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What is an appropriate length for a Wikipedia article? This is discussed at Article length.
An article can be as long as 10,000 words or more, if there are enough sources on the topic to provide for that much content. Undoubtedly there are articles that reach 20,000 words. The recommended maximum length is around 100kB of text. There is no standard for minimum length, an acceptable stub article could be as short as three or four sentences.
If you look at the menu on the right-hand side of any page on Wikipedia, there is a link to Page information. Clicking on that link shows lots of information about the page including its total size as well as how often it has been viewed. There is also this tool - you just copy and paste the text into there, and it counts it for you.
Wikipedia and its sister projects are organized at the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Wikimedia-wide issues can be discussed either on Wikipedia Meta or on the Wikimedia-l mailing list. If you ever want to bring an issue to the attention of the entire Wikimedia community, the foundation list is the best medium for doing so. But please use project-specificmailing lists for issues which concern just one project. You do not have to subscribe to keep up with the mailing list's postings—they are archived here.
Another source for what is happening is Goings on, which provides a weekly digest. On Wikipedia, to keep up with current events, visit the Wikipedia:Community portal.
There is a very large articles backlog
The articles backlog is growing rapidly (↑353 since last week) 
