long articles vs short? for long tail traffic.

Im setting up new site which i hope is going to get natural long tail se traffic (rank for low frequency keywords). I dont optimize content for any specific keword.
Now im trying to figure out is it better to have 500 short articles, or same content but 100 long articles "a la" long articles in wikipedia.
How do u think, wich page format gets more traffic?
i dont speak here about backlinks, yeh, sure im gonna get them!

Length doesn't matter as long as the content gives enough information

it matters because:
1 page =1 title
5 pages =5 titles

I agree, the question isn't 500 short or 100 long articles, its about having the appropriate content, hitting on the right long tails, correct h1, h2 tags, the right title tags and things like that...