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"National flag" as short description

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I preferred the use of "national flag" as short description for conventional flag articles of UN member states. For organizational flags, use "organization flag" for United Nations, NATO, etc., and for regional and state flag articles, for example, California uses "U.S. state flag" as short description (if shortened). 49.150.13.247 (talk) 01:03, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, what you shouldn't do is unilaterally change what the guideline says and then make work on 100 pages others have to undo. Remsense诉 03:07, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@GhostInTheMachine: is there a consensus for a short description that "national flag", "<country> state flag", "<country> municipal flag", etc., that is using short descriptions for flag of the United States and flag of California? 49.150.13.247 (talk) 03:12, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If "History of California" has an SD of none, why wouldn't this be? Remsense诉 03:14, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly it is, all list articles are intentionally blank, but some history articles also intentionally blank. 49.150.13.247 (talk) 03:24, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right, I'm saying I don't understand why almost all "in/of" articles in this vein shouldn't have an SD of none. Remsense诉 03:25, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All I say is that replacing a WP:SDNONE with "National flag" under a "Flag of [nation]" article isn't automatically needed. Although understand the need for consistency among flags, but unsure of the idea of adding/maintaining "National flag" SD's everywhere. DankJae 08:00, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is necessary to have short descriptions for flag articles. If you want to seek a consensus for short descriptions, please request for a comment. 49.150.13.247 (talk) 09:38, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No it is not necessary for filled SDs on flag articles, they are treated like any other article. Editors may decide whether a filled SD is needed or if SDNONE is fine for the purpose. DankJae 11:15, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just a general note: for flag articles such as Bloody flag, it may be necessary. But for flag articles containing a prepositional phrase (i.e. followed by "of"), such as Flag of Afghanistan and Flag of North Korea (nominated to "good article" status), then no, it is not necessary. However, all articles need the {{short description}} template as a rule of thumb. 192.254.92.90 (talk) 18:18, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure why so many are taking the preference of a block evader as an authoritative interpretation of policy. Changing the short descriptions of every "Flag of" article to "none" presumes that the reader is familiar with every country, subnational division, region, city, etc. It's not an improvement. Yue🌙 05:55, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is the case, but I'm not sure what elegantly to do about it: what I wouldn't argue is that it should necessarily cascade—there are cases I think where X would need a shortdesc for disambiguation (let's assume for a second that articles wouldn't have one by default, so e.g. France wouldn't but maybe Luxembourg would), but Y of X wouldn't. If you're searching, I actually don't think it's very likely that you get to a situation where you see Flag of Luxembourg and need to be disambiguated, since you already probably know Luxembourg is some state or territory. Does that make sense? Remsense ‥ 论 06:02, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Added another example

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I added Grover Cleveland's short description into WP:SDDATES. Sebbog13 (talk) 18:53, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Short descriptions for leaders

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I set to "none" as intentionally blank short descriptions for titles of office holders, but the exception of Pope and Taoiseach. There are considered meaningless and not a definition. 102.213.223.46 (talk) 22:39, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As I wrote on your user talk page:
These are not meaningless, If a country has a president and a prime minister, separating who is the Head of state and Head of government is important, this is the function of such short descriptions. Knowing which is HoS and HoG is important if you are in the search bar or wikilinking.
Speederzzz (Talk) (Stalk me) 22:42, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Monarchies, such as "Emperor of Japan", "King of Saudi Arabia" can be intentionally blank, rather than "Monarch of" per WP:SDNOTDEF? 102.213.223.46 (talk) 23:39, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is helpful to use actual short descriptions in such articles, since they disambiguate articles from similarly titled but not at all relevant articles like King of Wishful Thinking, King of the Hill, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, The Emperor of All Maladies, etc. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:24, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Should we start reverting all these edits? They have made a lot without consulting senior editors, especially for an IP.
Speederzzz (Talk) (Stalk me) 08:34, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If a short description serves a useful purpose it is valid. If someone is removing useful short descriptions, ask them to stop. If they do not, it may be a case of disruptive editing, notify an admin as a block may be necessary. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:56, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 30 October 2024

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Abkhazia is not a country . It is not partially recognized » abkhazia is a historical Geoegian territory occupied by the terrorist country-Russia in 1992. The UN never ever said otherwise. 92.54.250.112 (talk) 14:00, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: Not the right page for this discussion. CMD (talk) 14:30, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

SDs for ligaments

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Working on pages in "articletopic:medicine-and-health", I've noticed that many ligaments lack SDs and that the existing SDs of ligaments vary in their naming scheme more than other anatomical structures. Most commonly they're either "Ligament of xyz" or "Ligament between x and y" which makes sense considering the ligaments' connective nature (in comparison to e.g. nerves which are often more strictly localized and tend to follow only the first naming scheme).

Is there a preferred form for SDs of ligaments?

YuniToumei (talk) 13:36, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there is, so you should follow the general rules at WP:SHORTDESC. Two important aspects that often get overlooked on medical articles are that the SD should be understandable to the inexperienced reader - WP:SDJARGON; and that it should be short - WP:SDSHORT. It's not a definition - WP:SDNOTDEF. If you have some specific articles that you'd like advice on, please say. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:23, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, thank you for the info! YuniToumei (talk) 20:35, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve had a quick look at some of the SDs you’ve done so far, and they look very good. Great work! MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:55, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ampersand instead of "and" in SDs

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I've just come across someone changing the "and" in a short description to an ampersand (see diff at Andy Kim (politician)), presumably to save characters, and I was wondering if that is in line with the general consensus here. MOS:& prescribes the use of "and" in normal text and headings but also states that [e]lsewhere, ampersands may be used with consistency and discretion where space is extremely limited (e.g., tables and infoboxes). I don't think this specific issue has been discussed before (although there was an adjacent discussion in July 2023, Wikipedia talk:Short description/Archive 15#Using punctuation to shorten description, where Jonesey95 argued to use "and" instead of an ampersand), but whatever the general consensus is, this may be something to make explicit in WP:SDFORMAT following this discussion. (Ping Losipov who made the linked edit.) Felida97 (talk) 19:06, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Felida97 what you mentioned in your message is exactly the reason why I changed the "and" to an ampersand. Sometimes when something is over the limit (like if a short description is 42 characters long), I would change it to an ampersand so it goes down to 40 characters (the limit). I don't know if you took it this way, but I can assure you I wasn't trying to vandalize the article. I just thought it would save space, again like you mentioned. If the consensus is to revert it back to "and", feel free to revert me on that article. I won't object. Losipov (talk) 19:18, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Losipov: Sorry, if that maybe came across in a wrong way, I had not at all suspected that your edit was ill-intentioned (a quick look at your user page and contributions was enough for me conclude that). Felida97 (talk) 19:36, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't change "and" to "&" to go from 42 to 40 characters. That is not a useful edit. There is a reason that "&" is discouraged: it is much less reader-friendly than "and". Since the creation of local short descriptions, there has been a persistent misconception that there is a hard limit of 40 characters. It is just not so. Editor time would be MUCH better spent in adding short descriptions to articles that have none than in tweaking existing short descriptions that are fine.
[edited to add:] It is easy to find batches of articles that are missing short descriptions and that are easy to fix: search for articles in a "YYYY births" category that don't have the short description template – in this case, 764 articles in Category:1976 births. Go year by year to make quick and easy progress on the backlog. Please. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:32, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well said! Rublamb (talk) 06:35, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The limit of 40 characters is wise, but not absolute, so using 2 extra characters for "and" is not that evil. Mind you, using just a comma is even shorter! Probably best to use "and" as advised by the MOS — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 19:47, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Jonesey95, @Rublamb, @Patar knight: Do you have an opinion on the use of a comma, both vs. "and" and vs. "&" (for an example, see follow-up diff by GhostTheMachine at the article mentioned above, Andy Kim (politician), where the SD is now 41 characters as a result; just to be safe, I don't mean to call you out or anything and don't think that your edit wasn't well-intentioned either, GhostInTheMachine)? (Sorry, if this question is considered as unnecessarily pedantic; I just thought, we might as well clear this up, too, while we're at it.) Felida97 (talk) 15:48, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't mind it and prefer it to "&" but I would probably use "and" for clarity. Sliding over 40 by two characters is not a problem. Rublamb (talk) 17:35, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's still better to use "and" for clarity since the character save is still not much. However, I think it is better than the ampersand since it is more commonly used and is an additional character saved. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 01:25, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
40 isn't a hard limit and the character save here is minimal, so we should generally we should be following the MOS here as a standard. If two characters is the difference between critical information being pushed back past 40 characters, the SD probably just needs to be majorly overhauled in a way that an ampersand doesn't fix. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 14:41, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
People should take the trouble to actually read the whole of WP:SDFORMAT which states that less than 40 characters is/was a common length for short descriptions. It is a statistic, not a rule, and it is probably skewed by the many thousands of automatically generated short descriptions we used to get things going when the project started. Many of the shorter descriptions are acceptable but not very good, and improving them will usually result in a longer short description. In most cases this is just fine. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:55, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure why you would characterize it this way: it's been made stated repeatedly that 40 is specifically chosen because different display contexts may truncate an SD longer than that in different ways. Remsense ‥ 论 05:58, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are a few apps which arbitrarily truncate short descriptions. They are not helpful and were not chosen by the Wikipedia community, so have no authority over what we choose to do. It has indeed been wrongly stated many times that 40 was specifically chosen, but repetition of an error does not make it true. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:06, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The dichotomy is a bit strong: I'm part of the community, aren't I? "I have to keep telling members of the community that a number isn't agreed to by the community" is a slightly thorny rhetorical position.
More importantly, I happen to think UX is important, and whether I chose the number or not I'd like readers using an app to have a pleasant time as much as anyone, especially as users of those apps are generally the demographic most in need of SDs. Treat it as a cynical fait accompli if you'd like. Remsense ‥ 论 06:17, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As you say, you are a part of the community. A larger part of the community agreed that there is no hard limit. If you think you represent a larger part of the community, you can start an RfC for a proposed change, but you may find that consensus has not changed as the usefulness of the proposal is low. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:52, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there should be a hard limit, to be clear. Remsense ‥ 论 07:54, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Glad to hear it, as there are so many reasons why it is a bad idea to be Procrustean about such things. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:59, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would prefer that the developers of apps pay more attention to making the UX user friendly, so we can build the encyclopedia without artificial externally applied restrictions. Cheers · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:57, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RFC: should WP:SDNONE apply to articles on subnational entities and municipalities in the title? If so, what should be the format?

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I have asked this question multiple times and have received no complete consensus to change WP:SDNONE to apply article names such as History of Nottinghamshire and Watersheds of Illinois. When this is resolved, please update WP:SDNONE to comply with this ruling. This RfC is necessary since there are thousands of articles where this applies where there is no consensus for use of WP:SDNONE. Additionally, the guideline is extremely short and vague for something that applies to hundreds of thousands of articles. Potential options:

  1. Yes, articles on subnational entities and municipalities in the title should have "none as a short description"
  2. Only for cities and subnational entities that an "average reader would know" (which I have seen brought up in the past) should have "none" as a short description (most readers know about Delhi, Texas, and Moscow, not so much Kilgore, Texas, and Ncojane) (This has been brought up in the past by Remsense)
  3. No, none of these apply for WP:SDNONE (a format will have to be provided for what should be recommended in the new guideline)

Thanks! -1ctinus📝🗨 22:06, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please explain why "History of Nottinghamshire" and "Watersheds of Illinois" are not "sufficiently detailed that an additional short description would not be helpful", which is the criteria for WP:SDNONE (not that either article has an SD at all at the moment) - Arjayay (talk) 22:22, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From earlier conversations about this (not my thinking, these are OTHER PEOPLE'S quotes:
WP:SDNONE may work, but is not very user-friendly if the term is likely to be unfamiliar to the reader. Prefer "Aspect of Chinese history", "Aspect of Welsh history @MichaelMaggs
I whole-heartedly agree all "Aspects of history" should be gone asap. Like I said below, I was going around and changing those (and similar SDs) to "none" but ran into articles that didnt seem to make sense to be "nones". It was actually while working on SDs in Australia that got me thinking about it, specifically History of the Northern Territory. Unless you know that's a territory of Australia, "none" doesn't make sense. Wouldnt "History of the Austrailian territory" (or something to that effect) be better? @Masterhatch -1ctinus📝🗨 23:16, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Aspects of history is not usually very useful, but none may be worse. It depends on the specific title. History of the Australian territory is not efficient as it only adds one useful fact, and four of the five words are the same as in the title, but it is an improvement as it is an important fact. Nevertheless it may be possible to improve tit further some day, and better is better. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:37, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I don't know what the solution is but I do think SDNONE has gone too far. For example, unless you know Saskatchewan is a province in Canada, how does SDNONE help in List of communities in Saskatchewan? Wouldn't something like "Communities in a central Canadian province" (or something like that) be more helpful? Don't get me wrong, I support the concept of SDNONE. SDNONE works well for articles such as History of Canada. That's my two cents. Masterhatch (talk) 02:05, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    What part of SDNONE goes too far? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:40, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems like every History of... and List of... has automatically become "none" whether that's the best option or not. Masterhatch (talk) 09:21, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Someone is doing that. It is not SDNONE, it is someone's interpretation and their actions that go too far The advice in SDNONE does not encourage that behaviour. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 11:11, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Another comment Recently there was a tussle over SDNONE at List of Alberta provincial highways. I was on the side of defending SDNONE per the rules set out at WP:SDNONE. User:Evelyn Harthbrooke was on the other side. I think she brought forward another example of where SDNONE might not work. Unless you know Alberta is a province in Canada, how does SDNONE help? After the debate I looked at other highway list articles in Canada and I saw List of Ontario provincial highways wasn't "none". I didn't change it to none because I was starting to second guess if none fits there (Same as the Northern Territory SD caused me pause a while back).Masterhatch (talk) 02:21, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Explanation The use of "none" as a short description does not overrule any local consensus to add a non-none short description for any page. If there is a short description available that provides additional useful information of value to the reader it may be boldly added. If others disagree it is a talk page discussion matter. Look at the functions of a short description. Does the proposed short description provide better functionality/reader value? If so, it is a legitimate option. The format depends on the information in the short description. There is no fixed format. A WikiProject can recommend a format, but they cannot overrule consensus for the specific article, particularly if it is of interest to more than one project. As it happens, I am aware of wher Nottinghamhire and Illinois are, but a substantial number of readers probably do not, so a short description could usefully proviede that information. A lot of readers might also not know what a watershed is. The more obscure the topic, the more useful a short description can be, so global cities and federal states probably need less clarification than relatively unknown places. The more relevant question might be whether SDNONE is clear enough that it does not get misused. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:08, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Probably 3, No, but it is not clear what the question is to which Yes, Sometimes, and No are the answers. This RFC should be revised. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:17, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It should be revised to show why it needs to be asked, too. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:25, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Done. I spent a lot of time adding short descriptions, and when I dealt with any page dealing with... local elections, subtopics of cities (History of so and so), this came up EXTREMELY often and I had to ignore them all. -1ctinus📝🗨 13:11, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Done -1ctinus📝🗨 13:10, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think 3 since we cannot and should not assume that most readers are familiar with the subnational entities of the 200~ish various countries that exist, so labeling them as such helps differentiate them from similarly titled articles, which is an WP:SDPURPOSE. For example, typing "History of Mo" into the search bar gets met articles that include countries like Mongolia and Morocco, but also subnational entitles like Montana and Montreal, and board games like Monopoly. At the very least, we should be labelling subnational entities as such for the benefit of the reader.
However, there are many aspects of this RFC that are pretty unclear. Is this only about sub-national entities? How are we defining "global cities" and what is a "federal state"? What about subnational entities that incorporate the national name (e.g. Australian Capital Territory)? These things need to be clarified.
If we are opening it up to all instances of "X in Y", I would argue that we are probably overusing SDNONE even for national level entities. In an ideal world, everyone will know what is a country and isn't, the reality is that lots of people are just not very good at geography and an SD would be helpful. For example, it would probably be helpful if "History of Eswatini" had a SD of "National history" or "History of the/an African country" for the same reasons why subnational entities should be labelled. There is no harm in pointing out to readers what things are national-level in scope. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 07:03, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
SDNONE allows a short description of "none". It does not in any way suggest that when a useful short description is available it should not be used. On the other hand, removing a useless short description under SDNONE is OK. Until someone has a better short description to substitute for "none". · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 11:17, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, SDNONE doesn't explicitly ban anything, but practice on this page is to advise against using a SD for things like "X of Y" where Y is a country. (e.g. [1][2][3]) Obviously not every X is the same here (e.g. something like "National economy" or "National flag" are obviously natural SDs), but some consensus/guidance is probably warranted, even at the national level. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 00:06, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That practice should be discontinued, as it does not take the purpose and uses of short descriptions into account. Competence is required, not a formulaic rule. Wikipedia avoids unnecessary rules because there are people more concerned with rules than functionality, who rely on rules to win fights which are counter to the purposes of the encyclopedia, and will quote selected parts of rules and ignore those parts which do not serve their agendas. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 03:19, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I revised it to be more clear. Thank you -1ctinus📝🗨 13:17, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is one of a series of questions essentially asking for a definite yes/no 'ruling' as to whether "none" is always OK for a particular form of article title, for example for "List of ...", "History of ..." and similar. No such ruling is possible, as the test is based not on the form of the title, but on whether an additional short description would or would not be helpful. That requires editorial judgement on an article by article basis. The answer for any particular article depends not on the form of the title, but on whether something better than "none" can be created which advances the purposes. "none" should never be used when something more informative could be provided.
That said, the fact that SDNONE isn't always well understood does suggest that we should expand the guidance and add some specific examples of good practice. If you can give me a few days, I'll work up a full proposal and post it here for further discussion. MichaelMaggs (talk) 00:50, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds great, just try to keep it 1. not Anglocentric and 2. avoid partially redundant short descriptions. A policy that affects like a million articles being two sentences is frustrating and unhelpful for people who add lots of short descriptions. -1ctinus📝🗨 01:11, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes a partially redundant short description cannot be avoided without making it considerably longer. This can happen because titles are not required to be chosen with a potential short description in mind. We must deal with reality, and reality is not constrained by our rules. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 03:24, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How would it be Anglocentric? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 03:27, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Previous proposals created an "obscurity test" that was based on what a "typical English reader" would know, which meant that english speaking places were more likely to qualify than non english places. -1ctinus📝🗨 11:09, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What a strange criterion. Our readers include first language English speakers and people who have only a basic knowledge of English, and while we should not be dumbing down our content, we want to be as accessible as reasonably practicable to all comers. It is safer to assume that the average reader has no local geographical knowledge at all, and those who do, may not know the place by an English language name in any case. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 11:36, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that is the essential meaning of SDNONE. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:32, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
After promising to post a proposal in "a few days" I've had hardly a moment to sit down and it's been impossible to find the time to devote to this. I still plan to post something, but it won't be before next week. Apologies. MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:49, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please see section below, #Updating_examples_and_WP:SDNONE_guidance. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:15, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reversion of explanatory note

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Hi MichaelMaggs, you reverted an explanatory note stating This is a statistic, not a recommendation to arbitrarily shorten short descriptions to 40 characters or less, and provides no information on the quality of these short descriptions which to the best of my knowledge is simply a description of fact and not a change to the guidance, with the edit summary Strongly disagree, sorry. Perhaps this is just to discourage editors from shortening SDs of 42 characters, but it negates the many months of discussions we have had about SDSHORT, and takes us right back to the early days of interminable arguments with editors insisting that their 50 or 60 word SD is fine because "I need it, and who's to say what 'short' means?". SDSHORT is the single most important guide for keeping SDs within reasonable bounds, and it absolutely must not removed. Is there a part of the explanatory note that you consider incorrect? and why do you strongly disagree with its presence as a footnote?

  • As far as I am aware, the percentage of short descriptions exceeding 60 characters was not in disputed at the time it was listed, though that may have changed, and I would cheerfully accept a more recent value if it is available.
  • It is clear from the language that the statement Fewer than 3% of short descriptions are longer than 60 characters, and short descriptions longer than 100 characters will be flagged for attention. is descriptive of the situation and does not prescribe any action, particularly not to reduce the length of a short description simply because of length. We have no statistics on the relation between length and quality of short descriptions, but it is likely that many very short descriptions are sub-optimal.
  • The header to that item, [Each short description should:] be short – no longer than is needed to fulfill its functions effectively clearly implies that length is secondary to function, and as a general principle, our policies and guidance put function of the encyclopedia as a high priority.
  • We do accept short descriptions longer than 40 characters routinely, and we do accept longer short descriptions when they are functionally desirable.
  • As a general principle we do not make restrictive rules without good reason, and we try to avoid making rules overly verbose because of tl;dr, but sometimes people will not read the guidance and stop when they find a part of it that they can wield as a weapon to attempt to browbeat others to comply with a personal agenda which may not align with the intention or letter of the guidance text, or the purposes of the encyclopedia. Limiting the length of a short description to any arbitrary length is a restrictive rule.
    Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 12:04, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is a big topic and has the potential to start yet another huge discussion on the importance or otherwise of 40 characters. I'm happy to contribute again to that, if needed, but time is short at the moment and if you'd agree I would prefer to concentrate on "none" and the new examples of best practice before going back to issues of length. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:27, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No great rush, but there is always someone mis-applying the guidance to truncate useful short descriptions because they are longer than 40 characters, which is just wrong. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 04:54, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Updating examples and WP:SDNONE guidance

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Our guidance on when to use "none" as a short description could usefully be expanded. The current wording – some article titles are sufficiently detailed that an additional short description would not be helpful – is inadvertently encouraging the overuse of "none" on articles whose title is obvious to readers familiar with Western popular culture, but which may not be at all clear to other English speakers worldwide. I suggest re-focusing attention on the primary purposes of short descriptions, and providing some practical examples of good practice. There have also been many queries about best practice in various fields, and we can sensibly extend our general list of examples.

Since my proposed changes are quite extensive, I have prepared a working draft for discussion at User:MichaelMaggs/Draft SD guidance

We can amend that as needed and merge into the main guidance if we get consensus. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:18, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It would help discussion if you were to create a second subpage that contains the current text of the relevant sections. Then we can use Special:ComparePages to generate a custom link showing the differences between the current text and the proposed text. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:14, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, as requested:
• Text of new proposal: User:MichaelMaggs/Draft SD guidance
• Existing text of relevant sections: User:MichaelMaggs/Draft SD guidance - current
• Differences: Special:Diff/1261178073/1261182886. MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:23, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your draft is amazing, but it needs feedback and polish. I’ll start with two simple problems with the example short descriptions:
1. Why aren’t years included in the biography example short descriptions?
2. Why are the gramatical articles (an or a) excluded in the examples?
Ill keep adding nitpicks when I see them, but I like the rescoping. The previous RfC is stable and essentially proved to me that it needs to be completely blown up and rewritten. -1ctinus📝🗨 19:55, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
3. the example given for "List of Star Trek: Voyager episodes" being "American TV show series" seems like it is missing a few words. I assume this is an error? -1ctinus📝🗨 20:01, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Re question 2 about "a" and "an": Have you read this page's guidance on formatting? Specifically: avoid initial articles (A, An, The) except when required for correct grammar and meaning. Also see the first bit of WP:SDEXAMPLES. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:01, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
the emphasis is on the "correct grammar." I'm not sure if "Performances by American actor" is grammatically correct. I'm pretty sure an indefinite article is required (Performances by an American actor) for that to be true, but I'm not a linguist or the grammar police.
Also, you should advertise this on WP:PUMP to get more feedback by admins. -1ctinus📝🗨 14:31, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Re question 1: because dating suggestions are dealt with in a separate section. Above the table it says "See also § Inclusion of dates."
Re question 3: Changed the suggestion to "Episodes of American TV show" which is probably clearer though it repeats the word "episodes". MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:08, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"American TV show episodes" is more concise and avoids the article issue. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 03:44, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That would work well, too. MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:05, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For greater visibility, I've moved the following discussion (down to "end of copied discussion") here from User talk:MichaelMaggs/Draft SD guidance. No change to content, but I've tweaked the header levels and tabs.

No more than 40 characters

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I object to this as people will use it as an excuse to shorten descriptions regardless of functionality. This is already a problem. There is no broad consensus for a hard limit, and 40 characters is too short for a significant subset of short descriptions. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:07, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't a change: is already there. May need a separate discussion (I disagree btw). MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:35, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On reconsideration, as this is evidently contentious, I have removed the reference to 40 characters. MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:50, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Column of "Recommended short descriptions"

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Propose these should be titled "Suggested short descriptions" as they are not necessarily optimum, for example, does every reader know what the Olympic Gmes are? If so, should "Olympic Games – Major international multi-sport event" not have a short description? Do all readers know what "Ghana – Country in West Africa" is? I would not be surprised if a significant percentage of American readers do not know that Ghana is a west African state. If a suggestion is labelled a recommendation, some people will use it as an argument to remove a short description even if it is useful to some readers. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:27, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Changed Ghana to India to avoid questions about how well that country is known. Olympic Games should be OK, though: it's not possible to gloss everything, and attempting to overdo it makes it sound like mansplaining. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:33, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Not supposed to be a definition"

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There are users who interpret this as "Must not be a definition", which is wrong. It does not need to be a definition, but if it is that is OK. A short description that also happens to be a reasonable definition of the topic is acceptable and should not be changed just because it happens to be a definition. This has happened. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's fine, and the wording here is unchanged. The link is to WP:SDNOTDEF which explicitly says "There is no objection to an otherwise-suitable short description that also happens to work as a definition." Can't really be clearer than that. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:46, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Claim that "Concept" is better than a long description that attempts to define the topic, contrary to SDNOTDEF

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Not necessarily always true. Please do not make statements that will be interpreted as universally true when they are not. Particularly when they rely on an undefined condition which is open to interpretation (what is a long description in this context?) · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:16, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Added 'excessively'. Still undefined of course, but may help. Again, a separate discussion (not here) probably needs to be had to tie down the meaning of 'too long'. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:52, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(end of copied discussion). MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:47, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RFC?

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Is it worth advertising this proposal more widely as an RFC? MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:03, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not yet. As far as I can see, you have not yet created a second subpage that contains the current text of the relevant sections so that it is easy to compare the two pages using Wikipedia's built-in diff function. Please do not ask us to scan line by line to compare each word and clause. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:33, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I have: see above in response to your request. Maybe the links should be somewhere more prominent. MichaelMaggs (talk) 04:25, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, my mistake. I may have been looking at an old version of this page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:33, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What happens in the case of redirect articles that don't have their own SD?

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I don't have the means to check this myself, so may I beg a favour from someone who does, pleaase?

Right now, (this is just an example, it is the principle that I am trying to establish) the article Prebunking is a redirect to Fake news: it does not have its own SD. So my question is this: if someone searches for "prebunking", do they get (a) no SD or (b) the SD for "fake news"? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:09, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Prebunking does not appear to have a short description. You can verify this by going to Page information for that page and looking for "Local description" or "Central description". You can check it a different way by going to its listing on a category page and using the "Show SDs" button generated by the "shortdescs-in-category" script; when you do that, you will see "no shortdesc" next to "Prebunking". – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Depends on the skin. In skins that do show short descriptions (Vector 2022 and Minevra Neue), when a redirect title is typed into the search bar, only the target article shows up in the dropdown (so when you search for Prebunking, only Fake news shows up in the dropdown). Even if a short description is added, the dropdown just won't display the redirect page. In the other skins (Vector legacy, MonoBook, Timeless), the redirect does show up, but those skins don't display the short description. Liu1126 (talk) 19:20, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Liu1126 did a much better job of actually answering the question. When I search for "Prebunking" in Vector 2022 (the default skin), I do not see "Prebunking" in the results. I am shown "Fake news" with its description. It appears from Liu1126's response that nobody who searches is shown any short description for "Prebunking". Let us know if that does not answer your question. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:32, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know you have to click on the backlink to the redirect at the top of the target page to see the redirect page directly, where the short description is visible if you have chosen one of the options that display it, and there is a short description to be seen. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 17:22, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I do that, Prebunking (no redirect) does not have a short description. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:00, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That was the case when I first looked, but it has one now. Someone has added it, which fixes this particular case, but the situation regarding display of target SDs where redirects are displayed in annotated links and on category pages probably remains. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:33, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It might have been more helpful had I explained first why I asked. See Template talk:Annotated link#Very poor annotations when annotating redirects, for your comfort and convenience, repeated here: (@Tollens:, I trust you don't mind)

[begins]

I have just fixed two cases at Sanewashing where this template provided incorrect descriptions for Prebunking and Steelmanning, both of which redirect to a page with a nearly opposite meaning:

  • Prebunking – The process of debunking lies, tactics or sources before they strike
  • Steelmanning – The opposite of a straw man argument

While I can see the value of not having to write these annotations manually it seems to me like this is quite a dangerous template in its current form. Would it perhaps be reasonable to display no annotation at all when redirects are linked? Even checking the output manually at the time of an edit adding this template looks to me like it wouldn't be sufficient, since an article might be redirected at any time. I'm not sure how useful the tracking category is given that it is 2900 pages strong (and if the intent is to ignore correct cases it can only grow).
I see there has been discussion of this issue above but it doesn't seem like that was ever resolved. Tollens (talk) 06:56, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

So if someone searches for "Prebunking", the short description that they will see is "a nearly opposite meaning". So in fact this template is doing us all a favour my making the error obvious. Don't shoot the messenger, correct the message. Redirects should have SDs too.
But if someone has time, maybe it is possible to emulate the code that detects and flags 'fallback' SDs taken from Wikidata? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:36, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Sorry – I'm not sure where else any reader would be shown the short description of a redirect target without simultaneously being shown the title of that target? As far as I'm aware, the search tools that display short descriptions don't place them next to the title of the redirect being searched, but rather its target. (If this template were to replace the link provided with a link to the target in that same way, I would see no problem there either, but I wouldn't have assumed anyone would want that.) Certainly if this is an issue that's broader in scope than this one template I agree that this template isn't the problem, but I wasn't under the impression that was the case. Tollens (talk) 17:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

[ends]

So it looks like my surmise that {{annotated link}} is doing us a favour by highlighting "naked" redirects (especially R to section and R to anchor, which is the only serious problem) is not correct, unless I have failed to find a straw to clutch from your kind responses.

[I will resume the discussion at Template talk:Annotated link#Very poor annotations when annotating redirects rather than here but, fwiw, I will argue that the case for the prosecution is overstated, that ANLIs are extremely useful to readers when presented with a See Also list of meaningless (to them) buzzwords with no clue as to what it is or why they should be interested, thus advancing a major objective of the project, information discovery (library, not legal, sense). IMO, the rare cases sub-optimal behaviour like these two is an acceptable cost, given the reward. Feel free, of course, to participate in that discussion.]

Thank you all again. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:08, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I get big red text after the short description stating (for example:* Prebunking – False or misleading information presented as real Pages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets). I cant remember where I got this CSS, but it sure stands out and lets me know where the problems are. I get a similar message in big magenta text when a Wikidata description is used as fallback. This shows up on pages where Template:Annotated link is used, and where short descriptions are shown as annotations on category pages. The screenshots at Wikipedia:Short description illustrate this quite well. I find it helpful for fixing redirects which need a short description but do not have one yet. As the cases above illustrate, using the short description of the target page can be quite misleading, so I fix them as I find them. I do not know if they are displayed as default for me because of some script, or if this is the general case. A lot of changes have been made to Template:Annotated link over the last few years, and I don't really know how many of them work. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 14:01, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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The link to the 3,000 most visited articles in broken. It goes to October which is completed. Rublamb (talk) 18:56, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not broken, it's just that we managed to finish all the articles (don't think that has ever happened since the number was upped to 3000, so well done all) and the bot hasn't added the November articles yet. Probably will be up in a few hours. Liu1126 (talk) 01:34, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For those who don't know, the link referred to is User:Uhai/Pages without short descriptions by view count. It's a useful page listing high-visibility articles that don't (yet) have a short description. Anyone who has read and understood the guidance on adding short descriptions can help by fixing the articles listed. MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:12, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes, popular articles without SDs are that way because creating an SD for them is difficult. I have added some links to the "What can I work on?" list that are intended to help newer editors find easy SD work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:34, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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I haven't tested this upcoming change, but tools affected by the short description of "none" may need to look at T326898. There are some recommendations from WMF developers. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:47, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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