by Trump”
The only problem with this approach is duplication. Many statements would appear in multiple lists
Then how about a single chronological article of every bogus statement he ever made. Then have other articles that cluster them topically and provide context?
This it a great suggestion.
One “Trump fact” could be referenced in multiple articles.
I’m just saying, we can make this so much more funny than a single banner at the top of a single article. We can make multiple, legitimately-needed Wikipedia articles about Donald Trump’s horseshit, I want to see some wikipedia editor try and say “no not like that!”
Don’t forget “Statements earlier directly contradicted by Trump.”
You also need, Statements contradicted by objective reality.
This is usually what they do for long list-type articles. For examples, see such fascinating articles such as:
I know you didn’t ask, but I will tell you that when I saw this post I didn’t interpret it as a criticism of Wikipedia, but of the article subject. I read “Wikipedia at it again” as a positive endorsement about telling the truth.
I agree with that, and I think that one comment below has it wrong. My comment wasn’t a defense as much as it was a neutral clarification for readers at home™. I try to offer additional context when Wikipedia stuff gets brought up on Lemmy, because 1) selfishly, I think demystifying it makes it more likely that new people try editing, and 2) with Wikipedia being a major anchor of the modern information ecosystem, it’s healthier for said ecosystem if people better understand what goes into it.
When he inevitably dies of an aneurysm I hope you like have a script ready to change “is” into “was” because otherwise it’s going to take forever.
Wikipedia’s VisualEditor has a find-and-replace feature. But blindly using find-and-replace causes problems when you have sentences like this:
Donald Trump, who is the current president of the United States, draws a presidential salary of $400,000.
…which turns into this nonsensical sentence:
Donald Trump, who was the current present of the United States, draws a presidential salary of $400,000.
Yeah you’re gonna need a verb tense find-and-replacer
Another major problem I see in fixing this: who the fuck wants to spend all that time sorting through literal fucking nonsense?
Link for the lazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump
Yesterday wat
![Wiki: On predicting 9/11 to Pete Hegseth: History will never forget that it was the SEALs who stormed the compound at [sic] Osama bin Laden and put a bullet in his head. Remember that. And please remember I wrote about Osama bin Laden exactly one year ago, one year before he blew up the World Trade Center. And I said, ‘You got to watch Osama bin Laden.’ I said one year before to Pete Hegseth. I said one year before. Where’s Pete? In the book I wrote—whatever the hell the title, I can’t tell you. But I can tell you there’s a page in there devoted to the fact that I saw somebody named Osama bin Laden, and I didn’t like it, and you got to take care of him. They[who?] didn’t do it. A year later, he blew up the World Trade Center. - Trump at Naval Station Norfolk Pier 14, Norfolk, Virginia, October 5, 2025](https://lemmings.world/pictrs/image/9b9581fd-3a4d-4d16-b97b-05822fe2b9c9.png)
They [who?]
This is amazing technology
I honestly love Wikipedia… Can you imagine just how much worse everything would be if it never existed? Things are bad enough as it is, but holy shit…
You need to escape the square brackets otherwise Lemmy converts the entire thing into a link (that goes nowhere) which is just displaying as a single long string with no line breaks making it rather hard to read.
It really freaks me out how if you read a transcript of one of Donald Trump’s speeches it literally doesn’t make any sense at all. This is a consistent pattern through and through all of his extended stream of consciousness dialogue. And yet somehow we just let him coast on by.
Bro, what
This article may be TOO LONG to READ and NAVIGATE COMFORTABLY
🤣
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.
This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably
Yeah it’s definitely too long. But whose fault is that?
Donald Trump announces 140% tariff on Wikipedia starting next Monday
WAAAAAHHH-HH WIKIPEDIA IS LIBERAL BIAS WAHHHHHHHH
You’ll find that reality has a strong liberal bias. But not to worry, there will be a most presidential executive order later this week to abolish it.
in case you’re wondering… no. it’s not the longest article on the english wikipedia… but it’s getting close.
What’s the longest
Currently, it’s Japanese conjugation, followed closely by 2025 in women’s road cycling and then a bunch of lists. The third longest non-list article is 2024 United States House of Representatives elections in California
Waow, did you know that chapter 324 of the UFCW endorsed Lou Correa in the California 46 constituency of the US House of Representatives?
REALLY?! That’s life-altering information!
(technically all information is, though some by infinitesimal amounts)
Everyone knows that.
Is it meant to be read, though? I’d just search for keywords in the article to find whichever lie I was interested in confirming.
Also, is 21,000 words really that many? The story I’m just about finished writing for fun is at 140K words. I’m starting my fourth read-through for editing. It’s not that big of a deal. I guess people don’t read anymore?
I guess people don’t read anymore?
You hopefully saw that I linked the article size guidelines above alongside the 21,000 words figure. That page is only 1700 words, so feel free to give it a read and see if it soothes your curiosity for why we have them (definitely feel free to ask if any claims made seem dubious or terminology is unclear).
Keep in mind that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and that this singular “article” represents nearly 50 pages of prose in 12-point, single-spaced print – the size of a novella. Wikipedia articles are meant to be encyclopedic treatments of their subjects, not dissertations on them.
Edit: just checked, and the “Download as PDF” of this article is 153 pages long.
Also, is 21,000 words really that many? The story I’m just about finished writing for fun is at 140K words. I’m starting my fourth read-through for editing. It’s not that big of a deal. I guess people don’t read anymore?
Allow me to poke some fun at this.
Also, is a 1,000 calorie cupcake really that many? The wedding cake I just finished baking is at 25,000 calories. This is the fourth one I’ve made. It’s not that big of a deal. I guess people don’t eat anymore?
Trump lies as often as he poops.
I bet his ass is jealous of all the shit that comes out of his mouth.
Constantly?
I don’t think comfort was ever a consideration.
Makes sense to have article guidelines, but I’d argue it’s more of a list, documenting for history. I don’t think most people would read it like a book, beginning to end, no matter the length. So it should be all-encompassing, not split up.
This could be replaced by three words: ‘All of them.’
