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Hi folks, just a quick heads-up about a potentially confusing situation we're working on fixing: The Wikipedia apps (iOS and Android) have moved over to local descriptions, but editing can still take people to Wikidata. This will be fixed in the next app release. See phab:T257867 for more info. / Johan (WMF) ( talk) 18:00, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
It is my understanding that Wikidata duplicates information populated from the lede, and the short description gadget also duplicates information imported from Wikidata to be used for the short description. We are even encouraged to use this duplicated information on this project page by being told it is public domain, so it is ok to copy it. It is also my understanding that this imported duplicated information is intended to be useful for the main purpose of "augmenting search results", as described in the nutshell. It is also my understanding that most users view on mobile, and we are instructed that our primary concern should be distinguishing articles with the same title.
I was questioning why we have a tiny bit of editorial content advice that seemingly contradicts the entire way Wikidata, and the short description gadget imports, and populates duplicated information. It can be found at: Wikipedia:Short_description#Writing_a_short_description, where it states, "avoid duplicating information that is already in the title". As, you can see this also contradicts the primary concern of distinguishing articles with the same title, as well as contradicting the stated main purpose of this project to augment searches, since most effective searches are based on strategic use of keywords, not how well they "mesh with the prose".
So, I did some digging to see how this bit got introduced, and found
this diff where the editor implemented it
without any discussion and no explanatory edit summary other than "clarify". It almost seems as though it got put in as a personal type of editorial preference as opposed to something consistent with the project goals. I propose that it should be removed [reworded].
Huggums537 (
talk)
15:33, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
"the material comes from the same place"No it doesn't. Originally, the short description was drawn solely from Wikidata. Then, until very recently, the short description was drawn from the local short description, and drawn from Wikidata if the local description wasn't set. The local short description may be supplied by use of the {{ short description}} template or it may be generated by an infobox, for example. That's a long way from "coming from the same place"
"the description is always going to have to be related to, and rely on information contained in the article itself, including the title"That's nonsense. The first part is a truism, and the second part is patently false for the reasons I already gave. So, you're quite wrong. The current guidance, "avoid duplicating information that is already in the title", is exactly accurate. The article title shouldn't be part of the short description, and I defy you to find an useful example of where the title wording would be a useful part of its short description. How does it help anyone to see:
when you could haveJohn Smith (baker)
American baker
John Smithe (banker)
English banker
How does repeating part of the title help to distinguish between the results displayed when you type John Sm?John Smith (baker)
Born 1960 in Chicago, US
John Smithe (banker)
Born 1970 in London, UK
- to take an extreme example, but I think you'll see what I mean.John Smith (baker)
Person named John Smith who is an American baker
John Smithe (banker)
Person named John Smithe who is an English banker
Please see: Template talk:Information page#"noreplace" is not working. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:43, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
Should we be adding an explicit short description to articles which already have one (or more) via templates? For example, this good-faith edit adds a SD of "Year" to 1917, which already has SD "Calendar year" via {{ Year nav}} and a less helpful SD of "1917" via {{ Year article header}}. Certes ( talk) 12:42, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
noreplace
but does not —
GhostInTheMachine
talk to me
14:01, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
noreplace
and to use a SD of "Calendar year". --
RexxS (
talk)
15:34, 17 February 2021 (UTC)Quote:
Short descriptions should:
- be written in plain text, without HTML tags or Wiki markup
- use sentence case, starting with a capital letter, but avoiding a final full stop
- avoid initial articles (A, An, The)
- be brief: aim for no more than about 40 characters (but this can be exceeded when necessary).
This formatting policy is poorly written and self-contradictory. It needs to be discussed and reviewed. If the short description should be formatted as a sentence, why should we omit the full stop and the definite or indefinite articles? A sentence without a full stop is not a sentence. A sentence without a definite or indefinite article is not a proper sentence. On the other hand, if the short description should be formatted as a short explainatory note, why should we use sentence case? The short description in its current format looks super weird. I think we should vote on whether to adapt a sentence format or an explainatory note format, not something in between. 120.16.92.71 ( talk) 11:56, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
The current article says:
Short descriptions should:
- use sentence case, starting with a capital letter, but avoiding a final full stop
But the Wikipedia Android app says, while editing description:
Start with a lowercase letter unless the first word is a proper noun.
Both guideles are inconsistent with each other. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PardhuMadipalli ( talk • contribs) 09:02, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
For template designers, the
Template:Has short description is available which returns the position of {{
short description}} in the source wiki-text, or nothing if the template is not present (so it works directly with {{#if:{{has short description}}| ... | ... }}
constructions. It finds {{Short
as well as {{short
and also {{ short
, etc. with arbitrary amounts of whitespace after the opening curly brackets. That may be useful to compensate for editors' varying preferences for how they write templates. Is this worth documenting? --
RexxS (
talk)
22:16, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
|noreplace
as it uses much more resources because it has to load the whole page to search the text. --
RexxS (
talk)
02:40, 23 February 2021 (UTC)Please see: Template talk:Disambiguation page short description#Short?. — Goszei ( talk) 01:10, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
If short descriptions are supposed to be the top element of an article, why is AWB moving it below the hatnote, as in this edit? BilCat ( talk) 05:00, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm the creator of the PearBOT 5 (returning to an encyclopedia near you soon) and the bot parameter which has only been used by said task. I've gotten a bit feedback about the bot parameter not being particularly useful both at Wikipedia talk:Shortdesc helper#Bad edit summaries and Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#PearBOT 5 starting up again. I'm planning on removing the categorization for it from {{ Short description}} if noone objects. The intention was for me to easily be able to find issues and make sure no reported issue occurred in multiple places, but this can be done in other ways. Instead some people have used it as the lowest priority backlog ever wasting editor time and spamming watchlists and cluttering category lists with a basically useless category. -- Trialpears ( talk) 21:52, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
This has come up in Phillip Adams (American football), a football player who earlier this week suddenly shot and killed a number of people and then killed himself. The initial idea is believed related to medical issues arising from his football career, but while this is not confirmed, there's no RS or the like that this was a planned attack or the like. For all purposes he can be called a murderer (mass murderer even) and appropriately cataloged that way, and the article doesn't hide this in the lede by explaining the situation around his death. But given that the current RSes and statements from authorities do not seem to paint this as a premediated event and something tied to a mental state, they are not treating him as a "murderer" and it would seem UNDUE and BLP to weigh that term equally with his football career.
We've had editors try to add "and murderer" both to the lede and (relevant here) to the shortdesc. While concise should avoid most problems, this is a case where there seems to be a need to also stress that these shortdesc should be neutral as well, and when dealing with BLP (or as in Adams, the recently deceased), that they must not violate BLP policy. It would seem this could be added as an additional bullet point under "Content" ("The description should be neutrally worded, and not violate core content policies like biographies of living persons.") -- Masem ( t) 14:09, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
I noticed a change recently when adding the Short description. In film articles, where I used to see "(Wikidata Import Edit and import)", I now see "American film (Override Export ?)". As I understand it the "American film" populated part is due to some automatically pulling info from the {{ Infobox film}} template. This seems to be a fairly recent change, and I'm wondering if there was a discussion somewhere that explains this. — Ched ( talk) 12:46, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Short descriptions § Talk page merge proposal. {{u|
Sdkb}}
talk
19:57, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
When editing on the mobile app the "Edit article description" button gives a screen with a character counter. The counter gives x/90 as the basic count. Going beyond 90 ("91/90") produces a message saying "Try to keep descriptions short so users can understand the article's subject at a glance". That is fine, but we do not have consistency. Is the "limit" 40 characters or 90? I recommend we change the guidance here to read "90". That will allow app-using editors to provide useful shorts. (E.g., shorts which appear in the app-articles as 1 or 2 lines, and short enough in the regular screen articles.) – S. Rich ( talk) 15:14, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
The template:annotated link is extremely useful in See Also sections, where it expands a very short buzz-phrase (names of articles are typically just a very few words) into a link that is actually useful, because it appends the short description. For example, picking the first three that came into my head:
The discussion in the preceding subsection suggests that some editors are more concerned about form rather than content. How does it matter if the short description runs to two or three lines on a competently written mobile OS? Are we aiming to convey information or are we trying to look pretty? Do we really want to limit the design because Safari is broken? How to iPhones cope with long article names? 40 is a laughable "compromise" - even Twitter 1.0 allowed 80. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 22:58, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't understand what is going on here, we seem to be seriously at cross purposes. On my Android phone (about 60mm wide using Chrome), I don't see 'any' short description under Abraham Lincoln, as shown on the project page. If I do a search, I see the article name and its short description, word wrapping happily into however many lines it needs. Output from {{ annotated link}} does the same. So what and where is the problem? Surely this limitation is not being pressed because of a limitation in the Wikipedia app? That a tiny fraction of the readership uses? Please tell me I'm wrong! -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 11:01, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
help users identify the desired article, and 40 characters are usually adequate for that. If I type "Tripoli" in the mobile search box I can pick Tripoli "Capital and chief port of Libya"; Tripoli, Lebanon "City in North Governorate; Tripoli, Greece "Place in Greece"; etc. That guides me to the correct article; the data I was looking for (population, foundation date, etc.) can come from there. If we want short descriptions to do something else then they may need to be much longer, but that should be a conscious choice with an agreed target function. Certes ( talk) 11:09, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
I can see that this discussion is going nowhere so I propose to bring it to a close with these remarks:
I have no expectation that this will change the minds of the defenders of the status quo but I hope at least it will crystalise the issues for a future debate because I have no doubt that this question will return in other contexts. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 10:15, 2 June 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 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | → | Archive 15 |
Hi folks, just a quick heads-up about a potentially confusing situation we're working on fixing: The Wikipedia apps (iOS and Android) have moved over to local descriptions, but editing can still take people to Wikidata. This will be fixed in the next app release. See phab:T257867 for more info. / Johan (WMF) ( talk) 18:00, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
It is my understanding that Wikidata duplicates information populated from the lede, and the short description gadget also duplicates information imported from Wikidata to be used for the short description. We are even encouraged to use this duplicated information on this project page by being told it is public domain, so it is ok to copy it. It is also my understanding that this imported duplicated information is intended to be useful for the main purpose of "augmenting search results", as described in the nutshell. It is also my understanding that most users view on mobile, and we are instructed that our primary concern should be distinguishing articles with the same title.
I was questioning why we have a tiny bit of editorial content advice that seemingly contradicts the entire way Wikidata, and the short description gadget imports, and populates duplicated information. It can be found at: Wikipedia:Short_description#Writing_a_short_description, where it states, "avoid duplicating information that is already in the title". As, you can see this also contradicts the primary concern of distinguishing articles with the same title, as well as contradicting the stated main purpose of this project to augment searches, since most effective searches are based on strategic use of keywords, not how well they "mesh with the prose".
So, I did some digging to see how this bit got introduced, and found
this diff where the editor implemented it
without any discussion and no explanatory edit summary other than "clarify". It almost seems as though it got put in as a personal type of editorial preference as opposed to something consistent with the project goals. I propose that it should be removed [reworded].
Huggums537 (
talk)
15:33, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
"the material comes from the same place"No it doesn't. Originally, the short description was drawn solely from Wikidata. Then, until very recently, the short description was drawn from the local short description, and drawn from Wikidata if the local description wasn't set. The local short description may be supplied by use of the {{ short description}} template or it may be generated by an infobox, for example. That's a long way from "coming from the same place"
"the description is always going to have to be related to, and rely on information contained in the article itself, including the title"That's nonsense. The first part is a truism, and the second part is patently false for the reasons I already gave. So, you're quite wrong. The current guidance, "avoid duplicating information that is already in the title", is exactly accurate. The article title shouldn't be part of the short description, and I defy you to find an useful example of where the title wording would be a useful part of its short description. How does it help anyone to see:
when you could haveJohn Smith (baker)
American baker
John Smithe (banker)
English banker
How does repeating part of the title help to distinguish between the results displayed when you type John Sm?John Smith (baker)
Born 1960 in Chicago, US
John Smithe (banker)
Born 1970 in London, UK
- to take an extreme example, but I think you'll see what I mean.John Smith (baker)
Person named John Smith who is an American baker
John Smithe (banker)
Person named John Smithe who is an English banker
Please see: Template talk:Information page#"noreplace" is not working. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:43, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
Should we be adding an explicit short description to articles which already have one (or more) via templates? For example, this good-faith edit adds a SD of "Year" to 1917, which already has SD "Calendar year" via {{ Year nav}} and a less helpful SD of "1917" via {{ Year article header}}. Certes ( talk) 12:42, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
noreplace
but does not —
GhostInTheMachine
talk to me
14:01, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
noreplace
and to use a SD of "Calendar year". --
RexxS (
talk)
15:34, 17 February 2021 (UTC)Quote:
Short descriptions should:
- be written in plain text, without HTML tags or Wiki markup
- use sentence case, starting with a capital letter, but avoiding a final full stop
- avoid initial articles (A, An, The)
- be brief: aim for no more than about 40 characters (but this can be exceeded when necessary).
This formatting policy is poorly written and self-contradictory. It needs to be discussed and reviewed. If the short description should be formatted as a sentence, why should we omit the full stop and the definite or indefinite articles? A sentence without a full stop is not a sentence. A sentence without a definite or indefinite article is not a proper sentence. On the other hand, if the short description should be formatted as a short explainatory note, why should we use sentence case? The short description in its current format looks super weird. I think we should vote on whether to adapt a sentence format or an explainatory note format, not something in between. 120.16.92.71 ( talk) 11:56, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
The current article says:
Short descriptions should:
- use sentence case, starting with a capital letter, but avoiding a final full stop
But the Wikipedia Android app says, while editing description:
Start with a lowercase letter unless the first word is a proper noun.
Both guideles are inconsistent with each other. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PardhuMadipalli ( talk • contribs) 09:02, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
For template designers, the
Template:Has short description is available which returns the position of {{
short description}} in the source wiki-text, or nothing if the template is not present (so it works directly with {{#if:{{has short description}}| ... | ... }}
constructions. It finds {{Short
as well as {{short
and also {{ short
, etc. with arbitrary amounts of whitespace after the opening curly brackets. That may be useful to compensate for editors' varying preferences for how they write templates. Is this worth documenting? --
RexxS (
talk)
22:16, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
|noreplace
as it uses much more resources because it has to load the whole page to search the text. --
RexxS (
talk)
02:40, 23 February 2021 (UTC)Please see: Template talk:Disambiguation page short description#Short?. — Goszei ( talk) 01:10, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
If short descriptions are supposed to be the top element of an article, why is AWB moving it below the hatnote, as in this edit? BilCat ( talk) 05:00, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm the creator of the PearBOT 5 (returning to an encyclopedia near you soon) and the bot parameter which has only been used by said task. I've gotten a bit feedback about the bot parameter not being particularly useful both at Wikipedia talk:Shortdesc helper#Bad edit summaries and Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#PearBOT 5 starting up again. I'm planning on removing the categorization for it from {{ Short description}} if noone objects. The intention was for me to easily be able to find issues and make sure no reported issue occurred in multiple places, but this can be done in other ways. Instead some people have used it as the lowest priority backlog ever wasting editor time and spamming watchlists and cluttering category lists with a basically useless category. -- Trialpears ( talk) 21:52, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
This has come up in Phillip Adams (American football), a football player who earlier this week suddenly shot and killed a number of people and then killed himself. The initial idea is believed related to medical issues arising from his football career, but while this is not confirmed, there's no RS or the like that this was a planned attack or the like. For all purposes he can be called a murderer (mass murderer even) and appropriately cataloged that way, and the article doesn't hide this in the lede by explaining the situation around his death. But given that the current RSes and statements from authorities do not seem to paint this as a premediated event and something tied to a mental state, they are not treating him as a "murderer" and it would seem UNDUE and BLP to weigh that term equally with his football career.
We've had editors try to add "and murderer" both to the lede and (relevant here) to the shortdesc. While concise should avoid most problems, this is a case where there seems to be a need to also stress that these shortdesc should be neutral as well, and when dealing with BLP (or as in Adams, the recently deceased), that they must not violate BLP policy. It would seem this could be added as an additional bullet point under "Content" ("The description should be neutrally worded, and not violate core content policies like biographies of living persons.") -- Masem ( t) 14:09, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
I noticed a change recently when adding the Short description. In film articles, where I used to see "(Wikidata Import Edit and import)", I now see "American film (Override Export ?)". As I understand it the "American film" populated part is due to some automatically pulling info from the {{ Infobox film}} template. This seems to be a fairly recent change, and I'm wondering if there was a discussion somewhere that explains this. — Ched ( talk) 12:46, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Short descriptions § Talk page merge proposal. {{u|
Sdkb}}
talk
19:57, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
When editing on the mobile app the "Edit article description" button gives a screen with a character counter. The counter gives x/90 as the basic count. Going beyond 90 ("91/90") produces a message saying "Try to keep descriptions short so users can understand the article's subject at a glance". That is fine, but we do not have consistency. Is the "limit" 40 characters or 90? I recommend we change the guidance here to read "90". That will allow app-using editors to provide useful shorts. (E.g., shorts which appear in the app-articles as 1 or 2 lines, and short enough in the regular screen articles.) – S. Rich ( talk) 15:14, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
The template:annotated link is extremely useful in See Also sections, where it expands a very short buzz-phrase (names of articles are typically just a very few words) into a link that is actually useful, because it appends the short description. For example, picking the first three that came into my head:
The discussion in the preceding subsection suggests that some editors are more concerned about form rather than content. How does it matter if the short description runs to two or three lines on a competently written mobile OS? Are we aiming to convey information or are we trying to look pretty? Do we really want to limit the design because Safari is broken? How to iPhones cope with long article names? 40 is a laughable "compromise" - even Twitter 1.0 allowed 80. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 22:58, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't understand what is going on here, we seem to be seriously at cross purposes. On my Android phone (about 60mm wide using Chrome), I don't see 'any' short description under Abraham Lincoln, as shown on the project page. If I do a search, I see the article name and its short description, word wrapping happily into however many lines it needs. Output from {{ annotated link}} does the same. So what and where is the problem? Surely this limitation is not being pressed because of a limitation in the Wikipedia app? That a tiny fraction of the readership uses? Please tell me I'm wrong! -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 11:01, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
help users identify the desired article, and 40 characters are usually adequate for that. If I type "Tripoli" in the mobile search box I can pick Tripoli "Capital and chief port of Libya"; Tripoli, Lebanon "City in North Governorate; Tripoli, Greece "Place in Greece"; etc. That guides me to the correct article; the data I was looking for (population, foundation date, etc.) can come from there. If we want short descriptions to do something else then they may need to be much longer, but that should be a conscious choice with an agreed target function. Certes ( talk) 11:09, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
I can see that this discussion is going nowhere so I propose to bring it to a close with these remarks:
I have no expectation that this will change the minds of the defenders of the status quo but I hope at least it will crystalise the issues for a future debate because I have no doubt that this question will return in other contexts. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 10:15, 2 June 2021 (UTC)