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are easy, and we do not have to worry about someone having to pull out separate volumes and flip pages if directed elsewhere. We don't have to make sure there's a scrap of information at every conceivable search term; that's what redirects and the search function are for. Articles that are "cruft" on
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already made that position perfectly clear), but it's a case where the whole is indeed generally greater than the sum of its parts. Not only that, a large article which gets many visitors is far easier to maintain -- keep updated, patrol for vandalism, etc. -- than a collection of small articles
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Where such an article can't be merged into something larger, it's probably because it is too trivial for the next broader level of detail and probably shouldn't be included at all (for example, I wouldn't even be worth mentioning in my university's article: it would rightly get deleted were a
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With some articles you suggest merging and the creators respond as if you wanted to delete the article entirely. I regard merging as an improvement: information wants context, in order to be useful; maybe it doesn't add to your article count, but it adds to the usefulness of the encyclopedia.
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sentence about me to be added) -- or if it should be included, indicative that we have a big gaping hole somewhere in our coverage and need to write the article for the next broader level (for example, an individual folk song from a country on which there is no "music of X" article yet).
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What I don't quite understand is the opposition many people have to merging small articles into larger ones: schools into school district articles, fictional characters into book articles, city landmarks into city articles.
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It contains the advice or opinions of one or more
Knowledge contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
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their own (and I do try to use the term only jokingly!) can be a helpful bit of detail in a larger picture.
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to have lots of small trivial articles (I'm deliberately ignoring referencing issues here;
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