Talk:Symphyotrichum pygmaeum

Short description
@Eewilson the short description for this article sits at 100 characters, making it the longest such on wikipedia right now. To the user it currently reads as

"Species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae nat..."

getting cut off when viewed in the search bar. It can also be viewed in some places on mobile, showing even fewer characters. The guidelines for short descriptions ask that they be "very brief" and most are under 40 characters. In searches, they are meant to distinguish similarly-titled articles, not so much similarly-themed articles. They must help the user say either "That's it!" or "No not that one" in no time at all.

But unlike with say, films or mountains or politicians, it is difficult to quickly differentiate plant articles like this, because there's quite a few flowers that begin with "Symphy..." or (I imagine) with any number of similar prefixes.

I have done a search for the longest short descriptions containing the text "Species of flowering":. There are over 700 which are long enough to be cut off. Currently, the short description system is not working very well for these articles.

I believe some improvements could be made. The words "Species of" could be left out in any case where the next word(s) are in common English usage. So "Flowering plant" instead of "Species of flowering plant". The exception would be SDs that simply say "Species of plant". Second, the plant family or plant location should only appear if it's absolutely necessary, and probably never both. Looking at the most popular plant articles with scientific names, I rarely see either:

Warm regards Wizmut (talk) 09:23, 2 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I think I cut off the nativity after the revert, but if not, I will. Thanks. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 10:40, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * If you are interested in removing the "species of" or similar, I recommend bringing that up on the Plants Project talk page. You should be able to find the project from the link above on this page. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 10:47, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Plants
 * – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 10:49, 2 June 2024 (UTC)