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 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | → | Archive 15 |
@ RexxS: would it be possible to add something like the following tracking categories, please?:
This would help a bit with resolving some of the discrepancies that this forking off from using Wikidata descriptions directly has caused. Thanks. Mike Peel ( talk) 17:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
|noreplace=
is used.
Certes (
talk) 16:49, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
As promised, it seems that short descriptions from Wikidata are no longer being displayed automatically. Certes ( talk) 11:39, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
Our SD guideline currently discourages attempting to define a subject in a short description, as this almost always too long to be a useful on mobile devices. We instead encourage SDs that distinguish the subject, as often more helpful to readers unfamiliar with the subject (our target audience for SDs) and much more likely to be an SD that's actually short enough to be useful. I agree with all this.
I've encountered a lot of descriptions that only categorize the subject, such as "Chemical", "Type of warfare", "Computer language". At first, I considered these as placeholders until something better is found.
At the same time, I've seen many long and often heated discussions where editors don't seem to understand what "distinguish" means, and end up with defaulting back to attempting to define the subject, even if that means ending up with most of the article's whole first paragraph into the SD.
I now consider SDs that just state the subject's main category as much more viable and helpful in these cases. I also see these cases are pretty common.
So, my question is, should we expressly encourage this in our guideline? That is, suggest using the subject's main category as a reasonable default short description where alternatives are difficult? -- A D Monroe III( talk) 21:49, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
What formatting is allowed in short descriptions?:
I will guess that short descriptions are supposed to be plain text with none of these things, but that doesn't seem to stated explicitly. -- Macrakis ( talk) 22:44, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
Hi all. Related to the above post, and as a result of discussions with @ RexxS:, I've proposed a bot to synchronize enwp's short descriptions with the English descriptions on Wikidata, see d:Wikidata:Requests for permissions/Bot/Pi bot 14. The bot has two options, either only importing descriptions where Wikidata doesn't already have one, or completely synchronising enwp and wikidata English descriptions. Technically, this is possible, and I contend that the descriptions are short enough to be ineligible for copyright. If you have thoughts on this, please post them here or on Wikidata at the bot discussion or the d:Wikidata:Project_chat#Importing_short_descriptions_from_enwp. Thanks. Mike Peel ( talk) 19:34, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
Add a button, "export", to update the Wikidata description to match the local description.You can also use the 'Appearance' pane to widen the edit box (I use 55em) and font size to suit yourself. Once you have saved the settings (top-right button), you will thereafter have an Export link available next to the Edit link on every page, which will update the Wikidata description from the enwiki short description. Please remember you are responsible for the edits you make to Wikidata when you use this feature. Hope that helps those interested. -- RexxS ( talk) 21:06, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
Export | Export (lc)
where the second link lower-cased the first character before writing it to Wikidata. --
RexxS (
talk) 22:12, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
@ MichaelMaggs and RexxS: Just to let you know that I've followed this proposal up at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Synchronising_short_descriptions_and_Wikidata_descriptions. Thanks. Mike Peel ( talk) 21:46, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
The short description for Newton (unit) formerly read "SI unit of force". Since short descriptions are supposed to help non-specialist readers, I changed it to "Metric (SI) unit of force", since "metric" is far more familiar than "SI". I am tempted, in fact, to write "Metric (SI) unit of force in physics", since the non-specialist reader may have no idea what is intended by "force". Comments? -- Macrakis ( talk) 22:44, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
I have proposed that user:SD0001/shortdescs-in-category be made a gadget so that it can be found easily by more users. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#New gadget_proposal: view short descriptions in categories. Please comment there if you find this script useful. Thanks, – SD0001 ( talk) 05:07, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
Why is ! (Cláudia Pascoal album) in both Category:Short description matches Wikidata and Category:Short description is different from Wikidata? I can't figure it out. Steel1943 ( talk) 17:07, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
noreplace
in its {{
short description}} call, so the above issue should be fixed.
Primefac (
talk) 18:46, 23 September 2020 (UTC)Would there be any interest in adding some sort of tracking category/categories for the length of a shortdesc? I know they're supposed to be "around 40 chars" but I just trimmed a rather lengthy and unnecessary one; seems like that sort of thing should be tracked. I know there are a number that will likely be totally acceptable but still >40 chars, so maybe 80+ or 100+? Primefac ( talk) 18:48, 23 September 2020 (UTC) (please ping on reply)
According to Wikipedia:Short description#Using short descriptions in Wikipedia on the mobile site "Whenever a mobile user searches on a browser for an item using the search function from within Wikipedia, they see a list of suggested articles with their short description beneath." However, when I tried that on my phone it didn't work and I got something similar to the search function on the desktop. I thought at first I was on the desktop site but I checked and was on the mobile version. I realised I wasn't logged in and did so but that still didn't work. Eventually I went to settings and turned on advanced mode. That works but it isn't stated here. It was the same in Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Bing. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 04:35, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
Since October 13, there are no Wikidata short descriptions in mobile mode in the English Wikipedia version anymore. In other Language versions however, they are shown. I can only see those short descriptions created in Wikipedia articles.-- Maxeto0910 ( talk) 00:10, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
See this thread for some examples of short descriptions with invalid text or other errors.
Should we try using {{ KillMarkers}} to remove references from short descriptions? Should we use {{ Plain text}} to strip wikicode from short descriptions? I am sure that those would both require significant testing, but they could be beneficial.
Whether we use or do not use string-processing templates on |1=
, it seems like we should be able to use some string processing to detect emojis, wikicode, reference tags, and other errors that corrupt short descriptions, and assign pages to a tracking category if they have erroneous text in the SD. Has anyone tried this yet? –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 17:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Byron Bay High School is erroneously appearing in Category:Articles with long short description. Its short description is 40 characters. I'm guessing that the problem lies in the auto short description that is generated by {{ Infobox school}} but is not used. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 17:35, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
|type=
value: Government-funded co-educational comprehensive secondary day school?'"`uniq--ref-00000010-qinu`"'? schoolwhich is 105 characters long. It also includes a reference which would make for an evil short description. The local short description
Secondary school in Byron Bay, Australiaoverrides this, which is fine. — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 17:56, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
I've put up a proposal at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Short_descriptions#ShortDescBot_task_1_-_moths to start a bot to add short descriptions to all the moth article that currently lack one. I'll need community consensus do do that, though, and support or comments are welcome there. MichaelMaggs ( talk) 19:10, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
Recently both here and on Wikidata I've noticed that a large number of descriptions of persons have been edited to add the person's lifespan (eg [1]). Has there been a discussion about this somewhere? Nikkimaria ( talk) 14:47, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
Neil Downe (1234–1299), bishop of Narniaassociates the lifespan with the person rather than the role. If the birth and death dates were lost in the mists of time, we might instead write
Neil Downe, bishop of Narnia 1283–1293, with the dates there reflecting the time in office. Readers used to this convention might find birth and death dates appearing after a role confusing. Certes ( talk) 10:30, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
To the point that "c." may be confusing, take a look at Andrew Roe, which has a SD of British Army officer (fl. 1992- ). I would bet that "fl." is much less understood than "c." I think this is another reason why we should have a documented consensus of guidelines on the use of dates in biography SDs. This would also help prevent the kind of SD thrashing that has gone on at Ravi Belagere where dates were added/removed several times. MB 03:00, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
... (fl. 1992- )just says that we don't know when he was born. I am really struggling not to change it before people "here" get to see it — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:56, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Anne Example (fl. 1650), actor. For short descriptions, I'd prefer something like
17th-century actor. Certes ( talk) 16:09, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
British Army officer from 1992— GhostInTheMachine talk to me 16:53, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
... (1234-1278)and time in office would be
... from 1234 to 1245— GhostInTheMachine talk to me 16:53, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Notes
There seems to be consensus to add dating recommendations to the guidelines at WP:HOWTOSD to improve consistency in short descriptions. Here is my proposal, based on the discussions above and elsewhere. Comments are welcome. To avoid us all getting bogged down in minutiae, I'd suggest focussing initially on the overall acceptability of my general approach rather than on specific detailed drafting issues.
Type | Recommended date format | Examples | |
---|---|---|---|
Biography | Lifetime most important | [Person description] (birthyear–deathyear) Year of death unknown (or BLP): [Person desc] (born birthyear) |
English composer (1668–1735) English composer (born 1668) |
Period in office most important | [Office description] from startyear to endyear | King of Scotland from 1488 to 1513 Pope from 965 to 972 | |
Publication | Publication in a specific year | Publicationyear [Description] | 1964 musical film 1988 novel by Penelope Fitzgerald |
Historical | Event in a specific year | Eventyear [Description] | 1861 American Civil War battle |
Period or range | [Description] from startyear to endyear | Epidemic of bubonic plague from 1665 to 1666 |
MichaelMaggs ( talk) 16:09, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
I support the majority of this proposal. My concerns are three:
rowspan
, and the use of semicolons in the rightmost column is more confusing than helpful. (
MichaelMaggs, I didn’t want to touch this without your blessing, but if you want help with the row issues, just give a shout.)— jameslucas ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ 16:46, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
... on both of the numbered points above...
|
---|
On the first one: WP isn't in the business of implying statistically likely deaths. I.e., it is better to imply someone is presumably still alive than the opposite (well, up to a point, like older than 120 or whatever the record is these days). In cases where someone is known dead or has legally been determined "presumed dead", we could do something like "1969–2001(?)" or "1969–?", or otherwise come up with a notation for "surely dead but date uncertain" (whether we have an approximation or not). Given the special meta-data nature of these things, and their tight space limits, we need not necessarily reject conventions that would not be appropriate in main article text (e.g. WP doesn't use the –? style normally; I think this is covered at
MOS:DATE).
On the second point, I don't think we need any explicit discouragement stuff, because this is just too subjective. (And in this pair, the 1942/1958 split is hardly insignificant.) Except for highly unusual names, it's pretty likely that other people will need to be disambiguated over time, and even for this case there are lots of other Michael Jackson (disambiguation) subjects, so the dates will still help disambiguate the two above-named individuals from the rest of them, even if not as well as a century gap would. For a lot of sports figures it's genuinely helpful because sports fans often have various stats at hand already. I do get your concern, but I don't think it would be "enforceable", because people adding an SD to an article are unlikely to trawl through every possible DAB confusion target and check all the dates in them to determine whether they are sufficiently far part in time to comply with some arbitrary cut-off we put in there. It would be a lot of work for no practical gain. It's been my long and dreary MoS-steering experience that the simpler the rule is, the more people will follow it with the least drama (e.g. no one fights about MOS:LQ any more, despite it seeming arbitrary to various people and against their usual (nationalistic) preference; but people fight half to death over MOS:DASH stuff, because the complexity of it confuses a lot of them. |
I have some sympathy with SMcCandlish's comment that "Epidemic of bubonic plague, 1665–1666" or "Epidemic of bubonic plague (1665–1666)" is as clear as "Epidemic of bubonic plague from 1665 to 1666", and saves a few characters. If editors agree I can adjust the wording to make it clear that those are fine. A downside would be that that "(year–year)" is then not being reserved for lifespans, which makes the recommendations slightly less clear-cut. But it seems to me that that's not a real worry. What do people think? MichaelMaggs ( talk) 22:07, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
Thanks all. I've made some final tweaks following the last few comments, and have now added the text to the main page. MichaelMaggs ( talk) 14:19, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Infobox song § Automatic short descriptions. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 09:47, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Year in region § Automatic proposed short description. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 20:31, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Hi, can anyone tell me what the current practice is for putting descriptions into lists? I could not find anything in the current guidance. Thanks. Huggums537 ( talk) 00:14, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
I have an idea to merge "Short description template" and "Infobox template" and Short description be an argument of Infobox, but possibly invisible and article writers could make it visible so. I think, this way the articles become more easier to read, because user always engage in Infobox for all of the articles.
I should note that according to proposal of Tim Berners Lee that is Semantic Web all of the articles should gradually add "Infobox" to make some Structured data available for Semantic Query, and "short description" becomes one of these Structured data.
Any one have pros and cons? Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh ( talk) 08:30, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
I've put up a proposal at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Short_descriptions#ShortDescBot_task_2_-_organisms to extend ShortDescBot add new short descriptions to all the organism articles that currently lack one. Comments are welcome there. MichaelMaggs ( talk) 13:50, 18 January 2021 (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 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | → | Archive 15 |
@ RexxS: would it be possible to add something like the following tracking categories, please?:
This would help a bit with resolving some of the discrepancies that this forking off from using Wikidata descriptions directly has caused. Thanks. Mike Peel ( talk) 17:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
|noreplace=
is used.
Certes (
talk) 16:49, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
As promised, it seems that short descriptions from Wikidata are no longer being displayed automatically. Certes ( talk) 11:39, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
Our SD guideline currently discourages attempting to define a subject in a short description, as this almost always too long to be a useful on mobile devices. We instead encourage SDs that distinguish the subject, as often more helpful to readers unfamiliar with the subject (our target audience for SDs) and much more likely to be an SD that's actually short enough to be useful. I agree with all this.
I've encountered a lot of descriptions that only categorize the subject, such as "Chemical", "Type of warfare", "Computer language". At first, I considered these as placeholders until something better is found.
At the same time, I've seen many long and often heated discussions where editors don't seem to understand what "distinguish" means, and end up with defaulting back to attempting to define the subject, even if that means ending up with most of the article's whole first paragraph into the SD.
I now consider SDs that just state the subject's main category as much more viable and helpful in these cases. I also see these cases are pretty common.
So, my question is, should we expressly encourage this in our guideline? That is, suggest using the subject's main category as a reasonable default short description where alternatives are difficult? -- A D Monroe III( talk) 21:49, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
What formatting is allowed in short descriptions?:
I will guess that short descriptions are supposed to be plain text with none of these things, but that doesn't seem to stated explicitly. -- Macrakis ( talk) 22:44, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
Hi all. Related to the above post, and as a result of discussions with @ RexxS:, I've proposed a bot to synchronize enwp's short descriptions with the English descriptions on Wikidata, see d:Wikidata:Requests for permissions/Bot/Pi bot 14. The bot has two options, either only importing descriptions where Wikidata doesn't already have one, or completely synchronising enwp and wikidata English descriptions. Technically, this is possible, and I contend that the descriptions are short enough to be ineligible for copyright. If you have thoughts on this, please post them here or on Wikidata at the bot discussion or the d:Wikidata:Project_chat#Importing_short_descriptions_from_enwp. Thanks. Mike Peel ( talk) 19:34, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
Add a button, "export", to update the Wikidata description to match the local description.You can also use the 'Appearance' pane to widen the edit box (I use 55em) and font size to suit yourself. Once you have saved the settings (top-right button), you will thereafter have an Export link available next to the Edit link on every page, which will update the Wikidata description from the enwiki short description. Please remember you are responsible for the edits you make to Wikidata when you use this feature. Hope that helps those interested. -- RexxS ( talk) 21:06, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
Export | Export (lc)
where the second link lower-cased the first character before writing it to Wikidata. --
RexxS (
talk) 22:12, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
@ MichaelMaggs and RexxS: Just to let you know that I've followed this proposal up at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Synchronising_short_descriptions_and_Wikidata_descriptions. Thanks. Mike Peel ( talk) 21:46, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
The short description for Newton (unit) formerly read "SI unit of force". Since short descriptions are supposed to help non-specialist readers, I changed it to "Metric (SI) unit of force", since "metric" is far more familiar than "SI". I am tempted, in fact, to write "Metric (SI) unit of force in physics", since the non-specialist reader may have no idea what is intended by "force". Comments? -- Macrakis ( talk) 22:44, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
I have proposed that user:SD0001/shortdescs-in-category be made a gadget so that it can be found easily by more users. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#New gadget_proposal: view short descriptions in categories. Please comment there if you find this script useful. Thanks, – SD0001 ( talk) 05:07, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
Why is ! (Cláudia Pascoal album) in both Category:Short description matches Wikidata and Category:Short description is different from Wikidata? I can't figure it out. Steel1943 ( talk) 17:07, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
noreplace
in its {{
short description}} call, so the above issue should be fixed.
Primefac (
talk) 18:46, 23 September 2020 (UTC)Would there be any interest in adding some sort of tracking category/categories for the length of a shortdesc? I know they're supposed to be "around 40 chars" but I just trimmed a rather lengthy and unnecessary one; seems like that sort of thing should be tracked. I know there are a number that will likely be totally acceptable but still >40 chars, so maybe 80+ or 100+? Primefac ( talk) 18:48, 23 September 2020 (UTC) (please ping on reply)
According to Wikipedia:Short description#Using short descriptions in Wikipedia on the mobile site "Whenever a mobile user searches on a browser for an item using the search function from within Wikipedia, they see a list of suggested articles with their short description beneath." However, when I tried that on my phone it didn't work and I got something similar to the search function on the desktop. I thought at first I was on the desktop site but I checked and was on the mobile version. I realised I wasn't logged in and did so but that still didn't work. Eventually I went to settings and turned on advanced mode. That works but it isn't stated here. It was the same in Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Bing. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 04:35, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
Since October 13, there are no Wikidata short descriptions in mobile mode in the English Wikipedia version anymore. In other Language versions however, they are shown. I can only see those short descriptions created in Wikipedia articles.-- Maxeto0910 ( talk) 00:10, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
See this thread for some examples of short descriptions with invalid text or other errors.
Should we try using {{ KillMarkers}} to remove references from short descriptions? Should we use {{ Plain text}} to strip wikicode from short descriptions? I am sure that those would both require significant testing, but they could be beneficial.
Whether we use or do not use string-processing templates on |1=
, it seems like we should be able to use some string processing to detect emojis, wikicode, reference tags, and other errors that corrupt short descriptions, and assign pages to a tracking category if they have erroneous text in the SD. Has anyone tried this yet? –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 17:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Byron Bay High School is erroneously appearing in Category:Articles with long short description. Its short description is 40 characters. I'm guessing that the problem lies in the auto short description that is generated by {{ Infobox school}} but is not used. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 17:35, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
|type=
value: Government-funded co-educational comprehensive secondary day school?'"`uniq--ref-00000010-qinu`"'? schoolwhich is 105 characters long. It also includes a reference which would make for an evil short description. The local short description
Secondary school in Byron Bay, Australiaoverrides this, which is fine. — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 17:56, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
I've put up a proposal at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Short_descriptions#ShortDescBot_task_1_-_moths to start a bot to add short descriptions to all the moth article that currently lack one. I'll need community consensus do do that, though, and support or comments are welcome there. MichaelMaggs ( talk) 19:10, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
Recently both here and on Wikidata I've noticed that a large number of descriptions of persons have been edited to add the person's lifespan (eg [1]). Has there been a discussion about this somewhere? Nikkimaria ( talk) 14:47, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
Neil Downe (1234–1299), bishop of Narniaassociates the lifespan with the person rather than the role. If the birth and death dates were lost in the mists of time, we might instead write
Neil Downe, bishop of Narnia 1283–1293, with the dates there reflecting the time in office. Readers used to this convention might find birth and death dates appearing after a role confusing. Certes ( talk) 10:30, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
To the point that "c." may be confusing, take a look at Andrew Roe, which has a SD of British Army officer (fl. 1992- ). I would bet that "fl." is much less understood than "c." I think this is another reason why we should have a documented consensus of guidelines on the use of dates in biography SDs. This would also help prevent the kind of SD thrashing that has gone on at Ravi Belagere where dates were added/removed several times. MB 03:00, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
... (fl. 1992- )just says that we don't know when he was born. I am really struggling not to change it before people "here" get to see it — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:56, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Anne Example (fl. 1650), actor. For short descriptions, I'd prefer something like
17th-century actor. Certes ( talk) 16:09, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
British Army officer from 1992— GhostInTheMachine talk to me 16:53, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
... (1234-1278)and time in office would be
... from 1234 to 1245— GhostInTheMachine talk to me 16:53, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Notes
There seems to be consensus to add dating recommendations to the guidelines at WP:HOWTOSD to improve consistency in short descriptions. Here is my proposal, based on the discussions above and elsewhere. Comments are welcome. To avoid us all getting bogged down in minutiae, I'd suggest focussing initially on the overall acceptability of my general approach rather than on specific detailed drafting issues.
Type | Recommended date format | Examples | |
---|---|---|---|
Biography | Lifetime most important | [Person description] (birthyear–deathyear) Year of death unknown (or BLP): [Person desc] (born birthyear) |
English composer (1668–1735) English composer (born 1668) |
Period in office most important | [Office description] from startyear to endyear | King of Scotland from 1488 to 1513 Pope from 965 to 972 | |
Publication | Publication in a specific year | Publicationyear [Description] | 1964 musical film 1988 novel by Penelope Fitzgerald |
Historical | Event in a specific year | Eventyear [Description] | 1861 American Civil War battle |
Period or range | [Description] from startyear to endyear | Epidemic of bubonic plague from 1665 to 1666 |
MichaelMaggs ( talk) 16:09, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
I support the majority of this proposal. My concerns are three:
rowspan
, and the use of semicolons in the rightmost column is more confusing than helpful. (
MichaelMaggs, I didn’t want to touch this without your blessing, but if you want help with the row issues, just give a shout.)— jameslucas ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ 16:46, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
... on both of the numbered points above...
|
---|
On the first one: WP isn't in the business of implying statistically likely deaths. I.e., it is better to imply someone is presumably still alive than the opposite (well, up to a point, like older than 120 or whatever the record is these days). In cases where someone is known dead or has legally been determined "presumed dead", we could do something like "1969–2001(?)" or "1969–?", or otherwise come up with a notation for "surely dead but date uncertain" (whether we have an approximation or not). Given the special meta-data nature of these things, and their tight space limits, we need not necessarily reject conventions that would not be appropriate in main article text (e.g. WP doesn't use the –? style normally; I think this is covered at
MOS:DATE).
On the second point, I don't think we need any explicit discouragement stuff, because this is just too subjective. (And in this pair, the 1942/1958 split is hardly insignificant.) Except for highly unusual names, it's pretty likely that other people will need to be disambiguated over time, and even for this case there are lots of other Michael Jackson (disambiguation) subjects, so the dates will still help disambiguate the two above-named individuals from the rest of them, even if not as well as a century gap would. For a lot of sports figures it's genuinely helpful because sports fans often have various stats at hand already. I do get your concern, but I don't think it would be "enforceable", because people adding an SD to an article are unlikely to trawl through every possible DAB confusion target and check all the dates in them to determine whether they are sufficiently far part in time to comply with some arbitrary cut-off we put in there. It would be a lot of work for no practical gain. It's been my long and dreary MoS-steering experience that the simpler the rule is, the more people will follow it with the least drama (e.g. no one fights about MOS:LQ any more, despite it seeming arbitrary to various people and against their usual (nationalistic) preference; but people fight half to death over MOS:DASH stuff, because the complexity of it confuses a lot of them. |
I have some sympathy with SMcCandlish's comment that "Epidemic of bubonic plague, 1665–1666" or "Epidemic of bubonic plague (1665–1666)" is as clear as "Epidemic of bubonic plague from 1665 to 1666", and saves a few characters. If editors agree I can adjust the wording to make it clear that those are fine. A downside would be that that "(year–year)" is then not being reserved for lifespans, which makes the recommendations slightly less clear-cut. But it seems to me that that's not a real worry. What do people think? MichaelMaggs ( talk) 22:07, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
Thanks all. I've made some final tweaks following the last few comments, and have now added the text to the main page. MichaelMaggs ( talk) 14:19, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Infobox song § Automatic short descriptions. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 09:47, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Year in region § Automatic proposed short description. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 20:31, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Hi, can anyone tell me what the current practice is for putting descriptions into lists? I could not find anything in the current guidance. Thanks. Huggums537 ( talk) 00:14, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
I have an idea to merge "Short description template" and "Infobox template" and Short description be an argument of Infobox, but possibly invisible and article writers could make it visible so. I think, this way the articles become more easier to read, because user always engage in Infobox for all of the articles.
I should note that according to proposal of Tim Berners Lee that is Semantic Web all of the articles should gradually add "Infobox" to make some Structured data available for Semantic Query, and "short description" becomes one of these Structured data.
Any one have pros and cons? Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh ( talk) 08:30, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
I've put up a proposal at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Short_descriptions#ShortDescBot_task_2_-_organisms to extend ShortDescBot add new short descriptions to all the organism articles that currently lack one. Comments are welcome there. MichaelMaggs ( talk) 13:50, 18 January 2021 (UTC)