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I notice that over the last year a length limit has been imposed on short descriptions, apparently without broad community consensus.
Each short description should: be short – no more than about 40 characters (but this can be slightly exceeded if necessary)
, and there seem to be editors attempting to enforce this limit, which goes against policy and guidance, in that the limit appears to have been arbitrarily imposed, has no grounding in policy or guidance, and is counterproductive to the goals of the encyclopedia by being arbitrary rule creep with no demonstrated value. It is an unnecessary restriction on the freedom of editors to develop an optimum short description for any given article. A number of other suggestions seem to also have become regarded as rules, contrary to the spirit in which they were originally written. To the best of my knowledge, the only solid broad consensus for matters regarding short descriptions was produced in the debates at the time that that short descriptions were forced upon us by WMF. It is likely that none of the more recent, prescriptive recommendations now published on the page have no standing more substantive than personal opinions and preferences of the people who wrote them. I intend to revise some of these changes to bring them back in line with policy, guidance and in some cases, reality. Rules limiting article content must fit in with the needs of the encyclopedia, and limitations should be restricted to what is necessary to achieve the needs of the encyclopedia. Bear in mind that local consensus does not overrule policy and general guidance, and evidence of necessity or benefit is required before a rule can be imposed on editors. Everyone is welcome to participate in this revision and associated discussion.
I will open by challenging the claim that Each short description should: be short – no more than about 40 characters
as inappropriate. A short description should be brief within the more important constraints of being useful to the reader, valid, and not misleading. Where reasonable practicable it should be less than about 100 characters, or it is not short, but if a useful, valid and not misleading short description takes more than 100 characters, it must be as long as necessary.
The short description should also preferably be in simple, non-technical language to best serve the largest audience, but if special terms are needed to keep the length reasonable, that should be considered on a case by case basis like any other content, and discussed on the talk page. If you are reverted for a bold edit, explain your reasoning. Keeping the length to below 40 characters should not be used as a reason. Whether removing valid, useful and not misleading information from a short description in the pursuit of brevity is a valid argument is basically up to talk page consensus, like other content debates.
Notice that the constraints I have suggested are fully compliant with the goals of the encyclopedia. Anything more restrictive must be proven necessary. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 15:59, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
References
Is someone able to summarize this discussion or let me know if there is anything new here WRT § Too-short descriptions? The two discussions seem to start with the same observation. Sorry for not keeping up. ~ Kvng ( talk) 17:02, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
be short – preferably no more than about 40 characters (but this can be slightly exceeded if necessary; just 3% of short descriptions are longer than 60 characters). In the section immediately below WP:SDSHORT, the language is
preferably no more than about 40 characters, which I think is better phrasing than
no more than about 40 charactersfrom SDSHORT. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 11:50, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
is there is anything new hereis no. I do like Vanisaac's suggestion for explaining the range of workable lengths. If we put the salient points and presented evidence of these discussions in the recommendations, we're likely to repeat the discussion less often. ~ Kvng ( talk) 21:02, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
longer, more specific SDs can be less useful than a short, general one, as the opposite can probably also be said with equal truth, ie: longer, more specific SDs can be more useful than a short, general one. In some cases this claim may be true, in other cases the other. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 08:06, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
No further discussion?· · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:02, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
The short description should be as short as is reasonably practicable while serving its purpose. A target of 40 characters has been suggested, but there can not be a hard and fast limit. sometimes more words will be necessary to make sense.is the integral part that you refer to? Can I draw your attention to a)
A target of 40 characters has been suggested,and b}, directly following, and clearly referring to a),
but there can not be a hard and fast limit. sometimes more words will be necessary to make sense, which was not an instruction or a recognised recommendation, but a description of the situation at the time, having no standing as guidance or even as a "recommended target" just a statement of reality – it was suggested. There has been no broad community based consensus to change that in the interim to the best of my knowledge. Perhaps you can show evidence of such consensus? Perhaps not?
fulfill the purposes listed above, as most short descriptions are in their first iteration, and a large number are automated, via infobox, and in my experience, are good enough as a start, but far from ideal, so we cannot assume how many of them might approach the ideal to the extent of making recommendations based on current lengths. I commend your work on the statistics, but they are not useful for extrapolation of trends. They are only evidence of what exists now, not of what should exist, or even of what might exist in the future. For that it would be more informative to analyse short descriptions which have gone through several changes, to see how the length trends over number of edits, preferably using examples which have had several changes, and which have stabilised as descriptions recognised as good by a panel of topic experts. I hypothesize that very short descriptions will tend to get longer, and longer ones shorter. Whether the average will end up above or below 40 characters is beyond my capacity to accurately predict, and how much variance we can expect is another unknown. A wild-assed guess might predict the mode at around 40 characters, with the 25th and 75th percentiles near 30 and 60 characters, but I would only expect the reality to start to become apparent in another 5 to 10 years. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 17:53, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
If it is considered desirable to provide context, I suggest following Vanisaacs suggestion of laying out the issues, neutrally presenting the unbiased facts in a way that does not suggest any specific length limitation of the short description itself.I think that I have done that. As far as I can tell, the original wording has support from only one person in this discussion, so there is no consensus to return to it, or something like it. I am supportive of change, and I have proposed changes multiple times above. I have provided actual analysis of actual millions of actual short descriptions, and descriptive text for the page based on that analysis. Instead of helpful suggestions to guide us to a new consensus, Pbsouthwood's responses have unfortunately contained speculation and guesses such as the above. Speculation and guessing has a place, but using them to craft helpful consensus guidance for editors is unlikely to lead to positive outcomes. If you want the wording of the guidance changed, please make a suggestion that builds on the current, but suboptimal, consensus wording. Please take into account my feedback on your proposed wording change that omitted the numbers entirely; leaving out any mention of numerical length will just lead to more conflict and arguing here and elsewhere. Use facts and data, please. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 19:29, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
More than 80% of short descriptions fulfill the purposes listed above using fewer than 40 characters.Do they? How well? This is unlikely to have been analysed sufficiently to be able to make that claim with confidence. Perhaps More than 80% of short descriptions use fewer than 40 characters (assuming the analysis is accurate, which seems likely), and it is likely that most of them fulfill the purposes listed above (speculation, but perhaps not unreasonable, and based on having read a large number of them and more likely than the claim that they do fulfill the purposes – I am fairly sure that some of them do not, and it does not necessarily have anything to do with their length) This would be good enough and can be corrected if the numbers change.
Less than 3% of short descriptions are longer than 60 charactersProbably true, but may not remain true. Can be changed if later analysis shows the percentage to have changed, so OK as it stands.
and short descriptions longer than 100 characters will be flagged for editing. Short descriptions exceeding 40 characters may be truncated by some Wikipedia tools.Does not allow for the possibility of actually needing more than 100 characters. I suggest a slight amendment: and short descriptions longer than 100 characters will be flagged for attention. Short descriptions exceeding 40 characters may be truncated by some Wikipedia tools. If the tools change the explanation can be amended to suit without controversy
Because they are intended to be scanned quickly, longer, more specific descriptions can be less useful.Fair enough.
be short – no longer than is needed to fulfill its functions effectivelyis a useful qualification. It should be implied by other content on the page, but some people may not notice the context when their attention is drawn by a shortcut. If nobody else wants it, I am not going to push the point. It can be added later if confusion is common enough.
actual analysis of actual millions of actual short descriptionshas no analysis of the actual quality of those short descriptions, quality being how well they fulfill the described purposes, and is therefore of little relevance in making recommendations which are intended for improving quality of short descriptions.
As requested immediately above, here's a mockup of the Formatting section, with comments incorporated:
FormattingEach short description should:
- be written in plain text – without HTML tags or wiki markup
- start with a capital letter
- avoid initial articles (A, An, The) except when required for correct grammar and meaning
- avoid a final full stop
- be short – no longer than is needed to fulfill its functions effectively
- More than 80% of short descriptions use fewer than 40 characters. Less than 3% of short descriptions are longer than 60 characters, and short descriptions longer than 100 characters will be flagged for attention. Short descriptions exceeding 40 characters may be truncated by some Wikipedia tools. Because they are intended to be scanned quickly, longer, more specific descriptions can be less useful.
My apologies if I missed any feedback above. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 17:29, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Here are some examples, though they can all be varied if the context allows something better. See also § Inclusion of dates. Remember to ensure your description is short:, as it will be adequately covered in the formatting section, it could be replaced by (See above), and the shortcut WP:SD40 that mentions 40 characters should be deleted in keeping with the descriptive character of the new mention. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 09:30, 25 September 2022 (UTC)preferably no more than about 40 characters
Thank you, thank you, thank you !!! — ALL of you. I’m a relative newby, only a copy editor, and spend ~92.53% of my extremely limited WP bandwidth on SD’s & Intros. I’ve been bitten a few times on SD length (both directions); I really appreciate this clean solution set and all the time y’all put into it. (I also have some concerns on format, consistency, and quality…. largely irrelevant to the many happy hours that you folks put into this fix. They will keep, for now. And I hasten to add that I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and am trying to learn as I go.) This helps me a lot. All blessings!! Left Central ( talk) 03:36, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
I've noticed a number of SDs starting with "Former ..." or "Defunct ...", or ending with "now defunct". Those are unlikely to be useful for disambiguation or clarification. In general, our SDs are timeless, but if that information is useful, I'd think that using precise dates ("Computer hardware manufacturer, 1960-1980") would be better, leaving the detail to the end (where it might be truncated).
I suggest that we explicitly say that starting with "former", "defunct", "late", etc. is not recommended. Thoughts? -- Macrakis ( talk) 16:49, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Template:Short description has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Replace: {{#ifeq:{{{pagetype}}}|Disambiguation pages|s}}
with: {{#ifeq:{{{pagetype}}}|Disambiguation pages|s}}{{#ifeq:{{{pagetype}}}|Disambiguation page|s}}
i.e. insert the second clause, making the plural usage "descriptions" active for the type "disambiguation page" (singular).
Reason:
This is the actual usage, and there's an avoidable category redirect as a result.
E.g. Template:Place name disambiguation includes Template:Disambiguation page short description (singular "page" & "description"), which adds Category:Disambiguation pages with short description (plural "pages", singular "description"), which is a redirect to Category:Disambiguation pages with short descriptions (plural both).
This is e.g. visible at Template:Short description/doc#Pagetype parameter, which shows the disambiguation category with zero members (because it's the singular form, which is a redirect). Sai ¿? ✍ 14:13, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
Category:Disambiguation pages with short descriptions has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you.— Qwerfjkl talk 18:46, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
An edit recently revised "American Mormon leader" to "American religious leader". I can see that more general description can be better under many circumstances, but I'm wondering if there has been discussion of this type of distinction. For instance "footballer" vs. "sports person", "governor" vs. "politician", "surgeon" vs. "doctor". This is related in some ways to the inclusion of dates in the short description in that a guideline could help to reduce churn of values between camps with different points of view on "proper" content. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 16:28, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
When a user is editing an article in the Visual Editor, this template displays as "Short description": this is only normal for templates that have no text element; templates with a text element show as that text.
Viewing the description text is a hassle: it is two clicks away, only visible when actually editing the template.
Therefore I'd like to request that this template be changed so that it actually shows the short description text.
Spel-Punc-Gram ( talk) 14:17, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
The screenshot of the Abraham Lincoln article in this project page has a short description that no longer matches the short description on the Abraham Lincoln article. Jamplevia ( talk) 16:06, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Template:Short description has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
{{
Annotated link}} apparently
produces erroneous results when {{
short description}} has a missing or blank first unnamed parameter. I have attempted to check for this situation
with this change to the sandbox. I tested the change
here (no parameters) and
here (multiple empty parameters), and it appears to work. If other editors think that this change will work with no side effects, I believe that it should be implemented. There is no reason that I can think of to have an empty first parameter. As of earlier this month, there were
five articles with empty |1=
, so this is an actual (although rare) problem.
We may also want to check parameter 2 to see if it contains a value other than "noreplace". – Jonesey95 ( talk) 02:13, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
Would it make sense to generate SDs for the ~9,400 articles with {{ Infobox language}}? Could be "(Extinct or Endangered) (family) language (of country if one or two countries are mentioned in "Native to" / otherwise could be continent or region). Examples:
a455bcd9 (Antoine) ( talk) 10:32, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
Hi folks. Looks like we just reached somewhat of a milestone with the number of articles lacking a short description having just dropped below 1.5 million for the first time since the feature was added? Link That would mean less than a quarter of English Wikipedia's about 6.5 million articles don't have a short description. Progress! Kind regards, Robby.is.on ( talk) 20:15, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
Following the deletion decisions at CFD here and here, more namespaces are to be de-categorised following Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2022 December 15#Pages with short description.
Qwerfjkl or other interested editors: I have implemented this in Template:Short description by extending the previous code, but please review the code again, as it could no doubt be streamlined to work only in article space (using {{ Main other}}?) rather than excluding a list of other namespaces. – Fayenatic London 09:55, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
This seems like a kludge that could be productized into a cached tag extension for the MediaWiki ecosystem (mediawiki-extensions-MetaDescriptionTag). The current solution relies on .nomobile
, which was recognised as an antipattern. IIRC the tech stack was changed to expunge the class.
82.14.9.253 (
talk)
17:40, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
I requested a very useful query at WP:QUERY that was just fulfilled at User:Uhai/Pages without short descriptions by view count. It contains the top 1000 viewed articles without short descriptions. Would anyone like to contribute on this? — PerfectSoundWhatever ( t; c) 00:30, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
A requested move discussion has been initiated for Module:AnnotatedLink to be moved to Module:Annotated link. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. — RMCD bot 23:33, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
Opinions on the utility of two alternative short deacriptions are requested. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 08:06, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
There is a discussion on the appropriate short description for Marshfield station at Talk:Marshfield station which would affect several articles on the mass transit system of Chicago and other pages. The discussion concerns the purpose of short descriptions and whether local consensus or precedence overrides broader agreements on the purpose and style recommended for short descriptions in the encyclopedia as described in this project. Members of this project and any other interested parties are invited to consider the implications and provide input. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:53, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
I propose to change current textA short description is not a definition and should not attempt to define the article's subject nor to summarise the lead.
to: A short description is not a definition and need not attempt to define the article's subject nor to summarise the lead.
Current text implies that a short description that is incidentally a definition would be wrong, but if a definition serves the purpose adequately it should be quite acceptable. This is a minor point, and I am not expecting any objection, but you never know, and it is polite to ask, Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 09:49, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Is it really necessary to include the date of birth in a short description, when the description has already made it obvious who the person is, for disambiguation and other purposes, especially for BLPs? I see that quite a lot of them do, and it just doesn't sit right with me. IMO it should be discouraged. Laterthanyouthink ( talk) 01:28, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
These may be unfamiliar and therefore confusing to the average reader. Should we specifically discourage their use if reasonably practicable? The counterargument is that they are usually a way to make the description shorter. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 09:10, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
Where a date is not known exactly, "c. " may be used for "circa". Other examples are given at WP:APPROXDATE, although "fl. " for " floruit" should be avoided as it is not universally understood. Centuries should not be abbreviated "c. " due to the potential for confusion with "circa".
I've just been writing
test cases for
Module:GetShortDescription and had to create a bunch of pages under my sandbox/ to store the various wacky possible configurations the module has to handle. Other than the various mixes of numbered and unnumbered params including |pagetype=
and |2=noreplace
; {{short description| }}
will produce an eight character short desc entirely of whitespace (see
the example), and {{short description|||}}
will produce an empty short desc. Even {{short description}}
renders is treated as existing. I see empty descs are added to
Category:Pages with empty short description, but why render treat them as existing at all? I also see that my lovely string of whitespace isn't considered to be empty.
Fred Gandt ·
talk ·
contribs
19:49, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Fred Gandt ·
talk ·
contribs
15:06, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Fred Gandt ·
talk ·
contribs
16:11, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 10 | ← | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 | Archive 16 | Archive 17 |
I notice that over the last year a length limit has been imposed on short descriptions, apparently without broad community consensus.
Each short description should: be short – no more than about 40 characters (but this can be slightly exceeded if necessary)
, and there seem to be editors attempting to enforce this limit, which goes against policy and guidance, in that the limit appears to have been arbitrarily imposed, has no grounding in policy or guidance, and is counterproductive to the goals of the encyclopedia by being arbitrary rule creep with no demonstrated value. It is an unnecessary restriction on the freedom of editors to develop an optimum short description for any given article. A number of other suggestions seem to also have become regarded as rules, contrary to the spirit in which they were originally written. To the best of my knowledge, the only solid broad consensus for matters regarding short descriptions was produced in the debates at the time that that short descriptions were forced upon us by WMF. It is likely that none of the more recent, prescriptive recommendations now published on the page have no standing more substantive than personal opinions and preferences of the people who wrote them. I intend to revise some of these changes to bring them back in line with policy, guidance and in some cases, reality. Rules limiting article content must fit in with the needs of the encyclopedia, and limitations should be restricted to what is necessary to achieve the needs of the encyclopedia. Bear in mind that local consensus does not overrule policy and general guidance, and evidence of necessity or benefit is required before a rule can be imposed on editors. Everyone is welcome to participate in this revision and associated discussion.
I will open by challenging the claim that Each short description should: be short – no more than about 40 characters
as inappropriate. A short description should be brief within the more important constraints of being useful to the reader, valid, and not misleading. Where reasonable practicable it should be less than about 100 characters, or it is not short, but if a useful, valid and not misleading short description takes more than 100 characters, it must be as long as necessary.
The short description should also preferably be in simple, non-technical language to best serve the largest audience, but if special terms are needed to keep the length reasonable, that should be considered on a case by case basis like any other content, and discussed on the talk page. If you are reverted for a bold edit, explain your reasoning. Keeping the length to below 40 characters should not be used as a reason. Whether removing valid, useful and not misleading information from a short description in the pursuit of brevity is a valid argument is basically up to talk page consensus, like other content debates.
Notice that the constraints I have suggested are fully compliant with the goals of the encyclopedia. Anything more restrictive must be proven necessary. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 15:59, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
References
Is someone able to summarize this discussion or let me know if there is anything new here WRT § Too-short descriptions? The two discussions seem to start with the same observation. Sorry for not keeping up. ~ Kvng ( talk) 17:02, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
be short – preferably no more than about 40 characters (but this can be slightly exceeded if necessary; just 3% of short descriptions are longer than 60 characters). In the section immediately below WP:SDSHORT, the language is
preferably no more than about 40 characters, which I think is better phrasing than
no more than about 40 charactersfrom SDSHORT. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 11:50, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
is there is anything new hereis no. I do like Vanisaac's suggestion for explaining the range of workable lengths. If we put the salient points and presented evidence of these discussions in the recommendations, we're likely to repeat the discussion less often. ~ Kvng ( talk) 21:02, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
longer, more specific SDs can be less useful than a short, general one, as the opposite can probably also be said with equal truth, ie: longer, more specific SDs can be more useful than a short, general one. In some cases this claim may be true, in other cases the other. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 08:06, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
No further discussion?· · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:02, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
The short description should be as short as is reasonably practicable while serving its purpose. A target of 40 characters has been suggested, but there can not be a hard and fast limit. sometimes more words will be necessary to make sense.is the integral part that you refer to? Can I draw your attention to a)
A target of 40 characters has been suggested,and b}, directly following, and clearly referring to a),
but there can not be a hard and fast limit. sometimes more words will be necessary to make sense, which was not an instruction or a recognised recommendation, but a description of the situation at the time, having no standing as guidance or even as a "recommended target" just a statement of reality – it was suggested. There has been no broad community based consensus to change that in the interim to the best of my knowledge. Perhaps you can show evidence of such consensus? Perhaps not?
fulfill the purposes listed above, as most short descriptions are in their first iteration, and a large number are automated, via infobox, and in my experience, are good enough as a start, but far from ideal, so we cannot assume how many of them might approach the ideal to the extent of making recommendations based on current lengths. I commend your work on the statistics, but they are not useful for extrapolation of trends. They are only evidence of what exists now, not of what should exist, or even of what might exist in the future. For that it would be more informative to analyse short descriptions which have gone through several changes, to see how the length trends over number of edits, preferably using examples which have had several changes, and which have stabilised as descriptions recognised as good by a panel of topic experts. I hypothesize that very short descriptions will tend to get longer, and longer ones shorter. Whether the average will end up above or below 40 characters is beyond my capacity to accurately predict, and how much variance we can expect is another unknown. A wild-assed guess might predict the mode at around 40 characters, with the 25th and 75th percentiles near 30 and 60 characters, but I would only expect the reality to start to become apparent in another 5 to 10 years. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 17:53, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
If it is considered desirable to provide context, I suggest following Vanisaacs suggestion of laying out the issues, neutrally presenting the unbiased facts in a way that does not suggest any specific length limitation of the short description itself.I think that I have done that. As far as I can tell, the original wording has support from only one person in this discussion, so there is no consensus to return to it, or something like it. I am supportive of change, and I have proposed changes multiple times above. I have provided actual analysis of actual millions of actual short descriptions, and descriptive text for the page based on that analysis. Instead of helpful suggestions to guide us to a new consensus, Pbsouthwood's responses have unfortunately contained speculation and guesses such as the above. Speculation and guessing has a place, but using them to craft helpful consensus guidance for editors is unlikely to lead to positive outcomes. If you want the wording of the guidance changed, please make a suggestion that builds on the current, but suboptimal, consensus wording. Please take into account my feedback on your proposed wording change that omitted the numbers entirely; leaving out any mention of numerical length will just lead to more conflict and arguing here and elsewhere. Use facts and data, please. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 19:29, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
More than 80% of short descriptions fulfill the purposes listed above using fewer than 40 characters.Do they? How well? This is unlikely to have been analysed sufficiently to be able to make that claim with confidence. Perhaps More than 80% of short descriptions use fewer than 40 characters (assuming the analysis is accurate, which seems likely), and it is likely that most of them fulfill the purposes listed above (speculation, but perhaps not unreasonable, and based on having read a large number of them and more likely than the claim that they do fulfill the purposes – I am fairly sure that some of them do not, and it does not necessarily have anything to do with their length) This would be good enough and can be corrected if the numbers change.
Less than 3% of short descriptions are longer than 60 charactersProbably true, but may not remain true. Can be changed if later analysis shows the percentage to have changed, so OK as it stands.
and short descriptions longer than 100 characters will be flagged for editing. Short descriptions exceeding 40 characters may be truncated by some Wikipedia tools.Does not allow for the possibility of actually needing more than 100 characters. I suggest a slight amendment: and short descriptions longer than 100 characters will be flagged for attention. Short descriptions exceeding 40 characters may be truncated by some Wikipedia tools. If the tools change the explanation can be amended to suit without controversy
Because they are intended to be scanned quickly, longer, more specific descriptions can be less useful.Fair enough.
be short – no longer than is needed to fulfill its functions effectivelyis a useful qualification. It should be implied by other content on the page, but some people may not notice the context when their attention is drawn by a shortcut. If nobody else wants it, I am not going to push the point. It can be added later if confusion is common enough.
actual analysis of actual millions of actual short descriptionshas no analysis of the actual quality of those short descriptions, quality being how well they fulfill the described purposes, and is therefore of little relevance in making recommendations which are intended for improving quality of short descriptions.
As requested immediately above, here's a mockup of the Formatting section, with comments incorporated:
FormattingEach short description should:
- be written in plain text – without HTML tags or wiki markup
- start with a capital letter
- avoid initial articles (A, An, The) except when required for correct grammar and meaning
- avoid a final full stop
- be short – no longer than is needed to fulfill its functions effectively
- More than 80% of short descriptions use fewer than 40 characters. Less than 3% of short descriptions are longer than 60 characters, and short descriptions longer than 100 characters will be flagged for attention. Short descriptions exceeding 40 characters may be truncated by some Wikipedia tools. Because they are intended to be scanned quickly, longer, more specific descriptions can be less useful.
My apologies if I missed any feedback above. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 17:29, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Here are some examples, though they can all be varied if the context allows something better. See also § Inclusion of dates. Remember to ensure your description is short:, as it will be adequately covered in the formatting section, it could be replaced by (See above), and the shortcut WP:SD40 that mentions 40 characters should be deleted in keeping with the descriptive character of the new mention. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 09:30, 25 September 2022 (UTC)preferably no more than about 40 characters
Thank you, thank you, thank you !!! — ALL of you. I’m a relative newby, only a copy editor, and spend ~92.53% of my extremely limited WP bandwidth on SD’s & Intros. I’ve been bitten a few times on SD length (both directions); I really appreciate this clean solution set and all the time y’all put into it. (I also have some concerns on format, consistency, and quality…. largely irrelevant to the many happy hours that you folks put into this fix. They will keep, for now. And I hasten to add that I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and am trying to learn as I go.) This helps me a lot. All blessings!! Left Central ( talk) 03:36, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
I've noticed a number of SDs starting with "Former ..." or "Defunct ...", or ending with "now defunct". Those are unlikely to be useful for disambiguation or clarification. In general, our SDs are timeless, but if that information is useful, I'd think that using precise dates ("Computer hardware manufacturer, 1960-1980") would be better, leaving the detail to the end (where it might be truncated).
I suggest that we explicitly say that starting with "former", "defunct", "late", etc. is not recommended. Thoughts? -- Macrakis ( talk) 16:49, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Template:Short description has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Replace: {{#ifeq:{{{pagetype}}}|Disambiguation pages|s}}
with: {{#ifeq:{{{pagetype}}}|Disambiguation pages|s}}{{#ifeq:{{{pagetype}}}|Disambiguation page|s}}
i.e. insert the second clause, making the plural usage "descriptions" active for the type "disambiguation page" (singular).
Reason:
This is the actual usage, and there's an avoidable category redirect as a result.
E.g. Template:Place name disambiguation includes Template:Disambiguation page short description (singular "page" & "description"), which adds Category:Disambiguation pages with short description (plural "pages", singular "description"), which is a redirect to Category:Disambiguation pages with short descriptions (plural both).
This is e.g. visible at Template:Short description/doc#Pagetype parameter, which shows the disambiguation category with zero members (because it's the singular form, which is a redirect). Sai ¿? ✍ 14:13, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
Category:Disambiguation pages with short descriptions has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you.— Qwerfjkl talk 18:46, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
An edit recently revised "American Mormon leader" to "American religious leader". I can see that more general description can be better under many circumstances, but I'm wondering if there has been discussion of this type of distinction. For instance "footballer" vs. "sports person", "governor" vs. "politician", "surgeon" vs. "doctor". This is related in some ways to the inclusion of dates in the short description in that a guideline could help to reduce churn of values between camps with different points of view on "proper" content. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 16:28, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
When a user is editing an article in the Visual Editor, this template displays as "Short description": this is only normal for templates that have no text element; templates with a text element show as that text.
Viewing the description text is a hassle: it is two clicks away, only visible when actually editing the template.
Therefore I'd like to request that this template be changed so that it actually shows the short description text.
Spel-Punc-Gram ( talk) 14:17, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
The screenshot of the Abraham Lincoln article in this project page has a short description that no longer matches the short description on the Abraham Lincoln article. Jamplevia ( talk) 16:06, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Template:Short description has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
{{
Annotated link}} apparently
produces erroneous results when {{
short description}} has a missing or blank first unnamed parameter. I have attempted to check for this situation
with this change to the sandbox. I tested the change
here (no parameters) and
here (multiple empty parameters), and it appears to work. If other editors think that this change will work with no side effects, I believe that it should be implemented. There is no reason that I can think of to have an empty first parameter. As of earlier this month, there were
five articles with empty |1=
, so this is an actual (although rare) problem.
We may also want to check parameter 2 to see if it contains a value other than "noreplace". – Jonesey95 ( talk) 02:13, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
Would it make sense to generate SDs for the ~9,400 articles with {{ Infobox language}}? Could be "(Extinct or Endangered) (family) language (of country if one or two countries are mentioned in "Native to" / otherwise could be continent or region). Examples:
a455bcd9 (Antoine) ( talk) 10:32, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
Hi folks. Looks like we just reached somewhat of a milestone with the number of articles lacking a short description having just dropped below 1.5 million for the first time since the feature was added? Link That would mean less than a quarter of English Wikipedia's about 6.5 million articles don't have a short description. Progress! Kind regards, Robby.is.on ( talk) 20:15, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
Following the deletion decisions at CFD here and here, more namespaces are to be de-categorised following Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2022 December 15#Pages with short description.
Qwerfjkl or other interested editors: I have implemented this in Template:Short description by extending the previous code, but please review the code again, as it could no doubt be streamlined to work only in article space (using {{ Main other}}?) rather than excluding a list of other namespaces. – Fayenatic London 09:55, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
This seems like a kludge that could be productized into a cached tag extension for the MediaWiki ecosystem (mediawiki-extensions-MetaDescriptionTag). The current solution relies on .nomobile
, which was recognised as an antipattern. IIRC the tech stack was changed to expunge the class.
82.14.9.253 (
talk)
17:40, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
I requested a very useful query at WP:QUERY that was just fulfilled at User:Uhai/Pages without short descriptions by view count. It contains the top 1000 viewed articles without short descriptions. Would anyone like to contribute on this? — PerfectSoundWhatever ( t; c) 00:30, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
A requested move discussion has been initiated for Module:AnnotatedLink to be moved to Module:Annotated link. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. — RMCD bot 23:33, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
Opinions on the utility of two alternative short deacriptions are requested. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 08:06, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
There is a discussion on the appropriate short description for Marshfield station at Talk:Marshfield station which would affect several articles on the mass transit system of Chicago and other pages. The discussion concerns the purpose of short descriptions and whether local consensus or precedence overrides broader agreements on the purpose and style recommended for short descriptions in the encyclopedia as described in this project. Members of this project and any other interested parties are invited to consider the implications and provide input. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:53, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
I propose to change current textA short description is not a definition and should not attempt to define the article's subject nor to summarise the lead.
to: A short description is not a definition and need not attempt to define the article's subject nor to summarise the lead.
Current text implies that a short description that is incidentally a definition would be wrong, but if a definition serves the purpose adequately it should be quite acceptable. This is a minor point, and I am not expecting any objection, but you never know, and it is polite to ask, Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 09:49, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Is it really necessary to include the date of birth in a short description, when the description has already made it obvious who the person is, for disambiguation and other purposes, especially for BLPs? I see that quite a lot of them do, and it just doesn't sit right with me. IMO it should be discouraged. Laterthanyouthink ( talk) 01:28, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
These may be unfamiliar and therefore confusing to the average reader. Should we specifically discourage their use if reasonably practicable? The counterargument is that they are usually a way to make the description shorter. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 09:10, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
Where a date is not known exactly, "c. " may be used for "circa". Other examples are given at WP:APPROXDATE, although "fl. " for " floruit" should be avoided as it is not universally understood. Centuries should not be abbreviated "c. " due to the potential for confusion with "circa".
I've just been writing
test cases for
Module:GetShortDescription and had to create a bunch of pages under my sandbox/ to store the various wacky possible configurations the module has to handle. Other than the various mixes of numbered and unnumbered params including |pagetype=
and |2=noreplace
; {{short description| }}
will produce an eight character short desc entirely of whitespace (see
the example), and {{short description|||}}
will produce an empty short desc. Even {{short description}}
renders is treated as existing. I see empty descs are added to
Category:Pages with empty short description, but why render treat them as existing at all? I also see that my lovely string of whitespace isn't considered to be empty.
Fred Gandt ·
talk ·
contribs
19:49, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Fred Gandt ·
talk ·
contribs
15:06, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Fred Gandt ·
talk ·
contribs
16:11, 13 February 2023 (UTC)