Wikipedia talk:Short description

User pages

Would it be possible to add the short description "Wikipedia editor" as the automatic default short description for non-subpage user pages? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:05, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

How many users want this? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:52, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Maybe a better question is how many would object? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:57, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

If this is done by default (rather than through a bot), I doubt many people would notice. If it can be overridden if you define a short description on the page, I suspect even fewer would. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:22, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

You may be right, and I would have no objection myself, but I have seen a few unexpected reactions to changes. I have no idea if a default short description is possible without a change to the software. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 17:50, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

As an interim, we could add it to {{User page}}. I'll take up the discussion there. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:12, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb A more effective target would be the {{userbox}} metatemplate (though I'm not sure if we really need shortdescs for user pages). – SD0001 (talk) 08:24, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Bot short descriptions

Hi, I made a list of articles (here) that look like their short description should be set to none. I'm happy to file a BRFA and do this, but I'd like to hear what you think first. ― Qwerfjkltalk 08:08, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

None could be acceptable, but also consider "International sporting event" or competition. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:16, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, international sporting event would work, given that I got the articles from Category:Events at the Pan American Games (after some filtering). ― Qwerfjkltalk 10:20, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I have added that short description to {{Infobox Pan American Games event}}, which is transcluded in 1,847 articles. That should take care of most of the proposed list. If you redo the list to exclude articles that already have an appropriate short description, what does the list look like? We may be able to resolve this by tweaking a few templates instead of editing hundreds of articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:09, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Should invalid values of pagetype be trapped?

This edit, by adding |pagetype=Content, has changed the valid categories Category:Articles with short description Category:Articles with long short description into the redlinked categories Category:Content with short description Category:Content with long short description. Is this by design? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:03, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

The category should be derived by magic from the namespace (plus special check for dab pages) - there should be no need to override it. It is unclear what the user was trying to "test", so I have fixed it. The pagetype parameter should probably be removed from the SD template. As far as I can tell, there are now no articles setting the parameter — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:03, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:57, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Auto-generated short description

Resolved

Auto-generated short description for Infobox musical artist template, doesn't work in some articles. Are there any issues?—It'sCtrlwiki • talk • 00:49, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Please link to an example article. We can't read your mind. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:11, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Oh yeah, sure, Special:Diff/1055121550 and Special:Diff/1055120703, I tried to remove the short description template on those articles, because this page says that the template "musical artist" provides an automatic short description, but it doesn't work. When I search the article in the Wikipedia's search box, still no description provided. So I reverted it back. I tried it in other musical artist Special:History/Teddy_Corpuz, and it works.—It'sCtrlwiki • talk • 06:57, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Please do not remove accurate local short descriptions, which have been added by editors to improve upon the automated description provided by the infobox. Is there an article that is currently having this problem? – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:05, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes One Direction also having this problem, and maybe other korean musical artists. —It'sCtrlwiki • talk • 07:10, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

When I load One Direction, I see the short description "English-Irish boy band". When I go to the mobile interface and type "One Direction" in the search box, the band is the first suggested result, and "English-Irish boy band" appears below the article name in the search results. That looks like everything is working fine. The short description provided by the infobox is intended as a stopgap until someone comes along and provides a better local description within the article itself. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:24, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

You can really read the description obviously, because I reverted it back. But if I remove again the description template, you cannot read the description.—It'sCtrlwiki • talk • 02:14, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Post here when you find another article that is not working as expected. Link to the article without modifying it, and we can try to help you. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:22, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

If One Direction is previewed without {{Short description|English-Irish boy band}} then the hidden Category:Articles with short description disappears. {{Infobox musical artist}} is only coded to add the short description "Musical artist" but omits it if current_members or past_members is set. Maybe there are too many possible terms for groups of musicians. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:34, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for digging in and finding that; it even looks like I implemented the code a few months ago (I edit too many templates to remember where I've been!). I have added a bit of documentation that explains how this works. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:42, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

• Can someone please tell this editor to stop senselessly removing all manually added short descriptions from dozens of articles? – wallyfromdilbert (talk) 06:56, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
  • That has been done multiple times, including by me, in this discussion thread, and at AN, and at the editor's talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:33, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Ctrlwiki, a reason why local short descriptions are preferred here (whether they be defined in the article or be auto-generated), even if they are identical to one on Wikidata, is that vandalism of the description is much likely to be fixed more quickly here. It doesn't matter that it "increase the bytes of the article". Again, do not remove them. MB 22:06, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Automatic short descriptions for infobox redirects

Some infoboxes use Module:Is infobox in lead to determine whether to add an automatic short description. After noticing that use of the redirect {{Infobox single}} does not currently add a short description, I have added to the documentation [1] that redirects can be handled with extra invocations. I suggest we do this, at least for common redirects like {{Infobox single}}. Some infoboxes already do it, e.g. {{Infobox musical artist}}. The module could also be used to make different short descriptions or no description for different redirects, but template redirects are expected to behave like the target. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:21, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Birth/death dates in bio SDs

I thought this issue was settled after the discussion that led to WP:SDDATES which says that dates are encouraged even if NOT necessary for disambiguation. I have been reverted on Ian Munro (computer scientist). More opinions requested on the TP of that article. MB 03:33, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

The first paragraph of WP:SDDATES has too much waffle language in it. Are dates encouraged or not? That said, I nearly always move on to other editing when I am reverted like this. If it's the right thing to do, someone else will probably come along and take care of it. And if it doesn't get done, I'll improve a thousand other articles with a minimum of drama. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:51, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

This has been brought up again at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#Dates in short descriptions. MB 00:38, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

40-char limit in the doc page?

If the 40-character limit is a strong guideline (or rule), is there a reason it is not mentioned in the documentation page? Thanks. jhawkinson (talk) 14:59, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

The snarky answer is, "because you never added it". The possibly friendlier answer is, "good point; I have added an explicit mention there", although the section Template:Short description/doc § About writing good short descriptions did already point to WP:HOWTOSD. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 02:03, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

"Category:Articles with long short description" isn't working

Noticed that Category:Articles with long short description doesn't seem to be working; there are a number of articles there, such as Abhai Singh of Marwar , which have less than 100 characters in the short description. Would someone with appropriate experience be able to fix that? Thanks, Yitz (talk) 21:17, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

@Yitzilitt: Could this be related to § Template incorrectly categorizing when transcluded ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:24, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it is. I'm currently clearing out the long short descriptions cat. The remaining items that start with the letter A are being generated by templates despite the article having a valid additional short description. - X201 (talk) 14:34, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Possibly—I'm no expert on category pages, so I don't really feel qualified to speak here outside of simply pointing out the bug. Yitz (talk) 21:25, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

I have been working through the Short descriptions that include wikitext. Must have missed the one above - my Regex searches keep timing out — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 23:08, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not template savvy, but similar to the mention of {{Infobox film}} in the above discussion, would this be aided by adding {{Has short description}} to the logic that populates the above category or to the rest of the infoboxes in Category:Templates that generate short descriptions? I can't even tell how the long shortdesc category is populated in the first place. -2pou (talk) 23:18, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

The {{Short description}} template tests the length of the description. Any with a description over 100 characters causes the article to be added to one of the something with long short description categories — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 00:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Here's a weird case: The pages in Category:Honduras national football team results use transcluded short descriptions, and they are only 32 characters, but they get flagged for being long. -2pou (talk) 21:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Very odd. "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER." — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 22:49, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

 Fixed with this edit. There were span tags being carried into the short description. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:08, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

It's hardly The Last Question. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:54, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

True. Where templates are concerned there will always be more questions — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 21:23, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Wouldn't the solution to this be adding something like:

Is {{short description}} is being transcluded through another template (check from noreplace?)
Then check the wikitext of the page, to see if the wikitext (non-transcluded) short description has >100 characters (something like {{Find page text|plain=false|%{%{ *[Ss]hort description *%| *[^%}]{100,}}})
And if there's no match, don't populate the category. ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:08, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Two SDs displayed

Scaptopara has two, neither local. One is from WD and the other from a template. MB 17:43, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

As far as I know, a page itself can't "display" two short descriptions. A page can have a local description (from Wikipedia; see Page information for the page) and a central description (from Wikidata; also see Page information). The local description is preferred. Scaptopara (a redirect page) has only a central description. If you are seeing two descriptions, you may have one or more gadgets or .js scripts loaded that show you both descriptions. That could be useful as a tool, but it should not be something to be concerned about, since regular readers will see only one short description. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:11, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not aware of anything special. On Scaptopara, I see:

A redirect page from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Redirect page

Wikimedia disambiguation page (Wikidata Import Edit and import)

Is the second "Redirect page" a SD or something else?

On Babs Woods, (which is also connected to WD), I see:

A redirect page from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Redirect page

The first one was a DAB page until I reverted it back to a plain redirect, so I can understand why is has a DAB SD in WD. MB 18:45, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

As far as I know, the "Redirect page" text is not a short description. It appears to be some sort of subheader added by MediaWiki:Redirectpagesub and looks like <div id="contentSub"><span id="redirectsub">Redirect page</span></div> in the rendered HTML source. Actual short descriptions look like this in the rendered HTML source: <div class="shortdescription nomobile noexcerpt noprint searchaux" style="display:none">Town in Bulgaria</div> – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:42, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

OK, I went to the WD entry for Scaptopara and removed the label "disambiguation page". Now it looks like any other redirect to me and SD helper is not suggesting anything. MB 21:24, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Perfect. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:09, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Vandalism through suggested edits

Hi, Pi bot occasionally (every ~2 weeks) gets reverted on Wikidata after it's copied a short description from an article here that is actually vandalism (ironically since vandalism on Wikidata was thought to be an issue for these). E.g., [2], [3], [4]. They generally seem to be tagged with "#suggestededit-add 1.0" - not sure where those come from? It's something that clearly offers a free text form, rather than suggesting pre-written text, given the content of the edits. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:25, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Mike Peel, this is the result of one of the WMF's brilliant ideas; see mw:Help:Growth/Tools/Suggested edits. (My all-time favorite would be the short description added here: "branch of science about the natural world and how it relates to statistics, prediction, low-entropy thinking, extra sensory perception (ESP), Prophecising, Apocalyptic Revelations, God, The Trinity, David, Kyle, Alpha, Omega, K, Cabal, cosmos, Wikis".) I'm not sure there's too much we can do here: perhaps you could try to convince the WMF Growth team that shortdescs aren't a great thing for newbies to be starting with? Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:49, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

@Extraordinary Writ: The link doesn't work? But still, probably not something that would have happened if we'd continued to use Wikidata for these? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:00, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Mike Peel: link fixed; apologies. The shortdescs added by regular en-wiki users, of course, tend to be very good: the problem is just that the WMF has recently decided to herd newbies (many of whom don't even understand the purpose of a shortdesc) toward adding them as well. I'm not fully conversant in all the Wikidata–Wikipedia political debates (probably for the better), but it seems to me that the suggested-edit issue is quite separate from any other disputes regarding where shortdescs should be stored. (After all, I wouldn't be surprised if the WMF eventually rolled out something similar to this at Wikidata.) The Growth team has been pretty open to feedback, so it might be worth asking them to just disable the shortdesc element of the suggested edit system altogether. (Pinging MMiller (WMF), who seems to be the point person for such things.) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 23:27, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

@Extraordinary Writ: Thanks for the link fix. It would be good if you can raise this with the Growth team. We really need better ways of getting newbies started with Wikipedia edits, though. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:32, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I track additions to Category:Articles with long short description and try to fix up the Short descriptions that are too long. A high percentage of the problem edits are tagged with "#suggestededit-add 1.0". I would be very very pleased if the suggestededit thing did not suggest anything to do with Short descriptions — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 23:07, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I have opened T297341, FWIW. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:10, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello Mike Peel, Extraordinary Writ, and Jonesey95 -- thanks for looking closely at these edits and starting this discussion. "Suggested edits" is a term that we're using to refer to a few different features across different platforms and teams (we're using the same term deliberately, because from the user's perspective, they are all a similar concept). But the suggested edits you're talking about are coming from the Android app -- you'll see that in addition to having the summary "#suggestededit-add 1.0", they also have the edit tag "Android app edit". My team's work on the Growth team is on suggested edits that happen in the web browser. Therefore, I'm tagging Johan(WMF), who works with the Android team and can speak to those edits.

But while we're talking about suggested edits, I do want to mention a little bit about the Growth team's work. The main experience built by the Growth team is called the "newcomer homepage", and it contains a feed of suggested edits. These features are geared toward encouraging new account holders to make their first edits successfully, by pointing them to articles that need attention and that are in their topics of interest. The suggested edits feed is populated with articles that have maintenance templates, e.g.{{ad}}. When the user chooses one, the "help panel" gives them guidance on how to complete a good edit. These features have actually been deployed to a portion of English Wikipedia newcomers for much of this year, after lots of community discussion on this page. The results have been positive, and we're actually preparing an RFC to discuss whether the features should be the default onboarding experience for newcomers on this wiki (which is already the case on all other Wikipedias). I hope you all check the materials out and weigh in with any of your thoughts and ideas! You can actually go to your own "newcomer homepage" (or turn it on) by going to Special:Homepage.

One other aspect that I wanted to preview is that the Growth team is working on new types of suggested edits, in which newcomers are guided through completing an easy edit, assisted by an algorithm. The idea behind these is that we want to experiment with experiences that are very low barrier to entry for newcomers, so they can add value without needing to learn so much right off the bat. We've deployed "add a link" to about ten Wikipedias so far (starting this past May), and just two weeks ago we deployed "add an image" to three pilot Wikipedias. Mike, I remember you weighed in on the discussion about "add an image", and you encouraged us to consider adding images to Wikidata instead of directly to Wikipedias. I haven't forgotten that good advice -- but for the first iteration, we built it a simple Wikipedia-oriented way because our priority is to validate whether newcomers can apply good judgment to images and enjoy doing the task. In the future, I could definitely see us rethinking the architecture. Anyway, I hope you all check out the projects and give your thoughts if you have time! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:53, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): It's great work! But you might be trying to be too ambitious by having open text fields. I think the newbies would benefit if you focused more on edits like those made by the distributed Wikidata games - make it more yes/no rather than an open question, at least for the first few edits. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:19, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Mike Peel. Yes, the "add a link" task is solely a "yes/no" choice, and that's been going well so far -- it has a positive impact on newcomers and a low revert rate. We have been hearing concerns from some communities that it causes overlinking, and we have ideas for improvement. With "add an image", the users do need to write a caption, and we expect that will be the most problematic part, especially in non-English languages. Since the metadata on most images in Commons is English, it's hard for non-English speaking users to have all the information available as they make a decision on adding the image and writing the caption. Multi-lingual captions on Commons can potentially help with this, but their coverage is still quite low. Given your experience with Commons, do you have any ideas on how we might help users write a good caption to go with the image on Wikipedia (especially across languages)? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 04:53, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): As I said before, I wouldn't. :-) Better to add images to Wikidata instead of Wikipedia articles, where you don't need to add a caption for them. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:37, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

To comment specifically on the Android app: when this was introduced, there was an edit threshold which required editors to have edited before they were served this a suggested edits. We'll take another look at the data to see what it looks like now – we'll soon update phab:T297341 with the questions we'll be asking and a timeline. Do feel welcome to comment on those plans and if you think they'll give an adequate picture. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 15:51, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

So we looked into this and wrote an update here: mw:Wikimedia Apps/Team/Android#Special Update unrelated to Collaboration tools (January 2022):. We'll continue keeping an eye on it while we keep working on the communication tools in the app, and then return to the usefulness of suggested edits and how we can make them better in July. We appreciate the issue being raised – digging into the numbers, we found things that surprised at least me, e.g. I had thought that we'd have a significant number of bad edits being overwritten and not turning up in the reverts statistics, but this turned out not to be case. Do let us know about any issues, as always. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Use of "Former" in short description

Sometimes I see the word former in the short description, like "Former professional football player". It is my understanding that the word "former" should not be there and the description should be "Professional football player". Is that right? Does anything need to be added to the main short description page about this? Kaltenmeyer (talk) 12:34, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I see for Caitlyn Jenner we have "American media personality and retired decathlete" which seems OK to me. Maybe you are asking specifically about the word "former"? Would the description be better without "retired"? Thincat (talk) 14:08, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I would use former sparingly, only if the person is better known today for some other role and the lack of former would make the description ambiguous, like "US Senator and former professional football player". We don't want to imply that the person is currently both a senator and a football player. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:40, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree that "former" generally isn't useful, but I'd be reluctant to start specifying in too much detail the way in which a person should be described, as we don't want the page to become a long list of rules covering special cases. WP:SDCONTENT already says that "The short description is part of the article content, and is subject to the normal rules on content", and I'd say that's enough. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:24, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Why is former incorrect? A lot of people have a different role now so e.g. coach and former footballer is sensible. Joseph2302 (talk) 17:00, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, what do we do about Dwight D. Eisenhower? He's not the president, but he was; he's not a general, but he was, he's not alive, but he was; etc. Likewise Bert Lance, Ruth Metzler, Benito Mussolini, Carol Channing, and others. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 17:27, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Always good to see Mussolini and Carol Channing together again... .

The main reason not to use "former" is that it isn't really necessary to fulfill the mission of the short description (oh, Eisenhower the former president!), and it does make the description less... you know: short.

In the case of people whose status-for-everything is "former", it's then not necessary to distinguish in any way which roles may or may not be current.--NapoliRoma (talk) 19:40, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Re Ike and Il Duce: the word "former" is needed only if the SD will be ambiguous or confusing. Remember the key guidance on this page. The SD ideally can finish this sentence: "[Article subject] is/was a/an/the ... ", so the late Dwight Eisenhower would have the word "was" and would not need "former", as it is redundant. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:25, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Sure, and in fact, we say (already) "34th president" (not that everybody knows we're up to 46 now), which is useful for disambiguating from the other Dwight Eisenhowers who were president. The "former" usually falls away as unnecessary and length-increasing. I think it's a rare case when somebody (or thing) is equally notable for two things that readers will wonder how they did both at once, sort of like maybe Pius Schwert, although not quite. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 21:33, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Synonyms in short description

Can a short description include synonyms, or should they be avoided?

The above question has arisen from a brief discussion over at Talk:Prosopagnosia#Short_description. The article is the target for the face blindness redirect, and another editor wants to include the term in the short description. I'm resistant to include it, for the risk of redirects creeping into every article's short description; but not fully opposed. As I'm not familiar enough with short descriptions, I'm here to request if an expert could drop by that discussion. Little pob (talk) 13:41, 5 January 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)

Y 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. ― Qwerfjkltalk 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)

@GhostInTheMachine and Thrakkx: 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)

Automatic capitalization of first character

I'm not sure if anybody's brought it up before, but I often find myself capitalizing short descriptions drawn from Wikidata (which stipulates that the first character should be lowercase unless proper) as our MOS prefers the short descriptions be in sentence case. I wonder if there's any way they can be automatically capitalized by default, to save editors time and make everything consistent? I can't think of any cases where we wouldn't want the first letter to be uppercase. ASUKITE 19:55, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I can't think of any cases where we wouldn't want the first letter to be uppercase.
iPhone model, for example? ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:28, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

2025 model of iPhone ? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:45, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:SDH already does that, although I don't see it stated in the documentation, it is mentioned on the TP. MB 20:52, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I've never noticed. I just tested it with a random article, Hunger Wall, and viewed in mobile search to see if there was a short desc, which there wasn't. When I then imported the wikidata description, SDH did indeed correct it, so I'm glad I've learned something new at least. Mobile is still not displaying the description in search, but the cache may need to update. ASUKITE 20:57, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

When you can't think of any cases, sometimes it helps to do a search. Here's a search that turns up at least 5,000 articles with lower-case short descriptions. The vast majority are errors, but there is valid stuff in there, like "c. 1840 painting..." , "none", "macOS software utility...".

I estimate that 98% are errors, which makes me think that if we care about the case of the first letter, it might be worthwhile to either automate capitalization of SDs or to create a tracking category for lower-case SDs. In either case, a dedicated whitelist file could list the known exceptions, like "c. ", "iPhone", "macOS", "none", and others so that affected articles would be displayed properly or kept out of the category. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:14, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I've started to go through these (see my contributions). My JWB search turned up at least 10,000 of these. ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:47, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

If you are including ones that come from infobox templates, {{infobox settlement}} generates a SD beginning with the settlement type. If that is "town" or "village" for example, the SD should not be overridden, the capitalization should be fixed in the infobox because it is wrong there too. MB 01:01, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

The search is the same as the one provided above, so will only catch insource short descriptions. ― Qwerfjkltalk 07:37, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I've improved my code to do some other minor shortdesc cleanup (fixing the issues in the above section as well), and the error rate is very low (0 so far, and I've checked ~100 articles), so I'm thinking of filing a BRFA, and manually checking over for false positives (it wouldn't be too hard to add a whitelist). What do you think? ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:58, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

I think it sounds reasonable. It might be best to create a tracking category first, by modifying the template, so that the bot could have a well-defined population of pages to operate on. Do you have an exception list in your code for the items listed above, or would you depend on manually going back and reverting the bot's edits? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:25, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

As I'm just doing insource short descriptions, the search is fine. I'll try to add an exception list soon. @MichaelMaggs:  Already done ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:51, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I now have a whitelist, and if necessary it can match regex. ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:53, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

While you are at it, maybe you could change {{short description}} to {{Short description}} ? MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:40, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I've created a list at User:Qwerfjkl/lcSD of the pages I detected with a lowercase short description (10,303). ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

It would be useful for that list to actually show the short descriptions. Do you have any thoughts on deploying the change proposed below so that we can see if your list matches the category contents? It would also allow us to display SDs on the category page using User:SD0001/cat-all-shortdescs.js, providing an easy way to browse for additional whitelist words. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:02, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree a category would be much easier. My RegEx search may have timed out, so the list could be longer. ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Rendering all of the SDs at User:GhostInTheMachine/Test dies after about 1000 lines — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 21:25, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

... also needs to filter out "none" etc from the whitelist — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 21:28, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I know, it's hard to whitelist words using a RegEx search. It'd be easier just to run the script and check for changes. As a side note, some of the short descriptions are really bad e.g. Bat fly. ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:34, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

BRFA filed @Jonesey95. ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Template to check for lower-case short descriptions

I have hacked together a template to check for lower-case short descriptions at Template:Short description/lowercasecheck. See Template:Short description/lowercasecheck/testcases for an illustration of how it works. On that testcases page, the text "CATEGORY APPLIED" indicates an invalid lower-case short description.

I have added the new template to {{Short description/sandbox}}, and its output can be see at Template:Short description/testcases. Feedback is welcome. If anyone wants to rewrite this template in Lua, be my guest. It seems like an obvious candidate for a module. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:21, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Also, given that this template is transcluded in more than four million pages, I would love for people to add more testcases if they can think of weird edge cases that might trip up the lower-case checking. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:21, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I have activated this code in {{Short description}}. Category:Pages with lower-case short description will start filling up with thousands of articles. Many of them, at least until we get a few affected articles and templates straightened out, may appear to be there in error.

If an infobox or other template assigns a short description that starts with a lower-case letter because it uses the value of one of its parameters, it may be appropriate to modify the infobox's code to upper-case that value automatically when it is passed to the short description template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:24, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Please note: this new category will be applied if any of the article's short descriptions, whether applied in the article or via a transcluded template, start with a lower-case letter. This is a different flavor of the problem described in the section above about long short descriptions. The workaround is to upper-case all of the article's short descriptions, since they should all be formatted that way anyway. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:09, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Century

The century is often enough to give useful context for a person compactly. For Archimedes, do we really need "Greek scientist (287-212 BC)"? I would claim that "Greek scientist 3c BC" is sufficient, and leaves room for additional characteristics, e.g., "Greek scientist from Sicily 3c BC".

Note that I write centuries as 3c. Unlike c3, there is no ambiguity with "circa". I wish we could write -3c for 3c BC, but that is probably too non-standard and obscure. --Macrakis (talk) 19:46, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I get 3c BC, I'm not sure if the bulk of our readers would, but I'm all for shorter short descriptions whenever there is need to fit more info in. ASUKITE 19:53, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

There is a lot wrong with this idea. First, the proposed syntax does not properly finish the sentence "Archimedes was a ...." Second, please do not write "3c" for "Third century" or "3rd century". It is incomprehensible; we have MOS:CENTURY for a reason. In any event, "(287–212 BC)" (note dash per MOS) is shorter than either of those century designations, so the year range is probably ideal. And third, we have guidance for inclusion of dates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the reason I was proposing 3c or 3C was precisely because they're short and, to my eyes at least, clear. Apparently not to yours. Fair enough. Anyway, MOS clearly applies to articles; I wasn't aware it applied to SDs. In particular, I'd think that SDs should be written in more telegraphic style than articles.

Re "–" for number ranges, yes, I certainly appreciate that typographic refinement. Which is why I'm mystified that in 2022, WP still insists on using straight ASCII "'" instead of proper apostrophes and quotation marks. But hey, that's a different issue. --Macrakis (talk) 21:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

WP still insists on using straight ASCII "'" instead of proper apostrophes and quotation marks. I believe I read somewhere that Internet Explorer can't search for them interchangeably. ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:14, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

That's why I mentioned the year. Backwards compatibility with old software like IE is nice up to a point, but....

Anyway, I suspect that it also doesn't search for "-" and "–" interchangeably either. --Macrakis (talk) 21:49, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

SD for states of the U.S.

I've got several states on my watchlist and have noticed the SD tend to change a lot. They have recently been "standardized" to "U.S. State". Some used to be "State in the United States", which I prefer - it is well within 40 characters and is more "formal". Comment at Talk:Arizona#Short description if you have an opinion. MB 22:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Disagreement over content in SD in Mathematics articles

Hello. I've been getting a good deal of push back from the mathematics community over short descriptions. It seems that very few of the mathematics articles are in line with what's described in WP:SHORTDES. Here are some examples my edits that were reverted (there are more):

• Universal algebra - "Branch of mathematics" reverted to "Theory of algebraic structures in general"
• Lattice (order) - "Algebraic structure in order theory" reverted to "Partial order having least upper bounds and greatest lower bounds"
• Module (mathematics) - "Algebraic structure in ring theory" reverted to "Generalization of vector spaces from fields to rings"
• Homeomorphism - "Mathematical relationship in topology" reverted to "Isomorphism of topological spaces in mathematics".

The issue is not that my edits were mathematically inaccurate (I am a mathematician and made these edits carefully), but generally because they weren't "descriptive enough" for the editors with these pages on their watchlist. I was wondering if someone with more experience in the Short Description project had any input on whether or not by edits were out of line. I was looking specifically for descriptions that either attempted to define the subject/summarize the lead, used too much jargon, or were simply too long. There is a discussion about the issue currently over on the Project math talk page where more detail is given (both for and against). Donko XI (talk) 11:46, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree completely with your versions. SDs aren't supposed to define the subject, but to contextualize it very concisely. --Macrakis (talk) 17:54, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I think it is a bad idea to fragment the discussion -- the discussion at WT:WPM is much further advanced, people should add comments there instead. --JBL (talk) 17:57, 21 January 2022 (UTC)