Wikipedia talk:Short description/Archive 16

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U.S. in short description

I was recently told that it is not correct to include U.S. in place names for well-known states such as California or Texas. I have been creating and updates short descriptions for institutions, so it reads something like "Public university in XYZtown, California, U.S. Please advise. Thanks. Rublamb (talk) 17:06, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:SDEXAMPLES indicates that country should be included. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:19, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

There was a discussion about standardising locations in short descriptions at Wikipedia talk: Short description/Archive 10#Proposal: Add section on locations, but apparently no consensus was reached, so the main rule governing these things is still WP:SDSHORT. My personal opinion is that people who would recognise the acronym "U.S." as referring to the United States would probably be familiar with the well known states like California, so adding "U.S." would be redundant. Liu1126 (talk) 17:20, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

For further clarification (and in consideration of Nikkimaria's reply above), I don't universally object to the addition of "U.S." in short descriptions. My main concern is still WP:SDSHORT, and if the short description is already much shorter than 40 characters, then adding "U.S." wouldn't hurt. The problem arises when the short description is close to or already longer than 40 characters, in which case the end of the short description would be truncated by software, so any additional words wouldn't be seen anyway. Additionally, WP:SDEXAMPLES itself also states "Remember to ensure that your description is short (See "Formatting", above)." Liu1126 (talk) 17:29, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

In no case does it hurt to include if it's at the end (so avoiding other content being cut off). Nikkimaria (talk) 17:35, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

@Liu1126, The archived discussion you referred to is interesting. According to MOS:ABBR, U.S. or US is one of the few abbreviations that all users are assumed to know, so I don't worry about that. Rublamb (talk) 18:19, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Per MOS:US, we should be probably be using "US" instead of "U.S." simply because of the reduced character amount. I think ", US" is generally fine to include since it is not particularly long, especially in ones below or around 40 characters. However, if the SD is particularly long and the state is particularly well known and not ambiguous (e.g. New York), it would also be fine to exclude. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 18:40, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

@Patar knight: That sounds like a reasonable solution to me. Thanks so much@ Rublamb (talk) 20:01, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

In the instance I reverted that prompted this question, the short description was already above the 40-character recommended max, and adding ", U.S." just lengthened it further. In the prior proposal linked, the main concern leading to no consensus seemed to be that establishing the proposed standard would've encouraged some SDs to go above 40 characters. But from my reading of consensus, I don't think there's any appetite for adding ", U.S." after "California" in already-overlong descriptions.

Going back to the fundamental reasons why we have short descriptions, they're mainly to help readers figure out which search result to choose. If readers already all know what California is, then the addition does nothing but cause a risk of overrunning the allotted space or, at best, make the SD needlessly wordier. I do not think that you should be going through education article en masse and adding ", U.S.", Rublamb, and in contrast to your reply on your talk page, I do not think you presently have the affirmative consensus that you should have to undertake bulk actions. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:19, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

@Sdkb, I do thank you for brining this topic to my attention as it has resulted in an interesting discussion. I am working on an article for another WP that invovles more than 1200 colleges and uses their short descriptions for content. As a member of this WP, I also try to add or improve short descriptions for every article I visit if needed. It only appears to be a bulk activity because I have been working on the other project quite a bit lately. I clearly meant to trim the short description in question, with or without the US, rather than make it longer, and have now done so. As I indicated to you on my talk page, I will proceed as suggested with well-known states or cities in overly long descriptions as this seems reasonable. However, there is no need for you to remove US from the end of any short description as it is technically correct according to WP:SDEXAMPLES. As to the length of a short description, the suggested 40 characters is a guideline and the instructions clearly allow longer descriptions when needed. With universities, just having the word university and the place name is almost always at or more than 40 characters. It is something I had to come to terms with when working with this category of articles. Sometimes shorter is not helpful, and not even all Americans know the names of the states. Sad facts. Rublamb (talk) 20:01, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Tracking pages with multiple short descriptions

Would it be an idea to add a tracking category to detect this situation (there were two {{short description}} templates on the page, with the second one actually being used). I see it happen regularly when someone copies/adapts an infobox from somewhere else, and I think it would be useful to keep an eye on that category. Thanks, Simeon (talk) 18:36, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

It's an idea, but I don't know if there is an easy way to do it within a template. It might have to be a database report. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:39, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Should be possible with Lua (refer Module:Is infobox in lead, which checks if an infobox is used twice in an article). Galobtter (talk) 18:46, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I just run a stored search every week or so to clear out articles with more than one SD template — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 23:30, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! That's a valuable activity that deserves more praise than it will attract. I tried searching but it timed out unless limited to less than one initial at a time with prefix:. Certes (talk) 10:31, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I asked about this issue a while back (see archived talk section) but for now I do a similar thing as GhostInTheMachine and do a few different checks/searches using AWB at the end of each month. Although there are always/still quite a few of those pages, the number has greatly reduced since I first brought it up. Felida⁹⁷ (talk) 12:11, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikidata item description vs Short description

I was searching for information on why can't we use wikidata item description instead of Short description and why do we need data duplication. I could not find what is the difference. So I compared the help sections of each, and written a short summary, I tried to explain the differences at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Short_descriptions#What_are_the_differences_betewen_a_Short_description_and_a_description_from_the_Wikidata_item? -- you opinion is welcome. Thank you! Maxim Masiutin (talk) 20:11, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

This text may be better placed at Wikipedia:Short description, since it is not really relevant to the WikiProject itself. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:36, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

There was the text at this WikiProject page: Wikipedia descriptions and Wikidata texts serve different purposes and are not required to be the same

Still the section did not explain actual reason and I wanted to put the {{specify}} template: "Wikipedia descriptions and Wikidata texts serve different purposes and are not required to be the same"

Therefore, I put a wrote an explanation and specified the actual reason.

Do you think I should move it to Wikipedia:Short description and put the link there? Maxim Masiutin (talk) 00:43, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

That would make more sense to me. Other people may want to give their opinions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:07, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

OK, I was WP:BOLD! 😊 Maxim Masiutin (talk) 01:09, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, this is a helpful section. I'm going to tweak the wording, though, as it's not true to say that the short description is taken from Wikidata if the Short description template is not set in the article text. That is what used to happen when SDs were originally invented, but has not been the case for some years now. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:05, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

New template related to short descriptions

Hi! Just here to let anyone interested know that I've created {{uw-longsd}}, a single-use notice template for putting on the talk pages of users that consistently add too-long short descriptions. Feel free to test it out and let me know if there's any problems (I'm sure I've missed something) :P Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 14:09, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Neat template! I've done some testing in the user sandbox and haven't found any obvious bugs. Works seamlessly with Twinkle, although it isn't in the default list, so I added it as a custom warning in my settings (don't think it's worth talking to WP:UW about this, since mostly our project members will be using it). I've also added information on the template at Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions#What should I do about a bad short description?. Liu1126 (talk) 18:48, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the testing! There's currently a ticket on the Twinkle github for adding it to Twinkle (there's other very specific templates in there, so I think it's fine to have this in there too), so we'll see if it gets added. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 06:23, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Artist Joewales B (talk) 21:54, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi! Are you in the wrong place? This isn't an article - it's a talk page, where you can talk to other editors about editing and articles. Check out the Teahouse if you have any questions, and the introduction to Wikipedia if you're new to editing! Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 22:03, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Hostility to basic literacy

Ever since I first encountered "annotated lists" that get information from "short descriptions" of Wikipedia articles I have thought they are a terrible idea because of the obvious difficulties that they create in editing of "annotated lists", but now I see built-in hostility to basic literacy in what happened to my latest attempt to edit a short description.

In the article titled Markov number, the short description said

A number x, y, or z that can solve the Markov equation x^2 + y^2 + z^2 = 3xyz

So of course I attempted to edit it so that it would say

A number x, y, or z that can solve the Markov equation x² + y² + z² = 3xyz

since obviously that is what Wikipedia's standards require. But the software changed it so that it says:

A number ''x'', ''y'', or ''z'' that can solve the Markov equation ''x''2 + ''y''2 + ''z''2 = 3''xyz''

which is much worse than it was before, to the point where the reader has to guess what was meant.

Every annotated list that incorporates that short description will include material that is either blatantly false if taken literacy or in gross violation of the style manual. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:31, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Michael Hardy, you should not use html markup in short descriptions. That might have caused the problem. — Qwerfjkltalk 13:56, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Michael Hardy, you might be trying to push the short description beyond its intended boundaries by trying to include a definition rather than giving the context (scope) only:

• "A short description is not a definition, and editors should not attempt to define the article's subject nor to summarise the lead."
• "Each short description should: be written in plain text – without HTML tags, wiki markup, typographic dingbats, emojis, or CSS display manipulation [...]"

Including a mathematical formula, no matter how simple, will almost inevitably violate the first bullet here, as well as the second point if "plain text" interpreted to mean "plain English", which I contend is appropriate. Something like Solution to a specific Diophantine equation would fit the intent of a short description better.

In short: I tend to disagree with your underlying contention. —Quondum 14:02, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Agree with @Quondum on all counts. The relevant guidance quoted above can be found at WP:SDNOTDEF and WP:SDFORMAT. MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:55, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Pulling list annotations from short descriptions is often inappropriate (short descriptions should be used in as few contexts as possible and their scope of use shouldn't creep outward; they are a poor fit for most unintended uses). Just edit the page where the list is, instead of trying to change the short description per se. Do you have a link? (Or are you talking about a list in a search result view or something?) –jacobolus (t) 16:26, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I concur. The "short description" of Markov number is supposed to be something like what it is now, Concept in number theory [1]. This might be useful in some lists, like a list of things named after people called Markov, but in many other cases, one should just go ahead and write an annotation manually. XOR'easter (talk) 18:00, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

At the very least it should be substituted, so it can be manually edited on the page. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:25, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

This is yet another place where transclusion is thought to reduce maintenance / improve consistency by letting updates in one place propagate to several downstream uses. A more dramatic example is the {{excerpt}} template. (In my opinion that one is a horrible mistake and should never be used anywhere under any circumstances.) The problem is that the context is different between the source and target of the transcluded text, and content (and changes) helpful to one context are inappropriate for the other.

Unfortunately, as most articles get short descriptions, people are using them out of context more and more. For example, search engines are using them as subtitles in boxed search results pulled from Wikipedia. This kind of thing highlights the danger of features like the short description feature; despite originally constrained intentions, use expands whenever someone thinks it would be helpful/convenient, and this often ends up causing unintended damage. –jacobolus (t) 18:48, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, I feel like there's no easy solution to this. After all, misusing these things is an user problem, and we can't make Wikipedia foolproof. To use Template:Annotated link as an example, there are certainly alternatives to using this template when it's inappropriate (like writing the link by hand), but there's bound to be lazy editors out there who just slap the template on without checking the results.

In the end, I think it comes down to evaluating whether the convenience of these templates outweighs the disruption caused by its misuse, and my own experience leans towards the former. Liu1126 (talk) 19:20, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

The convenience is marginal, and the problem is not "misuse": the problem is that the expected result of the intended use is bad. –jacobolus (t) 19:27, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I think this problem is probably due to an unfortunate name of the template. It should really be {{short contextualizer}} or similar. —Quondum 19:59, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

If you must use math in short descriptions, use Unicode, which still qualifies as pure text (not just ASCII); in your case: "A number 𝑥, 𝑦, or 𝑧 that can solve the Markov equation 𝑥² + 𝑦² + 𝑧² = 3𝑥𝑦𝑧". Try, e.g., unicodeit.net fgnievinski (talk) 04:04, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

That is worse. Please don't use unicode characters unless there is no reasonable alternative. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:43, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Is there a better alternative for the use of math in short descriptions? Other than entirely avoiding math in short descriptions. fgnievinski (talk) 01:31, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

There does not seem to be any time when a mathematical expression (or any close alternative) is appropriate in short descriptions, as far as I can see, given the requirements placed on it. It is not supposed to describe the topic, only a give general context or the field of the article. That is why I said the template is unfortunately named. —Quondum 01:45, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Given the way short descriptions keep getting used in practice, please feel free to write short descriptions which describe the topic, so long as you make sure that the first 40 characters is in itself a meaningful summary (in case the later part is truncated). –jacobolus (t) 02:09, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Unicode characters

Someone insinuated Unicode characters should be avoided. So I asked wizards to produce list such occurrences: quarry:query/78639. It's not uncommon to find chemical and mathematical formulas in short descriptions. fgnievinski (talk) 04:35, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Frequency of occurrence may just reflect a common misperception of purpose. It does not mean that it is being used in a coherent way, or even in the intended way. Argue the purpose first, and only then produce specific examples that meet that purpose. To use a crude example: the fact that many instances of crime can be found does not make it okay to commit a crime. —Quondum 14:38, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Fgnievinski, it looks like that query has a lot of, or is even mostly, false positives. Can you filter out normal alphabetical characters like ā and á and é from your query? Also, I don't know why "King of Asturias (c. 760 – 842)" or "Soviet 7.62×39mm assault rifle" or "Chief executive officer of the postal service of a country" would be in your results. Also, I don't think I would characterize any query that resulted in 1,175 results out of 5,198,655 short descriptions as describing a "not uncommon" occurrence (Oops, that's 1,175 pages of results!). – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:09, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, for the second one I assume it's ×. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:11, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Also from looking the query it's fairly simple to modify the query, just change the regexp. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:12, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

It looks like this discussion is happening in parallel with this one. I expect that continued development could result in a nice daily query to identify problem characters in SDs while avoiding false positives. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:29, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

"King of Asturias (c. 760 – 842)" is there because of the thin space between "." and "760". Postmaster General's "Chief executive officer of the postal service of a country" has non-breaking spaces in "the postal" and "service of". —Cryptic 17:38, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

That makes sense. It seems like there could be a bot that fixed those characters, per MOS, but maybe it would be subject to CONTEXTBOT. An AWB editor should be able to make quick work of those if they appear in a report. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Invisible space characters in short descriptions

As a result of the discussion linked above, I was able to create Wikipedia:Database reports/Short descriptions containing invalid space characters, which lists short descriptions that contain invalid copy/paste versions of nbsp and thinsp characters that should be replaced with regular spaces, per MOS. There are currently 3,800 articles affected. An editor using AWB should be able to make quick work of them, as long as this replacement is OK per the AWB rules. If you find any that are inserted by templates instead of existing directly within the article, please let me know. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:37, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Once we get the errors cleared out, we can try to track down the source of these erroneous character insertions, which often seem to come from mobile edits, probably via copy/paste activity that should not insert these characters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:51, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

3800 is quite a lot of times to press Save for an AWB operator. A bot might be appropriate, if it can be given a page list without false positives (or with a small number of harmless false positives). That would also give the option of re-running the bot regularly to clean up newly arrived rubbish. Certes (talk) 22:27, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Invalid character report (first draft)

I have put together Wikipedia:Database reports/Short descriptions containing possibly invalid characters, a first draft of a report that tries to identify invalid characters in short descriptions. The report currently has just 1,899 pages on it, which seems lower than I would have thought. The included and excluded characters are documented on the page. It looks like the majority of errors are invalid dash characters (which should be easy for an AWB editor to fix) and invalid apostrophes (be careful to watch for instances that should be ʻOkina or prime (symbol)).

I have deliberately not filtered out degree symbols and minus sign characters from the report; do we want to discuss those? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:26, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

There are 645 occurrences of em dash "—". When surrounded by numbers, usually date ranges, it should be replaced with en dash "–" (see Dash#Ranges of values). When surrounded by letters, it seems to indicate geographical hierarchy (city, state/provice), in which case it could be replaced for a comma and a space: ", ".

The degree symbol should be allowed as it's fairly common in prose.

The same goes for currency symbols.

Should phonetic alphabet symbols be allowed? I'm not sure.

Simple math should be allowed, such as =, >, ≥, ±, ·, √, etc.

Subscripts and superscripts could be allowed, it's popular in chemistry and math.

Articles about a symbol need not give the symbol in their short descriptions, e.g., ℗. fgnievinski (talk) 02:41, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I think the "em dash surrounded by letters" conclusion may be a misdiagnosis, at least in some cases. This one and this one needed to be replaced by a hyphen. This one needed to have part of the SD removed.

I would like to hear others' thoughts on math symbols, superscripts, and subscripts. I think in most cases they are not needed. It may be easier to evaluate them once the date ranges and curly quotes are cleared out. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:58, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the "em dash surrounded by numbers" assessment. I count 487 of those. I also count 424 curly quote marks. That means that about half of the pages are easy fixes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:14, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

A bot that can fix those per MOS:DATERANGE, MOS:CURLY and the invisible space characters can be quite useful here. Gonnym (talk) 09:59, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, dashes surrounded by numbers should be en dash, possibly spaced (c. 429 – c. 500). Dashes surrounded by letters need manual attention, e.g. Station on the Foo–Bar railway. Certes (talk) 09:59, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:SDFORMAT says not to use HTML tags which includes <sup>...</sup>, <sub>...</sub>. It also says not to use Wiki markup which includes <math>...</math>. Gonnym (talk) 10:04, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

We're discussing Unicode characters, which includes subscripts and superscripts without special tags, e.g., "A number 𝑥, 𝑦, or 𝑧 that can solve the Markov equation 𝑥² + 𝑦² + 𝑧² = 3𝑥𝑦𝑧". It's pervasive in chemical formulas. fgnievinski (talk) 16:42, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Pervasive? I count about 77 articles out of 5+ million. Nearly all of them just need the specific chemical or mathematical formula removed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:18, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

It's pervasive in the body of articles about chemistry and mathematics. We shouldn't prohibit chem and math editors from using symbols that are natural or common for them. Or be consist and ban all non-alphabetical and non-numerical symbols in short descriptions. fgnievinski (talk) 18:33, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

What happens in the body of articles is not relevant to this discussion. Short description content is not a black-and-white issue, which is why we are having this discussion. The en dash, the parenthesis, the semicolon, the comma, and the apostrophe are not alphabetical or numeric characters, but they are clearly allowable in short descriptions. The query that generates the category basically says "allow normal characters that a person can type on a keyboard" (without modifier keys), or something similar, and then adds a short "whitelist" of other accepted characters. I think the question here is: What other characters should be allowed? – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:42, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Allowing only alphanumerical and punctuation characters – those found in a keyboard – would be more defensible than banning some symbols but not others. fgnievinski (talk) 00:48, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Whose keyboard? Do you allow £? €? ¬? §? ÷? Or just plain vanilla US QWERTY? —Cryptic 02:14, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

British and American keyboards. fgnievinski (talk) 03:03, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Symbols can sometimes be very helpful. Perhaps the SD for Yen and yuan sign should pedantically be something like "Currency symbol" and force the reader to read the article to find out which symbol it refers to, but including "¥" makes the article's topic instantly clear. Certes (talk) 10:08, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Deleted short descriptions

In my haste and ignorance, I believe I deleted some short descriptions thinking they they were nothing. Is that something that a vandalism bot will repair, or can repair? TlonicChronic (talk) 16:20, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

On which pages did this occur? I skimmed through your contributions and didn't find anything like that. We don't have an existing bot to deal with incidents like this, and although I believe it's technically possible to write one for this instance, I don't think someone would bother unless the damage is on a very large scale (like hundreds of pages; if it's just a couple dozen, a human could probably restore them manually). Liu1126 (talk) 19:56, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

It would have most likely been a couple of the first three hundred ECM releases. It's at most dozens, most likely half a dozen, realistically, unfortunately I've edited something like 500 pages, so it'd be a little difficult to search one by one. TlonicChronic (talk) 00:23, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I wouldn't worry about it. There's over a million articles without short descriptions right now, and a couple dozen more won't change much. Eventually, someone will come across these articles and add the short description back, and that'll be the end of the story. If someone comes to yell at you for removing the sdescs, just point them here. ;) Liu1126 (talk) 01:08, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you kindly! TlonicChronic (talk) 01:46, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't know of such a bot, but Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested#Identify removal of short description is discussing the prevention of some removals. However, this would probably apply only to very new editors (not autoconfirmed). Certes (talk) 10:42, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Content

Guidelines ask us to 'avoid time-specific adjectives like "former", "retired", "late", "defunct", "closed",' (and others - such as "future"- that are clearly to be avoided because they could change). Surely there can be no problem with adjectives that indicate a completed state and therefore remain valid for ever? A guidelines paragraph that I recently tweaked has now been altered again but the adjective "extinct" was left in an example - correctly, in my opinion. I suppose some of them can be arguable because they could be revived - e.g. "former MP" and "closed road"; but "late" is not reversible and "retired" and "defunct" seem unlikely to be reversed. Robin Patterson (talk) 04:13, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

I think "Extinct" is useful for species, but "Baseball player" (or "Geologist" or "Screenwriter" or "MP") is much better for a biography than "Retired baseball player" or "Former MP". In part, we are stating what a person is notable for; people are not notable for being a retired or dead "x" or "y", just for doing the thing that they did. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:38, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Joneseye95. Short descriptions are to help identify and distinguish topics from each other. Being dead or retired is rarely a distinguishing fact. --Macrakis (talk) 22:48, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

For complete states it is almost always better to indicate this via dates if possible (e.g. "American bank (1894-1929)" vs. "Defunct American bank", or the extra redundant "Defunct American bank (1894-1929)"). However, I do think there is room for forward facing terms like "Future", "Planned", "Upcoming" mainly on the basis of accuracy. It is somewhat misleading to describe something that has not happened with the same SD used for analogous subjects that have occurred. Though sometimes we can use more futureproof phrases (e.g. "Ethiopian dam project" vs. "Planned Ethiopian dam"). -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 23:12, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Not sure what the best wording is for things that are in process, e.g., Grand Egyptian Museum (SD: "Archaeological museum in Giza, Egypt"). One disadvantage of "planned", "future", etc. is that someone has to remember to update them when they open. --Macrakis (talk) 15:49, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Helper UW template

Hey—I whipped up {{Uw-shortdesc}} real quick, and I figure others would find it helpful. Cheers! — Remsense诉 23:25, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

italics

{{annotated link|Tuvix|"Tuvix"}}

If I used that code, the resulting description is 24th episode of the second season of Star Trek: Voyager. Anywhere else in the wiki, even in hatnotes, we'd italicize Star Trek: Voyager. Are short descriptions explicitly exempt from this? Why the incongruity? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 21:51, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Short descriptions can't have markup in them (see WP:SDFORMAT), so there is no way to italicize their content properly within the short description. They were never intended to be displayed in articles, as far as I know. Your question may be best asked at Template talk:Annotated link. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:32, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Fourthords makes a good point: the annotated link function displays short description text in articles (that's what it is designed to do). A work-around for handling italics in situations like Wordle#See also, where the first link should display like this: Connections – New York Times word game (rather than "Connections – Word gamePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets") would be useful. Cl3phact0 (talk) 09:41, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

PS: Sorry, just saw that conversation has moved to Template talk:Annotated link. Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 09:45, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Defunct category

Hi all, I'm currently working on emptying out the defunct category Pages with Short Description. For each of these, you just need to edit the shortdesc to change the "pagetype", and put "Redirects" in that category. There are around 250 pages in this category, so it shouldn't take too long to empty it out. GraziePrego (talk) 00:48, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Now I'm unsure if I'm actually doing it correctly.... what's the sorting protocol for Disambiguation pages? GraziePrego (talk) 00:58, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Removing the short description template should work for dab pages, as long as there is a dab template present. That should provide the default SD of "Topics referred to by the same term". – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:14, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok, thank you :) GraziePrego (talk) 01:16, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Prego. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:23, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Adding to list articles

I plan to add an empty short description to every article starting in "List of", to significantly decrease the number of pages without short descriptions. It is embarrassing to pad my numbers with repetitive, mostly pointless changes. But hey, number goes down. -1ctinus📝🗨 00:24, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm assuming that you mean a short description of "none", per the instructions, not an empty short description. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:32, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

yes -1ctinus📝🗨 13:44, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Here is the query if anybody wants to automate this:

-hastemplate:"Short description" prefix:"List of" -1ctinus📝🗨 13:45, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

DONE -1ctinus📝🗨 21:46, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

A bit off topic (but sparked by this thread), I noticed that Wikipedia:Short description#Pages that should have a short description says Disambiguation pages and list articles both make use of transcluded descriptions, and those do not normally need to be edited manually (emphasis added by myself). However, standalone lists quite obviously don't have an automatically generated short desc like DAB pages, so I presume the mention of "list articles" in the sentence is a mistake? Liu1126 (talk) 00:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Why hidden by default?

Does anyone know why short descriptions are hidden by default in Desktop? I feel like they would be as helpful to desktop users as they are to mobile users. Bensci54 (talk) 17:23, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't think they are. The short description shows up under each entry when you type something in the search bar, just like on mobile. Liu1126 (talk) 23:49, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

In the search bar yes, but only in Vector (2022) skin according to this page. They are not visible by default underneath article titles like they are on mobile unless enabled in the gadgets. Why? This ended up being a point made in an RM discussion, that since our short descriptions aren't always visible like Britannica's subtitles are, we ought to include some of the information that would be in a Britannica subtitle in our article title since it wouldn't be visible to all users if it were only stored in the short description. Bensci54 (talk) 04:12, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Short descriptions are to disambiguate topics when searching for a title. That is, they should clarify which, for example, Brown is wanted if searching for that name. A short description is not article content. Johnuniq (talk) 05:10, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

They are article content, and subject to the usual rules, despite being hidden on the desktop: WP:SDCONTENT MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:10, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Go to your Preferences and select the Gadgets tab. Scroll down to Editing and check the Shortdesc helper. You will then be able to add and edit short descriptions from visual mode (as long as you are logged into Wikipedia). Note that you can see this helper while you are in visual mode, but it is invisible once you select edit mode. Rublamb (talk) 00:06, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Nobody's really addressing your question as to why SDs do not appear beneath article titles on the desktop. It's merely history I think. SDs were originally pushed by the WMF who wanted to improve the mobile experience, especially in search results (which at that time simply showed a list of titles). They were also felt to be useful when viewing an article on mobile, as they helped viewers check they were looking at the right page without the need to scroll down on a small screen through what could be a long lead. The WMF wasn't particularly interested in the desktop experience, although they later incorporated SDs into searching with the Vector (2022) skin. Since then, SDs have become increasingly used in other situations, including third party software.

Many of us would love an option to be able to see and directly edit the SD on desktop, without having to install a gadget, but early discussions (sorry, can't find those now) foundered. If I remember rightly, the issues were whether it's really needed given that the gadget is almost functionally equavalent, layout disputes, and the need to convince the WMF to allocate resources to build it into Vector. It's unlikely they would do that just for the English Wikipedia, and other languages would need to be taken into account. So, it would not be not easy to achieve, but could perhaps benefit from another discussion now that SDs are more well known and used. MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:34, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Acceptable characters

It would be useful to have a clear, definitive statement of what characters are allowed in SDs. Here is my understanding of our policy so far:

Allowed

Upper and lower case Latin characters, ASCII space, and limited punctuation (. , ; ' " - &).

Common Latin characters with diacritics (à ê ç ű ğ ...).

Unicode superscript and subscript characters for chemical and mathematical formulae.

Disallowed

Control characters (LF, Tab, soft hyphen, ...).

Special spaces (nbsp, thin space, zero-width space, ...).

Curly quotes and apostrophes -- not allowed (unfortunately!) in the text of WP pages.

Presentation forms (ffi).

Characters outside the BMP.

Questions

All Latin characters with diacritics (ȑ ấ ...), even those which aren't available in many fonts?

Simple fractions (½)?

Why do we allow endash and not emdash? I'd think that both should be replaced by ASCII hyphen.

Non-Latin characters (Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, ...)? For example, could the SD for gamma be [Third letter of the Greek alphabet: Γ/γ]?

Combining characters?

Discussion? --Macrakis (talk) 19:38, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Database reports/Short descriptions containing possibly invalid characters for a list of other characters that are currently considered acceptable (by consensus here, not by any formal guidance). That list of SDs has been reduced from 1,899 to the current 799, mostly by fixing invalid characters; further fixes are still needed, especially em dashes that should be en dashes (or should be removed, in the case of many radio station articles).

We allow en dashes because they are used in ranges, per MOS. When would an em dash be usable?

I don't think it is necessary to include the symbol or non-English letter in the short description. An SD like "Greek letter" or "Mathematical symbol" is sufficient for disambiguation, IMO.

At that report page, you will see examples of short descriptions that are flagged by the report. If you see valid characters on that report, and I am sure there are a few, post them here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:30, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for that interesting report.

But I think it would be useful to actually have an explicit definition that we can discuss rather than relying on our personal judgement about "valid" characters.

For example, I see no reason to exclude numeric superscripts and subscripts for chemical formulas, while allowing primes (‴) and backprimes (‷). I see no reason to allow thinspace and nbsp. I see no reason to allow okina (used for Hawaiian) while excluding similar marks used for other languages, e.g., ⟨ʿ⟩ and ⟨ʾ⟩ for Arabic and Hebrew. The definition isn't clear about which alphabetic characters it allows. It sounds as though it allows letters with diacritics, but it doesn't say whether that's limited to Latin letters or allows extended Latin (ð, æ), Greek, Cyrillic, etc. I don't understand why it allows "invisible thinspace" (is that U+2009?) or nbsp. I don't understand why it allows the multiplication sign but not division or addition.

Perhaps we should start with a rationale. For example, should this be restricted to only characters which are found in some particular font?

Should we allow certain characters only as examples of themselves, e.g., the SD of Copyright symbol might be [Symbol © used in copyright notices]. I think that would be very helpful to users.

Why not use IPA for sounds? Open-mid central rounded vowel currently has the SD [Vowel sound represented by ⟨ɞ⟩ in IPA], which seems perfect to me.

Thanks again for your work on this. --Macrakis (talk) 23:49, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Many of the answers to your questions are in WP:MOS. Specifically, the multiplication symbol and invisible thinsp and nbsp are mentioned there. Discussion here may result in the definitions that you seek; the purpose of the reports is to highlight characters that are invalid by consensus and others that merit discussion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:38, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Could you point me to the exact section of WP:MOS you have in mind?

The main page Wikipedia:Manual of Style says nothing about acceptable characters in SDs. It does mention the use of &ndsp; to control line breaks, but SDs rarely have line breaks. It does mention various other special characters, including  , −, and ⋅, but does not say that they are the only special characters that are allowed. It does not prohibit non-Latin characters; in fact it even mentions using character entities in some cases (Α) to ensure that they are easy to edit.

The page Wikipedia:Short description to which it refers only says:

• should...be written in plain text – without HTML tags, wiki markup, typographic dingbats, emojis, or CSS display manipulation

The term "plain text" here might be ambiguous, except that it then continues by mentioning what it means. It does not exclude Unicode superscripts or subscripts (as opposed to HTML superscripts and subscripts) nor does it explicitly allow prime characters. And of course many articles include non-Latin characters and symbols. --Macrakis (talk) 19:41, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is all ambiguous, in part because short descriptions were forced upon Wikipedia by Wikidata and the Wikimedia developers. This talk page is a good place to figure things out. this MOS section explicitly forbids invisible space characters, hence the name of the report Wikipedia:Database reports/Short descriptions containing invalid space characters. The other report has the word "possibly" in the title precisely because there is no clear guidance on what characters are invalid. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:53, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Exactly -- there is no clear guidance. Which is why we need to be systematic about developing guidance.

We should probably start with understanding the rationale behind limiting acceptable characters. Is it because SDs are displayed on devices which can't render some characters? Is it because Wikidata/Wikimedia software impose limitations?

Above, you said about super/subscripts, "Nearly all of them just need the specific chemical or mathematical formula removed." But that is presuming that there is something wrong with the super/subscript characters. At the same time, your script allows primes (‴), backprimes (‷), and okina, for no obvious reason. --Macrakis (talk) 22:54, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

It occurs to me that you keep asking questions that are answered in the section above that led to the creation of the two reports. The inclusion of the okina is explained there, for example, as it looks like a curly apostrophe, which is not allowed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:11, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above presumes that certain characters are OK and others are not. I don't see any rationale there for why some characters are OK and others aren't. Or even a clear criterion other than "I know it when I see it". --Macrakis (talk) 15:11, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:31, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

So what process do you suggest so that we can develop a consensus rationale and then a consensus classification of characters as acceptable or not in SDs? --Macrakis (talk) 22:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

The process used here at Wikipedia is discussion leading to consensus. Ideally, there would be more than two of us participating. In the meantime, I have cleared Wikipedia:Database reports/Short descriptions containing possibly invalid characters of nearly all of the obviously invalid characters so that it is easier to see what is left. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:20, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I've been on WP for 19 years and have 50k+ edits, so I'm familiar with that idea. That's why I opened this discussion. But it sounds like you didn't like the way I approached it, which is why I asked what process you suggested. --01:38, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I think you're approaching it just fine. My challenge in responding was that you did not appear to have looked at the text on the two report pages or at the above discussion, or at MOS, so I felt as if I was answering questions that had already been answered. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:52, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Regarding the ʻOkina (note that ʻ is not an apostrophe) and other similar characters. If the MoS accepts their usage in articles, their usage in the short description is also fine. MOS:APOSTROPHE and MOS:OKINA allow their usage. Gonnym (talk) 10:37, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to add automatic SDs to Template:Infobox election

Going through the list of articles without short descriptions, I have noticed many of them are articles for elections, eg 2015 Virginia elections or 1999 Hyndburn Borough Council election. I think that this makes it a prime candidate for adding automatically-generated short descriptions to the appropriate infobox template, Template:Infobox election. A quick search indicates that 8,374 articles use the election infobox and currently have no short description (out of the 29,177 articles using the infobox). Additionally, the articles that have both the infobox and a short description have relatively inconsistent ones, like:

• "60th quadrennial U.S. presidential election"
• "House elections for the 119th U.S. Congress"
• None
• "Tennessee gubernatorial election"
• "Local election in the UK"
• "1998 UK local government election"
• "Basildon Borough Council election of 2019"
• etc.

Of course, not every election article uses this infobox, but this is a problem faced by every infobox template.

I'm sharing this observation and informal proposal to generate discussion. Given the diversity in existing styles and the large number of articles without SDs, this isn't a straightforward problem. What do you think? Should we seek to have the Template:Infobox election automatically generate short descriptions? If so, what should be the standard format? Are there different sub-cases that should be handled differently? Would this be a problem better handled by a dedicated bot? - - mathmitch7 ^{(talk/contribs)} 17:27, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I feel like this should be discussed at Template talk:Infobox election, but otherwise I see no reason why it can't add a shortdesc like dozens of other infoboxes. It would be set to not replace an existing one, so any of the current "inconsistent" uses would stay. Primefac (talk) 18:22, 23 February 2024 (UTC)