Wikipedia talk:Short description

"X in X" articles

What should be the proper short description for articles with an "x in x" title such as Basketball in Tuvalu, Women in Tuvalu, or Health in Tuvalu, etc? should it be blank, since those titles are self explantitory? What should be the procedure, with examples of the articles listed above? Thanks. -1ctinus📝🗨 01:21, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

If the meaning is self evident, as in your examples, you should use "None" - see WP:SDNONE. MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:14, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Variation between different language Wikipedias

A short section detailing differences in practice for different languages would be useful. For example, I currently want to know whether "Don't start with an article" applies in Swedish Wikipedia. (The Android app has decided to suggest I read Swedish articles about islands, whose short descriptions often begin with en ö i . . . instead of just ö i . . . These are jumping out at me as potentially wrong and I'd like to know whether to change them.) Musiconeologist (talk) 12:10, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I've added a cautionary footnote to the formatting section, about other languages not necessarily using uppercase. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:15, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

As far as I know, the English Wikipedia is the only Wikipedia site making its own short descriptions. All other descriptions are managed on Wikidata, where a omitting the article is the standard in English and also in Swedish. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:35, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 Ah, thanks. I didn't realise. I've just checked one of the articles in question, and there's certainly no sign of anything resembling a short description template in the wikitext. Musiconeologist (talk) 16:49, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

They are typically pulled from Wikidata when you do a search (or cached locally from Wikidata; I don't know the exact details). If you are on sv.WP and you do a search for Sverige, you should see "konstitutionell monarki i Nordeuropa" under the article title in the search results. They also appear under the title in mobile view, and on the Page information page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:07, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Formatting section

I think the bullet point about being short belongs under Content text rather than Formatting. I've not moved it, because it affects the bookmarks and I'm not overly familiar with editing them. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:48, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Bug report: Template code to auto-generate short descriptions fails to work

I tested several, and none of the templates that use code to automatically generate a short description when displaying search results on the mobile site actually worked to display a short description. I am not a techie who can fix this, nor even know who to report it to, but this talk page seems sufficiently on-topic to be able to alert someone who does know.

Take any template from Category:Templates that generate short descriptions and do an insource search for it (minus the word "description", so as to exclude articles which explicitly use the "short description" template), then check in the mobile site to see if any of those articles display a short description. They don't.

As an example, take Template:Infobox song. Do the search: insource:"Infobox song" -description

There are 2,300 results! Take any one of the article titles and do a search for it in the mobile site and you will see no short description displayed. I have tested several other templates that use code to auto-generate short descriptions (including settlement, royalty, port, and a few others). They all fail; I have seen no exceptions.

I would really like to see this bug fixed, and the use of autogenerating short descriptions used more broadly in infobox templates, because it's a great idea.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 19:03, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I looked at half a dozen articles in those Infobox song search results, and none of them have an automatically generated short description. My first guess is that it has something to do with Module:Is infobox in lead, which {{Infobox song}} uses to determine whether to apply a short description. You might need to start a discussion at Template talk:Infobox song to ask if that module is working correctly in pages with multiple instances of {{Infobox song}}.

The "settlement" search results returning just four results should have been a hint. Narkeldanga, for example, had a typo that was making the infobox fail to render. The other three are false positives.

As for your all-encompassing bug description, I do not think it is correct. Bak, Hungary has a short description generated by an infobox, and when I search for it on the mobile site, I see a short description in the first search result. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:41, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

{{Infobox royalty}} will not create a short description if |title= and |succession= are both empty. Your infobox port search results were returning false positives; here's a better search. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:59, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: The short description displayed for Bak, Hungary is "Village in Western Transdanubia, Hungary", however the word "Transdanubia" does not exist in its infobox, so where is it coming from? It does have a Wikidata entry, but I don't see the word "Transdanubia" there, either. I have checked a sufficient number of infobox templates which use different code (quite unlike the code used in infobox songs) to know that the problem is more widespread than just one infobox template. Finding some that do work (but don't make sense), or making dismissive assumptions such as search results returning just four results should have been a hint neither explains the failed short description displays nor is it helpful.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 20:03, 5 March 2024 (UTC) (Edited to add: I see that "Western Transdanubia" is coming from some sort of look up related to List of regions of Hungary. That is not intuitive at all.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 20:42, 5 March 2024 (UTC))

With regards to your assertion about {{Infobox royalty}}, Farrukh Hormizd's title is blank but succession is not... generates no display. I added a test title, and it displayed my test. The code in the infobox

{{#if:{{Has short description}} |<!--Do nothing--> |{{Infobox royalty/short description|{{{title|{{{succession|}}}}}}}}}}

isn't obvious why succession would not display if title was blank, nor is there mention in the template documentation as to what will display, and when. None of the templates asserting to create auto-generating short descriptions (that I checked) explain what they display and any conditions that must be met. There is no explicit "if" wording in the template's coding—and if there is some sort of assumed "if" by reason of "code syntax", I don't know what that is; hence it manifests as a bug across multiple infobox templates (each coded differently). If I understood the coding, then I could fix both the coding and the documentation, and avoid a bug report. But since multiple templates appear to be buggy, I wrote the report as general so someone would look at it. That multiple individual infobox templates might be buggy because of poor coding or documentation, doesn't mean the report is incorrect or not useful and ought be ignored.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 20:26, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

The Hungary location has that text in |subdivision_name1=, generated by a template. You can see it in the rendered infobox. I have adjusted {{Infobox royalty}} to ignore empty parameters; template parameter usage has a fundamental design flaw in that empty parameters are treated differently from missing parameters. That change has fixed Farrukh Hormizd.

Template documentation is written by all of us. I clarified the template documentation for {{Infobox royalty}} after examining the code and seeing that there were conditions. The original coder should have written it, but we are all volunteers, and some people are good at code and bad at description.

As you can see, I am not ignoring your report. On the contrary, I have responded to each of your specific reports. As far as I can tell from the above reports, you found individual problems with a few different templates, and a few things that looked like problems because of false positives in search results. If you find problems with specific templates, issues should be reported on those templates' talk pages. Feel free to ping me from those discussions in case I am not watching the page. I enjoy troubleshooting templates. If you find a general pattern, feel free to report it here. Happy editing! – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:01, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Jonesey95. I see the changes to both the code and the documentation ({{Auto short description}}). Very concise. Thank you for looking at this. I would like to make some changes to a template to include the auto-short-desc feature, as well as write a new infobox template for a project I am working on. This information will come much in handy. Thank you for offering to help via pinging. In the meantime, I consider this report thread answered (at least as far as my concerns were).   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 21:19, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:SDNONE and "History of"

There are almost 2000 articles that start with "History of" that don't have a short description. I believe that it applies for WP:SDNONE (which is horribly vague in my opinion). If I get the greenlight from another editor without disapproval, I will script it to add descriptions to it semi-automatically. -1ctinus📝🗨 19:39, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

That should be OK as long as you will be approving each and every one manually, as there are quite a few "history of X" articles where "X" won't be self-evident to many readers and needs explanation, eg History of the Tasmanian AFL bid and History of the Cleveland Guardians. If you are thinking of setting up a script that will run through the list without personal intervention for every article, you'd need to obtain bot approval. ~~~~ MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:37, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, per WP:MEATBOT. — Qwerfjkltalk 21:46, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Here's the problem with some of these, is that none of my hypothetical attempts seem to make good short descriptions; take History of the Detroit Tigers as an example:

• "Aspect of history" (per wikidata) - vague and adds nothing
• "Baseball franchise history" - clunky and worded in a similar way to the title
• "History of a baseball franchise" - not too crazy on the "a" article, still makes it clunky

I would like to find a good formula for coming up with descriptions for these "History of" articles that fail WP:SDNONE, as I don't have any good ideas. -1ctinus📝🗨 23:28, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

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 (talk) 23:48, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree, but I am trying to come up with an ideal formula for articles such as the one you mentioned, as described above. -1ctinus📝🗨 23:50, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

The best you can do, I think, is to use AWB or similar to step through all the relevant "History of . . ." articles, accepting "None" where it works and skipping those where it doesn't. The skipped ones then need to be handled individually. Articles where "None" isn't appropriate vary, and there isn't a general formula. In the example you gave, I'd use "History of a baseball franchise" MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:53, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

A few months ago, I changed a whole bunch of "History of..."s to "none"s. Then I stopped. It seemed to make sense for many of those to be "none" but then I ran into others that i wasnt too sure about. It makes sense for History of Canada (a commomn term we don't often wiki link to) but it seemed to make less sense for provinces, such as History of Saskatchewan. To me, for a province (or state or city or region) wouldnt an SD of "History of a Canadian province" for Saskatchewan make more sense than "none"? I was going to bring it up here but I never got around to it. Masterhatch (talk) 21:49, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

adding a generator to Template:infobox musical

I have made a short description generator for infobox musical and I just want some extra eyes on it before I add it to the template.

{{#if:{{Has short description}} |<!--Do nothing--> |{{short description|{{#if:{{#invoke:string|match|{{{premiere_date|}}}|%d%d%d%d|ignore_errors = true}}|{{#invoke:string|match|{{{premiere_date|}}}|%d%d%d%d|ignore_errors = true}} m| M}}usical{{#if:{{{music|}}}{{{lyrics|}}}|{{#ifeq:{{Plain text|{{{music|}}}}}|{{Plain text|{{{lyrics|}}}}}|{{spaces}}by {{Plain text|{{{music|}}}}}}}}}}}}}

Thanks! -1ctinus📝🗨 01:23, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

If you put it in the sandbox, you can test it at Special:ExpandTemplates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:58, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

A version with fixed bugs has been added to the template, It seems to be working well. -1ctinus📝🗨 17:38, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Good articles appear to be done

Searching -hastemplate:"Short description" hastemplate:"Good article" isn't returning anything for me, do we cross it off the project tasks checklist? Orchastrattor (talk) 02:24, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Without short description

Hi short description experts, if you're interested some Italian foods are without short description (e.g., gelo di melone). JacktheBrown (talk) 20:35, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Using the SD category script when looking at Category:Italian cuisine and its subcategories should make it easy to pick out the 5 to 10% of articles without SDs. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:20, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Jonesey95, in some cases User:1234qwer1234qwer4/shortdescs-in-category.js is more helpful for adding short descriptions. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:31, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I've done a few. It was easy to fix Gelo di melone in just one click. MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:47, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Articles that are simultaneously both "Short description matches Wikidata" and "Short description is different from Wikidata"

It appears that articles can be simultaneously placed in both the Short description matches Wikidata category and the seemingly inconsistent category Short description is different from Wikidata. For example, see UEFA Europa Conference League and 2024–25_CONCACAF_Nations_League. Can this phenomenon be investigated to help determine if there is an appropriate way to fix it? Thank you. Coining (talk) 02:16, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I think this is because the infoboxes of these two pages (Template:Infobox football tournament and Template:Infobox international football competition) also automatically generate short descriptions. These were later overridden by a manual short description that matches the Wikidata description, but for some reason the automatic shortdesc, which differs from the Wikidata description, is still being detected. For example, I removed the manually overriding short description on 2024–25 CONCACAF Nations League, and now the page is only categorised under Category:Short description is different from Wikidata. Not sure how to fix this though. Liu1126 (talk) 10:05, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Much thanks for at least, seemingly, finding a manual solution. I'll await any further advice, but I may proceed by bringing up your observation on those template talk pages. Coining (talk) 13:35, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Also see this less-watched discussion page, where other options were discussed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:47, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it seems that the fix used by Template:Infobox film still fails; Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, for example, uses infobox film but is still double categorised, which is very strange since the conditional should, in theory, prevent the dual invocation of Module:SDcat that is causing the problem.

In the final comment in Wikipedia talk:Short description/Archive 8#Adding tracking categories, RexxS said that there's no easy general solution because Lua can't simply get the local short description from page_props, so I guess we'll just have to bear with it until someone does a whole revamp of the code. Liu1126 (talk) 14:32, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Infobox film in that "Alvin" article is working fine; it's {{Infobox video game}} that is causing the dual categories in that one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:29, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Oh, you're right. I just searched incategory:"Short description matches Wikidata" AND incategory:"Short description is different from Wikidata" AND hastemplate:"Infobox film" and found a few results, but upon closer inspection it seems that none of these are caused by Infobox film itself. Guess the fix works then, though I don't know if it would be worth the effort making this standard for all automatic sdescs. Liu1126 (talk) 19:38, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

@Liu1126, can you help me to understand why you believe that it is the templates that are automatically adding the short descriptions? In the UEFA Europa Conference League article, the errant short description was added well after the template (see Version comparison showing edit in September 2020. Coining (talk) 13:51, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Some templates have an automatic short description embedded within their code (at the end of the template code, enclosed within <includeonly> tags), like the two I mentioned above. This short description doesn't appear inside the wikitext of the target page (because the template is transcluded), and it gets overridden when an explicit instance of Template:Short description is added to the target page (due to its noreplace parameter). See Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions#Auto-generated and bot-generated descriptions for more info. These manual short descriptions aren't necessarily "errant"; in cases where the automatic short description isn't ideal, it is recommended to manually override them. Liu1126 (talk) 14:02, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Finally under a million!

We hit a big milestone today. It may have been my edit (I have been updating a ton of templates) or somebody else's edit, but we have hit the final million milestone. (Pardon my weird CSS) -1ctinus📝🗨 01:39, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Woohoo! GraziePrego (talk) 02:05, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Yay! :-) In December 2022, we went below 1.5 million which means we added 500,000 short descriptions in 1.5 years. If we continue at this rate, we will have completed the task of adding short descriptions in three years. Robby.is.on (talk) 09:47, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Redirects with short descriptions

Editors who watch this page may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Redirect#Question on redirects with short descriptions. Certes (talk) 16:24, 23 May 2024 (UTC)