Wikipedia talk:Short description/Archive 12

Short Description with "None" is redundant
In instances where " {Short description | none} " is used why even have the template at all on the page? It's literally just adding unnecessary strain on the server just to report the same title as the default lead article title anyway? Why not just have the server default where anywhere this is used the entire "{Short description|none}" line gets deleted since it will produce the same result. CaribDigita (talk) 19:48, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
 * @CaribDigita: It shows that the short description is intentionally nothing. &#8213; Qwerfjkl  talk  20:46, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
 * There is an explanation at WP:SDNONE. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:53, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
 * if you activate the Shortdesc helper, you will see that on pages where the short description is "none", the helper will display . Thrakkx (talk) 13:57, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Just thinking allowed Could there have been a way to have the Wikipedia server automatically apply this to *any* genuine article that gets loaded unless it has a qualifier that it should go by another name? (I.e. an opt-in approach for the few articles under an alternate name, rather than an opt-out for most articles which should be named appropriately on Wikipedia? CaribDigita (talk) 15:12, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Cyrillic letter
Thoughts on having the template automatically add "Cyrillic letter" as a short description? User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 18:28, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅. Good idea. I checked the list of transclusions, and they all seemed to fit the recommended short description. Editors can override the infobox's SD locally within an article if they choose to. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:19, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95 Can I also suggest "Typeface" for Infobox font? 1234 kb of .rar files (is this dangerous?) 09:26, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Of course. ✅. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:24, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Redirecting less than useful descriptions to "none"
I've noticed many list articles have short descriptions like "Wikipedia list article" or "Wikimedia list article" or others, which don't really provide any value as a short description, and it seems that editors in past discussions agree. After looking through the archives, my understanding is that in the past they were better than nothing because we had not yet achieved 2 million short descriptions to remove the dependency on Wikidata.

Now that we've doubled that milestone, I think we should address these filler descriptions. Is it possible to (and is there desire to) edit the template such that when these short descriptions are entered, it behaves the same way as entering "none"? Thrakkx (talk) 22:24, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * All list article should now have a Short description of "none" — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 22:48, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Right, but I'm saying that many list articles still have manual overrides with "Wikipedia list article" or "Wikimedia list article", among others, as the short description. Thrakkx (talk) 02:54, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * You could go through here and clear them out.  Who knew so many redundant short descriptions were out there...? -2pou (talk) 04:01, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly. Search now returns zero results — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 12:24, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Apparently my search logic sucks as that only seemed to return things with both terms. Not how I thought that OR statement would work... I clearly did something wrong. When I put the search terms individually there’s a lot more using Wikipedia and Wikimedia by themselves. -2pou (talk) 14:58, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Just 78,000 or so more. I'll get started then ... — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:04, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I have been removing these slowly, manually. Would be nice if they were to be done in one fast sweep instead. I have had very few complaints so far, but you may expect to get a few if you do this en masse. And it will need to be redone regularly, as new ones are still being added. Fram (talk) 15:31, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * For that reason I am asking whether we can amend the function of Short description such that when these strings are entered, it will be the same as entering "none". That way, we don't have to edit c. 100,000 articles manually. Thrakkx (talk) 16:25, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure that could be done fairly easily. &#8213; Qwerfjkl  talk  17:50, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I think that would be the best course of action—just solving the issue through the template. That way, we won't have to do routine maintenance as more short descriptions are added. Thrakkx (talk) 19:28, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Just get a bot to run through them and set the SD=none. Once they are all fixed, we can easily pick up any new ones. Do not alter the template to cover up a problem with content that uses the template — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 19:35, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Would we need to go to bot requests for that? Thrakkx (talk) 22:36, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * For inclusion of "Wikipedia list article" for short description, it could be required or optional. --Aesthetic Writer (talk) 02:22, 12 January 2022 (UTC) Again, this is not a better solution, I should reply outdented below. --Aesthetic Writer (talk) 04:23, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Does list articles might be also needed to place "Wikipedia list article" for short description? in general, for Wikipedia list articles, that should not normally need to be edited. For example, articles does not have short description for the 1960 Winter Olympic Games topic, Alpine skiing at the 1960 Winter Olympics – Men's downhill, if an article title is sufficiently detailed that an additional short description would not be helpful. --Aesthetic Writer (talk) 03:25, 12 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I don't think you understand what SDNONE says. I would appreciate it if you stopped policing my edit history and reverting my edits. Thrakkx (talk) 14:26, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
 * @Thrakkx @Fram @GhostInTheMachine @2pou: I'll file a BRFA for this as soon as I finish the lowercase short description issue below (or get it down to <100). &#8213; Qwerfjkl  talk  20:43, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
 * &#8213; Qwerfjkl  talk  10:52, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
 * (@Jonesey95) I've run through all of these (that match ). &#8213;  Qwerfjkl  talk  16:34, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Infobox cemetery
This seems like one that could easily have a automatic SD: "Cemetery in Location, Country". There are only 1400 transclusions and a lot are done, but this would still help. MB 17:57, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I have added a basic one. Because of apparent limitations of Module:Type in location, I have not included country. I asked at the module talk page for help. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:13, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I thought grabbing the country would be easy because I believe it is already done in infobox school. Since you are looking into extra spacing, that happens in school SDs too sometimes. I've never really looked into it for a pattern, but just searched for examples and found Lincoln High School (San Diego, California) which has a space after California, and Abraham Lincoln High School (San Francisco, California) which has a space after District. Same problem you saw in cemetery? MB 01:31, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
 * That looks reasonable; I just didn't have an easy-to-copy model at hand. I incorporated country in the sandbox, and I think it was working, but when I saw the extra spaces, I backed out that change. I'll wait for the module to be fixed before trying it again. Thanks for the links to actual SDs with extra spaces in them. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:37, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Filmographies, videographies, discographies, bibliographies...
I've noticed that editors often add bad short descriptions to filmographies, videographies, discographies, bibliographies, etc., in that the description almost entirely duplicates the article title. For example, Johnny Depp filmography has the short description "Filmography of American actor Johnny Depp". Generally, editors revert a change to "none", so any ideas for a better description that could fit for these titles? Thrakkx (talk) 17:16, 25 April 2022 (UTC)


 * In that case you were reverted by a new editor who probably didn't know why you made the change you did. I find that leaving an edit summary when significantly shortening an SD or changing it to "none" greatly reduces the risk of reversion. Unfortunately, that means avoiding Shortdesc helper (which can't handle edit summaries) and dropping into the wiki editor, but for that type of easily-misunderstood edit it's worth it. Try something like "per WP:SDNOTDEF and WP:SDNONE" and see if that helps. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:43, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

More spam via suggested edit
Crypto spam anyone? Can't there be an extended confirmed user limit on access to this?- X201 (talk) 09:28, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I provided feedback on . – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:25, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Only just spotted this. - X201 (talk) 07:01, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Wiktionary redirects
Do soft redirects to Wiktionary like Lutescent need short descriptions? Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 01:18, 9 May 2022 (UTC)


 * No, redirects of any type don't normally need a short description. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:52, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Redirects with a reasonable possibility of being expanded into a full article may usefully have a short description, if you know enough about the topic to create one that will help editors considering whether to create the article. That short description may also be useful for annotation of links in see also sections, indexes, outlines, or other lists. &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 14:51, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Top 1000, no SD
Editors may be interested in a SQL query to list which of our 1000 most popular articles lack a short description. I've worked through the current batch, except a couple such as Gambling in Russia where I couldn't think of anything helpful to add but wasn't sure enough to deploy SDNONE. Certes (talk) 15:34, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I had a stab at Gambling in Russia. It reads to me as a history of gambling legality in Russia. - X201 (talk) 09:57, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Odd short description
Why is the short description for Ireland–Libya relations currently "2019 Irish film"? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:57, 22 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Because of the template that wasn't referred to anywhere in the text. I've fixed it. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:17, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
 * In general, short descriptions provided by infoboxes will show an "override" link in the SD helper gadget. Click "override" and type a better short description. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Infobox film should probably use Module:Is infobox in lead to avoid this issue. Galobtter (pingó mió) 01:24, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Redirect SDs
Redirects almost never have SDs. There is a thread above that says they could be useful on a redirect that has the potential to become an article. When pages with SDs are converted into redirects, they still display any SD from Wikidata. See Amnd for an example. This can be fixed by setting the SD to NONE, or removing the SD in Wikidata. I think the latter is preferred, but it is more work. This seems to me like something that should be automated. What about a bot that looked for redirects with SDs and removed them from WD, subject to any exceptions (like tagged with R with possibilities)? MB 14:59, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
 * @MB, sounds like a WP:CONTEXTBOT. &#8213;  Qwerfjkl talk  17:01, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I believe that any intentional SD on a redirect would be a local one. The ones on former articles that are now redirects are "artifacts" left in Wikidata. Removing them from WD would not be CONTEXTBOT concern. MB 06:52, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * @MB, as Wikidata items are sometimes linked to redirects, surely this would.mean that the not would remove the short.description from WD, which wouldn't be great. &#8213;  Qwerfjkl talk  07:01, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Do you have any examples of WD SDs on redirects that should be kept? MB 15:03, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Any redirect that is the result of a merge will retain its description. Here are some examples: Black Jack Justice, Tales of the Jedi: Golden Age of the Sith, and Eton Road.  Those descriptions shouldn't be eliminated from WD, though.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're only seeing those redirect SDs because of the settings you selected on SDHelper.  It is not actually visible to the average searcher.  Or am I totally wrong, and you are actually seeing the residual SD in a WP search box somewhere? Remember that the WD description has a different purpose than the SD here.  ANYTHING can have a WD entry, unlike WP articles, so some kind of description describing the entry is highly desirable.  Otherwise, one may have no context as to what the WD entry is for if the entered properties are bare bones. This entry, for example, could do with a better description, and removing the current one wouldn't be very helpful.  (I'll leave as is for now for examples sake, but I'll try to remember to update it later.) -2pou (talk) 19:29, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Good points. Yes, I see these with SD helper. Without it, I guess it is mostly invisible and therefore harmless. But, as in the example I gave above, the WD description of "disambiguation page" is wrong. It was a dab page at one time. The WD SD should still be removed or updated; however without any real impact here it becomes a WD problem entirely. I am frequently editing dabs and redirects, so I probably see these more than most. MB 02:04, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Template for getting short descriptions
I just created the (expensive) template Get short description. &#8213;  Qwerfjkl talk  14:07, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Articles with long short description below 3000
Time for us to give ourselves a pat on the back. As per above. Category:Articles with long short description is now down to less than 3000 short descriptions needing attention. Well done everyone, and thanks also to the anonymous infobox template editors for clearing the false positives out of the category. - X201 (talk) 07:42, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Well done all! There are a few more templates that still need to have Noreplace added, including Infobox album, Infobox weapon, Infobox museum and Infobox royalty. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:23, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95, any chance you could look at those, please? MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:00, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
 * And the recent change to Infobox airport as well please? - X201 (talk) 09:23, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I think these all have noreplace in them already. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:33, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh dear. Must be some other reason that many of those articles appear in this list, then, for example Assisi Diocesan Museum and ArmaLite AR-15. MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:49, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅. I see now. These templates needed  added around the SD template. I have done so. Pages may take a few days to trickle out of the category as they are refreshed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:36, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I found and fixed a few more oddballs in the category that needed special treatment, and it is currently empty from "A" to "Em". Feel free to ping me if you run into cases that you are unable to fix with a simple edit to the SD. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:56, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I just came across Rassemblement Démocratique Africain which shouldn't be in Category:Articles with long short description. It's probably an issue with (the auto-generation from) Infobox political party, but that's only my guess. Felida</b><sup style="color:black">97 (talk) 20:53, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I have fixed that infobox template using the code shown above. Thanks for figuring out that you should come here and ask nicely! It's not always obvious how to get things like this fixed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:04, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I just ported this code tweak to the three other templates that I did: Infobox radio station Infobox television station Infobox shopping mall Sammi Brie  (she/her • t • c) 23:54, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
 * All titles in the list beginning with letters A–F are done. More help would be gratefully received. Why not adopt a letter and clear out the corresponding entries? MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:38, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Or hit the "Random Item in This Category" link. It's a welcome relief when you're wading through an endless wall of Australian shrubbery articles. - X201 (talk) 14:36, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
 * , Yamphudin is listed due to a long template-generated SD, even though it has a compliant local SD. <b style="color:#034503">MB</b> 14:28, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I missed the ping, but I saw this message. I just removed some extraneous unsourced text from type in that infobox, since that text was not in the body and that's not really what is supposed to be in type in that infobox. I hope that I don't have to mess with Infobox settlement, because it has a LOT of transclusions and edge cases. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:58, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

For those who might find it useful, here's a link to a search that includes all articles in the "long short description" category using a specific template, in this case Infobox person. If you want to clean up all articles containing a specific template, just type the template's name into the "Has all of these templates:" box and click "Do it!" to see a list. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:34, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

2,000 articles
We are now down to 2,000 articles, less than a month after the post above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:28, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * At that rate, what are we going to do in August? - X201 (talk) 14:37, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Tighten up the category by including SDs of more than 50 characters, and doing a second pass. MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:43, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Did you forget the smiley emoticon? There are plenty of SDs that should not be reduced to fewer than 50 characters. Just doing a little clicking around, I find Mecklenburgische Seenplatte (district) (SD: "District in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany", exactly 50 characters). I can imagine reducing the category cutoff to maybe 90 to see what we learn, but the purpose of the category is to catch ridiculously long SDs, not ones that IAR for good reasons. Somewhere between 50 and 100 characters, there is a number that is reasonable in at least some circumstances. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:52, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Interesting. We are advising "". I've never found it necessary to go more than a few characters over 40, and certainly never as high as 50. Such long SDs are 'necessary' only when an editor has ignored the bit about "". Mecklenburgische Seenplatte (district) is easy - you leave out the region and simply have "District in North-Eastern Germany" or even "District in Germany"
 * I'm reluctant to rely on WP:IAR, as very long descriptions are largely cut off on mobile platforms which defeats their primary purpose. That said, I agree that cutting the category down to 90+ (or, better, 80+) initially would make sense, with a view to gradually going lower if, as I suspect, virtually all of those are still way outside the "necessary to slightly exceed 40 characters" requirement. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:49, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Heh... Just ran into this... Simply spelling out what UNIDO stands for in any of its related articles already puts you at 50 characters... -2pou (talk) 18:22, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * True, but spelling out an acronym generally doesn't result in a good short description. Here, "Specialised agency of the United Nations" works well. MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:12, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

1000 articles
Now down to the last remaining 1000 articles. MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:05, 8 June 2022 (UTC)


 * It's now 100 — PerfectSoundWhatever  (t; c) 14:42, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Automatic short descriptions added to a few infoboxes
I have just added automatic short descriptions to a few infoboxes. This can cause new entries to the "long short description" category. If you have trouble overriding the automatic short descriptions and think that the infobox code needs to be fixed, please drop a note here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:20, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, two slightly related things (sorry, if this message is too misplaced): 1. Some automatic short descs of the recently adjusted Infobox building ended up not in the "long short desc" cat, but in Category:Pages with lower-case short description. Afaict, that is due to templates (like ubl, hlist, etc.) in type of the infobox template. I wasn't sure whether to "fix" those short descs by overriding or whether that's something you can/want to account for in the infobox template (for example by defaulting to "Building" in those cases; maybe that issue is just not common enough to warrant the effort, though). 2. Not one of the recently adjusted infoboxes, but Infobox port causes articles to end up in Category:Articles with long short description (e.g. Port of Latakia). I think this should be fixable with the code above, I just wasn't comfortable making the template change in case there was something else wrong. Sorry to bother you with this and thanks. <b style="color:black">Felida</b><sup style="color:black">97 (talk) 10:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for these notes. It's no bother at all; I changed the infoboxes, so I am responsible for the side effects. I added local short descriptions to the 20 or so building articles rather than add convoluted code to the infobox template. I also adjusted Infobox port per your suggestion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:11, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks again! I just got two more (though that should be all for the Infoboxes recently adjusted by you, at least for those that also currently have examples in Category:Articles with long short description): Infobox historic site (see Port-Royal (Acadia) as an example in the "long short desc" cat) and Infobox short story (see Poetry and the Gods as an example). Side note: Could we/you add the year to the auto-SD from Infobox short story? <b style="color:black">Felida</b><sup style="color:black">97 (talk) 15:52, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I have fixed those two as well. As for the year, I am wary. Editors are endlessly creative in what they put into template parameters, and I think that we would end up with a lot of bizarre results. I clicked on ten short story articles at random and found Cain Rose Up and Company for Gertrude and Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey, all of which would yield Bad Things. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:01, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I guess I was thinking of the auto-SDs of Infobox film, Infobox song, etc., but you're right. It seems the date inputs are lot less standardised for Infobox short story compared to those, as evidenced by your examples. <b style="color:black">Felida</b><sup style="color:black">97 (talk) 16:26, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * @Felida97, should someone just replace all instances of  with , which avoids this issue. A query something like   might help. &#8213; <span id="Qwerfjkl:1653929868654:Wikipedia_talkFTTCLNShort_description" class="FTTCmt"> Qwerfjkl  talk  16:57, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl: Sorry, I'm afraid I don't quite understand your comment (or at least how it relates to me or the specific comment you replied to). Are you suggesting someone should do that ("replace all instances ...")? In that case, I think Jonesey95 is the better person to ask/ping as he is a template editor and almost infinitely more involved in Infobox template editing (as evidenced by me having trouble understanding your comment ;)). Did you maybe mean to reply to a different comment? <b style="color:black">Felida</b><sup style="color:black">97 (talk) 18:54, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Whoops, I think I meant to ping @Jonesey95, as Felinda97 says. &#8213; <span id="Qwerfjkl:1653982041276:Wikipedia_talkFTTCLNShort_description" class="FTTCmt"> Qwerfjkl talk  07:27, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95, Kārtika (month) can't be removed from Category:Articles with long short description. A problem with Infobox month maybe? MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:37, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
 * . Good catch. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:51, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95, something a bit odd. While making a better description for Maad Ndaah Njemeh Joof, I noticed that the default from Infobox royalty appeared to come from the text in . I'd have thought that would hardly ever produce a sensible result. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:31, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't know why you would think that. Did you sample other articles to see what they have in succession and see how it was being used? The documentation for succession was being ignored in that article; I have removed a bunch of extraneous text. The same thing happens with location in place-based infoboxes; it's often a GIGO problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:17, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
 * You're right. I didn't dig into other examples, and I apologise for pinging you unnecessarily. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:04, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Issue with Infobox Australian place? - see Ngarkat, South Australia. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:13, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * yep. Handling of suburb is picking up the LGA — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 17:30, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * so that local short descriptions completely override infobox-generated descriptions, via the method above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:16, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95, Infobox UN resolution seems to be a problem: see United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and United Nations General Assembly resolution 67/19. MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:01, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Those looked like GIGO errors to me. I adjusted the result parameters per the template's documentation. Wikipedia editors don't always RTFM, and changes like this can unearth errors in template use. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:25, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:24, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Too-short descriptions
Some well-meaning efforts to shorten short descriptions have introduced inaccuracies into the descriptions. It appears the 40 character goal is not achievable in some cases. I'm not sure what is the way forward but I thought I'd start a central discussion and list the conversations I'm aware of: Talk:Waveguide/Archive 1, Talk:Baseband, Talk:Maximum_transmission_unit. Also ping the current particpants: User:Zac67, User:MichaelMaggs. User:PerfectSoundWhatever, User:Wtshymanski, User:Spinningspark, User:GhostInTheMachine. I the meantime, I'm going to continue to improve or revert shorter descriptions that do a worse job of describing the topic. ~Kvng (talk) 15:43, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Two responses:
 * 1. Each of the pre-modification short descriptions in these discussions was attempting to define the thing that the article describes. This is not ideal. Per WP:SDCONTENT, Editors should bear in mind that short descriptions are not intended to define the subject of the article. Rather, they provide a very brief indication of the field that is covered, a short descriptive annotation, and a disambiguation in searches. The SD for Waveguide, for example, could be "Type of telecommunications equipment".
 * 2. A 40-character limit is simply not realistic, and the idea that a subset of poorly designed mobile interfaces should dictate the length of short descriptions for every Wikipedia page is and always has been absurd. The tail is wagging the dog, and the mobile bug that cuts off short descriptions after 40 characters should have been fixed ages ago. I do think that there should be a reasonable limit (the word "short" is in the name for a reason, after all), and that our current "long short description" threshold of 100 characters is always easy to comply with, so a reasonable limit is somewhere between 40 and 100. My rough estimate based on shortening a few hundred "long" short descriptions is that somewhere in the 60 to 70 character range should be enough for 99.99% of articles (which would leave about 600 articles as exceptions). – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:14, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I've done many thousands of these, and in my experience long SDs are almost always the result of an editor attempting to define the subject matter, contrary to WP:SDNOTDEF. That causes problems particularly in mathematics and science where fully accurate definitions are frequently and necessarily long and technical. Such definitions, breaching both WP:SDSHORT and WP:SDJARGON, need to be shortened and simplified to achieve the purpose of the SD, namely.
 * Sometimes that can't be done by starting with a full definition and chopping out parts of it, as that results in an SD that is inaccurate. The way to go then is to use simple expressions to give the reader, in broad terms, . The idea is to give the non-technical reader enough information to decide whether the article is or is not the one being sought. For example String theory can't reasonably be defined, but uses the broad expression "Theoretical framework in physics" to make it clear that it's something to do with physics; and Platform-independent model has "Software engineering model" to make it clear it's software-related. Baseband should be something like "Frequencies in a telecommunication signal" (41 characters), indicating that has to do with telecommunications as opposed to, say, a type of rubber band. While WP:SDSHORT does envisage going beyond 40 characters "if necessary", it's really not necessary to go beyond 45, even in the most difficult cases. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:32, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm aware of the principle, but that doesn't give free license to write rubbish in the SD. Of Kvng's examples, the change to the SD that provoked the discussions #1 is meaningless and #2 and #3 are downright incorrect.  Since when did brevity trump right in an encyclopaedia?  I am so tired of people biting my head off when I revert the nonsense they have just inserted.  They tend to throw it back to me to write something better.  No, I don't want to spend my wiki time writing SDs.  It's not my fault that you got it wrong, I'm just the messenger pointing that out.  There is a much more important policy in play here – that is WP:Verifiability.  It is down to you to prove what you wrote is correct before reinserting it, not for me to write something better. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 19:02, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * When working through the backlog, I've been aware of the 40 character limit, but using it as more of a loose guideline than a hard rule, per WP:SD40. The arugment of "It doesn't make sense!" or "The new SD is less vague", for example made at Talk:Waveguide/Archive 1 are just incorrect. As we know, SD's aren't definitions. My change on Waveguide from Structure that guides waves, with minimal loss of energy by restricting the transmission of energy to one direction to Structure that guides waves is retrospectively not great, since they are both definitions, but the former includes extra information that shouldn't be in the SD, and is read in the article. — PerfectSoundWhatever  (t; c) 19:03, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * That's disingenuous. The edit that provoked that discussion at Talk:Waveguide was this one. Do you really believe that "structure" is any kind of help to the reader? Could it be a bridge? Or perhaps its not a physical structure at all.  Maybe its a mathematical structure. Come on, it means nothing.  No SD at all would have been better than that. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 19:15, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Your complaint that some specific SDs are "wrong", "incorrect", "nonsense", "meaningless" or "rubbish" is an article content issue not a structural problem caused by WP:SDSHORT. As WP:SDCONTENT says, . That is best discussed on the individual talk page, but as you've mentioned Waveguide, I'd suggest something like "Pipe, fiber or line for propogating waves" (41 chars). MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:13, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I started this central discussion because these non-improved descriptions are being justified by WP:SDSHORT and I think this is the best place to discuss any shortcomings or misreadings of that. Spinningspark wants to talk about the justification for the 40 character limit. I'd like to talk about exceeding that guideline when necessary. ~Kvng (talk) 22:05, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * We need to know what is the problem we are addressing before we can decide if and when it is ok to go outside the limit. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 12:54, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The guidelines already do say it is OK to exceed the limit if necessary. They don't give editors any guidance or examples for when it may be necessary. ~Kvng (talk) 14:29, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * My bad, accidentally missed that edit. I removed it since the part "that guides waves" is already in the title, so it felt redundant. SD's are supposed to describe what the thing is, not what it means or how it functions, so while the SD "Structure" is admittedly way too vague, it's probably of more value to the reader than the overly long definition. I'm not keeping count, but I've made quite a few edits to pages on Category:Articles with long short description. It's understandable to make mistakes sometimes; this isn't the norm of my SDs. — PerfectSoundWhatever  (t; c) 22:34, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * You might be right that the majority of SD edits are unproblematic, but that is not my experience for my watchlist. There is a high density of technical articles on my watchlist and I would say the majority of edits to them have needed reverting or amending. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 12:54, 21 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Getting back to the fundamental issue, I have yet to see an example of where an over-long SD has caused a display problem. I have seen lots of assertions that it does, but no real-life examples.  Everywhere I've looked on mobile view, long SDs display just fine and in desktop view they have very limited use in any case.  So let's have some concrete examples with links or screen shots before we carry on fixing a problem that might not exist. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 19:08, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry for removing SpinningSpark's comment, I thought he had removed someone else's, I was not paying attention to the diff. Among Us for POTUS (talk) 19:28, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Another SD conflict to add to the list ~Kvng (talk) 16:42, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Again, the SD there appears to be attempting to define the subject of the article, which is contrary to WP:SDCONTENT and WP:SDNOTDEF. It's like watching people arguing about how long the cricket bat should be when they are supposed to be playing golf. This edit was the one that created the problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:53, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * So, Audio enthusiast practice is a better description? I changed it to Using separate amplifiers for different audio frequency ranges because it is practiced more widely than by audio enthusiasts, it is also a very a common practice in sound reinforcement systems and powered loudspeakers. Do you have a better suggestion given this context?
 * But my point continues to be that we shouldn't be shortening these descriptions further if doing so makes them more difficult to understand and I believe that's clearly what happened with 's edit here.
 * Also no one seems to want to go back to the root of this and discuss whether the 40-charager limit is actually useful/desireable. ~Kvng (talk) 17:29, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * "Audio amplification technique" is my suggestion. <b style="color:#034503">MB</b> 17:49, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The framing of this as "another conflict" is not helpful: it's simply perfectly normal content discussions between editors iteratively trying to find appropriate wording. This issue has very litle to do with the 40 character soft limit, and far more with editors disliking WP:SDNOTDEF and wanting to treat the SD as akin to a scientific definition. "Audio amplification technique" works very well in this case. MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:03, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * has not participated in this discussion. The only statement I've seen from them is that descriptions need to be shortened. If there's no discussion while the behavior I am complaining about continues then I think it is fair to call it a conflict. ~Kvng (talk) 20:36, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * To my mind, this is another case of an attempt to use SDSHORT to override correctness. "Using two or three audio amplifiers" is too broad (there are many circumstances in which multiple amps are used, but have nothing to do with the topic of the article, eg this) and it totally fails to give the reader the context of the article.  They could get that much from the article title.  It is not " perfectly normal content discussion".  It has nothing to do with content and everthing to do with enforcing SD40. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 14:43, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Since no one seems to want to answer my question in this section, let's start its own section. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 14:47, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Reasons why SDs over 40 characters are a problem
This section was created as an empty section to spark discussion, and I do not think that SDs over 40 characters are a problem, but here are some links to previous discussions from 2019 and early 2020, notably without screen shots of the 40-character truncation problem that is described by at least one editor:
 * Archive 5 (with links to screen shots that show 80-character SDs working fine)
 * Archive 6 (with screen shots that show 80-character SDs working fine; this is also the discussion that led to the "long short description" category that is assigned when the SD is longer than 100 characters)
 * Archive 6, second discussion (with screen shots that show 80-character SDs working fine, one editor saying that the apps won't let you type an SD longer than 90 characters, and the editor with truncation problems saying that they probably have an outdated app version)

I do not believe that SDs over 40 characters are a problem with any current app or way of viewing Wikipedia. I have reason to believe, based on screen shots and editors' descriptions of technical restrictions, that SDs over 90 characters may be a problem in some situations. Verification of this 90-character technical limit is welcome, via screen shots, version numbers, and OS versions.

If we are going to have a recommendation for an SD length and a hard limit on SD length (those are two different things), they should be based on actual reasons. As far as I can tell from the previous discussions, the current recommendation and limit we have were both set somewhat arbitrarily. Just because the numbers are arbitrary does not make them bad, but they do not appear to be justifiable.

As far as I can tell (I could be wrong here), the 40-character limit recommendation was set because at least one version of the Wikipedia app on at least one mobile platform truncated SDs after 40 characters. I have never seen visual proof of this claim, and it is reasonable to assume that more than two years later, this bug has been fixed.

The 100-character limit was chosen by the editor who boldly implemented it (note that the limit has implicit consensus after two-plus years); that editor said 100 characters was chosen mostly arbitrarily as where I expect that there will be basically no descriptions that couldn't easily be cut down without losing much information and where consensus to eventually add a warning would be relatively easy to obtain. I've seen a few descriptions at 80-90 characters where making it more concise would be difficult due to names or technical terms. Feel free to change it if you want. I agree 100% with this statement. Every SD I have seen could reasonably be reduced to under 90 characters, and I would be comfortable with 90 as a limit, but anything below that would need a technical or UI rationale, IMO. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:10, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * From what I've seen, most SDs over 100 characters are either definitions (WP:SDNOTDEF) or pointlessly wordy—often word for word copies of the lead sentence—and add to much detail that shouldn't be in the SD (WP:SDCONTENT). So as the above comment said, it's definitely not a technical limit, but an arbitrary rule-of-thumb in this case is not out of place. We might need to amend the 40 character "limit" though: WP:SDCONTENT states, "short – no more than about 40 characters," when in reality, the 40 character thing should be used as a rough guideline, since there's no quantifiable reason to keep it at 40. — PerfectSoundWhatever  (t; c) 17:14, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * it is reasonable to assume that more than two years later, this bug has been fixed If only bugs were fixed that quickly, especially in the mobile apps. &#8213; <span id="Qwerfjkl:1656016533039:Wikipedia_talkFTTCLNShort_description" class="FTTCmt"> Qwerfjkl talk  20:35, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I have also yet to see a problem getting descriptions below 70-100 characters. I have seen problems with editors attempting to get them to 40 or below (links to examples in the section above). The original charter of this project seems to be sound. Things went a little sideways when someone claimed (without providing evidence, apparently) that truncation was happening at 40 characters. ~Kvng (talk) 20:38, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * This doesn't affect readers, but with Vector 2022, the SD appears below search results, and cuts off at ~40 (42 for Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic). &#8213; <span id="Qwerfjkl:1656017167829:Wikipedia_talkFTTCLNShort_description" class="FTTCmt"> Qwerfjkl talk  20:46, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Nice catch. When I do it, I see truncation at 59 characters, plus an ellipsis. That bug will presumably affect readers soon if the Vector 2022 skin is made the default. I have filed it as a bug, . Screen shots are at File:SD search in vector 2022 skin.png and File:SD search in 2022 default skin.png. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:09, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Truncation with ellipses is less worrisome than bald truncation. I assume your bug report will be closed as works as intended. Truncation or no truncation, we should always try to put the most useful information early in a description in case the reader can't be bothered to read the whole thing. ~Kvng (talk) 22:36, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The suggested article boxes at the bottom of mobile view truncate at 40 characters. - X201 (talk) 22:29, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yikes, that is even worse! That one truncates for me at 35 characters before the ellipsis. I added it to the bug report, with a screen shot at File:SD in related articles 2022 default mobile skin.png. Good find. It's nice to have actual problems to report, with verified screen shots. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:52, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
 * FYI, I have filed a query request to get some data about the length of short descriptions in article space. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:20, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
 * What platform is this on? I'm getting multiple lines of description in these suggestions on my Android phone app ~Kvng (talk) 15:23, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
 * As I noted when I submitted the bug, the screen shot is from Chrome on Mac OS, using the mobile view, logged out. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:59, 27 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Compared to the problems caused by short descriptions which are inaccurate, misleading, or confusing, being longer than 40 characters – an arbitrary limit called by a WMF functionary as it suited their one specific use case at the time, and has never been vetted by the broader Wikipedia community, a longer description is far less problematic. A short description should be as short as it can be as long as it does what it should do, and as long as it needs to be to do what it should do. Bear in mind that the short description can be used to annotate lists of links inside Wikipedia, which is a valuable function and should not be deprecated to serve an artificial limitation. People are supposed to apply logic, reason, and common sense, not arbitrary dysfunctional hard limits. The suggested guidance for this feature ws written when the short descriptions were forced on us by WMF, and the guidance must adjust to fit reality. We do not try to force reality to fit what one WMF employee thought was a good idea at the time. Be flexible and reasonable, make it work from an encyclopedic point of view. Apps and displays can be coded to work with reality, if they don't, it is a bug, not a feature. We should do what will work best in the long term. If the mobile apps or a new skin can't deal with that yet, that is the devs' problem, not ours. If the devs want to make a counter case based on logic and reality, they are free to do do here. &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 05:46, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Table and histograms showing SD lengths
I asked for a query showing the distribution of SD lengths throughout article space, excluding redirects. These numbers should be taken with a small grain of salt, because the SD "none" is handled strangely, and dab pages may or may not have been included, but the basic distribution should be useful for informing discussions. I can't explain the anomalous figures at 9, 35, and 71 characters (maybe some very common infobox descriptions?), but this distribution is useful to see. Some notes:
 * 84% of SDs are 40 characters or shorter.
 * 3% of all SDs are 60 characters or longer; they are used in 122,000 articles
 * 0.2% of all SDs are 90 characters or longer; they are used in about 7,500 articles
 * Nearly 10% of all SDs are exactly 35 characters; I can't explain this one

Comments are welcome. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:16, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Copied from the query request discussion: 35 is because of "Topics referred to by the same term"; 339550 pages have that exact shortdesc. The two most common 71-length shortdescs are "Village in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina" (2844 pages) and "Village and Jamoat in Districts of Republican Subordination, Tajikistan" (57 pages). The former looks like dab pages, which I should have excluded from the request, so I have subtracted them from the table and chart above. The latter are legitimate (though awkward) auto-SDs created by Infobox settlement. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:32, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Should we check for too short SDs? Perhaps put anything under 10 into Category:Pages with very short SDs. The ones with 1 or 2 characters can't be good, right? <b style="color:#034503">MB</b> 16:45, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm curious about the 1 and 2 character SDs. I can imagine valid SDs like "Car" or "Bird", but not 1 or 2. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:03, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but those could still stand improvement, like "Racing car" or "Species of bird". <b style="color:#034503">MB</b> 17:32, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95, @MB, somw interesting searches:<ul><li>SD of :  ?</li><li>SD of 1 character:  </li><li>SD of 2 characters:  </li></ul>*Generic query:   <span id="Qwerfjkl:1656357441257:Wikipedia_talkFTTCLNShort_description" class="FTTCmt"> Qwerfjkl  talk  19:17, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I fixed most of the 1 to 3 character SDs recently, along with a few other suspicious patterns. Some were test edits such as .  Others were cryptic abbreviations promoted from the likes of .  (It may seem obvious that APC means armoured personnel carrier, but only if you guess that the Pindad APS-1 is a weapon.) Certes (talk) 21:45, 27 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Interesting statistics, but unclear if they have any practical use. Bear in mind that the ideal is for every article to have a custom short description which fulfils all the functions optimally for that article. We are currently still trying to get a short description onto every article, and concurrently have started on the optimisation of some short descriptions, both processes will not end soon. Not while Wikipedia is actively growing and improving. I think we have done well so far. We are getting meta – we have reached the stage where we are doing the stats. Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 06:03, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Articles with long short description
Seeing as Category:Articles with long short description is now empty. Shall we alter the category so that it desplays all SDs over 80 characters (or some other level)? - X201 (talk) 13:34, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Given that the original choice of 100 characters was arbitrary (though IMO reasonable), I would prefer to come up with a technology-based limit and would not support another arbitrary change. See the long section above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:23, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, 80 is a sensible figure. We'll soon get a feel for what's in there as soon as we start going through it. This category is intended to include SDs that are definitely too long, the purpose being to gradually clear it out. It's not directly linked to the "not more than about 40 character limit" being discussed above. That's a separate issue. If we initially try 80 for the category, we'll soon see if it looks sensible to start working through the >80 SDs or not. The existing category has shown us that lengths of >100 are trivially easy to improve, and its existence has been extremely productive in pulling in volunteers. Let's now try the 80-100 range and see how we go. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:36, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Pinging who has also been heavily involved in working through this maintenance category. MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:00, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Summing the numbers from 's comment somewhere above, 80 characters and above would yield a category of 22,601 articles. Are we really sure that all or most of these articles have incorrect SD's? I agree with Jonesey95; another arbitrary limit doesn't make much sense. — PerfectSoundWhatever  (t; c) 16:13, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * In one of the archived discussions linked above, at least one editor claimed that one or more of the Wikipedia apps won't let you type an SD longer than 90 characters. Can anyone verify that claim with an app version and OS version? If this claim is valid, what happens if you try to edit an existing SD that is longer than 90 characters? – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:43, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * On iOS, after 90 characters, a warning appears, and I can . Thrakkx (talk) 14:47, 16 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Please, no hard limits. The short description's function is more important than its length. It must not be confusing, misleading or wrong, even if it needs to be a bit longer to work. It would be better to have no short description than one that makes the displayed output worse. This is an option the app and skin devs can also apply. If they can't, or don't want to, display longer short descriptions, they can leave them out, it is a small matter of programming. &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 06:30, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Template:Infobox television episode in season bridge episodes
In general, Template:Infobox television episode does a good job at adding short descriptions. This includes double episodes, e.g Future's End. However, there is one type of episodes where the template fails: double episodes which span the end of one season and the beginning of the next, e.g The Best of Both Worlds (Star Trek: The Next Generation), which spans the end of season 3 and the beginning of season 4. Can someone patch the automatic description to handle these episodes correctly? (Note that on Star Trek such episodes are quite common.) Animal lover &#124;666&#124; 18:37, 13 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Can those not be handled manually? Even an issue which is 'quite common' on Star Trek must be considered a pretty rare special case overall. MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:11, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This infobox has 11,000 transclusions. There are only 10 articles in, and it looks like there are 20 more multi-part episodes in other Star Trek series. I imagine that only some of those span multiple seasons. If the automated short description on a given article is less than optimal, add short description at the top of the article, as the template's documentation suggests. With only 30 or so articles, all of which appear to be categorized nicely, that should be quick work. Use the "Show SDs in categories" script to make it easy to look for problem descriptions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:05, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
 * If the amount of work to do a good custom (manual) short description for each of the cases is in the same order of magnitude as automating it, then custom short descriptions are the way to go. Do we have numbers? A maintenance category, or some other easy way to find them? &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 06:39, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I see has already suggested some methods. &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 06:43, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I just fixed a couple, and was able to make them significantly shorter without losing any information. Definitely a better method in this case.&middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 06:53, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Find articles with no short description
Is there a tool to, for instance, make a list of all the pages in a category without a short description? Thanks, Urban Versis 32KB ⚡ (talk / contribs) 03:02, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
 * @Urban Versis 32, Try searching &#8213;  <span id="Qwerfjkl:1658817402625:Wikipedia_talkFTTCLNShort_description" class="FTTCmt"> Qwerfjkl  talk  06:36, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
 * @Urban Versis 32, User:SD0001/shortdescs-in-category is also a useful tool listed under WikiProject Short descriptions. If you are already in the category, with the click of a button, you can quickly see what pages in the category have as their current SD or if there is no SD. -2pou (talk) 07:19, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
 * @Urban Versis 32 You can type into the main search field. MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:47, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
 * You can use https://petscan.wmflabs.org/ for this purpose. On the first page, under "Categories", fill in the name of the category that you're interested in and on the third page (Templates&links), fill in  in the field in the top-right corner ("Has none of these templates"). You can then press "Do it!" to get a list of such pages. Simeon (talk) 18:25, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Urban Versis 32KB ⚡ (talk / contribs) 22:16, 28 July 2022 (UTC)