Hey, since your an UX designer, I was wondering if you know of any research specifically about preferred line length in easy texts like fiction and technical texts like scientific papers and encyclopedias.
I can give anecdotal evidence that I and a few people I know prefer to read fiction in small line widths, but technical texts in large line widths. It makes sense when you realize that most fiction books are sold as small format paperbacks with few characters per line, while textbooks and technical books are almost always large format hardcovers. I think it's because fiction and newspapers are read front-to-back, while in technical texts the reader has to go back and forth a lot to understand everything.
If there are studies backing this, it might convince wiki programmers to drop the text width restriction, since obviously Wikipedia is as technical as you can get among major websites.