Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions

This is a project to populate all Wikipedia mainspace articles with a suitable short description, and to improve existing descriptions.

State of the project
There are a total of content pages in the main namespace, of which  are disambiguation pages.

Out of 0 articles — 0 have a short description and 0

% complete

This [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=insource%3A%22Short+description%22+hastemplate%3A%22Short+description%22&title=Special:Search&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%7D&ns0=1&ns118=1&ns119=1 search] finds all articles that have had the template added. The remaining descriptions are generated by infoboxes or other templates.

Note: The article counts prior to March 2023 are rounded values taken from Size of Wikipedia: The data set.

See checklists of current progress.

Progress in biographies
% complete — Last updated: 24 June 2024

Why help to make sure that all articles have a short description?
Short descriptions appear in Wikipedia mobile and some desktop searches, and help users identify the desired article. When viewing an article, some mobile Wikipedia Apps also display the description below the page title.

Articles that are lacking a short description appear in search result lists simply by their titles, with no annotation. If all titles were self-evidently clear, it would be immediately obvious which one relates to the article of interest, but very often that is not the case. Titles alone can be ambiguous or otherwise not comprehensible to non-specialist readers, as well as to readers who are not fluent speakers of English.

How to write a short description
The easiest way to add and edit short descriptions on desktop is to make use of Shortdesc helper. Alternatively, in the source code editor insert the short description template to the very top of the page, above all other article headers and templates. The format to use is

If a short description would be redundant you can use "none", thus:. See WP:SDNONE.

Adding and editing short descriptions
Short descriptions can be added and edited using the standard wiki markup editor (edit source), but it is often easier to enable Short description helper in Preferences | Gadgets, in the Editing section.

Editing using the Shortdesc helper gadget
If the article currently has no short description, you will see a message to that effect. Click on Add, type in a new short description (or drag and drop from the article text, editing as appropriate), then Save. If a short description already exists you can Edit it, or click on Export to push the text, as-is, to Wikidata.

If Wikipedia has no short description, but there is an existing Wikidata description, you have the option to Import the Wikidata text as-is into Wikipedia (not generally recommended), or to Import and Edit (preferred).

A cogwheel icon that appears after you click Edit provides various usage options. By default, adding a short description to a Wikipedia article also adds the description to Wikidata if missing there. This can be changed in the settings. To edit a short description that is already on Wikidata, click on one of the links (not shown in this example) in the Wikidata item description or Q-number to open the item at Wikidata.

Difference in formatting conventions:
 * Wikidata: text always starts with a lower case letter;
 * Wikipedia: short description normally starts with an upper case letter (Sentence case).

When a description does not yet exist on Wikidata and a new short description is supplied all in lower case, Shortdesc helper sends the text in lower case to Wikidata while simultaneously formatting the short description correctly in Sentence case for the Wikipedia page. However, when exporting a modified short description to Wikidata it is necessary to go to Wikidata and manually edit the description there to change the first uppercase letter to lower case.

Shortdesc helper will provide a standardised edit summary describing the edit. A custom edit summary can be added using the "summary" button.

Other useful scripts

 * The script User:SD0001/shortdescs-in-category shows the short descriptions of pages while viewing a category
 * The SDlinkBuilder user script helps you build a TODO list - taking all of the article links in a page and showing their current short descriptions.

What if I want to see the text that is used on Wikidata?
Wikidata maintains its own texts which are not linked in any way with Wikipedia short descriptions (although Short description helper can display the Wikidata text to help editors construct a suitable description for Wikipedia). Wikipedia page Short descriptions and Wikidata item descriptions serve different purposes and are not required to be the same. If you want to view the Wikidata item description, you can:
 * Configure Short description helper to show the Wikidata text at all times; or
 * Click on the Wikidata link in the sidebar to go directly to Wikidata, where you can view and edit the information.

Neither the Wikidata item description nor the Wikipedia short description should give a definition of the subject covered by the article; see WP:SDNOTDEF and Wikidata:Help:Description for more details.

Auto-generated and bot-generated descriptions
As the short description is article content, any bot or template generated short description may be overridden with a better short description by an editor. If there is a dispute about whether the new description is better, discuss on the article's talk page. If the lead section of the article is so confused that it is not possible to work out what the article is about, leave an appropriate maintenance tag or, if you can, fix it yourself.

Bot-generated

 * User:DannyS712 bot Task 4 – Short descriptions for articles about bilateral relations (approx. 3,000 articles)
 * User:DannyS712 bot Task 20 – Short descriptions for outlines (approx. 400 articles)
 * User:ShortDescBot – about 300,000 articles

Templates and modules
Templates and modules that are useful for this/created for helping with short descriptions:
 * Module:Plain text, for removing extraneous markup
 * Module:Type in location, for formatting input from location and getting shorter location
 * Module:Is infobox in lead, for checking if the infobox is the lead infobox and the only lead infobox
 * Template:Auto short description, for tagging templates that have code that automatically generates a short description.
 * See also Category:Modules that create a short description

Can I use the Wikidata text if it is good?
Yes, but only if it complies with the guidance at WP:SDFORMAT, including the length recommendation (the vast majority of short descriptions are shorter than 40 characters). If it is good, you can copy it to Wikipedia in one click using the helper gadget, or choose to edit the text beforehand. There is no legal issue with copying, as all Wikidata texts are in the public domain.

Can I use a bot to copy over text from Wikidata?
No. The idea of bulk-importation from Wikidata has been rejected in an RFC. Wikidata texts are often not suitable as they are not subject to Wikipedia's policies, and have a different purpose.

Which articles can I work on?
Start with topics where you are sufficiently familiar to be able to write a good short description. If you run out, do anything that you are confident you can handle. If in doubt, leave it out. When dealing with biographies, follow the WP:BLP policy scrupulously. Don't add a date of birth unless it is properly sourced in the article.


 * Work through User:Uhai/Pages without short descriptions by view count, updated monthly. Or just do a few when you feel like it.


 * Work through your watchlist (or part of it), or a WikiProject's articles, or a category. You can add the User:SD0001/shortdescs-in-category user script to help working on categories
 * If you like Outlines, work through one. They may be a good source of short descriptions if well annotated, and if not you can annotate with the short descriptions as you create them.
 * Featured, Good, A and B class could be prioritised. All articles need a short description.
 * If you are a bot operator, there are bot tasks to be done.
 * search for -incategory:"Articles with short description" -incategory:"All disambiguation pages" — this ignores any disambiguation pages, as they are being handled separately. You could add something like articletopic:physics or neartitle:"San Francisco" to limit to topics or places of interest.

How do I find articles with no short description?
The search parameter identifies articles that do not have the template.

You can simply use the input box below:

What should I do about a bad short description?
can be used to warn editors who continually add very long short descriptions (documentation here). You can also write a personalized message addressing the problem, which may be more effective or appropriate in some cases.
 * Fix it: this is Wikipedia.
 * Follow Bold - Revert - Discuss, or you can start with Discuss in uncertain cases. The short description is just another piece of content.
 * In the case of a content dispute, get talk page consensus.
 * For a BLP violation, remove or preferably replace the description, providing an edit summary to explain. A date of birth should not appear for a living person unless properly sourced in the article.

Join the project
Add your signature to the bottom of the list of project members.

Userbox
Add User Short descriptions to your user page to be included in Category:WikiProject Short descriptions participants. The userbox looks like this:

You can also display a top icon as well, by adding Short descriptions topicon anywhere in your user page.

Tracking categories
Counts of different types of pages having short descriptions
 * — this should be empty; pages should either be in one of the above categories, or not be categorised in this way after Categories for discussion/Log/2022 December 15
 * — this should be empty; pages should either be in one of the above categories, or not be categorised in this way after Categories for discussion/Log/2022 December 15
 * — this should be empty; pages should either be in one of the above categories, or not be categorised in this way after Categories for discussion/Log/2022 December 15

Categories for this project

Counts of Short description vs. Wikidata

Counts of modules/templates that create short descriptions

Maintenance categories
Maintenance category to identify problems with the template parameters

Maintenance categories to list pages with descriptions over 100 characters

Issues with Short descriptions

Database reports

 * Database reports/Short descriptions containing invalid space characters
 * Database reports/Short descriptions containing possibly invalid characters

Monthly checks

 * Review
 * This TemplateParam report lists articles where the SD template has a missing or blank description.
 * The main TemplateParam report can also highlight cases where the template has too many parameters.
 * Also Template:Short description

Discussions
Previous and current discussions on English WP short description and WikiData descriptions

Note: Template talk:Short description redirects to Wikipedia talk:Short description