Wikipedia talk:Short description

Prepositional phrases

For articles with titles like "So-and-so's theorem", I have often been using short descriptions in the form of a prepositional phrase, like "On [topic of the theorem]" for the short description. The article itself is not about that topic, per se, but rather about the theorem, and the theorem is on that topic. So it would not work to shorten the description even more, to just "[topic of the theorem]". But you could read the title and short description together as "So-and-so's theorem on [topic of the theorem]". (Another formulation that sometimes works is to give a statement of the theorem as the short description, as Euclid's theorem with short description "Infinitely many prime numbers exist", but in many other cases this would give something too long and technical and it's better just to state the general topic of the theorem than its detailed formulation.)

In a recent edit to one of these articles, User:Btyner objected to this, and changed the short description from "On [topic of the theorem]" to "Theorem about [topic of the theorem]", with the edit summary "short description should generally start with a noun". I cannot find any wording in Wikipedia:Short description stating any such rule, and I can find wording saying that short descriptions should generally avoid words from the title of the article they describe (and that they should be short). Both for reasons of concision and avoiding repetition I prefer the "On [topic of the theorem]" formulation, but I thought maybe this would be something other regulars here might have an opinion about.

So, any opinions? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:38, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

The guidance you are looking for is in the Examples section: "[Article subject] is/was a/an/the ...". This guidance has been the consensus for a long time, and I would rather not see us stray from it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:46, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

An example is not guidance. Guidance would say "A short description should be a noun phrase". Examples of short descriptions that happen to be noun phrases could merely be insufficiently imaginative to cover all cases. Also note that the other formulation I gave above, "Infinitely many primes exist", is also not a noun phrase. Also also note that the only example given that covers this sort of topic is the odious "Concept in" formulation that is neither accurate (a theorem is not a concept) nor informative ("concept in" uses ten characters to say nothing). —David Eppstein (talk) 23:06, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

It's not "an example". It's the end of key guidance about the structure of short descriptions, and it serves to explain the table of examples that comes next. My apologies for quoting it only in part. Here's a more formal quotation: "A good way to draft a short description is to consider the words that would naturally follow if you started a sentence like this: '[Article subject] is/was a/an/the ...'" There's a nice discussion about it somewhere in the archives of this talk page, IIRC. As for "Concept in" being odious, that's a pretty strong statement to describe ten characters that mostly do no harm. "Concept in mathematics" would be sufficient to distinguish an article from one about a hip hop album with a similar name or one about a 1980s power pop group. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:35, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Logically, there is a big leap from "a good way to..." to "the only way to..."

Many ambiguities in titles, especially in mathematical articles, involve similarities to the titles of other mathematical articles. "Concept in mathematics" is almost as useless a short description as "Wikipedia article" for resolving those ambiguities. That is especially true when the article title already contains the word "theorem", which both makes clear that its topic is very likely mathematics and that it is something different from a concept. (Also your example above of game theory is also not a concept. It is a broad field of study that overlaps both mathematics and economics.)

Or to put it more bluntly, if you think short descriptions should only distinguish the broadest of topic characterizations, and fail to make any finer distinctions within those topics, then why should we have any short description for a biography other than "Person"? After all that would also disambiguate people from music albums and rock bands. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:29, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I concur strongly with David. Jonesey95, you seem still to be in the mind-rut that SDs are exclusively for searches. They are not. SDs like "concept in physics" are a total waste of space as an annotated link in a See Also list. Yes, in more detailed articles, hand-tailored annotations of the articles listed will certainly be needed but in most cases, a good SD is sufficient to help the reader identify interesting related concepts. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:26, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

If the guidance that has served us well for so long is inadequate, I recommend that you propose additional guidance text for this page, along with an explanation of when that secondary guidance should be used. It is useful to have SDs that have consistent formatting. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:13, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

One of the three purposes of the SD, as set out in WP:SDPURPOSE, is to provide "together with the title, a very brief indication of the field covered". So long as the wording chosen focuses on that and on the other two purposes (annotation and disambiguation in searches), and also complies with WP:SDNOTDEF and WP:SDFORMAT, I see no reason why "On [topic of the theorem]" shouldn't be acceptable. While rare, I have occasionally come across abstract topics that can't easily be captured with a noun phrase, because even to get the noun phrase grammatically correct takes too many characters; things called "principle", "rule", "law", "model" and similar in other academic fields come to mind. That's not always the case with theorems, but "So-and-so's theorem on [topic of the theorem]" does achieve what we want. Its only downside is that it might tempt editors to draft an unreasonably long SD, in an effort to define the theorem. But we have WP:SDNOTDEF to cover that. No objection to this being added as a new example. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:50, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

As well as SDNOTDEF we also have the 40-character target length, which is often too short to provide a precise statement of the theorem (which we should not be trying to provide anyway).

If we're looking for an example to provide, one I just added is Hilbert's lemma, short description "On curvature of surfaces". My aim in formulating this was to be specific enough to distinguish it from the many other things named after Hilbert in different areas of mathematics, but not even trying to formulate a precise statement of the lemma nor using the more technical terminology like "principal curvatures" that would appear in a more precise statement.

Thinking about it some more, I think my real beef with the "concept in mathematics" short descriptions is the attitude they convey of "it's something abstract, you probably don't care, here are some rock bands for you to read about instead". We should not lump all abstract things together as if they are indistinguishable and uninteresting; we can and should do better. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:23, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I have checked this before. There is no formal 40 character limit, although the app for iPhones has a design error which has that effect (so Apple users should lobby for that error to be fixed asap but the rest of the world should not wait until it is). WP:SDSHORT specifies that the SD should be succinct but not so that the SD is useless to someone coming to it cold. So while

• Hilbert's lemma – On curvature of surfaces

works is necessary and sufficient ,

• Principal curvature – Maximal and minimal curvature at a point of a surface

is no longer than it needs to be. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:39, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I concur with this assessment of "concept in mathematics". Pushing ourselves to do better is good exercise. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:42, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

For the first example, I'd suggest

• Hilbert's lemma – Theorem on curvature of surfaces

Slightly longer, although still perfectly fine, and adds context given that the word "theorem" is not already in the title. Adding "Theorem" adequately explains the technical term 'lemma' which apart from specialists hardly anyone will understand. In this simple context we don't need anything more to explain 'lemma'. MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:30, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

If I said that the term "concerto" is too technical to be used in a musical composition short description, and that we should replace it with the word "symphony" because it's more widely recognized as a type of musical composition, I think we would rightly expect classical music lovers to object that although both are types of musical compositions they are not at all the same thing. Similarly, lemmas and theorems are both types of proven mathematical statements but they are not the same thing (even though it is not hard to dig up examples where a theorem is used as a lemma or a result treated as a theorem is nevertheless called a lemma). —David Eppstein (talk) 21:01, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

In this example, adding "Theorem" informs readers it's a mathematical topic, which most won't realise from 'lemma'. 'Concerto' is enough on its own to identify the topic as classical music. MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:05, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

You are down in the search-mode gulley again. To use symphony for a concerto or theorem for lemma in an annotated link would be grossly incompetent and have people back here again demanding that {{annotated link}} be banned. And with good reason. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:15, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Indeed, which is why {{Annotated link}} provides an override option for such a case. As anyone can see from WP:SDPURPOSE, the annotated link template is "available for" use in See also and index list articles. Use of that template is not one of the three purposes of a SD, and those purposes should not be subverted for ease of template operation. Anyway, let's not go over that ground yet again. It's entirely off the topic of this section. MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:02, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

No! Purpose number 1: a short descriptive annotation to the title

Short descriptions are intended to supplement the title, so as to inform readers unfamiliar with a topic why it may be worthy of further exploration. A misleading SD is a misleading SD, no matter how it is revealed. Under no circumstances should we collude with, let alone actively encourage, creation of SDs that we know to be misleading, incompetent, or just downright false. Annotated link is one way to expose an SD, search is another. The only difference between the two techniques is that [a] search results are transient and the searcher probably won't bother to report crud (though they may have an unprintable reaction to it) whilst [b] SDs in annotated links are there in See Also lists to be revealed in all their glory. In the course of the last few years, I must have corrected many dozens of incompetent, fatuous or false SDs that I just happened to have exposed by converting See Alsos to use annotated links – SDs that have been misleading searchers for years.

My challenge is relevant to this debate because it is the compulsion to be terse at all costs that requires verbal gymnastics and strange proposals to create false SDs. The first priority for an SD must be that it be useful (and for that it must also be accurate). 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 01:21, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

It is not a WP:SDPURPOSE "to inform readers unfamiliar with a topic why it may be worthy of further exploration". A few editors like to use Annotated links without having to put in the effort to use the override option provided, but that is simply not what the guidance says. We can all agree that SDs should not be incorrect or misleading, but drafting for sophisticated readers who are capable of reading through to the bottom of a highly technical article completely ignores WP:SDJARGON: "avoid jargon, and use simple, readily comprehensible terms that do not require pre-existing detailed knowledge of the subject". It's noteworthy that essentially nobody apart from a very few mathematics specialists have problems sticking to WP:SDJARGON. Not theoretical physicists, chemists or any other highly technical field. Anyway, I think that's enough on this side issue for this thread. Feel free to respond if you wish, but I'll leave it there. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:06, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, the short description for Ising model uses jargon ("ferromagnetic"), the short description for AdS/CFT correspondence is awful (full of jargon and using an ordinary word in a jargon way), the one for conformal field theory repeats the jargon from the article title, the one for Boltzmann constant uses a term ("particle kinetic energy") that is at least as obscure as "lemma", Stefan–Boltzmann law sneaks in ordinary words overloaded with a jargon meaning ("black body") while using the odd locution "emissive power", Universality class presumes the reader understands "renormalization group flow limit"...

I was going to say that mathematicians are naturally going to have a harder time since their field extends further into pure abstraction, but I honestly don't think the physicists are doing too well either. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 20:34, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Maybe a corollary of WP:ONEDOWN is that if the lead of an article should be written one educational level less technically than the body, then the short descriptions should be one more level less technical than that. This does not mean eschewing all technicality, though. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:43, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Just one further comment: whilst that may not be an overt SDPURPOSE, it is certainly the purpose of WP:SEEALSO. But for non-obvious article titles, an unannotated wikilink in a See Also list is next to useless. In an ideal world, editors would write context-specific annotations but that is very much the exception rather than the rule. Exposing the SD via {{anl}} gives a "good enough" solution ["the perfect is the enemy of the good"], provided that editors are encouraged to write meaningful SDs. And discouraged from writing vacuous or [mathematically] trivial SDs. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:56, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Aiding search is the most common use case for SDs probably by multiple orders of magnitude. Every single person using the default skin will see it whenever they begin to type anything into the search bar. By comparison, Template:Annotated link is used on 15,000 pages. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 01:26, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Inserting a word that is factually incorrect—lemmas and theorems are not the same thing, and this is a thing called a lemma that is being used like a lemma—is wrong. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 00:32, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Our own article (Lemma (mathematics)) describes uses "theorem" to describe it, so it seems fine for an SD, especially since "Lemma" probably fails WP:SDJARGON. We are writing for the average reader, not mathematicians. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 01:22, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I see no reason not to use a prepositional phrase if that's a way to get a description that is both short and useful. A description being fit for purpose is more important than exactly matching a template in a list of examples. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:38, 14 March 2026 (UTC) revised to quote purpose #1 --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 01:35, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

RfC: short description on Golan Heights

Please see Talk:Golan_Heights#RfC:_short_description, thanks, Huldra (talk) 23:19, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

60 character limit

Currently, Only 2% of short descriptions are longer than 60 characters, and short descriptions longer than 100 characters will be flagged for attention. But I should impose 60 character limit, rather than 40 characters. Absolutiva 11:21, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

That is deliberately a descriptive statement. There is no 40 character limit. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:40, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

A 100 character SD is probably waffle or a definition, though I have seen one or two that were genuine. But I have seen many of 40 or fewer that were facile, trite, vacuous or all three, because someone was more fixated on length than on purpose. So most importantly of all, an SD must be useful. Along with the article title, it must give an unfamiliar reader a good clue as to the article content. Size is secondary. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:54, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Regardless: the fact remains that many (as in most) small devices will only show the first 40 characters (this is by deliberate design due to small screen sizes - which in turn dictates the requirement to keep the descriptions to under 40 characters so that all devices show the whole description). The upshot is that any short description beyond that limit is simply not displayed. Anyone looking for "European Union" and seeing an apparently 'helpful' description of "Supranational political and economic uni" may think it is some sort of university - and there will be some people on the planet who really do not know what the EU really is. "Political and economic union" is both correct and sufficiently apposite and will be correctly displayed by all devices.

I would agree that adding 'National' to the front although keeping the description to under 40 characters, would muddy the waters as that might suggest that one country is involved. The practical upshot is that many a short description would not be as complete as it really ought to be if it is longer than 40 characters, but that is a limitation of the technology. Further: the meaning of some descriptions could be materially altered if part of the message is truncated. The short description should be fully readable on all devices and not just the one(s) that you happen to own. Vuehalloo (talk) 17:14, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

The 40-character target, even when exceeded, also serves a helpful purpose of keeping these things concise and descriptive rather than definitional, and avoiding WP:CREEP of these things into containing everything one would expect to see in an infobox. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:40, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

The aspirational goal of 40 characters is helpful, especially for those of us who are very active in creating short descriptions. Unfortunately, there are editors who use the open-ended nature of the guideline to justify longer descriptions even when a short description would work. When someone reverts a reduction in the length of a short description, the discussion is never whether or not "the shorter version works", but that the longer version is allowed by policy. Some rewording of the guideline, vis-à-vis the preference for shorter descriptions would add clarity to this topic. Also, given the effort put towards updating the longest short descriptions, it is probably time to adjust the 100-character ceiling to 75 or 80. Rublamb (talk) 22:39, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Mathematics has an RfC

Mathematics has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place discussing if Mathematics should have a short description. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 00:36, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Infobox monument

Resolved

I've noticed that some pages using this infobox that have generated short descriptions are not appearing in Category:Articles with short description. It has this code to generate the short description based on location length:

{{main other|{{#ifeq:{{#invoke:Is infobox in lead|main|[Ii]nfobox [Mm]onument}}|true|{{#if:{{{location|}}}{{str ≤ len |{{{location|}}}|60|{{Short description|Monument in {{Plain text|{{{location|}}}}}|noreplace}}}}}}}}}}

Is there a use of {{#invoke:Type in location|function}} or better code that would fix this? Sammi Brie (she/her · t · c) 18:06, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Are you sure that the location test is the issue? I'm looking at Statue of Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi Maidan, which has a 34-character location string that is used to generate a short description. That short description appears on the Page information page and in the shortdesc helper gadget. The page is not in Category:Articles with short description after multiple null edits and purges, which does not make sense to me. I think there may be something else going on. It looks like there are about 700 pages using the template that are not in the category. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:28, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Do we really want to encourage embedding SDs in infobox templates? It makes the SD in invisible to {{Annotated link}}. Thus...

• Statue of Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi Maidan – Monument in Patna, Bihar, India

This practice has caused havoc with Australian location articles. Please don't do anything to facilitate it. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:13, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, we do. It works fine, and it is a way to get regularized short descriptions into hundreds of thousands of articles. We should not let the tail, this long-standing bug in the annotated link template, wag the dog of short descriptions. Someone should fix the annotated link template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:23, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

It is not a bug (nor a feature ). {{Anl}} reads the SD from the top of the article and replicates it. To search various infoboxes for the information is a significant development effort that nobody with the ability has come forward to do, despite multiple prompts. Consequently, articles that don't have an explicit {{short description}} don't get a free ride, they always have to be annotated individually in every instance where listed. Which in practice means most are not annotated at all. If the editors of the articles concerned don't care enough about identifiability and serendipitous discovery, why should anyone else? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:04, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

It sounds like you have described the situation accurately. As such, I gently request that you refrain from continuing to bring up this shortcoming of {{annotated link}} on pages related to short descriptions unless you are recruiting someone to enhance the functionality of {{annotated link}}. You are welcome to add custom annotations, which is enabled by the template, where annotated links are currently blank due to this missing feature. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:37, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I think I've fixed the issue. Holodomor Genocide Memorial is using the sandbox with this fix and is now in the right cat. Does this look appropriate to publish to the main infobox? Sammi Brie (she/her · t · c) 21:57, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Now that I look at it more closely, I don't understand how the current code was outputting a short description or why the category was being suppressed. Something odd was happening because the #if statement was malformed. I have fixed the problem by inserting a missing pipe in the #if test. Thanks for prodding me to look at it a bit more carefully. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:33, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

This resolved the issue and took 9 pages immediately off the WP:PWSD list. Thank you for the fix. Sammi Brie (she/her · t · c) 23:40, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Sammi Brie: The infobox monument articles without SDs is down to 152 articles after some null editing. Some of these have no |location= value, some have very long location values, and there may be a few outliers doing some other strange thing. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Android Short descriptions not working

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Short descriptions

Hello. As I and @Organhaver mentioned on my Wikipedia talk page, about two weeks ago, I lost my ability to edit short descriptions on the Android "suggested edits" tab. Does anyone know why I lost my ability to edit short descriptions with the Android app, why I wasn't notified, about it until I found a message saying that editing short descriptions is disabled?

As @Jonesey95 mentioned to me on my talk page, there is currently a bug going around where the app should not suggest that you add short descriptions to pages where the short description is already set to "none", but it does.

This issue has already been brought up at WP:VPT as suggested by @ColinFine, as well as at MediaWiki

If anyone could help me with this issue then it would be highly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance, Roads4117 (talk) 18:57, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

"Sex offender" in short description

In per MOS:CONVICTEDFELON, "sex offender" does not needed for living persons (in general):

• Bill Cosby – American entertainer (born 1937)
• Russell Brand – English comedian, actor, and podcaster (born 1975)
• Roman Polanski – Polish and French filmmaker (born 1933)

and for deceased persons:

• Johnny Kitagawa – Japanese talent manager and sex offender (1931–2019)
• Rolf Harris – Australian entertainer (1930–2023)

When the person is primarily notable for a reason other than a crime, principles of due weight will usually suggest placing the criminal description later in the lede (or section). If notable convicted of crime or had their crimes publicly revealed without a conviction, for example:

• Jimmy Savile – English media personality and sex offender (1926–2011)
• Gary Glitter – British musician and sex offender (born 1944)
• Harvey Weinstein – American film producer and sex offender (born 1952)
• Jeffrey Epstein – American financier and child sex offender (1953–2019)

Absolutiva 14:06, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

You seem to be making a general comment. What if anything are you suggesting should be changed? MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:28, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Jimmy Savile is a bit of a problem area. Although it is pretty much certain that Savile committed numerous sexual offences during his lifetime, he was never arrested, charged or convicted for any offence. The is why there is a consensus not to say "he was a sex offender" in the article text, because it gives a misleading impression. On a more general note, the offences need to be very notable before placing them in the lead or the short description.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 17:43, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Birth years of living people in short descriptions

As recommended in WP:SDDATES, it’s well accepted for biographical SDs to include the person’s dates in the form (yyyy–yyyy). Years of birth are increasingly being included for BLPs, too. Our guidance on that says Care should be taken when the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy applies: birth years for living people may be included only if reliably sourced within the article.

I wonder if we should now change or delete that sentence, as it’s little regarded and it’s becoming common now for unsourced birth years to appear in BLP short descriptions (33 out of the 50 I just checked are completely unsourced; I didn’t check the accuracy of those citations that were provided). The rule’s original rationale was to avoid unsourced and potentially wrong birth dates within the text being even more widely disseminated by repetition in the SD. But it’s not ideal that guidance and practice are increasingly diverging. As I see it, the options could be:

• A – safety first: change to discouraging all birth years within BLP short descriptions unless specifically needed for disambiguation, which probably isn’t often.
• B – unsourced birth years in the SD aren’t actually a problem: they are very common within BLP leads, and nobody seems to worry much about that. In which case we can simply delete the sentence.
• C – whatever: Leave as it is; some people might still find it useful.

I’d be inclined to go for A, but could be persuaded otherwise. MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:42, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

If it's unsourced, it cannot be in a BLP. Even if it can be sourced, WP:BLPPRIVACY allows for subjects to request that their birthdate be removed. WP:BLP is policy and is clear on this. We cannot carve out local exceptions to that merely because the short description gnomes value their consistency more than they value BLP policy. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:15, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't know if my question was unclear, but I'm at a loss to see how it can be understood to involve any such thing as a 'carvout'. Unsourced birth dates are exceptionally common in BLPs, regardless of policy, and I'm trying to judge how much it matters to editors that they are frequently copied into short descriptions. If we think it does matter, we could try harder to discourage it, as suggested at A. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:53, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Regardless of being exceptionally common, unsourced birth dates should be removed whenever their existence is noticed, not copied into short descriptions.

If that was indeed your intent, then your option A is very badly worded: it says not to include birth years within BLP short descriptions, with nothing about whether they are sourced or unsourced. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:59, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

A is to discourage all birth years within BLP short descriptions unless specifically needed for disambiguation, on the basis that they are very likely to be unsourced. I've amended the text above with underscore. MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:16, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

I think it would be more helpful to say that a birth year can only be included in the short description if it is properly sourced. Editors who are working on short descriptions and find that a birth year is not properly sourced should remove it from the article text. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 20:13, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

That is my position also. It is not a position enumerated among MichaelMaggs's ABC options. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:19, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

WP:SDDATES already included some words to this effect. I added a line to emphasize correcting BLPs for policy compliance. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 20:25, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

That seems a useful addition, thanks. MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:54, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

It's explicitly C – leave the wording as as it is. The existing wording is that quoted in the first paragraph of this section. The proposed additional sentence seems good, too. MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:53, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I sometimes edit BLP articles and add short description, but I really don't have the expertise or time to go through and check citations to see if they're reliable (and this is for all articles I add shortdesc to). I would support C. Probably encourage editors who work with citations and see badly sourced birth years to remove it from the article (and shortdesc), maybe? 🫀 Crash // Organhaver ( it / he | talk to me, maybe? ) 22:01, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Where I most often see these is in the infobox. People tend to add things to infoboxes without sources and without checking whether they repeat sourced article content. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:01, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Short descriptions should be useful

A week ago, I appended some points about utility to Wikipedia:Short description#Format, which I believe summarises a number of discussions above:

• be meaningful, so no shorter or longer than is needed by a reader unfamiliar with the topic to identify it as worthy of further exploration
  • In addition to search support, SDs are used as the default annotations for entries in WP:see also lists, where they provide an important function as a "Guide to information sources" related to the host article. (See § Annotated links below.)
  • For this purpose, the article title and its SD will be read together, so the SD is not required to be wholly meaningful in isolation.

but MichaelMaggs reverted saying that it does not have consensus. I acknowledge that it has not been proposed in precisely this form but certainly the view that fatuous SDs like "Concept in mathematics" are unacceptable. Can my version be improved? because surely there cannot be any continuing argument about the principle? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:56, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

See new section Wikipedia:Short_description#Complex_or_technical_subjects which tries to address this in a more general and considered way than deprecating just the specific wording "Concept in mathematics". MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:09, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

No, the purpose of my addition is to encourage editors to make the SD useful to "a reader unfamiliar with the topic to identify it as worthy of further exploration". My intention is to encourage good SDs, not provide excuses for the SDSHORT pedants to render them useless to anyone except searchers who already know what they want.

It is not acceptable to sideline the most basic ideas in science, mathematics or technology as "complex or technical". Contrast this with your own practice: for example, you recently added this SD to Abuzar Brigade: Afghan Shia militia, 1980–1988. Why did you not consider that Military group would not be adequate? For someone searching, it would be enough. At Figure study, you wrote Preparatory artistic study of the human body when Art technique would do, it distinguishes it from numerical analysis. You don't practice what you preach – and rightly so, yours are excellent and meaningful SDs. It is the sermon that is at fault, not the practice. Is the problem that STEM topics are ipso facto "complex" by definition in your worldview but topics in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences are not? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:59, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

As a ex-physicist myself, I really don't recognise the framing here. The entire purpose of the new section is the opposite of "rendering them useless": I wrote the section to meet your concerns, and I'm sorry you feel so negative about it. It's intended to acknowledge that for some topics there really is no way to make the whole thing comprehensible to a non-specialist reader, and to explicitly approve wording such as "Theorem in x" or "Algebra of x" where x may be something quite technical. I've tried tweaking the wording again to ensure that's clear, and to remove any implication that "Concept/Aspect/Topic" etc are the only possibilities; they are the last resort. There should be no need in any event to go as broad as "Concept in mathematics" (which I agree is not good) since the words "Theorem", "Algebra" etc provide sufficient context. I initially included an example from philosophy, to make this more general, but took it out for fear of being too wordy. It could easily be put back, for less emphasis on maths/physics. Really, this applies to all topics needing substantial background knowledge, not simply STEM topics. MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:08, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

First, I can only apologise for making an embarrassingly invalid assumption about your motivation.

No, I don't feel negative about it but only that it addresses the symptoms but not the disease. Your addition (which I applaud) suggests how to write better SDs for complex topics but it does not (and should not, because the disease is by no means unique to these cases) say why the effort should be made. In my view, the disease is the tendency to create SDs that are so terse that they are useless for anything but search. The underlying problem is that there are still too many SDs written to disambiguate between search results for cognoscenti, not to facilitate serendipitous discovery of related concepts. The purpose of my proposal is to encourage SDs that facilitate the latter, even if it is at the (marginal) expense of the former. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:05, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. If you could give me a few days I'll have a further think (I may not have much time over the long weekend). I do have sympathy for your "worthy of further exploration" idea, especially since SDs have started to appear in new areas such as the Wikipedia mobile "Because you read" and "Top read" recommended reading lists. MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:44, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

There are clearly some strong views (below) about the merits of "worthy of further exploration". It would be useful to have other views. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:09, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

Strong oppose. There are a number of misapprehensions about the purpose of SDs here. This proposal is entirely contrary to the core purpose of short descriptions. Having been christened with an unfortunate name, editors have been missing the point of why short descriptions were created in the first place, and very often try to describe what the article is about using them. But SDs have nothing at all to do with describing clarifying complex topics and should not be used for that. Per Article title policy:

The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles

The SD is not about repeating or extending the title; how could you possibly hope to explain a complex topic in forty characters? It has one purpose: to get a user searching for an article to the right place as fast and easily as possible from a short list of titles returned by a search where title alone might be confusing, but title + SD makes it clear. That's why the SD of Ecuador is Country in South America and nothing more, because if a user is searching for something and ended up with a short list of just titles, let's say, 'Equator', 'Equatorial Guinea', 'Ecuador', 'Ecuadorians', 'Equatoria' they might not know that 'Ecuador' is the South American country they had in mind and click it, but if the list was title + SD instead, like this:

• Equator, Imaginary line halfway between Earth's North and South poles
• Equatorial Guinea, Country in Central Africa
• Ecuador, Country in South America
• Ecuadorians, People of Ecuador
• Equatoria, Region in South Sudan

then they would know right away, and click the right one. And that is the only reason for the existence of the (poorly named) "short description".

Keep in mind that users *never* see the short description on the article page itself, so it is not going to help them understand what a complex topic (or any topic) is about. For that, we have MOS:LEADSENTENCE. Note also, that Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, all have the *identical* SD: Country in South America. That would not work if it were really a description of what the topic is about, but that is not its purpose. Mathglot (talk) 17:35, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

The three purposes of SDs, with long-standing consensus, are set out at WP:SDPURPOSE. Things aren't quite as black and white as you say. MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:21, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Just one point to add to MM's succinct reply: your users *never* see the short description on the article page itself flies out n the face of reality unless you have decided that See Also sections are not part of article pages? (Or did you mean that the SD of an article is not reflected back? If so, then you have completely misunderstood my proposal because it concerns how the short description of a given article is displayed in the See Also lists of related articles.) 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:50, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

• Comment. JMF calls out specifically the short description "concept in mathematics" as "fatuous" and suggests by implication that it is not "useful". I sharply disagree. We mathematicians like to give things names that make sense to us, but that often could appear to outsiders as something completely different. A lay reader coming across a listing including "supercompact cardinal" needs first and foremost to understand that it's not a tiny red bird, but rather "some math thing". Really "some math thing" is all that 95% of them will ever want to know about it, and so "concept in mathematics" is actually very useful.
  Now, in that particular case, there's considerable space below 40 characters to play around with a more meaningful short description, if that's the way someone wants to spend their time. I don't really see much value in it but it's not my place to tell you what's a waste of effort. Just don't make it longer than 40 chars, and don't make the reader work to figure out that it's some math thing. --Trovatore (talk) 19:51, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

  First, as has been declared repeatedly, there is no 40 character limit. SDs should be concise, not be a definition, and be read in conjunction with the title. That's it.

  Second, taking the example you cite,

  1. (search): nobody is going to search for "supercompact cardinal" without already having some mathematical knowledge. There is no ambiguity. No credible confusion with birds or Princes of the Church. That fatuous SD adds no value to the people who credibly would search for it. Just give them the article and get out of the way.
  2. (annotated links): the article would only be included in a See Also list of related – wait, don't tell me... – concepts in mathematics. Need I go on?

  Annotated links are seen and actually read by far more readers than are search results. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:35, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

  Annotated links are seen and actually read by far more readers than are search results. This seems highly unlikely to be true, given that anytime anyone using the default Wikipedia skin types anything into the search bar, they will see and read short descriptions whereas annotated links are in "see also" sections at the bottom of pages or navigation-type pages such as dabs. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 05:36, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

  Someone searching already knows what they are looking for. In contrast, 'See Also' lists tell them what they don't already know but may well be interested to find out. Which is why most articles have a 'See Also' section.

  Btw, dabs are generally hand annotated for specific clarification in that context, rather than use the SD option. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:33, 23 May 2026 (UTC) revised --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 09:04, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

  Under the original raison d'etre of SD, you have it exactly backwards: SD's are *only* needed and helpful when viewing a short list of search results, and rarely if ever helpful in See-also listings, and 'annotated links' did not exist. But that was then, and this is now. Because of the misunderstanding of what SD was for, and some major changes to the guideline based on the misunderstanding, the meaning has morphed (perhaps metastasized would be a better term) into something very different, and now many editors—perhaps most—might agree with you today.

  'Short description' was a poor name to begin with, and then Annotated links were introduced afterward and just confused things further. The fact that a single editor unilaterally created the {{Annotated link}} template on 13 September 2018 and the new SD section about annotated links called '#Using short descriptions in Wikipedia' the same day without any discussion about it afaict, is perhaps understandable given the confusion about SD, but nevertheless represented a departure from its original purpose. That section name completely usurped the original purpose of SD, or perhaps that editor never understood it to begin with. By 5 Jan 2019, it gained a subsection heading, "Annotated links", still under section "Using short descriptions in Wikipedia", as if that were its main purpose.

  The crappy name short description was the first step in obfuscating the original purpose, which led to making annotated links possible, which ended up becoming the nail in the coffin of a comprehensible, single-purpose short description. Through long acceptance this has now has become part of the foundation of SD, sitting uncomfortably alongside the original purpose, leading to these endless flare-ups that cannot be resolved, because some editors prefer one incarnation of SDs, while others prefer another, and a guideline in conflict with itself.

  I can imagine an article some South American topic have a See-also section listing some nearby countries, where the section might look like this:

  • Peru
  • Bolivia
  • Paraguay
  • Chile

  Perhaps some helpful editor thinks it might be an improvement to use {{annotated link}}, so they add them, leading to this:

  • Peru – Country in South America
  • Bolivia – Country in South America
  • Paraguay – Country in South America
  • Chile – Country in South America

  Being aghast at how unhelpful that was, they might then change all the South American SD's from old-skool SD's into definitions. Someone who buys in to the See-also/annotated-links theory of SD will probably see the original SD's that are faithful to the original purpose of SD as somehow wrong because they make no sense in a See also section and change them to definitions, which were originally forbidden. Yet given the current [per]version of SD, that would be a defensible change.

  In fact, annotated links should never have been created, or at least, they should not have been based on short descriptions, if they are to be uniformly helpful in See-also sections (as opposed to helpful only when the SD-authoring editor adheres to the SD-as-useful-in-See-also theory). But it's all one gigantic muddle now and there is no good solution to it anymore. Maybe we should just give up and go with the muddle, rename Short description to Sesquipedalian Definition, and limit them to 256 characters. Then we can stop maintaining that it was ever intended to be a search disambiguation phrase. Mathglot (talk) 10:42, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

  No, the key concept you have missed is emergent behaviour. Yes of course the original concept was as a timesaver at the regular query entry point. That was true then and it is still true. The key development since then is

  1. the recognition that there are thousands of items in 'See also' lists that have only the cryptic (to the uninitiated) names of the article concerned. Some conscientious editors were annotating by hand but that was a tiny minority.
  2. the recognition that most SDs are good enough to provide an 'out of the box' annotation

  So the leap of imagination was to create {{annotated link}} to capitalise on #2 to make a huge dent on problem #1. By and large, this idea hit the ground running and it is good enough for most of the articles most of the time. In narrow contexts, hand annotation is still needed but the SD is usually good enough. Or it is until some wikilawyer comes along and renders it meaningless or useless because they are still straitjacketted into the 40 character limit fixation. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:00, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

  Some responses:

  • Most SDs are not good enough; or at least, not when they were being written according to the original conception.
  • The use of annotated links helped hardly at all (see South American example above) until editors realized they could *make* annotated links provide useful information by abandoning their original purpose and the character-size limitations, and writing the SD *for* annotated links. I.e., they wagged the dog, doing things backwards, figuring that annotated links are the goal, and needed longer SDs that look like definitions, because that was what a link needed to explain it, so that's what they did; adjusting the project page to boot, to suit the goals of the template. Of course, the total number of annotated links is minuscule, compared to the number of SDs, so the purpose of SD and the project page description were altered to suit a minuscule number of cases.
  • The leap of imagination was good in theory, but the design was tragically flawed. Instead of basing the annotated link on the SD, it should have been based on the WP:FIRSTSENTENCE of the article, which *is, in fact, a definition*. That would have been the correct approach. (And it still could be done now, but it seems like the horses ay have already left the barn.

  Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:47, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

  Nobody ever suggested that SDs should not be concise. SD:Short still applies and it sets out the consequences of excessive verbiage. But excessive brevity can produce a meaningless SD. Such fatuous and facile SDs disadvantage search too. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:31, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

  It is also relevant that the advent of {{anl}} has led to a significant reduction in the number of articles without SDs. It is a win for both applications. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk)

  I don't know what gave you that impression; annotated links have almost zero effect on the number of articles without SDs. The total count of transclusions of annotated link is around 16,000 (so, fewer than 16k articles, as probably most transclusions are not singletons), whereas the number of short descriptions is about 6.8 million (which means 6.8 million articles, as no article has two). Mathglot (talk) 03:59, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

  Mathglot, many articles have two, e.g. with an automatic one from the infobox and a manual one that overrides it. — Qwerfjkltalk 12:01, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

  Ah, thanks for the correction, I was unaware of that. I'm not sure how to exclude only those from the tally, but in the worst case (assuming every Infobox has an SD, which we know is an exaggeration) that would alter the tally by half, I think, so 3.4 million, not 6.8 million (unless some have two infoboxes); so the 'drop in the ocean' comparison still holds. Mathglot (talk) 19:14, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

  Mathglot, well, Category:Articles with short description has 6.3 million. But yes, your points stands. — Qwerfjkltalk 13:14, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

  I didn't try to quantify it and maybe there is something out of the ordinary about the threads I have followed, but my experience of applying annotations to many 'see also' lists is that five to ten percent have not had an SD before I added it. But anecdote is not evidence, so I must accept your numbers. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:55, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

  • No, they aren't going to search for "supercompact cardinal" but it could nevertheless come up when someone starts typing "cardina...". It didn't, in my experiment just now, but enough stuff came up that wouldn't have started with those letters that I don't see why it wouldn't. As for annotated links, I have not been convinced that they have much value. --Trovatore (talk) 16:21, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

    So by simple inference, you are equally not convinced that 'See also' lists have much value. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:36, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

    That's...actually true, but I don't see how it follows. I'm against "automagicizing" Wikipedia in general (I think for example that "abstract Wikipedia" is a completely ludicrous idea that needs to be junked and expunged), which is why I'm not convinced by automated links. I also think that "see also" has little clear rationale, and that there's a risk of people using it tendentiously to make insinuations that don't have to be cited. But I don't really see the thread connecting these two points. --Trovatore (talk) 01:00, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

    We partly concur on this one. Robotic annotation of entries in 'see also' lists is not perfect and they should all have been annotated by hand when they were added. But the perfect is the enemy of the good and the SD is usually good enough.

    One of the many advantages of annotations is expose entries in a 'see also' list to critical examination. "Why is this here? How is it relevant?" As I have written already, most editors don't routinely see the SDs of other articles - why would they? Annotated 'see also' lists cast light in the murky shadows. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 09:07, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Finding auto-generated short descriptions?

@Camilasdandelions recently educated me about inboxes automatically generating short descriptions. What I can't figure out is how a tool parsing the page can get to that. Currently, I'm looking for a {{short description}} template in the wikitext, but that's obviously a losing strategy. I assume I can find it by looking at the Parsoid output, but what should I be looking for? RoySmith (talk) 22:20, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

RoySmith, the easiest way would just be to use the api. Is there some reason you need to parse the page itself? — Qwerfjkltalk 10:22, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

It looks like you can also try $(".shortdescription").get(0).innerText though if the article has multiple short description (e.g. a manual one and one applied through a template) I'm not sure how you'd determine which one is used. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:31, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I'm already parsing the page to get other information, so I assumed that's how you would do this too. RoySmith (talk) 10:34, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Why dates on bios?

The current text says:

As long as the formatting criteria are met, biographies of non-living people, articles on specific publications, and dated historical events generally benefit from dating.... [emphasis added]

Who says they benefit from dating? I find these dates mostly annoying on short descriptions of bios; I don't see that they add much. The case where they would add something is if you have two persons with similar names and otherwise similar descriptions, but who lived sufficiently far apart that you could quickly tell which one you wanted because one was in the 16th century and the other was in the 19th century, or something like that. Exclusive of this unusual case, I don't think we should be encouraging birth and death years. --Trovatore (talk) 19:39, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

As a reader, I find it useful when searching on a not-uncommon name; it gives me a clue whether the wikipedia article is about the person I'm looking for or a different person. Both persons don't have to have an article for it to be helpful. I might be doing a search on a modern person and the Wikipedia article is on a historical person (or vice versa). It can add search-value and (as far as I can tell) does no harm. Schazjmd (talk) 19:55, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

WP:SDDATES begins with, "Dates or date ranges are encouraged when they enhance the short description as an annotation or improve disambiguation." That would seem to imply dates should be used when needed for disambiguation--that is, to differentiate between articles about people with similar names. So why does the line that you mention follow, which encourages the use of dates in general for all biographical entries? My guess is that there are often people with the same name and profession who don't yet have an article in Wikipedia. I came across a name last week that applied to three professionals in the same sport. Only one had an article in Wikipedia. The inclusion of a date in the short description might limit incorrect linking, for example. It would also give searchers a heads-up that this article is or is not about the person they are looking for. It might also encourage someone to create the article for one of the others with the same name. Rublamb (talk) 22:59, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

I am not a fan of dates in short descriptions. There are too many articles where we don't have dates and BLPs where we shouldn't be adding dates - it makes it inevitably inconsistent. //Lollipoplollipoplollipop::talk 08:37, 23 May 2026 (UTC)