diff --git a/UPDATING b/UPDATING
--- a/UPDATING
+++ b/UPDATING
@@ -27,6 +27,10 @@
 	world, or to merely disable the most expensive debugging functionality
 	at runtime, run "ln -s 'abort:false,junk:false' /etc/malloc.conf".)
 
+20230914:
+	Enable splitting out pkgbase manpages into separate packages by
+	default. To disable this, set WITHOUT_MANSPLITPKG=yes in src.conf.
+
 20230909:
 	Enable vnet sysctl variables to be loader tunable. SYSCTLs which
 	belongs to VNETs can be initialized during early boot or module
diff --git a/share/man/man5/src.conf.5 b/share/man/man5/src.conf.5
--- a/share/man/man5/src.conf.5
+++ b/share/man/man5/src.conf.5
@@ -1152,8 +1152,8 @@
 .It Va WITHOUT_MANCOMPRESS
 Do not install compressed man pages.
 Only the uncompressed versions will be installed.
-.It Va WITH_MANSPLITPKG
-Split man pages into their own packages during make package.
+.It Va WITHOUT_MANSPLITPKG
+Do not split man pages into their own packages during make package.
 .It Va WITHOUT_MAN_UTILS
 Do not build utilities for manual pages,
 .Xr apropos 1 ,
diff --git a/share/mk/bsd.opts.mk b/share/mk/bsd.opts.mk
--- a/share/mk/bsd.opts.mk
+++ b/share/mk/bsd.opts.mk
@@ -60,6 +60,7 @@
     MAKE_CHECK_USE_SANDBOX \
     MAN \
     MANCOMPRESS \
+    MANSPLITPKG \
     NIS \
     NLS \
     OPENSSH \
@@ -76,7 +77,6 @@
     CCACHE_BUILD \
     CTF \
     INSTALL_AS_USER \
-    MANSPLITPKG \
     PROFILE \
     RETPOLINE \
     STALE_STAGED \