Wikipedia talk:Short description/Archive 4

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Consensus to use?

Is there a documented consensus to use this template? A certain user keep removing it from The Dead Lands because It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. I would have thought the fact that it has well over 1,000,000 uses was enough of a consensus... --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 23:10, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

@Zackmann08: RfC: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 145#RfC: Populating article descriptions magic word - there is clear consensus to use --DannyS712 (talk) 23:15, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
Courtesy ping. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:42, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
@DannyS712 and Nikkimaria: could we perhaps update the page to use a different ombox that doesn't include It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.? --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 05:48, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
@Zackmann08: This is just an information page - the stuff on it isn't policy. But, the consensus is to use short descriptions locally. Idk how to say that here without making it seem like the rest is a guideline --DannyS712 (talk) 05:50, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
@DannyS712: I do agree, but I also think the "clear" bit is somewhat questionable. There's a lot of long discussions about how to deal with the WMF's little "present", but last time I went looking I failed to find something that gave clear consensus for mass-adding these to all 5+ million articles (and mass changes to articles is what tends to require the strongest and most clear consensus here). I've raised that issue before, but I haven't noticed any effort to address it (I may just have not been paying attention). I would feel on a lot firmer ground if the consensus for mass-adding this to articles was a lot clearer (and easily linked), because you know it will be challenged (and not just by the one editor exemplified here). I also, of course, agree with Johnuniq (below). Bickering over a short description on a single article, or small set of articles, is a colossal waste of time: it's the 5+ million articles (and the 2 million milestone) that are important. --Xover (talk) 07:39, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: maybe, when we hit 2 million and we stop defaulting to wikidata, we should have another RfC - at that point, it'll either be add a local description, or have no short description at all, rather than defaulting to the wikidata one. Thoughts? --DannyS712 (talk) 07:42, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
@DannyS712: If we're talking longer view than the current rush triggered by the software changes, I think we need to develop actual policy and guidelines for short descriptions. All vs. this defined subset is one issue; but details of what they contain and how they relate to the lead, infoboxes, etc.; what makes sense for redirects, dabs, lists, outlines, portals, etc. Put it this way: even now there's actual disagreement on whether "Wikipedia list article" has any merits, and on whether the first letter of the shortdesc should be capitalized. The small group driving the immediate changes cannot provide the consensus needed to determine these issues for the whole project. In other words, at some point there will have to be one or more RFCs on those issues (but I also think it's a bit early yet for carving such details into stone).
But having another RFC after hitting 2 mill. is just racing to be able to present the community with a faith accompli: as you say yourself, at that point the options have narrowed to a binary. My concern expressed here is really the period from 0 to 2 mill.: WP:SHORTDESC does not clearly tell anyone that "Consensus is that all articles should have a short description". It argues that it is a good idea. It points to RFCs that tells us we shouldn't mass copy Wikidata's descriptions over, or just copy the first sentence of the lede. It gives lots of info on how to technically add the right magic syntax and how to troubleshoot it. But it does not contain "There's community consensus that all articles should have a short description. Here's how the consensus was arrived at." It leaves room for interpretation, and that room is sufficient for dissenters to legitimately oppose the addition of short descriptions. Or put another way, if I am ever challenged on adding a shortdesc to an article, I will have to rely on persuading the opposer that short descs are a good idea because I can't point to any clear statement that their opposition is overruled by community-wide consensus.
And provided I understand Lugnuts position correctly, they have looked at the issue and come to the conclusion that short descriptions are not a good idea, should be actively avoided for that reason, and is extremely unlikely now to change their mind absent new or changed factors. They are, I presume, willing to abide by community consensus even when they disagree with it; but I can't find sufficiently clear and unambiguous documentation of such to point them at. Either we have that and should make it clear; or we don't, and are actually threading on pretty thin ground. In the latter case I would actually suggest an immediate RFC with just that question just to make it absolutely clear that there is consensus for it. It's a bit overkill if Lugnuts is the only one objecting, but I would be surprised if that's the case. --Xover (talk) 08:22, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
Folks, move on. It makes no different to the encyclopedia if a handful of people don't like a short description in a handful pages. It's best not to get outraged when a good editor has a different view. It might have been possible to enter a dialog with the user and gently explain what short descriptions are about (and the fact that removing the short description from the article does not affect the fact the article will still have that description because it is at The Dead Lands (Q17639839)). However, that possibility won't happen because a rather confrontational approach was used. Johnuniq (talk) 06:39, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
Yep, it's all handled through Wikidata. This is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Saying it's on "millions of other articles" is a false-positive. Remember Persondata? That was on about 2 million articles. And then it was dumped. Much like this will be at some point in the future. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 07:58, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
There is a problem, namely that vandalism at Wikidata can cause extreme nonsense such as BLP violations to be prominently displayed in a way that editors at Wikipedia may not notice for months. The short description is mainly seen by mobile users and changes at Wikidata do not appear on watchlists (there are options to show such changes but they give a ghastly result and are off by default). Johnuniq (talk) 08:12, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Can we be clear that it's the contents of the page Wikipedia:Short description that "is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community"? Just because the help page isn't policy doesn't mean that the community has not created a consensus for adding {{short description}}.

In the face of strong community support, the outcome of Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 138 #Rfc: Remove description taken from Wikidata from mobile view of en-WP was an assurance that the Reading Team "have decided to turn the wikidata descriptions feature off for enwiki for the time being". Although that turned out to be an untruth, my suggestion in the discussion for a local override gained sufficient traction for a second RfC on how it would be implemented.

At Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 145 #RfC: Populating article descriptions magic word the outcome was "The consensus is #5 for the first question - To populate the magic words by starting with blanks, and allowing them to be filled in manually and/or by bot (as per usual bot procedures). The consensus is #2 for the second question - Show no description where the magic word does not exist."

There is clear consensus, from an RfC at VPP, to populate the magic words (i.e. SHORTDESC) by allowing them to be filled in manually. That is what is done when editor adds the template {{short description}} and I don't accept that any editor has the right to unilaterally go against that consensus. --RexxS (talk) 17:55, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree that the desireability of adding a short description is implicit in the consensus there, but there is a difference between "Here's how we think it should be done [if and when it is done]" and "This should be done to every single one of the 5+ million articles on the project, no exceptions and as soon as possible". I do not see the latter anywhere: not on this page, not on the two RFCs. Which means there's nowhere I can point those who object. --Xover (talk) 18:23, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: I don't agree that the distinction you're trying to draw is real. Look at: "The consensus is ... To populate the magic words by ... allowing them to be filled in manually and/or by bot". That means there is consensus to allow them to be filled in manually (or by bot). Filling them in implicitly requires them to be present on a page. If I fill in a short description manually and somebody reverts it, they are clearly going against that consensus. We shouldn't be agonising over the niceties and pandering to the wikilawyers. You only have to review those two RfCs to see the strength of argument and strength of feeling by the community. If you don't feel that the consensus applies to every one of the 6,819,662 articles on English Wikipedia, I suggest you find somewhere where it's stated that fully advertised RfCs conducted at VPP don't apply to all of them. --RexxS (talk) 19:10, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
@RexxS: There is consensus that infoboxes should be placed in the top right corner of articles. Try adding an infobox to every single article and see what happens.
I very much agree that there is an implication in the RFC that short descriptions should be added. But it's only an implication, it requires interpretation. The question asked in the RFC, and the conclusion of the close, is focused on how. It takes the desireability of short descriptions for granted. You would be in perfect compliance with that if a short description was added to only a single article, so long as you didn't copy the Wikidata description, didn't pull from the infobox, etc.
And I'll note that had the "nicities" been more carefully observed when constructing the RFC, we wouldn't have this problem right now. Dismissing dissent as "pandering to wikilawyers" when they are arguing from the gaping hole left in the framing of the RFC is not constructive (neither is the strawman in your last sentence, but I'm trying hard to just ignore that one). I agree with you, and I don't think your argument holds up. That someone who disagrees with the desireability or necessity of short descriptions is not convinced is not a surprise, it's inevitable. We'd better hope there won't be too many who do or this is going to turn into Yet Another Pointless Wikipedia Holy War (see "Infoboxes" above).
But given I've multiple times tried to tease out a better argument I may have missed, and your above is, then, presumably, the strongest I'm going to get; I'm going to stop beating this horse. My conclusion is that there is only weak (implicit) consensus for mass adding short descriptions; that the consensus does not stand up to challenge; and the issue will have to be re-discussed on each article where someone objects. Which I'm not going to bother with, personally (anyone reverting my short descriptions win by default). --Xover (talk) 20:05, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: I do on occasion add an infobox to an article. There is a policy governing that: MOS:INFOBOXUSE, "The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article. Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article." If I add an infobox and it's reverted, I'll go to the talk page and start the required discussion. There's no such policy for short descriptions. I have, however been intimately involved in all of the previous discussions, and I'm well aware of the arguments presented at the time. If I add a short description (as I'm allowed to) and it's reverted, I'll politely explain to the reverter the problems they enable and the consensus that exists; if that fails, I'll pursue DR at ANI in the first instance, because I'm absolutely sure that the overwhelming strength of feeling among anyone who's looked at the issue favours adding a short description. If I have to create a precedent that deliberate obstruction is disruptive editing, then I'll reluctantly invest my time in doing it. Let's hope common sense prevails and it doesn't come to that.
If you're looking for a stronger argument, feel free to copy this:

Are you aware that the short description visible on the Wikipedia app and by anyone searching using the mobile interface (i.e. well over half of our readers) will see the description provided by Wikidata?

If so, are you content to see LeBron James's article on the English Wikipedia have the short description "loves dick" with no obvious way for an editor on the English Wikipedia to fix that vandalism, which occurred on Wikidata? See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Short descriptions #WikiData's description visible.

Would you also be content to see Bernie Saunders Bernie Sanders described as "Jewish politician" on the English Wikipedia, despite it violating WP:ETHNICITY because Wikidata doesn't have that policy and has no reason to object to that description there?

If you don't want to see such problems grow, then the onus is on you to explain how editors here can prevent them. Those of us who want to avoid such problems have started moving control of short descriptions back to the English Wikipedia by using the template {{short description}}. The encyclopedia would benefit if you decided to join us, rather than opposing the work done.

--RexxS (talk) 21:39, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
@RexxS: The distinction I've attempted to make is that between an article and all articles. I wrote "try to add an infobox to all articles". You would quite literally have been blocked in short order if you did that, and the reason is the distinction between an article and all articles. Adding an infobox to one article is a matter for local consensus, but trying to add one to all articles is disruptive. My point is that due to the framing of the RFC, the same situation obtains for short descriptions: we have explicit consensus on how to use them (the "one article" case) but not that all articles should have them. That's only good enough until you get a "vocal minority" objecting. I'd give your proposed "DR" (ANI isn't DR; it's where you go when DR has failed miserably) 50/50 chances because of this distinction. You keep making arguments why local short descriptions are desireable, but that's beside the point (I'm familiar with them, and already convinced they are desireable). The issue is when we run into editors who do not believe they are desireable, who in fact think they are undesireable, and are not swayed by the desireability-based arguments. We have an implied consensus for adding short descriptions in general, but we lack an explicit consensus for adding one to all articles. But now I'm just repeating myself. Let's just say I very much hope there won't be more than an extremely few editors who find short descriptions objectionable and leave it at that. (PS. I'm sure Bernie Saunders would be more shocked to be described as a politician than Jewish ;D) --Xover (talk) 06:31, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
I can't imagine short descriptions ever inspiring the level of vituperation we have seen over infoboxes. The SD doesn't affect what the readers see at all, once they have found the wanted article. The problem is lack of awareness. Any editor with a watchlist will sooner or later see SDs being added to articles. Unless they followed or took part in the "Populating article descriptions magic word" RfC with its opaque title, they will probably wonder what's going on, and it's to be expected that some will start to ask questions: Bhunacat10 (talk), 10:22, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: "I wrote "try to add an infobox to all articles". You would quite literally have been blocked in short order if you did that". Not for the reasons you state. The only articles where it is disruptive to add an infobox are ones where a previous consensus at that article has decided not to have an infobox. There is nothing whatsoever to prevent any group of editors adding an infobox to all of the other articles. However, there is absolutely no prior consensus at any page not to have a short description, and there the analogy with infoboxes breaks down. As far as short descriptions are concerned, all articles have exactly the same status as any article, and there is no distinction to be made.
You'll find that ANI is WP:DR. If you read WP:CONDUCTDISPUTE you'll see "... the first step is to talk with the other editor at their user talk page in a polite, simple, and direct way. ... If discussion with the editor fails to resolve the issue, you may ask an administrator to evaluate the conduct of the user. You can ask for an administrator's attention at a noticeboard such as the administrators' noticeboard for incidents (ANI)." That is precisely what I outlined above. Given the massive amount of prior discussion and agreement, any intransigence is really unlikely to be found acceptable at ANI. the only question is whether it's worth investing time to create precedent, or just move on. I think you've convinced me there's a need to have that precedent.
The Bernie Sanders example – thank you for spotting my typo – is symptomatic of the lack of maturity of Wikidata's policies, and people need to be aware of that. Perhaps we need a FAQ that gives examples of the sort of problems that we're trying to circumvent, so that we don't get more garbage like needing "better anti-vandalism filters on Wikidata" being used as a defence by the uninformed. --RexxS (talk) 15:38, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Section break

Trying to blame the lack of anti-vandalism on one project to use that as the main (and only) reason to use it here is a weak argument. Bottom line, this has still not been vetted by the community, so the vetting process is the next logical step. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 14:47, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
@Lugnuts: I really don't think you have any comprehension of what you're talking about, or if you do, you fail to express yourself in a comprehensible way. Wikidata has a problem with vandalism principally because the number of editors active in patrolling for that vandalism is too few for the number of items needed to be patrolled. The reason why we don't want to use the 'description' field from Wikidata on English Wikipedia is not only that is easy to vandalise, but more importantly that it is impossible for me to programmatically filter out likely problematical text, as I can with ordinary Wikidata statements, where I can arrange to reject unreferenced data.
So what is "Trying to blame the lack of anti-vandalism on one project to use that as the main (and only) reason to use it here" supposed to mean? That's incomprehensible.
Bottom line is that the addition of short descriptions to articles is allowed in the manner in which it is currently done by a community-wide RfC at VPP. You've confused the "vetting process" for the text of the help page Wikipedia:Short description with the community consensus to add short descriptions. It's been explained to you what problems can arise if we don't add our own local short descriptions to articles on Wikipedia. You've been referred to the prior discussions that established consensus for the addition of short descriptions locally, and the way in which it may be done. If you don't think that's sufficient, feel free to start an RfC on the matter and see where that gets you. --RexxS (talk) 21:02, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
"I really don't think you have any comprehension of what you're talking about" - Please stop with your personal attacks. Bottom line is that this has NOT been vetted by the community. So until then, it should not be used. Thanks. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 08:51, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Have you still not read MOS:LISTGAP? Is it really so difficult to show some thought for those less fortunate than yourself?
As for your laughable attempt to turn a genuine criticism of your incomprehensible comment into a "personal" attack: I'll just remind you that on Wikipedia comptence is required. BOTTOM LINE IS THAT THE CONTENTS OF THE INFORMATION PAGE HAS NOT BEEN VETTED BY THE COMMUNITY. Big deal. The community has given consent to the process of adding short descriptions to articles, and has approved the methods by which it should be added. Over 800,000 articles have a short description and every single one is an improvement, but there's still a long way to go. We don't need thoughtless obstructionism to make the task harder and the encyclopedia worse. --RexxS (talk) 14:07, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Wah, this is a very angry crowd of Wikipedians here. I too was removing this template for a long time, and probably will continue to do so, because I don't see the reason for it being placed into every single article. You see, Category:Articles with short description does have some articles that don't carry it, yet they are still connected. Which begs the question, why we need to put this template and disrupt the project that way if its already included into an article somehow?--Biografer (talk) 15:26, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
In the absence of any reason not to place the template on every article, you're just going to be edit-warring to satisfy your own baseless prejudices. If you can't be bothered to read the many places where the need for this template was discussed and agreed, I don't see why anybody should waste time trying to educate you. --RexxS (talk) 16:06, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Biografer, and anyone else with similar intentions, Before you continue with deleting short descriptions because you don't like them (as opposed to cases where you can convincingly argue that no short description is needed, and generate a local consensus to omit for each specific article), I suggest that you fully educate yourself on the reasons for having one, and the history behind them, unless you think that a test case at ANI for disruptive editing would be useful to the encylopedia. If you still disagree with short descriptions after reading the background, you can start yet another RfC. There is a possibility that after a few more weeks of discussion, sufficient well presented arguments involving facts previously unknown to Wikipedians might achieve a consensus to deprecate short descriptions, or you could try to convince DannyH (WMF) to stop WMF using short descriptions from any source in search results and elsewhere. It is not worth the effort to deal with isolated cases of ignorance or misunderstanding, but any campaign to delete short descriptions will have to be responded to. We are not adding short descriptions because we have nothing better to do, but to protect our credibility as an independent and reasonably reliable source of information with ethical constraints on the content we offer. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:07, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
You see, Category:Articles with short description does have some articles that don't carry it, yet they are still connected. That is because the {{short description}} template is embedded in another template, such as Template:Infobox settlement. This cannot be done for all articles, only ones for which a description can be generated from the infobox. Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:19, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Re "why we need": All pages have a short description, some of them defined at enwiki and some at Wikidata. The large number of readers who use mobile devices often see the short description. Vandalism at Wikidata is hard to detect yet can prominently display WP:BLP violations and other junk. By contrast, vandalism at enwiki is usually quickly fixed. Johnuniq (talk) 00:08, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Lugnuts, If you are so convinced that there is insufficient consensus for adding short descriptions to all articles where they may be useful in search results, please feel free to start a wide RfC to prove your point. The available consensus and history of this issue seems to be sufficient evidence for quite a large number of editors that wide ranging consensus and actual necessity for adding short descriptions to most Wikipedia articles exists. Furthermore, while it may be debatable whether there is sufficient widespread consensus to add a short description to all articles (we are after all debating it right here), I have seeen no evidence of consensus against this practice. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:22, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
I have seeen no evidence of consensus against this practice. That is important to keep in mind in all discussions regarding this. While I have argued that there is insufficient direct consensus for imposing a local short description on every single article on the project (my objection goes to scale and to sufficient mandate to overrule local consensus), the consensus which does exist strongly implies it and there is an absence of any consensus against. There are some individual editors opposed, but the burden of proof is clearly on them to gather an actionable consensus against this. --Xover (talk) 09:56, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Xover, The RfC actually does go into the use of local consensus that a short description is not needed on specific articles, or even classes of article. There are probably a large number of articles, though probably also a small percentage of the total, where the title is adequately descriptive and a short description cannot easily be composed that adds sufficiently useful information to be a good thing. My recommendation is that if you can't think of a useful short description immediately, don't waste time - move on to the next, but don't remove one that is OK but not great just because you can't think of a better one. Bhunacat10, provides a few excellent examples just below of cases where a useful short description does not spring to mind. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:48, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
If this were in fact an RfC I'd go Partial support. The short description is of most value to searchers on mobile when the topic is a name: the name of a person, place, company, book, species, theory... In contrast, the SD can add little to a title that defines a topic, like History of Europe, Health in Nepal or Non-English press of the Communist Party USA. So the effort to add SDs should be applied selectively, and if the main concern is over BLP violations on Wikidata, then the priority for adding local SDs should go to BLP articles. Indiscriminately adding SDs to any & all articles to meet the 2 million target, irrespective of value added, is a diversion of editorial effort. I'd add that the evangelical tone sometimes seen around this project, relying on an old RfC found in a bog, is unlikely to win many friends: Bhunacat10 (talk), 10:25, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Pbsouthwood We (me, Bhunacat10 and Lugnuts) aren't removing them because as you said we don't like them, we removing them because we have a valid reason. Those reasons were thoroughly explained to you all in this discussion, my talkpage and many other places (at which I wasn't present, but many of you were). The concern that I personally had (and still probably will) is that it is disruptive. We block editors for such actions, but now, wollah, its perfectly fine now to disrupt a project to achieve 2 million mark. And what would be the end result? DannyH (WMF) will give us a pat on the back? I'm not saying that they are useless, but the way how we do it, is.--Biografer (talk) 16:31, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Just to say I haven't removed any short descriptions and don't support such unconstructive action: Bhunacat10 (talk), 20:14, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Bhunacat10, Which old RfC found in a bog are you referring to here? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:39, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
Pbsouthwood Why, this one from December 2017, titled "Populating article descriptions magic word", which is being presented as the main justification for saying there is community support for adding SDs to all articles. To me, neither the title nor the preamble adequately conveyed the full import, and there were only about 10 votes for "option 5", To populate the magic words by starting with blanks, and allowing them to be filled in manually and/or by bot which was deemed to have the consensus: Bhunacat10 (talk), 09:30, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
Bhunacat10, I see. Or rather I don't see what the bog reference means, but one of the things about Wikipedia is that no-one is obliged to take part in a consensus generating discussion, but we are all expected to follow a consensus if one is deemed by the closer to occur amongst those who spend the time and effort to take part, or to challenge it formally. I have seen a few complaints and a few informal claims of insufficient consensus, but no formal challenge (That would be an RfC). · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 21:00, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
Biografer, we do not dispute that you are removing short descriptions for a reason, but we do question and dispute the validity and legitimacy of that reason. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:39, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
Bhunacat10 That is exactly what I wanted to point out. Maybe we should use SDs only on BLPs and only on high importance ones, such as Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, etc. Somebody who is a controversial individual who currently exists. I don't think that using SDs for academics will fly. I will give you couple of reasons why: From my experience, I see that vandals care only to vandalize politicians or sportspeople, but not academics. When it comes to academics, I only noticed couple of times when a subject rewrote the whole article as a resume. Fortunately, those were on my watch list and were restored to the original form. An example here. My other concern with those templates is the fact that we already have a ton that we use on almost every article. We have {{infobox}}, {{DEFAULTSORT}}, templates to use specific language of English and templates to use specific manual of style. Adding to it, {{navbox}}es in sports, political and geographical articles and it becomes a burden to add another one just because DannyH (WMF) decided that it will be cool to do! As I mentioned earlier, I am not 100% against it, but we don't need to use it on every article.--Biografer (talk) 16:56, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
For example, Hotwiki continues to use it on Philippine TV shows, which will never be vandalized from Wikidata, because no vandal cares about some foreign language TV show. Its useless in those cases. In order to do what consensus wants, there should be logic. With TV shows and academics, I see no logic.--Biografer (talk) 16:56, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
There are some editors adding these templates to articles in batches of thousands at a time with automation of some kind. There's no quality checking going on. They get added, typos and other mistakes, all for the good of this project. How can that be a positive here? I've remove them as I see fit as this project has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. I don't see any of the pro short-description users getting this thoroughly vetted. I wonder why that is? Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 17:21, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Agreed with typos and other inaccuracies.--Biografer (talk) 18:44, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Lugnuts, Would you mind defining thouroughly vetted by the community, and specify exactly where this is stipulated as a requirement and where the responsibility for doing so is explained. Once we have that clear we can look at why and where it has or has not been done. Or you could just start the process for doing what you think should be done, but the explanation would be helpful.
Could you link to some examples of automated batch additions with typos and innaccuracies, so we can know what you are referring to? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:14, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
I don't know about typos, but the whole process of meatbotting is highly discouraged in this project as we all aware, except for those that semi automatically add short description, which is appalling. If its ok to add this template without consensus vetting on it, then its perfectly ok for people to remove this template from academics and TV shows which are not prone to vandalism on Wikiidata. Apparently, some rules can be broken as long as you are on top of the food chain.--Biografer (talk) 16:17, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
It's untrue that "academics and TV shows are not prone to vandalism on Wikiidata". You can take a look at the Wikidata vandalism dashboard from day-to-day and see the broad range of topics that get vandalised. There's a TV actor whose description was changed to "has either ran away to join an Amish community or has joined the FBI". Here's a character from The Ren & Stimpy Show having his description vandalised. This change to the description of a French pressure group of maths teachers ought to dispel the notion that academics are immune. Anyone who checks that dashboard regularly will soon realise that vandalism has no boundaries. --RexxS (talk) 18:23, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
Biografer, Please define the term "meatbotting" which you claim is highly discouraged, as I am not familiar with it, and it does not come up in a search.
I don't see the relevance of your remark about breaking rules in this context, as we have yet to establish which rules, if any, have been broken, and by whom. I would also point out that WP:IAR exists, and does not refer to any food chains, only to improving the encyclopedia, but I doubt that it applies here either. One could also mention straw man arguments and red herrings, but why bother. I repeat my suggestion that if you think the wider consensus would support your viewpoint, go ahead and open an RfC. I do not think it is necessary, so I will not, but will take part if there is one. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 20:40, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: WP:MEATBOT should not be unfamiliar to anyone involved in large-scale semi-automated editing. Without otherwise commenting on this issue, I'll reemphasise that part of the above assertion: this kind of editing is covered by the bot policy, and the bot policy requires explicit consensus for bot edits (that is, it is strongly discouraged wiithout going through BRFA or equivalent). If there are actual concerns about high-volume, low-quality additions of short descriptions, as has been implied but not substantiated in this thread, then those very much need to be addressed. --Xover (talk) 21:16, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: Haven't been very involved in this thread, but see User:DannyS712 bot/tasks tasks 4 and 20 (both approved and completed). --DannyS712 (talk) 21:20, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
@Xover:, Thanks for the link, it answers my question adequately. I searched for "meatbotting" which returned no hits. As it happens, I am not involved in large-scale semi-automated editing, and was not familiar with the term, hence my question. I find it difficult to respond usefully when the terms used are unfamiliar, so I look them up. When there is no search result, I ask the poster to explain. For reasons best known to themself, the poster did not link to the explanation, but went off at a tangent. Communication requires some cooperation.
I agree with you that "if there are actual conserns about high volume, low quality additions of short descriptions" they should be addressed. I am unconcerned by high volume acceptable quality additions, and would be delighted to see high-volume, high-quality additions. It is up to the complainants to specify any high-volume low-quality additions in order to make the complaint actionable. Unspecific accusations are difficult to check. Using an unspecific claim of high-volume low-quality additions as a motivation to remove short descriptions of unspecified quality is unhelpful. Removing specific low quality short descriptions is acceptable, but in no way a substitute for improving them. Short descriptions are content, and may be added by any editor. Likewise they may be improved by any editor. In some cases deletion is an improvement, but it should be explained why it is an improvement in a way that actually adresses the point, so the next editor can understand the reason for deletion is rational. Disagreements can be discussed on the talk page until local consensus is achieved for that article. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:19, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: This is not for me to define the term. Lugnuts had said that some editors adding those short description templates with an automation of some kind which can be referred as "meatbotting".--Biografer (talk) 23:47, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
Biografer, If you make up a term and expect anyone to take it seriously, it is for you to define. Your explanation above is vague and I for one do not accept that it can be taken seriously as it stands. To determine whether a type of action is highly discouraged it is necessary to understand what that type of action really is. The use of vague and undefined terms in a disparaging way may be construed as casting aspersions while attempting to obfuscate to avoid consequences. I dont know whether you are doing this, or whether it is intentional, but it passes the duck test for me. Please try to make your points in widely understood terms, particularly when accusing editors of actions you claim to be against policy or guidelines, and be specific about which policies or guidance they contravene.
(S)ome editors adding these short descriptions with an automation of some kind is also an extremely vague accusation. Unless Lugnuts can be more specific about what kind of automation and who has been using it and where and when it was used it remains an unactionable aspersion. Bear in mind that the potential use of automation and semi-automation were considered and debated in the RfC as part of the option that was eventually accepted. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:45, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Pbsouthwood Where is the link that proves that it was discussed? How come throughout the whole discussion here, I have not seen a single link pointing to a relevant discussion? As for duck test, I think you are aspiring something against me, but what? I don't know. Are you assuming that I am someone else? If so, maybe you have a prove of that? :) I assure you though I am not accusing anyone of anything (yet) and there are no rule that I can think of that defines my actions as an act of aspersion. I was just defining Lugnuts' comment and I don't see anything that goes against our policies here.--Biografer (talk) 09:14, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Biografer, Link to prove that what was discussed? Please try to make your comments and questions unambiguous. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:20, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
The duck test does not necessarily refer to sockpuppetry, which is the mistaken conclusion I am assuming you have reached in the absence of clarity in your query. It generally means that if something looks like evidence for a thing it may be because it is evidence for that thing. See also Occam's razor. In this case the thing is casting veiled aspersions. Also you failed to define your terminology as requested. Lugnuts is probably capable of clarifying their own statements better than you, since they actually know what they wanted to say.
Who else might I be assuming you are other than yourself? I have made no suggestion that you might be a sockpuppet, and so far I have seen nothing to lead me to that belief. Also I really don't care. I am responding to what I see on the assumption that you are a unique editor using the pseudonym Biografer, no more, no less. As to whether or not you are intending to cast aspersions, or whether you are effectively doing so, I recommend looking up the words and thinking about their meanings. I am not convinced that you are comprehending what I am saying, as some of your replies are somewhat unexpected. If you don't understand what I am saying, you are allowed to ask me to rephrase or simplify, and I will try to do that. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:20, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Pbsouthwood You perfectly know what link I am talking about. The one where you discussed the use of the DS templates. Is this clear enough?--Biografer (talk) 11:39, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Biografer, I assume that by DS templates you refer to {{short description}}, as I have no idea what "DS templates" would mean otherwise. I have discussed the use of the short description template and related matters at many places on Wikipedia, so no, not clear enough. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 12:51, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Pbsouthwood Then give me every discussion that you had (don't worry, I have plenty of time to read through them). :)--Biografer (talk) 17:21, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Biografer, you can find them for yourself if you really want to read them. However, I suggest that you read everything at Wikipedia:Short_description#History and all the discussions linked from that section first. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 19:49, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
This is the most relevant discussion: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 145#RfC: Populating article descriptions magic word, and is the RfC referenced in Bear in mind that the potential use of automation and semi-automation were considered and debated in the RfC as part of the option that was eventually accepted.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:24, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
Are we done with this, or does someone wish to provide evidence for an actionable complaint? Cheers. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:07, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: No, we are not done. I read every single discussion here and found no evidence to support that there was an agreement. Or, rather say, there was, but people who opposed it were ignored. The thing is is that me and many others here, see it as a disruptive technique. Instead of editors focusing on creating articles, we have editors creating edit conflicts for those who work hard on improving and creating more content. As for Wikipedia app, while I don't use it, I do enter it to read via mobile, I do not, do not see any improvement in using it. For example, I go to Matthias Schömann-Finck article via mobile, it doesn't have short description, but via mobile it provides it still. Unless, you implying that it is because sports and actor infoboxes are already imbedded with this template? The same goes with Merryn Tawhai.--Biografer (talk) 18:25, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
@Biografer: Taking up on your example: the article Matthias Schömann-Finck currently has no short description on the English Wikipedia. And yet, when I open Wikipedia in a browser on my mobile phone and search Wikipedia for 'Matthias Sch' I see the suggestion 'Matthias Schömann-Finck' with the words 'German rower' underneath. Similarly, when I look at the Matthias Schömann-Finck article on the Wikipedia app, it displays 'German rower' immediately below the article title. The words 'German rower' are fetched from Matthias Schömann-Finck (Q3299851) on Wikidata. That means we have content on the English Wikipedia being provided from another site, with no indication whatsoever of how to correct any errors in (or vandalism to) that content, nor any means of supplying a reliable source to verify the content. That's a pretty clear breach of our WP:V policy, and what WP:Short descriptions is trying to do is rectify that problem. When a short description is created on the English Wikipedia, it is used instead of the Wikidata description. If an error or vandalism occurs, it is quite obvious to any editor how to correct it here. In addition, all content here is subject to our policies such as WP:BLP, many of which are lacking at Wikidata. Another athlete's description on Wikidata was changed to "loves dick" and I'd really rather not see that offered to our readership with no obvious path to rectifying it. I'm having difficulty understanding why you think that trying to circumvent the problems foisted on us by the developers is a bad thing. Could you explain which part of our efforts to move control of our content from Wikidata to here is causing you so many concerns, please? --RexxS (talk) 19:56, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
@RexxS: I already stated numerous of times what concerns I have with it, yet you and many others ignore it. I can again explain how useless and disruptive this thing is, how an editor who wants to peacefully write an article here is being bombarded by edit conflicts because somebody is trying to insert a stupid template which in my (and many other editors') opinion does nothing to solve vandalism, and in fact might even bring more. I completely understand that inserting phrases such as "loves dick" breaches our WP:V and WP:BLP, but this template wont prevent it. The best solution to the problem would have been to introduce those policies to Wikidata and/or send in a group of admins to patrol it there. Why can't we do it? We have already over 50 sysadmins and twice as much of admins. We can send a half of them to Wikidata, and they will patrol vandalism there. But again, nobody here wants to listen to me, so my suggestions are flying at the wall, because people here are not listening!--Biografer (talk) 20:25, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
I don't see where you have addressed the central problem: if Matthias Schömann-Finck has the short description template and someone changes it to "loves dick", that edit will be noticed by people watching the article and by ClueBot which will probably revert it before anyone else. By contrast, if the article does not have that template, vandalism at Wikidata will be displayed on the article and may not be noticed for a month. Johnuniq (talk) 01:02, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: It will be noticed regardless. ClueBot was known for reverting vandalism without this template. And no, it didn't took ClueBot a month to revert something. That, is a complete BS. If the problem is with Wikidata vandalism then why can't we move half of our admins to Wikidata? Or better yet, disconnect our sister project altogether? Like we already have wikipedia.org, we can create a separate wikidata.org and send those that prefer Wikidata over there. Ok, how about you will show me an example where a Wikipedia article was saved due to the use of short description?--Biografer (talk) 01:54, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
Biografer, There is no ClueBot in WikiData; what Johnuniq is saying is that the lack of anti-vandalism patrollers on wikidata means it can take months or years to revert simple vandalism (which is certainly the case). On here, Filter 384 would have stopped that edit adding "loves dick" before it even got saved. WikiData does not have the anti-vandalism bots, the anti-vandalism filters, the anti-vandalism patrollers, the anti-vandalism admins.
On move half of our admins to Wikidata: if you can convince the Wikidata community to make half our admins admins there, and convince those admins to patrol Wikidata, please do so. Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:40, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
Or better yet, disconnect our sister project altogether? This is precisely what we are trying to do by adding local short descriptions. By adding local short descriptions, descriptions are pulled from en.wikipedia.org instead of wikidata.org, i.e disconnecting enwiki from wikidata. (the WMF won't allow full disconnecting of short descriptions from wikidata until 2 million descriptions are added) Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:47, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
I'm not becoming an admin at Wikidata in order to patrol this lot. Too many legit maintenance edits to skip past. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:10, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
Biografer Your invocation of WP:IDHT strikes me as somewhat ironic. If you truly read all the linked discussions, I must ask if you understand the consensus policy, or perhaps have difficulty understanding the English language, or maybe do not understand the differing policies and independence of English Wikipedia and Wikidata, and that an adim on one is not automatically an admin on the other. I repeat, If you don't agree with the current consensus, your remedy is to open an RfC to try to clarify or change it. If the "many other editors" who you claim share this opinion actually exist and have a convincing alternative, then you may succeed. Try to hear this and understand, or if you still don't understand, go and do something constuctive that you do understand. If you are reported for disruptively deleting short descriptions you are likely to be blocked or topic banned. I do not need to do it myself, and would prefer not to, as I consider myself slightly involved. I also point out that the occasional edit conflict will happen, and is in no way a justification for trying to stop other editors fom making legitimate edits. I have done a fairly large number of edits, and have so far never had an edit conflict with someone adding or editing a short description · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 14:14, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
Pbsouthwood Maybe I don't understand the differing policies and independence of English Wikipedia and Wikidata, and that an admin on one is not automatically an admin on the other, but I fairy familiar with policies and English. Fine, if its just to reach the pathetic 2 million, just to show a WMF a middle finger (literally of course), then I will wait. As for the comment that was made by Redrose64, may I ask, we have some legit edits here too. So your point?...--Biografer (talk) 15:39, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
I think the point that Redrose64 was making is that the recent changes feed on English Wikipedia is slow enough for a patroller to keep track of the changes and probably spot vandalism, especially given the large (relative to other projects) number of editors here who give their time sifting through the changes. On Wikidata there are lot more high-speed bot edits and attempting to patrol the Wikidata recent changes is just not feasible, especially given the much smaller base of editors who are active on Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 16:04, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
RexxS Fair point, but just like here, we can omit some patrol features. Like, I usually exclude talkpage comments here.--Biografer (talk) 16:48, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
Biografer, To clarify: Wikidata and hundreds of Wikipedias are hosted by WMF on the same hardware, using similar software. Some editors are active on Wikidata and one or more wikipedias, possibly on several other projects as well. WMF has a set of conditions of use which are common to all WMF projects. The internal policies of English Wikipedia and Wikidata may incidentally coincide occasionally, but they are independent projects. As an analogy, The US and Russia are both nations based on the planet Earth, there may be similar laws in both forbidding theft and murder, but they are not identical, or enforced by the same agencies, and cannot be changed by the same processes, as they are independent of each other. Russians would not appreciate US citizens sending over a task force to enforce US laws in Russia. Wikidatans would similarly not appreciate English Wikipedia sending over a task force to enforce English Wikipedia rules on Wikidata. The conditions imposed by WMF are not something that Wikipedians or Wikidatans can change, like the laws of nature that Americans and Russians cannot change. The analogy is not exact, but maybe you get the picture. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:05, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Section break 2

"There is a problem, namely that vandalism at Wikidata can cause extreme nonsense such as BLP violations to be prominently displayed in a way that editors at Wikipedia may not notice for months. " The solution to which is to display the Wikidata description more permanently on this project; not to replicate it in this benighted template, that merely replicates the recently-deprecated 'persondata' template, with all the problems inherent in that template, that led to its deprecation and removal. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:56, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Except that the purpose of persondata was to avoid putting infoboxes in biographies. Whereas the purpose of this template is to fix the problem of developers forcing content into the English Wikipedia from an unverifiable source derived from a project lacking the protection that biographies enjoy on English Wikipedia. The only thing the templates have in common is that everybody would be happy if we could do without them. --RexxS (talk) 18:54, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
I don't know where you get "the purpose of persondata was to avoid putting infoboxes in biographies", but that's not the case. Short descriptions on Wikipedia are no more sourced than descriptions on Wikidata, and Wikidata has a BLP policy. We can - and should - do away with this template today. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:27, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
Persondata was promoted so that opponents of infoboxes could claim that the metadata was being supplied elsewhere in the article. That's a simple fact.
If the content of the short description template isn't sourced then any editor on Wikipedia can correct it to something that is sourced, making use of the references available in the article.
If the content forced into enwp from the Wikidata description field doesn't correspond to the sources in the article, then many (perhaps most) editors on Wikipedia will not know how to fix it on Wikidata. Nor is there an obvious link to the appropriate place to make the edit.
If anybody tries describe Bernie Sanders as a "Jewish politician" on enwp, our policy at WP:BLPCAT dictates that it should be removed: "Categories regarding religious beliefs ... should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief ... in question, and the subject's beliefs ... are relevant to their public life or notability, according to reliable published sources. ... These principles apply equally to lists, navigation templates, and Infobox statements (referring to living persons within any Wikipedia page) that are based on religious beliefs"
If somebody describes him as a "Jewish politician" on Wikidata, the equivalent protection does not exist, and that description will show up on enwp without any guaranteed recourse available. That's unacceptable. The BLP policy on Wikidata is nowhere near mature enough to support importing content from Wikidata without any means of locally overriding it. Unfortunately, the template is still needed here. --RexxS (talk) 19:57, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
That might be how a few misguided individuals chose to misrepresent Personadata, in furtherance of their own ends. It was never its purpose.
If the content of a Wikidata description isn't sourced then anyone can correct it to something that is sourced, making use of the references available in the item.
"forced into enwp" Please spare us such emotive hyperbole.
Bernie Sanders is described in Wikidata as a "United States Senator from Vermont".
Wikidata's BLP policy requires that "descriptions... need to be neutral and well-sourced". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:28, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
That was the only use ever made of Persondata in my experience. Perhaps you found other uses?
If the content of a Wikidata description isn't sourced and its content shows up in English Wikipedia, how does an enwp editor know where to go to correct it?
"forced into enwp" Please spare us such emotive hyperbole. No. I won't spare you. I thought you knew the history of the WMF devs making the decision to add a subtitle to articles in mobile view and on the Wikipedia app, as well as a description for the search results on mobile? I thought you knew that they made the decision to draw that description from an unsourceable field in Wikidata? I thought you knew they that took no heed of the objections raised and went ahead and did it anyway? Those descriptions were forced into the English Wikipedia, plain and simple. There are no other words for it, and there is no hyperbole.
Bernie Sanders is described in Wikidata as a "United States Senator from Vermont". Today, he is. But Wikidata is the database anybody can edit. Tomorrow he could be described in Wikidata as a "Jewish politician" and there's very little we could do about it except edit-war. We have no policy on our side because there is no requirement on Wikidata to exclude statements of religious belief when the subject hasn't self-identified or when they are irrelevant to their notability.
A few weeks ago a prominent athlete's description showed up in the Wikipedia app as "loves dick". It remained that way for a considerable time until an enwp editor who knew where that description came from was able to find and revert the vandalism on Wikidata. The same change to the local short description stored on the enwp article would have been picked up and reverted by Cluebot within a minute. Without the ability to override what is imported from Wikidata with local content, we would be at the mercy of Wikidata vandals. For now, this template has to stay. --RexxS (talk) 01:04, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
So run Cluebot on Wikidata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:02, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Meanwhile...

... over on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Short descriptions#Automatically generating short descriptions for species articles, we have, for example (and I quote verbatim), this:

Download the wikitext for an article in Category:Articles with 'species' microformats

Run the regex string (?<=(. a | an ))(.*?)(?=(\.|,| which | known | found | describe|<ref|\(| native | grow| that | within | from | cause)) on the wikitext

Take the first match generated by this regex, ignore/discard the rest.

This produces the basic short description now we need to clean it up.

Start loop

Run the regex \[\[[^\]]*\| to identify the left side of piped links.

If any matches were found, remove the matched text and repeat the loop

End loop

Run the above loop three more times, replacing the regex lines with the lines below to strip out links, bold, and Italics

Run the regex \[

Run the regex \]

Run the regex [']{2,}

If the string is "Gram-negative" replace it with "Gram-negative bacteria"

Check whether there's a space in the string

if there is not

Add the article to a list for carbon-based intelligence to deal with, then skip the article

Check the length of the string

if length in characters > 70

Add the article to a list for carbon-based intelligence to deal with, then skip the article

else, add {{shortdescription|(the remaining regex match)}} to the article. Include attribution in the edit summary.


That palaver is better than "use the Wikidata description" how, exactly? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:38, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

For a start, it doesn't produce the description "loves dick". --RexxS (talk) 01:15, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
Vast vast majority of Wikidata descriptions are automatically generated, probably with less care. Galobtter (pingó mió) 08:47, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

1,000,000 articles

Noticed that we just passed this milestone. Congrats and thanks to all. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:26, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Now let's double that! Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:03, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Replace with wikidata?

Why not? It's ridiculous to be populating this template from wikidata, just to have two copies. We should load directly. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:30, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: One reason why not is that the "description" field on Wikidata is unsuitable to use as a source for content on the English Wikipedia. Another reason is that Wikidata doesn't offer the protection for biographies that English Wikipedia does. When Wikidata has descriptions that are sourceable and has a BLP policy comparable to that on English Wikipedia, you'll find no objections to loading directly from me. Until then, this kind of rush to insert unsuitable content just fuels the paranoia of all those who would gladly see no content drawn from Wikidata at all. Have you forgotten Wikipedia:Wikidata/2018 Infobox RfC so quickly? --RexxS (talk) 19:19, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Maybe related, maybe not - is this edit useful? -- Begoon 16:57, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
    @Begoon: The best way to look at these sort of questions is to consider what happens when the short description is used. One of three things can occur: (1) On the Wikipedia app, the article List of video games notable for negative reception has a subtitle "Wikimedia list article"; (2) When searching Wikipedia on the mobile platform for "List of v ", one suggestion is List of video games notable for negative reception with the line "Wikimedia list article" beneath it; (3) The annotated link to List of video games notable for negative reception looks like this:
    I don't think any of those results is particularly useful, because the title already clearly indicates what the article is, so the short descriptions aren't going to help anyone decide if that is the article they were looking for. On the other hand, I don't think that the {{short description}} is harmful, and it does protect the article from vandalism originating from Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 17:58, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
    Thanks, RexxS - you got me with "it does protect the article from vandalism originating from Wikidata", so I'm all in favour of it now. Would {{short description|}} (empty) "serve that purpose" too? -- Begoon 18:11, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
    Unfortunately, the magic word inside the template {{SHORTDESC:}} doesn't do anything without a value (the same as {{short description|none}}), so we then get the description pulled from Wikidata (naturally, that's "Wikimedia list article" for these sort of articles). Have a look at Special:Permalink/901282407 which shows the effect of omitting the description from {{short description}}. Best to leave an innocuous description in these cases, IMHO. --RexxS (talk) 21:19, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
    A shame. I thought I had read somewhere that infoboxes that pull parameter data from wikidata could be prevented from doing so by entering local blank parameters, |some_param=, so wondered if this might work the same way - I suppose it's different. -- Begoon 06:52, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
    You did read that. The first module I coded to retrieve data from Wikidata for infoboxes had exactly that behaviour: omitting the parameter fetched from Wikidata and setting the parameter blank meant it did not appear in the infobox. Unfortunately editors are accustomed to a blank parameter and the absence of the parameter producing the same results. That meant that I got so many questions why it didn't produce what they expected that I gave in and changed the behaviour to use |fetchwikidata= and |suppressfields=, and made sure that a blank parameter gave the same results as no parameter. Presumably the devs who wrote {{SHORTDESC:}} had similar experiences. --RexxS (talk) 01:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Need for more convincing arguments

I have tentatively joined this project and have been adding short descriptions mainly to my own articles. I am nevertheless a bit doubtful about the effectiveness of this enterprise and have not been able to find much evidence of how the short descriptions facilitate searches, etc., in practice. Can anyone point be to more extensive Wikimedia backgrgound on this or indeed on any non-Wikimedia comments on the usefulness of short descriptions.--Ipigott (talk) 16:39, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Whether or not short descriptions are useful is not really the point. What counts is that they exist regardless of opinions here, and they are editable by anyone with very little oversight at Wikidata. A short description is only important for people reading Wikipedia from a mobile device. On a gadget, people find things by typing a couple of words of a subject into a search bar. They are presented with a list of titles matching those words. Each title also shows the short description (only the portion of it that fits into a short space). The short description is very helpful to decide which title is about the subject of interest. However, it is also a great way to display abuse entered by a vandal. When that is done here, it is quickly reverted and the vandal blocked. When it is done at Wikidata, no one may notice for a month because active editors generally do not use mobile devices. Therefore it is better that short descriptions are entered at Wikipedia because they override any description at Wikidata. Johnuniq (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for these explanations. Can you be more specific about the portion "that fits into a short spece", for example in terms of the actual number of characters? It would be useful to know how much of a short description is actually being displayed on mobile devices.--Ipigott (talk) 07:14, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I have not tested exactly what happens but I suspect the number of characters displayed is dependent on the width of the screen of the device used. I have tested on a large phone and more is displayed when the text is displayed in landscape mode. See here for some results. Johnuniq (talk) 07:44, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
That's very useful. It seems to me to be important to convey the essence of the article in the first few words. I came across this Wikimedia page. It looks to me as if it needs to be updated. Do you know whether the Wikipedia EN short descriptions take precedence over those in Wikidata for mobile search purposes? Is anyone ensuring the Wikipedia short descriptions are added to Wikidata if descriptions in English are missing?--Ipigott (talk) 15:24, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
The descriptions here do take precedence over Wikidata, so every description added that replaces a Wikidata description reduces the attack surface for vandals. If there is no description anywhere, by default User:Galobtter/Shortdesc helper will add the description to Wikidata too. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:35, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
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