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What's the point?

Has creating this been discussed somewhere? I see no positive value in adding "short description|Swedish jazz pianist and founder of the jazz group Esbjörn Svensson Trio" to an article that has as its first sentence "Esbjörn Svensson (16 April 1964 – 14 June 2008) was a Swedish jazz pianist and founder of the jazz group Esbjörn Svensson Trio" (at Esbjörn Svensson). Or is there a formatting error at that page and the short description should normally be invisible? EddieHugh (talk) 15:30, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Would you prefer having the short description being taken from Wikidata, as it is now? See the Wikidata app on a phone for how it displays right after the article title. There has already been considerable annoyance and frustration about having English Wikipedia content being determined by another site, which may not share our standards for some issues.
It is most likely subtle spin that would cause trouble. One of the things that would be done by POV-pushers is to add ethnicities to descriptions at Wikidata, so Bernie Sanders (Q359442) might be described as "Jewish American politician, senator for Vermont". The naive folks over at Wikidata wouldn't see anything wrong with that, so it would show up on the English Wikipedia app, contrary to our established policy on stating ethnicities/religious views, etc. Despite all the argument that has gone on on the English Wikipedia to resolve those sort of issues, we would be powerless to insist on changing the displayed content on our own Wikipedia article because it is out of our control. The WP:Short description is our way of regaining control of our content on the English Wikipedia. Once we have the text of the short description editable from English Wikipedia, we can use our own anti-vandalism systems to maintain policy-compliant descriptions. It is important though, to make it easy for vandal fighters to fix any vandalism, and having the wikitext in the same position as it is displayed in mobile or app view is the best bet unless shown otherwise. --RexxS (talk) 17:31, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. Sounds like a choose-your-battleground scenario – internal or with Wikidata. If it's supposed to be mobile only, then something is wrong at Esbjörn Svensson, because it's showing on the computer version. Mentioning the mobile-specific info (if that's the case) right at the beginning of this project page (and in edit summaries that add a short description) might help reduce the mystery for page watchers. EddieHugh (talk) 17:51, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
You're welcome. I fixed the problem at Esbjörn Svensson – accidental use of round parentheses, rather than curly ones. I agree that it would be helpful to explain more of the background, but the arguments at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 145 #RfC: Populating article descriptions magic word and Wikipedia talk:Wikidata/2018 State of affairs #Short descriptions have drained most of my will to live. --RexxS (talk) 18:22, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

An opinion by one WP:DPL regular

At least two WP:DPL regulars have trepidations about this whole idea. In February 2014, there were bad links to 65,600 DAB pages. In February 2018, team effort has brought that number down to about 8,500. I have fixed 50,000+ bad links to DAB pages. 400-600 new bad links to DAB pages are created every single day, so I claim no more than partial credit for getting that headline number down.

Most DAB problems take no more than 2-5 minutes to solve. Some tricky problems, involving major multilingual searching (in more than one alphabet) and InterWiki linking, have taken me up to an hour. On the other hand, the most difficult and time-consuming DAB problems to solve are those which involve Wikidata links. Such problems take 15-20 minutes, minimum, to identify and (if lucky) to fix. I know cases where it has taken two or three experienced editors to work out what the hell was going on and to fix a problem, sometimes after extended arguments on template talk pages with other editors who could not easily be persuaded that they had created a problem. If this new idea creates new problems, expect posts on your personal Talk Pages politely asking you to repair the damage which you have caused. Narky Blert (talk) 02:38, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I remember the good old days when there were 1.35 million and none of us had ever heard of Wikidata. Dekimasuよ! 03:41, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Sheesh! Doffs cap. Narky Blert (talk) 21:52, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Fixing links to DAB is pages valuable work, thanks! I don't think {{short description}} would be a problem? As I understand it, that template merely includes fixed text in the page, with no links and no Wikidata, incoming or otherwise. If there is an issue, please spell it out. I'm beginning to think that DAB pages should not have {{short description}}—instead, that template should be called from a template that is on the DAB page. That way, the description could be uniform for all DAB pages, possibly just saying "disambiguation page", per WT:Disambiguation pages with links#Short descriptions. In case anyone is unaware, the description "disambiguation page" is very valuable for those using a mobile because, for example, a search for "sarah brown" might list results including Sarah Brown and it useful to know that it is currently a DAB. Johnuniq (talk) 04:18, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
That sounds great. I believe "disambiguation page" alone will be sufficient (some might like "human name disambiguation" for cases of hndis, possibly). "Set index page" should also be enough for set indices. Dekimasuよ! 04:22, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
It sounds as if we should add {{SHORTDESC:{{{shortdesc|Disambiguation page}}} }} to {{Dmbox}}, then it can be called from Hndis as {{Dmbox|shortdesc=Human name disambiguation}}, etc. with a sensible default for any wrappers that don't provide that parameter.
(Part of me wants to solve the problem by adding {{SHORTDESC:blank}} to every article, but I suspect that might be considered disruptive...) Certes (talk) 11:10, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Certes, The problem with adding blank (or several other similar suggestions) as the short description, is that WMF Reading Team have explicitly stated that they will use the decription from Wikidata in those cases, which is precisely what we wish to avoid, as there are inappropriate descriptions on Wikidata, and the magic word is their "solution" to the problem. If you think this is extortion and WMF severely overstepping their function, you are not alone. Feel free to express your displeasure to the WMF spokesperson at User talk:DannyH (WMF).
Would {{SHORTDESC:{{{shortdesc|Disambiguation page}}} }} actually work? I have been trying to find out how to use the magic word with a template, and this is counterintuitive, though that is not saying much as I really dont have any idea. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 21:10, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Narky Blert, I am quite willing to personally revert all the short descriptions I have added to disambiguation pages as soon as someone shows me a disambiguation template that does the job correctly. So far there have been claims that it can be done, but no demonstration of it working. This is not altogether surprising as the magic word has not been implemented yet, so it is somewhat difficult to experiment with it. It may be available around the end of the month. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 21:10, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Pbsouthwood My warning was intended to be more general. If you create a fancy new template or suchlike thingy, check that it works properly before going live. I found yet another one today. I didn't bookmark the link. It took me only 10 or 15 minutes to work out what the problem was and how to fix it; but then, I've seen similar problems before. I should not have had to waste my time doing so. Narky Blert (talk) 22:39, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
I created the template and it's not fancy and I made sure it worked when I made it live. If you really found a problem, report where you found it. Otherwise your evidence-free hand-waving is completely unhelpful. --RexxS (talk) 01:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
RexxS, Narky Blert may have been referring to a completely unrelated template in passing. That is my impression anyway.
Narky Blert, Not taking it personally, just hoping for actual practical input in general. Also I try to fix what I break. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:50, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Do you know if DannyH has been asked about that? Part of their implementation should be a method to embed a fixed description in a template for DAB pages. It would be silly to put a short description which should have the same text on thousands of pages, particularly when there might be a need to change that text in the future, even if only to change between lowercase and uppercase in "Disambiguation page". Johnuniq (talk) 21:39, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Would {{SHORTDESC:{{{shortdesc|Disambiguation page}}} }} actually work? I don't see why not. Templates expand from the inside out, and the magic word would just "see" whatever the shortdesc= parameter is set to, or the default text "Disambiguation page" if not. Let's try it and see! Certes (talk) 00:52, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Johnuniq, DannyH has been asked many things. Sometimes they answer, sometimes the answers are to the point, and sometimes they are useful. I think DannyH does not have much of idea of how the software works, or for that matter, of how Wikipedia works. Someone else is doing the coding, and I don't know who it is. I guess we will find out what it does when it is implemented. It might work, stranger things have happened. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:50, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Certes, The short description template also allocates a maintenance category. Would that be likely to affect the magic word? I am guessing not, but from a position of ignorance of the details. Anyway, it should be implemented soon. Then we can test it and find all the bugs. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:58, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
My preferred option is still to do nothing, except perhaps adding a disclaimer to the boilerplate text around each article to the effect that the description comes from Wikidata via WMF and is not our fault. That said, I took a short cut above. We should declare all short descriptions via {{Short description}} rather than using SHORTDESC: directly in articles or even in other templates. That way we benefit from the features of {{Short description}}, such as a maintenance category, without coding and maintaining them anywhere else. It would be a few minutes' work to change Dmbox as I suggest above. However, would it continue to work when {{Short description}} changes from its current implementation to use the magic word? My guess is that it would, but we can't be sure until SHORTDESC: becomes available. If we do change Dmbox then we should add some typical disambiguation pages to {{Short description/testcases}} to assist with retesting at that point. Certes (talk) 11:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Proposed insertion of short description into disambiguation template

Dekimasu, Johnuniq, Narky Blert, Certes, and anyone else who may be interested. I have proposed an edit to {{disambiguation}} to add the short description template. I have tested in the sandbox and it seems to work, and RexxS has checked that the API returns the local short description. Those interested please take a look at the proposal and test it in any way you think might help. Suggestions for a better way also welcome. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 20:26, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Complete waste of time and redundant to Wikidata

This is a huge undertaking for no benefit: put these at Wikidata, which is one of the functions of the project. Everyone who has an account here has one there and changes at Wikidata show up in your watchlist--it's seamless. The idea of adding this magic word 5.5M+ times to all of the articles here is frankly ridiculous. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:24, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Of course it is. Almost as ridiculous as having content prominently displayed on the English Wikipedia that is controlled by another project with differing sensibilities, without any ability to filter it or have it verified by a source. Because that's the alternative that you're advocating. --RexxS (talk) 10:38, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
In my opinion, we are being forced to choose between two ridiculous options and we have chosen the less ridiculous. Certes (talk) 11:57, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
There are also good uses for a short description other than those envisaged by WMF Reading group. It is not the adding of the magic word that is the issue, it is crafting good short descriptions, which are uncommon on Wikidata. Making them part of articles should improve the chances of getting good short descriptions which are useful on Wikipedia as well as to WMF. The magic word is just a way of accessing them. The idea is no more ridiculous than creating and maintaining 5.5M encyclopaedia articles with categories and all the rest of the trimmings, which we do as a matter of course. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 16:16, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

A suggestion

Why don't we have a bot go through all 5 million+ articles without a short description tag, and put one into each article, containing a single non breaking space. At least then we will obviate the issue with Wikidata gibberish appearing in short descriptions. And a bot could list the top 1,000 or so articles by page views without a short description, refreshing daily, giving people who want to put them into articles something to work off. Fish+Karate 09:54, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

  1. WMF specifications for the magic word were that in the case of a non-breaking space or similar attempt to bypass Wikidata, that the magic word would go to Wikidata for the description, so this plan will probably not work. If it has been coded to do this, it will probably be quite easy to extend for any other equivalent. This is a non-starter. I don't think a long term edit war with the developers will gain us much in the long run.
  2. There may be some value to having a blank short description, it will make adding a better one marginally quicker, but may interfere with Galobtter's rather useful gadget, so test first.
  3. If there is a blank template in all the articles, how will we know how many still need a real short description, as the template puts the article into a category of having a short description. This might complicate maintenance significantly.
  4. A list of the top articles without a short description could be useful to suggest what to work on. I would be more likely to work on articles that I have confidence I can describe well. There is currently no shortage. I try to make a point of doing a few every day. I usually work on articles from WikiProjects I have an interest in. FA and GA are also on my list with higher than average priority. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 10:23, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
Another suggestion: Use Gallobtter's gadget to populate short descriptions to articles which already have descriptions on Wikidata. Some of them are usable with very little editing, others need more, but it is a start. By doing these first we prevent WMF from using substandard Wikidata descriptions in the fastest way. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 10:29, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
Actually, the best start would be to classify the articles. For example, we have hundreds of thousands articles on localities, adding a short description "A locality in X" (X being the country) is likely uncontroversial, as soon as the title is simply "Locality", not "Locality, X". The remaining ones can be fine-tuned. Similarly for geographical objects etc.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:59, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
A somewhat more advanced version of this has already been included in {{infobox settlement}} (see its talk page), though some polishing is still needed. When the code for this has been tested, a similar thing can be done for many other infoboxes. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 14:30, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
I am not at all in favour of putting in "blank" short descriptions. Some of the Wikidata descriptions are OK and a few are good. For a while I have been supplying a handful of descriptions on Wikidata and, recently, directly on ENWP but now I have just installed Galobtter's gadget (User:Galobtter/Shortdesc helper.js). For me it installed and is running very nicely. Thank you for this. To be able to (import and) edit like this will be extremely helpful for people unused to the concept. I think very recently added descriptions on Wikidata are not visible here although they display OK on the Wikipedia app. Thincat (talk) 12:20, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
Fair enough re the blank spaces, just a suggestion. Ymblanter every geographical location is in a category, as are objects and so on, could those drive this? Fish+Karate 12:39, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
Yes, this is exactly what I meant.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:45, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
@Ymblanter and Fish and karate:, Take a look at what Fram has done on {{Infobox settlement}}. It looks like a good start, and you may have some ideas to improve it or use a similar technique elsewhere.
@Thincat:, I have also been using Galobtters gadget to make good use of the Wikidata descriptions where they are good enough or can be reasonably easily improved. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 14:30, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

RfC for wider community approval of this feature?

I think any proposal to add something to every single Wikipedia article warrants a pretty thorough community discussion and RfC. Can anyone point me to such a discussion taking place?

I see some aspects discussed at various different specific talk pages. I see discussions about disabling usage of Wikidata descriptions (1) (2), which does not imply approval for new "short description" templates on WP. There was RfC: Populating article descriptions magic word, but the way it's set up, it already presumes that adding "short descriptions" is a good idea. Am I missing something? -- intgr [talk] 16:48, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

@Intgr: Yes you're missing a key point. You have it the wrong way round. Short descriptions are already with us, implemented without debate by WMF developers. They are present as the line immediately below the article title when viewing English Wikipedia articles with the Wikipedia app, and were similarly visible in mobile view until an uproar managed to get them turned off temporarily. They are also displayed when searching to help disambiguate search results. The text of these 'short descriptions' is presently taken from an unsourceable field in Wikidata and many editors on English Wikipedia would prefer to have the text used to be editable from the English Wikipedia, to ensure policy compliance. That is the purpose of this initiative: not to have or not have short descriptions – that ship has sailed – but whether we take short descriptions for English Wikipedia articles from English Wikipedia or Wikidata. Now you're quite free to set up an RfC to argue that we should continue to take the descriptions from Wikidata – see how far that one gets you. Or you could always set up an RfC to argue that the WMF Reading Team actually doesn't know better than us and should disable the short descriptions – for all the good that would do. Discuss all you like, but sooner or later, folks are going to have to start doing something to fix the problem instead of just talking about it. --RexxS (talk) 20:41, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
The most thorough conversation I can find at the moment is at Wikipedia talk:Wikidata/2018 State of affairs#Short descriptions. I don't get it (yet?), either. Dekimasuよ! 20:42, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
What don't you get? --RexxS (talk) 20:43, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
For one, the status of the project and where its authority stems from. From the page I've linked, the answer appears to be Danny/the foundation. But just as an example, this particular page in the Wikipedia namespace isn't labeled as content guideline, policy, or anything else. It's not in any categories (Wikipedia processes? Editing guidelines?) Thus its status is going to be unclear to a lot of people arriving here. Dekimasuよ! 20:52, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
What do you mean 'status of the project'? It's ongoing. Since when do we need authority to edit Wikipedia? WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY. If you're asking where Danny's authority to do what he feels like comes from, his talk page is User talk:DannyH (WMF). If you think it would be helpful to label this page or categorise it, please feel free to do so. --RexxS (talk) 20:58, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
You're acting like I'm attacking the page or the project, which I'm not. I don't think User:intgr was either. I'm pointing out that in the absence of an explanation, people will not understand the basis for the change. And subsequently, you may find editors coming here confused and/or upset that a template they didn't know was being implemented is being added to every page on their watchlist. We don't need authority to edit Wikipedia, but concerns over adding a template to thousands of pages is not something easily dealt with through WP:BRD. Dekimasuよ! 21:05, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
e.g. Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links#Short descriptions. There is a concern that implementation is getting ahead of discussion of the best way to execute the change.Dekimasuよ! 21:08, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
From Template:Short description/doc, emphasis added. I know you were involved in the creation of the template, but this info should help others. "This is an experimental template proposed as a solution to a problem under discussion at Wikipedia talk:Wikidata/2017 State of affairs. It does not do anything yet except store a short description of an article which may be used later by expanding the functionality of this template or by calling the contents by other software. Details of potential usage are yet to be finalised." Dekimasuよ! 21:13, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Have you viewed Wikipedia on a mobile? Short descriptions have been a fact for a long time (months/years?). With a proper browser and full screen, searching is easy because you can easily open a few pages in tabs then cycle through the tabs to see what you want. That is not feasible in an app with a tiny screen and feeble input. Therefore, a short description is displayed when searching, and it is very important to allow selection of the correct article. MediaWiki currently gets the short description from Wikidata and people have complained (raised legitimate concerns) about the back-door vandalism that allows where editors could monitor, say, a prominent politician's article at Wikipedia yet be unaware that the description has been changed to "wanker and child molester" at Wikidata. That description would be prominently visible to people browsing with a mobile and may be present for a significant period until someone able to fix it notices. Therefore short descriptions are being migrated enwiki articles so changes can be monitored. Does anyone have a better idea? Johnuniq (talk) 21:47, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Well, it appears from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Short descriptions#A suggestion that the addition of the template is first being added to disambiguation pages (because User:Pbsouthwood is the first one really adding it to pages, and that's what he started with). But as soon as this was noticed on Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links#Short descriptions, two users came up with simply adding a standardized description to the disambiguation template, which would immediately solve the issue for those ~200K pages.
Lets see if it works. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:01, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Since disambiguation pages are not classified as articles anyway, perhaps the description at the top of Wikipedia:Short description should be changed to refer to "pages" if it means everything on Wikipedia; at the moment it says, "The short description of a Wikipedia article is a concise explanation of the scope of the article." Dekimasuよ! 22:10, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
We need to clarify that it is only required for mainspace. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:05, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
"Required"? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:58, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Cannot edit automatic description using the helper script

The automatic formation of the short description of a town or district from {{Infobox settlement}} works well in most cases, but when it doesn't the description cannot be edited using the helper script. I mean the text can be amended, but the edit does not then save. Try prefixing the SD of Petal, Mississippi with the necessary words "City in...": Noyster (talk), 10:13, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Redirect pages

Sorry, something else with the helper script: With the script installed, the description line on any redirect page is currently shown as

Redirect pageMissing article description (Add)

– could the "missing description" part be omitted?: Noyster (talk), 08:10, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Contents

I feel these short description should refrain from using words that would otherwise have to be wikilinked or in the main text or can’t be considered colloquial. I’m saying this in response to Baleen whale’s short description which reads “A parvorder of the infraorder Cetacea (whales, dolphins and porpoises),” which is not helpful since most people don’t know what parvorder or infraorder or Cetacea mean, and this exact same description could be used for toothed whale. I realize this discussion should be on Talk:Baleen whale but it seemed for appropriate here to establish some kind of consensus for the template usage   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  20:31, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

@Sumanuil:

It's probably best to consider where these short descriptions will show up, and who would benefit from them. The description will most likely be seen as the second line after the title in the Wikipedia app (and maybe at some point on mobile view), and in search results. The benefit of the description should be to help those searching recognise that they have found what they are looking for. In the case of Baleen whale, it would seem to me that the reader would be expecting an article about a whale, so the value would come from disambiguating baleen whales from other whales. I suggest something like "A group of 15 species of whales mainly found in the Arctic and Antarctic", which is less precise, but should be more readable. What do others think? --RexxS (talk) 21:22, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
I tried putting in, “Whales that strain small organisms from the water using their hair-like baleen,” but this was reverted back to the original   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  21:29, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
I understand. My advice would be to forget about it, and carry on improving the encyclopedia somewhere else. But if you want to invest the time, the only other option is to raise the issue on the article talk page. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:40, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
"A parvorder of the infraorder Cetacea (whales, dolphins and porpoises)" a what now ? This seems a typical example of people being overly accurate. "suborder of mammals" is WAY better. Think of the audience, a short description is MORE of a disambiguator than it is the lead of an article. Now if it pops up in a search i would STILL have to visit the title to distinguish it from anything else. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 04:06, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
Also it's way too long. Remember that things after the 40th character are likely not even showing up in many of the interfaces where the shortdescription is presented. It's basically failing the first 4 bullets of Wikipedia:Short description. ping User:Pbsouthwood, User:Sumanuil. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 04:12, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
I am also of the opinion that a lot of the short descriptions I'm seeing are not... short. Like, many people's have life date ranges in them. Wikidata, ironically, does tend to keep them short. Outriggr (talk) 04:16, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
Baleen whale is now described as "parvoder of aquatic mammals". That first word is not very helpful and is a typo (it should be parvorder). An argument in favor of parvorder might be that it tells the person looking for information that the article will be about technical stuff, and someone who understood the term would know that was the wanted page. I see about 45 characters of a description when searching using the mobile app (much more if landscape mode). Johnuniq (talk) 05:12, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
I used parvorder rather than suborder to prevent reverting on the basis that it isn't a suborder Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:14, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
You all make good points. The best short description for Baleen whale would probably be determined by the main contributors to the article, what I am trying to do is get the process started and running without spending too much time on each article, there are 1.5 million more to go before WMF will stop using Wikidata as default. My main concerns are that the local short descriotion is present and technically correct, as these are the problems most common with Wikidata descriptions. They should be improved when possible. Preferably with an edit summary to explain why if it is not obvious.
Short descriptions may be used for other purposes in the future, so when possible, it may be helpful to try to put the most important part in the first 40 or so characters, or whatever is the minimum display. If people use mobile in landscape or WMF decides to show more than one line or other apps use short description on wider screens, or search apps use audio conversions, then a longer short description would often be useful. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:29, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
Short descriptions are content. Talk page consensus is appropriate to sort out content disagreements, via Bold-Revert-Discuss. That said, I rather like Dunkleosteus' version. It gets to the core of the matter and is very accessible. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:37, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
That being said, my version’s 80 characters, and a 40 character version’d read “Whales that strain plankton using baleen” which, I suppose, could be understood by the average person, but it effectively only says “baleen whales are whales with baleen.” Should short descriptions refer that much to the title?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  13:28, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
IMO, rather than explanation, short descriptions should describe what category they fall in; for species it'll be the common(ish) names like aquatic mammal, lizard, chameleon and so on. Similar for other stuff; for places their type (city, town); for people their occupation etc Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:37, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Explanation of "the hidden comment" requested

In the template documentation's "Example", it begins:

At Oxygen therapy, replace the hidden comment with:

What does this mean?--NapoliRoma (talk) 21:21, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

@NapoliRoma: When the documentation was written, Oxygen therapy had a hidden comment <!-- use of high concentrations of oxygen as medical treatment --> which was used for testing before the {{Short description}} template was created. Doc James eventually replaced the hidden comment with the template. The documentation hadn't been updated to reflect that. I'll fix that now. --RexxS (talk) 22:40, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

This Is America (song)

Should this page have a short description. This has apparently been a point of contention between me and another editor @Ss112:. I interpreted this page and WP:WikiProject Short descriptions to mean that since the disconnect from Wikidata all pages will the future need a short description. Am I wrong?---Coffeeandcrumbs 08:11, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

If we can add meaningful information to what is conveyed in the title itself, and do it in a small space (up to 40 characters is suggested), then yes add the short description. Where the description from Wikidata is adequate, then we import that; where we can do better, we provide our own description. Where we consider the title self-explanatory, it's best to put {{Short description|none}}, so as to separate the Wikipedia display from whatever goes on on Wikidata: Noyster (talk), 09:10, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
See Talk:This Is America (song)#Short description. I wouldn't push the point as descriptions are new and there are lots of other articles. Johnuniq (talk) 09:37, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
Why all of a sudden are we adding this template to pages when before now (or 2017, when this template was made here at Wiki) nobody worried about the possibility it might be vandalised over on Wikidata? I didn't think short descriptions were only (relatively) new at Wikidata either. Ss112 09:48, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
Ss112 there were two RfCs and other discussions about this in late 2010, so people were worrying about it being vandalised om Wikidata, If you want the details, please read through the pages linked at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Short_descriptions#History. It will take a long time to work through to some articles because there are millions to do. Eventually the descriptions on Wikidata will be disabled, and then articles without a local short description will not have one at all. Most users appear to be accepting the change with equanimity or possibly indifference. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 10:24, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: I didn't say I had a problem with it in general, just on this article, as it's not telling us anything different from the Wikidata description (which, sure, may eventually be removed—but that time hasn't come yet) or anything much more than we can get from the title—that it's a song. As much as I don't have a problem where it has a use, I do think this may be a thing that stays here for a few years then gets ported somewhere else, like the interwiki language links that used to be placed at the bottom of articles. Ss112 10:32, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
The interwiki links were moved to Wikidata because every Wikipedia needs one consistent set of links, so storing them in a central location makes a great deal of sense. Also, on a pragmatic basis, editors here essentially don't care if interwiki links are vandalized. Putting that more nicely, we do care, but such vandalism will have negligible effect on articles here, and any damage would essentially be invisible. By contrast, short descriptions appear at the top of all articles seen by readers on mobile devices (the description is just under the title). Also, searching for a title displays the description for each, again very prominently. That means vandalism is guaranteed to occur and it will greatly impact the large number of readers on mobile. Johnuniq (talk) 10:41, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
This is a case where the Wikidata description is adequate, and a small minority of articles without local short descriptions is not worth losing sleep over. If Wikidata gets vandalised and affects this article, someone will probably sort it out, and when Wikidata descriptions are switched off it can be added locally, a little late, but not a crisis. It is even possible that it may get ported elsewhere some day. If that happens it would be better if it is ported from a local, curated short description than from whatever might be on Wikidata at the time, but again, it is a small item in the bigger picture. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 11:25, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
Pbsouthwood: I agree that this is just one page out of five million, but is it a good idea to discourage people from adding high-quality short descriptions? I would think we'd want to encourage people to write descriptions, outside of the procedurally-generated infobox descriptions. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
DannyH (WMF) yes, it's a very good idea to encourage the few editors working on this not to waste time on articles where there are uncomprehending OWNers willing to waste everybody's time by reverting. You only have to observe Special:History/This Is America (song) to see a classic example. --RexxS (talk) 21:29, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
RexxS: But the answer is to discourage the OWNers from reverting, rather than discouraging the editors working on it. Right? -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 23:54, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
@Danny: That's right. But the time-sink and effort in accomplishing the first job is disproportionate to the result. This really is one of those situations where walking away from the dispute is 100% guaranteed to be the best course of action. --RexxS (talk) 00:12, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
RexxS: Yeah, that's a good point. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 17:07, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
DannyH (WMF), In the time that it has already taken me to respond in this discussion I could have added maybe 10 to 20 short descriptions which probably would not have been reverted. To persuade someone who does not want to be persuaded could take more effort than several hundred decent short descriptions elsewhere. You can do the maths. It is not an efficient use of volunteer time. Those of us working on short descriptions are doing so primarily to get you to shut off Wikidata. it will cost thousand of hours that could have been spent on other work, maybe hundreds of thousands by the time it is done. The problems with the magic word implementation are not helping any either. The occasional obstacle thrown up by reluctant users we just walk around and carry on. The fact that so far we can't use short descriptions for purposes that we consider demonstrably useful to Wikipedia also discourages contribution. By all means spend your own time trying to persuade editors to add good short descriptions and not to revert those we add. It would be an interesting and possibly educational experience, which might have a positive influence on your future interactions with the English Wikipedia community. I would be happy to ping you every time we hit one of these cases. You could even add a few good short descriptions yourself. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 06:41, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
Pbsouthwood, I have been adding short descriptions, under my volunteer account. :) The other day, I fixed all the US state capitals so that the short descriptions worked properly. I'll keep working on it. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 17:06, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
DannyH (WMF), I am happy to hear that. I see you have also done some good work on the Wodehouse novels. Keep it up! Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:39, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

If my experience is any indication, it does not seems like editors have an opinion on whether short descriptions are a good thing or not. I don't think they care either way. In this instance, the editor read the instructions at Template:Short description and WP:Short descriptions and interpreted to mean that their only purpose is to disambiguate an article. Ss112 assumed since "the article title alone is sufficient to ensure reliable identification of the desired article" then the short description template or even a {{Short description|none}} is unnecessary. However, we know that at stage 2 of this magic words implementation, a short description is required since Wikipedia will stop pulling the descriptions from WikiData altogether. What we need to do is make it clear at Template:Short description and WP:Short descriptions that editors are now being encourage to either migrate the short description or create a short description for the over 5.5 million articles, in anticipation of this event (when we reach "~2 million good-quality descriptions").

Out of 6,555,211 articles, 5719718 have a short description template. 835,493 articles do not have a short description.
5,719,718 / 6,555,211 (87%)
87.25452 % complete – Help make this bar green!

We need to make it clear at the top of the two pages mention above that in the future we expect every page will contain this template.---Coffeeandcrumbs 07:16, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

I have added a clarification to the top of Wikipedia:Short description, please check if you think it is sufficient. The project page already mentions it. If you think it needs further clearification, please suggest an improvement. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 09:09, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Wow, all these vague references to me because I decided to remove the template from one article and even after I made it clear above I didn't have any objections to it in general. Not that it's particularly relevant on this talk page, but I don't feel I "own" anything; most of my reverts on This Is America (song) have been reverts of IPs for adding unsourced content or formatting fixes, but of course, one disagreement over the inclusion of this template and apparently I feel it's my property. @Coffeeandcrumbs: I assumed no such thing. I'm very well aware short descriptions are for mobile users and not for disambiguation. I can read. Until such a time as Wikidata no longer covers descriptions for Wikipedia, I just don't see the point—that's all. I felt it did not add anything Wikidata did not already say. If it's your crusade now to include as many short description templates locally in order to bring about the disconnect with Wikidata hosting descriptions just so you can include the template on this article (despite the fact that I thought you said on your talk page earlier you had taken it off your watchlist as in that you stopped caring), then I would think you might have better things to do than go on a crusade with a petty motive. However, if you've taken an interest in this template now only to improve the project, good for you. Go for it. No further pings or references to me are necessary if I'm also a "timesink", I'm just clarifying what I thought I had already made clear. Good day. Ss112 07:43, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
Wikidata did not already say - that's the thing, the wikidata description will be disabled soon, once there are two million or so descriptions, and thus it makes sense to preemptively put the short descriptions; there is no specific crusade with a "petty motive" - people genuinely want to switch off wikidata descriptions, and so are working towards it. Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:49, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
@Galobtter: The part about the "crusade" was directed specifically at Coffeeandcrumbs, as the user appears, from taking a quick look at their contributions, not to be interested in adding said template anywhere else but, from what they said here, determined to get short descriptions used on two million articles in order to restore it to this specific article. However, as I said, I hope that's not the reason why, because I believe that would be a petty motive. I don't think any other users adding this template to articles are on a crusade, or I have no reason to believe so. Ss112 08:03, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
That is not correct. See here: [1]. I also basically created this page, at the same time (May 10), when I became interested in this project (unrelated). Which is why I added a short description to it. I couldn't care less if this page was the very last page to have a short description. You accused me of edit warring for reverting your removal of the short description. Then I started this discussion. That is all. Please understand I have no bad faith motive. I am just trying to do what you suggested. Your words: "Take it to the talk page". I am trying to discuss the matter so such a disagreement will not cause me a headache in the future. I wanted an opinion from people informed about the project if I was somehow mistaken. But you obviously took that as an attack on you or some sort of crusade. So I apologize. I will avoid you in the future.---Coffeeandcrumbs 08:22, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
Coffeeandcrumbs, Ss112, Short descriptions is a new requirement, It is not surprising that there is occasional pusback for various reasons. Wikipedia is like that. As I see it there is nothing personal here, just the ordinary need for clarification where something unexpected has happened. We will try to clarify the situation as suggested and go forward from here. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:53, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Using the same short description for many articles

Is there a way that a short description can be placed inside a template of its own, so it can be transcluded into dozens of articles that share the same category? For instance, all the pages in Category:New York City Subway stations in Queens, New York are about "New York City Subway stations in Queens, New York" and so the short description can be "New York City Subway station in Queens, New York". I would like to put a short description such as New York City Subway station in Queens, New York into a template so it would be easier to paste it onto every article. epicgenius (talk) 13:44, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

@Epicgenius: I'll do one better; I added a short description to Template:Infobox New York City Subway station so that the subway stations of all boroughs automatically get descriptions in the format you have (feel free to tweak if necessary, though doing it automatically in the infobox is preferrable) Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:55, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
{{Disambiguation page short description}} (transcluded by the widely used {{Disambiguation}}) is another good example. Note the |noreplace parameter, allowing a more specific description to override it where appropriate. Certes (talk) 14:18, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Short description none

I've just added the code to re-implement {{Short description|none}} which is mentioned in the documentation (and was formerly available). Prior to this edit, it was actually setting the short description to the literal word 'none', which is clearly not desirable for use in searches, etc. An issue that will now arise is that the helper script will now erroneously indicate that the article is missing the short description. However, the article will still correctly appear in Category:Articles with short description as can be seen in Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79, for example. --RexxS (talk) 10:15, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Templatestyles

I've amended the sandbox to move the inline style display:none; into the template stylesheet that I created at Template:Short description/styles.css. This is part of the migration away from inline styles in templates. More information can be found at Wikipedia:TemplateStyles, mw:Help:TemplateStyles and mw:Extension:TemplateStyles. When we've made sure that all is working well with the sandbox version, we'll need to update the main template to match. --RexxS (talk) 11:00, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Only one, trivial rule, used only once on a template used only once per page does not warrant moving to TemplateStyles. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 13:54, 22 July 2018 (UTC) (underlined text added {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 15:17, 22 July 2018 (UTC)}}
Yes it does. Who put you in charge of deciding where templatestyles may or may not be used? And "a template used only once" is pure nonsense: Template:Short description has 886100 transclusions to date. --RexxS (talk) 14:05, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
I was meaning to say that the rule was used only once by the template, not that the template was used only once. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 15:06, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Okay, thanks for the clarification. Although one of the advantages of using classes over inline styles is that it's easy to apply the same set of styles to multiple html elements, that is not the only advantage. In web design, one of the goals is to separate presentation from content, and placing as much of the presentation outside of the content as possible should help make the markup easier to maintain, adapt and re-use. In addition, as I understand it, a templatestyles class has a lower priority than user css, which makes it easier for a user to override styles defined in templatestyles than those defined inline – a considerable simplification for users with special needs. There is talk that at some point, the wikimarkup parser may blacklist the style= attribute, although the problem of passing parameters to stylesheets will have to be solved first. In any case, what we do now becomes an exemplar for others to follow, so I think it's useful to offer simple examples that are easy to understand and adapt for more complex templates. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:25, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Alternate names

I've been putting alternate names in short descriptions, eg. {{short description|aka. Neo-Chartalism, a macroeconomic theory}} on Modern Monetary Theory. I think there should be a standard representation of alternate article titles. Suggestions? Thoughts? Daask (talk) 17:16, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Cutting the guidance

A recent series of edits has removed a lot of the guidance and background from the page. Information such as "should be written as if following the title" is useful to the reader and should not be removed with consensus to do so. --RexxS (talk) 14:01, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Content recommendations

@RexxS: You reverted several recent changes I made, specifically:

  1. Changed "several purposes, including as a disambiguator in searches and as an annotation in outline articles" to "primarily intended as a disambiguator clarifying the article title." I might just not understand what is meant by "annotation in outline articles"
  2. Length recommendations
  3. Recommend sentence case
  4. "Short descriptions should include only plain text, without templates, links, formatting."
  5. Move not a definition up with intended purpose
  6. Move wikidata import guidance to Help adding short descriptions

Can you explain your concerns with these changes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daask (talk • contribs) 14:08, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

@Daask: Yes, as I expressed in the section above, I do not agree that cutting out pieces of guidance improves the page.
  1. Some articles give an outline of a topic for which there is a fuller article, and the short description discriminates between them, rather than clarifying the title. The short description appears immediately below the article title in the Wikipedia app, so also functions as sub-title.
  2. Length recommendations: you removed a better explanation of the purpose.
  3. Recommend sentence case: you removed the reasoning behind the recommendation.
  4. Short descriptions should include only plain text, without templates, links, formatting: you removed a better explanation of the purpose again.
  5. Move not a definition up with intended purpose: restored prior version because of lack of communication and repetition of the same removals.
  6. Move wikidata import guidance to Help adding short descriptions: as previous - this was part of a series of challenged edits. When you make wholescale changes, you may expect anyone who disagrees to revert wholescale, rather than trying to pick apart multiple complex changes.
Now can you likewise explain why each of your edits (I count six edits in 25 minutes, many containing multiple changes), improves the guidance? --RexxS (talk) 14:42, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Track pages with local short descriptions only?

Probably we need a tracking category for articles lacking Wikidata descriptions.--GZWDer (talk) 02:02, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Why would that be useful to Wikipedia? · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 06:35, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
This is similar to Category:Coordinates not on Wikidata.--GZWDer (talk) 11:49, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
That may be true, but does not answer my question. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 19:21, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
Any Wikidata tracking categories by itself is not useful for Wikidata. It provides a tool to see a list of pages with something to be done.--GZWDer (talk) 17:42, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata and style guide

I've started adding short descriptions in articles I come across as a gnomish activity. While there isn't much of a style guide yet, I've noticed that the wikidata suggested entries are usually not in sentence case--the first word usually starts in lower case, at Hospital information system for instance.

So I am a little confused. Wikidata suggests a shortdesc as a lower case sentence fragment. The style guide suggests a sentence fragment. But the style guide also suggests sentence case and the Abraham Lincoln illustration suggests that shortdesc is a subheading, which I interpret to mean a section heading, where MOS:HEAD applies. The Abraham Lincoln illustration, however, violates MOS:HEAD by starting with a number.

Stylistically, is a shortdesc and sentence fragment that it sentence-cased but not a sentence? Is it a section title? Should we make the wikidata suggestion conform to the shortdesc style guide? --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 20:05, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

@Mark viking: Short descriptions appear as the second line of Wikipedia articles viewed via the mobile app (and were previously displayed in the same position in mobile view). They also show up when searching for an article title. In either case, the purpose is to help the reader identify or disambiguate the article. There is an element stored on Wikidata called "description" that is intended to serve the same sort of function for Wikidata. However, they are not the same thing, and it is perfectly reasonable for short descriptions on Wikipedia to be formatted according to Wikipedia style, not Wikidata style. That means we are free to agree on capitalising the first letter of a short description, if we think that the line immediately following the title (when viewed on the app) would look better capitalised. Similarly we are free to accept either sentences or noun phrases as we choose.
If we are happy to accept the current "The short description should not be a full sentence unless absolutely necessary. Whether it should have an initial capital remains undecided, but is favored at present. as the short description style guidelines, then I believe we should be converting descriptions that we import from Wikidata as necessary. Does that sound reasonable? --RexxS (talk) 20:10, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
@RexxS: I appreciate your clarification and advice. This sounds reasonable to me. If I understand correctly, stylistically, we are going our own way here--neither tied to the formatting coming from Wikidata, nor tied to MOS:HEAD section titling style. Thanks, --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 20:25, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Plural of category

Category:Molecular formula set index pages currently categorises in Category:Categorys with short description thanks to the way this template generates its categories. Either categories should be ignored or the correct plural generated when in category space.Le Deluge (talk) 03:50, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Le Deluge, I removed the incorrect use of a set index template for a category, which removes the short descripition and categorization Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:06, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
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