Wikipedia talk:Short description

Without short description
Hi short description experts, if you're interested some Italian foods are without short description (e.g., gelo di melone). JacktheBrown (talk) 20:35, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Using the SD category script when looking at and its subcategories should make it easy to pick out the 5 to 10% of articles without SDs. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:20, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Jonesey95, in some cases User:1234qwer1234qwer4/shortdescs-in-category.js is more helpful for adding short descriptions. — Qwerfjkl  talk  17:31, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I've done a few. It was easy to fix Gelo di melone in just one click. MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:47, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Articles that are simultaneously both "Short description matches Wikidata" and "Short description is different from Wikidata"
It appears that articles can be simultaneously placed in both the | Short description matches Wikidata category and the seemingly inconsistent category | Short description is different from Wikidata. For example, see UEFA Europa Conference League and 2024–25_CONCACAF_Nations_League. Can this phenomenon be investigated to help determine if there is an appropriate way to fix it? Thank you. Coining (talk) 02:16, 28 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I think this is because the infoboxes of these two pages (Template:Infobox football tournament and Template:Infobox international football competition) also automatically generate short descriptions. These were later overridden by a manual short description that matches the Wikidata description, but for some reason the automatic shortdesc, which differs from the Wikidata description, is still being detected. For example, I removed the manually overriding short description on 2024–25 CONCACAF Nations League, and now the page is only categorised under Category:Short description is different from Wikidata. Not sure how to fix this though. Liu1126 (talk) 10:05, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Much thanks for at least, seemingly, finding a manual solution. I'll await any further advice, but I may proceed by bringing up your observation on those template talk pages. Coining (talk) 13:35, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Also see this less-watched discussion page, where other options were discussed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:47, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, it seems that the fix used by Template:Infobox film still fails; Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, for example, uses infobox film but is still double categorised, which is very strange since the conditional should, in theory, prevent the dual invocation of Module:SDcat that is causing the problem.
 * In the final comment in Wikipedia talk:Short description/Archive 8, RexxS said that there's no easy general solution because Lua can't simply get the local short description from page_props, so I guess we'll just have to bear with it until someone does a whole revamp of the code. Liu1126 (talk) 14:32, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Infobox film in that "Alvin" article is working fine; it's Infobox video game that is causing the dual categories in that one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:29, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, you're right. I just searched incategory:"Short description matches Wikidata" AND incategory:"Short description is different from Wikidata" AND hastemplate:"Infobox film" and found a few results, but upon closer inspection it seems that none of these are caused by Infobox film itself. Guess the fix works then, though I don't know if it would be worth the effort making this standard for all automatic sdescs. Liu1126 (talk) 19:38, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Liu1126, can you help me to understand why you believe that it is the templates that are automatically adding the short descriptions? In the UEFA Europa Conference League article, the errant short description was added well after the template (see | Version comparison showing edit in September 2020. Coining (talk) 13:51, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Some templates have an automatic short description embedded within their code (at the end of the template code, enclosed within  tags), like the two I mentioned above. This short description doesn't appear inside the wikitext of the target page (because the template is transcluded), and it gets overridden when an explicit instance of Template:Short description is added to the target page (due to its noreplace parameter). See WikiProject Short descriptions for more info. These manual short descriptions aren't necessarily "errant"; in cases where the automatic short description isn't ideal, it is recommended to manually override them. Liu1126 (talk) 14:02, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Finally under a million!
We hit a big milestone today. It may have been my edit (I have been updating a ton of templates) or somebody else's edit, but we have hit the final million milestone. (Pardon my weird CSS) -1ctinus📝 🗨  01:39, 21 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Woohoo! GraziePrego (talk) 02:05, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yay! :-) In December 2022, we went below 1.5 million which means we added 500,000 short descriptions in 1.5 years. If we continue at this rate, we will have completed the task of adding short descriptions in three years. Robby.is.on (talk) 09:47, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Redirects with short descriptions
Editors who watch this page may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Redirect. Certes (talk) 16:24, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Long and/or bad short descriptions
Just wanted to report that I've been shortening or otherwise changing short descriptions that match common mistakes, using a quarry script. I know other methods of searching are available but I've found a nice workflow this way. I can turn on one or two filters to get a bit of variety with the type of problem being corrected.

So far I've managed to prune down all the SDs over 100 characters and nearly all those of exactly 100 characters. Counting all the SDs in excess of 60 characters, there's over 100 thousand such articles that may need attention. It's steady work :) Wizmut (talk) 19:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you for doing God’s work for short descriptions. It would be awesome if you were able to track long short descriptions generated from templates if it’s possible. I wager there’s a lot of template generated short descriptions between 80-99 characters hiding in sight. -1ctinus📝  🗨  20:30, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I've looked into your question, but the only coherent output I've gotten is a list of articles which have SD-generating templates that are not generating any SD: I'm not sure why this happens but there's thousands of them.
 * The problem with finding induced SDs is that the database which tracks instances of templates on pages, templatelinks, will say that Template:Short description appears on any page with either an explicit or induced SD. Overall my attempts at distinguishing between the two using the database have come up short. Wizmut (talk) 07:12, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Proposal of creating a short description for Template:Infobox book
I am working on a proposal for creating a short description of Template:Infobox book in the template's talk page. Any constructive help to improve the proposal would be greatly appreciated. -1ctinus📝 🗨  00:57, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Article with two Short descriptions
Greetings, Asking if anyone here can check article Patil_(Koli_title) that has 2 short descriptions. I'm not sure if that is Okay? Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 15:13, 15 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I removed the more redundant one. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 15:22, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Inherit?
Sometimes, an infobox sets a good SD and we really do not want the text to be overridden by a local SD in the article. So we have a problem: Do we: Thoughts? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:45, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
 * If we leave the article without a local SD template, there is the danger that somebody else will add one (to "fix" the article) and so block the infobox value.
 * If we "import" the SD text from the infobox to a local template, this means that any future improvement to the infobox SD text will be lost.
 * 1) accept that, if we "import" the infobox SD text into an article and later the infobox SD text is improved, then we just have to repeat the import for all of the articles using the infobox
 * 2) accept that, if we "import" the infobox SD text into an article and later the infobox SD text is improved, then we just have to not mind
 * 3) add some sort of comment to the article text saying not to create a local SD, and accept that few people will see it or read it
 * 4) treat an empty SD as being valid (do not add the article to ) so the empty SD marks the article as "fixed" but also does not set the local SD value
 * 5) invent a new SD value of "inherit" which (being special like "none") does not set the SD, but allows the value to be inherited from a subsequent infobox
 * When is a short description that is identical for every article that uses that infobox better than a local SD (assuming the local SD is specific to the article)? Schazjmd   (talk)  16:02, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Per WP:SDCONTENT, the short description is part of the article content, and is subject to the normal rules on content. So it should always be possible by local consensus to override any 'default' infobox text. Of course, local consensus may occasionally be worse than the infobox version, but that's just a feature of "the normal rules on [editing] content". I don't think it's something we need to worry about too much. MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:29, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Per the above comments, if "we" do not want the infobox's SD to be overwritten, "we" should put the article on our watchlist and ensure that the article's content is not changed in an undesirable way. Perform option #3 above, a hidden comment, if necessary. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:48, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Time-related adjectives
Guidelines include "Extinct group of molluscs" as an example. "Extinct" is time-related, not unlike "defunct", one of the deprecated words. Surely such permanent time-related adjectives are OK? Robin Patterson (talk) 23:47, 26 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes, "extinct" is definitely OK. The existing wording is intended to discourage editors from constantly updating the SD as things change over time, eg from "Footballer" to "Retired footballer" or from "Company" to "Defunct company", but it doesn't really address your point. It would be better for the guidance to suggest focusing on what the subject matter is (currently) best known for: so in the first example, the subject is best known for being a footballer, not for being a retired footballer. As with "extinct", there are rare examples where time-specific adjectives are not only OK, but are really needed. If others feel the same we might consider working up some better wording. MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:39, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
 * An exemplary case in point (apart from missing the WP:SD40 target) being: Woolly mammoth (Extinct species from the Quaternary period). I would also make a case for "defunct" being acceptable in some cases too. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 09:54, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Shuffling chairs
I frequently see short description changes in my watchlist, and they frequently look like chair-shuffling ie. It's too long. Now it's shorter. Oh wait, it needs to say this, now it's longer. Oh wait, it needs to be rephrased. Oh wait, it's too short, we need to make it longer etc etc .. it would be funny if it wasn't for my poor watchlist and attention overload. I'd love to see these things moved to their own database somewhere out of mainspace. Like Wikidata or Commons. -- Green  C  16:39, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * You forgot the /s markup at the end of your last sentence. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:48, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * we’ve come full circle, given that wikidata was previously used. haha. the best way to possibly implement that would be for the watchlist program to have a setting to be able to ignore changes w/ shortdesc helper. -1ctinus📝  🗨  00:40, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * There's the option to exclude the  tag in watchlists through the filter settings. Won't catch all cases of shortdesc changes (i.e. those done manually without the gadget) but should cut out a decent amount of edits (plus, editors who use shortdesc helper are more likely to be experienced in shortdesc editing and hence need less monitoring of their edits). Liu1126 (talk) 01:20, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Short descriptions are on Wikipedia because some editors here didn't want Wikidata material appearing in their articles. MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:20, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

The use of annotated links is vandalism
In Wikipedia's List of things named after Leonhard Euler, we find this:
 * Euler's partition theorem – Relates the product and series representations of the Euler function Π(1-x^n)

Do I need more to prove beyond all doubt that the use of annotated links is vandalism? Every Wikipedia article that uses an annotated link to that article will see THAT! Including this:
 * Π(1-x^n)

Is THAT how we now do mathematical notation in Wikipedia articles? We will now discard an deprecate all the work that's gone into WP:MOSMATH and condone things like THAT? In articles we can write
 * Π(1 − xn).

To be fully explicit I will point out several obvious things: Now annotated links come along and tell us we must write like illiterate cave men. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:33, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * A minus sign differs from a stubby little hyphen (as you see above).
 * Spaces precede and follow a minus sign when it is used as a binary operation symbol (as you see above), unlike what is done when it is a unary operation symbol.
 * Variables are italicized. (Unlike things like cos, log, max, sup, det, etc., and unlike parentheses and other punctuation.)
 * We have the ability to write xn rather than x^n.
 * We also have the ability to write $ \prod(1-x^n). $
 * There is another option: fix the short description to match our guidance. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:08, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Not an option, last time I checked. Superscripts in short descriptions are not allowed. Nor italics, if I recall correctly. Have those bugs been fixed? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:51, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * You've got to be kidding: You changed it so that it says "Theorem in number theory." Do you really think it would be appropriate in List of things named after Leonhard Euler to describe that item by saying "Theorem in number theory"? Many of the other items in that same list are theorems in number theory, and obviously those interested in that list will want immensely more specificity than "Theorem in number theory". It is as if a list containing miscellaneous geographic locations that satisfy some criterion said:
 * Paris – a place
 * Berlin – a place
 * Honolulu – a place
 * Besides lists of annotated links often have some links beginning with a capital letter and some with lower case, in a context where lower case is clearly the appropriate option. And they are not adapted to the context. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:57, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Of course that's an appropriate short description; it follows the guidance on this page. If there were a music album in that list called Euler's Party Theorem, I would expect its short description to be something like "1978 rock album by Group Theory" or whatever. That SD would help me distinguish the music recording from the mathematical theorems.
 * I don't know why you are posting strawman arguments (Paris: ; Berlin: ; Honolulu: ) and complaining here. If annotated link is vandalism, discuss it on the talk page for that template, or start a TFD. If annotated links should begin with a lower-case letter, propose that change at the template's talk page. If annotated link gives undesirable results at List of things named after Leonhard Euler, don't use the template there. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:16, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * That's just a slightly-lower tech way of writing the same information, how is it "deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose"?
 * If you don't like the annotation just write your own, its perfectly reasonable to use annotation templates for some items in a list but write out a custom description for others, you can even subst: it nif you want. Orchastrattor (talk) 18:26, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * If you don't like the annotation just write your own, its perfectly reasonable to use annotation templates for some items in a list but write out a custom description for others, you can even subst: it nif you want. Orchastrattor (talk) 18:26, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

What such lists look like:
Here is a capitalization correction: That's what lists of annotated links look like. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:59, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Paris – a place
 * Berlin – A place
 * Honolulu – a place
 * There is no use of annotated link above. Please link to an actual list that displays this problem, preferably from the talk page of the template in question. Also you might want to RTFM. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:17, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 July 2024
Gilmoregreatniece (talk) 03:46, 7 July 2024 (UTC) I am the great niece of W.E. Garrett Gilmore. He is know by this name and not “William Gilmore”. The photo accompanying the entry “William Gilmore” is NOT W.E. Garrett Gilmore. The text IS correct for W.E. Garrett Gilmore!
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Short description. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned.   [[User:CanonNi ]]  (talk • contribs) 03:48, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Changing descriptions to a bland triviality, by heavy pruning of anything implicit from the name
Any thoughts on these (just one of many)? This, from "Class of 55 South African 4-6-0 locomotives" to "Design of steam locomotive" for South African Class 6B 4-6-0 is really not an improvement. Likerwise. I presume these were done because some of the description is also implicit in the name. Except that we don't always have the names visible in the same context as the description. Also the resultant description is still, and now entirely, implicit in the name. That makes the changed description completely useless (to the point where we might as well delte it altogether). Andy Dingley (talk) 13:04, 7 July 2024 (UTC)


 * The first revision change is better due to WP:CONCISE, and I would disagree with the idea that "South African Class 6B 4-6-0" is implicit of a steam locomotive design. What you're describing is a common problem for a lot of articles whose titles are on the edge of describing themselves and not. -1ctinus📝  🗨  14:12, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * CONCISE is about article titles, not shortdescs. Nobody claims '"South African Class 6B 4-6-0" is implicit of a steam locomotive design'.
 * This may be a common problem (that's why we support 'none' as a short desc). But that's no reason to go from a reasonable description to one that's "the sky is blue" levels of self-evident. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:57, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * See WP:SDDUPLICATE and WP:SDLENGTH. We generally want short descriptions to be 40-characters or less if possible. So duplicate words such as "South African" in both and "4-6-0" in the first (which also seems to be jargon that is also discouraged) shouldn't be repeated in both.
 * If we look to WP:SDDATES, it would probably be more helpful to identify the most relevant dates for each than the number of cards built, which seems more trivial and less definning. Something like "Steam locomotive class (1897-1973)" for the first and "Electro-disel locomotive class (1992-)" might be better with the necessary adjustments if the industry convention is to use only the build years, or the first run year. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 14:42, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The description here is 43 characters. Which is entirely in keeping with a practice where 80% are <=40 chars, and 60 is seen as a limit.
 * '4-6-0' is no more 'jargon' than 'president' is in our masthead example. What's a president? Is that like a king? My country has prime ministers instead, are they the same thing? Everything assumes some level of field-specific knowledge. '4-6-0' is extremely common terminology for anyone with any interest in railway matters. That's a very broad scope and entirely appropriate to use for descriptions of locomotives. What we don't need here are more of these "choo-choo pull train" descriptions that convey absolutely nothing to either audience. '4-6-0' is a good description: it's clear and conceptually atomic: I can look-up 4-6-0 and find a specific article. It also conveys to those with a passing interest in the field rough ideas of the size, purpose and era of the locomotive, and obviously that it's a steam locomotive. Year dates though (which neither version uses) are not helpful. They're annotational, not defining. There are very few locomotives where their date is significant, or it affects their function as locomotives. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:57, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I think the only place I see a short description is when searching, and in those cases I already have the class name. Yes, anyone familiar with steam locomotives knows that a 4-6-0 is a steam locomotive. In situations where the search results are ambiguous, explicitly stating "steam locomotive" is probably helpful. Mackensen (talk) 15:38, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Probably a side issue, but isn't your last point regarding dates also true for the number of produced units (which you insist on keeping in the SD, e.g.,, , or , where you reverted the change from "Class of [number] South African electric locomotives" to "Class of South African electric locomotives")? The number is entirely superfluous for the purposes of SDs (and less helpful for the reader or useful for disambiguation than dates, I would argue). It's certainly not worth the characters in a short description that's already >40 characters. While I agree that "Design of steam locomotive" is not really an improvement, something like "Class of South African steam locomotives" instead of "Class of 55 South African 4-6-0 locomotives" (or instead "Class of 55 South African steam locomotives") certainly is. Felida97 (talk) 16:07, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * To claim that, to the average reader or the general audience, "4-6-0" means just as much as "president" is not really helping your argument... However, leaving that aside, if '4-6-0' is extremely common terminology, wouldn't the people to whom that does mean something (as you say, anyone with any interest in railway matters) also recognize it in the title? So, the people to whom this addition conveys ... rough ideas of the size, purpose and era of the locomotive, and obviously that it's a steam locomotive would already know that from the title, right? Meanwhile, for the people to whom "4-6-0" means nothing, this part wouldn't be very useful, begging the question who benefits from this addition then. Felida97 (talk) 16:37, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Just because a description is under or close to 40 characters does not mean that WP:SDDUPLICATE does not apply, since other useful information could be added instead.
 * The primary purpose of SDs is to indicate the general category that an articles falls into, which in our case only necessitates including "locomotive" somewhere in the SD. If there is room, the secondary purposes of SD include disambiguation, for which we normally include helpful information such as date, nationality, genre/medium (for artistic works), etc.
 * The average reader they are just as likely to know what a "president" is versus a "4-6-0" locomotive wheel configuration is not a serious argument. While including field specific terms can be helpful in the SD, it should not come at the cost of the primary purpose or needlessly duplicate words that are already in the title. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 22:03, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Courtesy ping, since it is their short descriptions being discussed here. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 22:06, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Everybody except the OP seems to agree here. Trying to maintain "Class of 55 South African 4-6-0 locomotives" treats the SD as a technical definition, which directly goes against WP:SDNOTDEF. The SD is not written for specialists in the field. Per WP:SDJARGON, it should . @Patar knight is quite correct: the SD should be something like "Steam locomotive class (1897-1973)". MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:19, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Since I was the one being accused of edit-waring, it seemed wise not to comment any earlier. However, it seems that we do have a consensus for a general simplification. As suggested by Pater knight, I will try to add a date or dates. Since all of the titles already say class, how about a pattern like: ? If the industry norm prefers using the first build date, would be better? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 18:05, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

WikiData
It sure would be nice if this template could just be configured to grab the short description from the matching WikiData entry. That way an article wouldn't need to be frequently edited (and checked) just because people can't agree on a short description. Praemonitus (talk) 15:55, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * See Short description for why the exact opposite of this suggestion is what is happening here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:22, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Also see the section "Why shouldn't I simply re-use Wikidata's item description? Isn't this superfluous repetition?" (WP:SD-VS-WIKIDATA) for the brief explanation why the description on WikiData and the short description on Wikipedia for a given article should not automatically be the same. Felida97 (talk) 18:35, 15 July 2024 (UTC)