Wikipedia talk:Short description/Archive 7

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Biography SDs

I usually add birth/death dates to SDs on biographies, if there is nothing else that seems significant and the SD is otherwise very short - e.g. "French author (born 1949)". And I frequently see dates in other SDs. For the first time (to my knowledge), I was reverted here with the edit description "DOB is unnecessary for short description". Any comments? MB 16:04, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

It is very useful, especially if there are multiple people with similar names. SDs are for disambiguation of similarly-named articles. How better to tell the 1649 Henry Williams from the 1949 Henry R. Williams? (Made-up names, but you get the idea.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:29, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

@MB and Jonesey95: It's almost always a good idea to add a birth date to the SD to help disambiguation. Unfortunately in the case of Anju Kurian, the date of birth was entirely unsourced. With popular young actors you'll find ardent fans doing their own research and adding personal details like date of birth without any reliable source. You'll also find that some actors don't want to reveal their date of birth – and some have even been known to lie about it! That's a recipe for edit-wars, and the reversion was quite possibly part of the ongoing dispute about whether she was born in 1992 or 1993 (check the article history). --RexxS (talk) 23:05, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

RexxS, I grabbed the dob from the infobox without looking further in the article for a source. I certainly have no objection to removing it as unsourced (I see you removed it from the infobox for that reason). But in this case, the editor reverted the SD but left it in the infobox; I don't they were objecting based on sourcing. So for the general case, should we add a bullet in the Wikipedia:Short description#Content that birth/death dates are usually appropriate for SDs or just leave this up to individual editors and/or projects to discuss elsewhere? MB 23:25, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

@MB: it wasn't obvious that it was unsourced until I dredged out the Internet Archive for the first reference, so you couldn't be blamed for grabbing the year from the infobox. The editor who reverted you definitely wasn't reverting on grounds of sourcing. Judging by their contributions, they may be a fan, or merely misguided about the purpose of SDs. I'd tend to leave it up to editors' good sense about what to put into the SD, so it's probably best to add detail to guidance only if we come across the same problem regularly. Keep up the good work! --RexxS (talk) 23:40, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

{{annotated link}}

I didn’t see any awareness of other uses of short description in this article. Should they be documented? Might they influence which pages have a short description? Or, are these other uses incorrect in intention, perhaps? —¿philoserf? (talk) 17:02, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

It's mentioned in the Wikipedia:Short description #Background/overview section, but not prominently. I've added a couple of subsections to Wikipedia:Short description #Using short descriptions in Wikipedia discussing the uses for Mobile site and Wikipedia App. Those were the original, and remain the most common uses for short descriptions, even though they are not seen by desktop users. --RexxS (talk) 00:33, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

I see that now (finally). RexxS, Thanks. I encounter many editors that are not aware of this use.—¿philoserf? (talk) 00:42, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Short description in mathematics

I have now added or edited a lot of short descriptions in mathematics. Some specific problems appear. One of them is that it is often very difficult to provide a useful short description in less than 40 characters. Less than 80 is generally possible, but this generally needs a high expertise of the subject. Nevertheless, input from non-mathematicians can be useful on some aspects.

• Categorizing as mathematics. It is often impossible for the layman to know from the title that an article is about mathematics. See for example Group action, Free module, Flat module, Noetherian ring, Hilbert's Nullstellensatz. It is therefore often necessary to add to the short description either "In mathematics" at the beginning or "(mathematics)" at the end. The former option has the disadvantage that it may make the short description not convenient for an annotated link in a "See also" section. The latter's disadvantage is that it may be cut on device that display only 40 characters. What is non-mathematiciand opinion?
  A related question is whether the occurrence in the short description of a word such as "algebra", "algebraic", "equation", "theorem", "polynomial" is sufficient for categorizing as mathematics (the answer may be different for each term). For example, here are the current short descriptions for above articles, where one can see various choices
  • Group action - Operation of the elements of a group as transformations or automorphisms (mathematics)
  • Free module – In mathematics, a module that has a basis
  • Flat module – Algebraic structure in ring theory
  • Noetherian ring - Algebraic structure
  • Hilbert's Nullstellensatz – Relation between algebraic varieties and polynomial ideals
• Someone's theorem. Many mathematical articles have such a title, which is clear only for people who know well the subject. This sets again the question whether "theorem" is sufficient for saying that it is mathematics. Here are some examples, for showing that a reasonably short description cannot be straightforwardly extracted from the content of the article, and that 40 characters is generally impossible
  • Bézout's identity – Relating two numbers and their greatest common divisor
  • Bézout's theorem – Number of intersection points of algebraic curves and hypersurfaces
  • Fundamental theorem of algebra – Every polynomial has a real or complex root
  • Fundamental theorem of arithmetic – Integers have unique prime factorizations
  • Hilbert's basis theorem – Polynomial ideals are finitely generated
  • Galois theory – Mathematical connection between field theory and group theory
  • Hilbert's syzygy theorem – Theorem about linear relations in ideals and modules over polynomial rings
• Mathematics disambiguation pages. There are hundreds of pages that are categorized with {{Mathematical disambiguation}}. It would be useful if this could appear in the short description. Short description helper does not propose to edit the short descrition of the dab pages, and this suggest that it must not be changed. It appears that it is possible to do that by using explicitly the {{short description}} template. Nevertheless, it would be better to provide a standard short description for categorized disambiguation pages. Here is an example:
  • Differentiable – Mathematical function whose derivative existsPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets

The questions that I have asked for are relatively minor, as they do not prevent me to go ahead. However it should be useful to adapt the project page to make it compatible with domain specificities, or at least to make clearer which adaptations are allowed in specific domains. D.Lazard (talk) 17:45, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I've been adding and editing SDs on articles in math and physics as well and I think you are generally on the right track. Ideally, a non-technical reader seeing the SD should get the idea that an article is about mathematics. I agree that the terms you list are adequate clues. "Group" and "ring" probably aren't. I just changed the SD for Group Action to "How elements of a mathematical group transform another space or structure " and Noetherian ring to "A mathematical ring with well behaved ideals". (Note that this breaks your use of the annotated link template. I took the liberty of editing your comment to show the versions before I edited them.) I think there is room for creativity here. The goal should be to get the general idea across, not necessarily a precise definition. I also like your approach to named theorems, but there are opportunities to trim there too. For example Bézout's theorem could be SD'd as "counts intersection points of two algebraic curves".--agr (talk) 18:19, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Another possible use -- Category listings

To make SDs more useful I'd like to see a toggle-able option to display short descriptions in category listing. This would be especially useful for topics where article title reveal little about their subject. Some examples include mathematical theorems named after a person (as discussed above), standards titled by their standard number (e.g. Category:IEEE standards) and military articles about units and equipment. A button to turn this feature on and off would not add much clutter, and might be limited to categories where it makes the most sense.--agr (talk) 18:33, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Lists

I see that a huge number of lists have recently been updated to carry the short description "Wikipedia list article". Even Lists of women carries it. Is it standard policy to add the same description to all lists? If so, what does such a description add to an understanding of the contents? Would more explicit descriptions not be preferable, e.g. in this case: "Subject-based index of all Wikipedia lists about women". I can understand some of the arguments about the need to have a short description included in every mainspace article but I am not convinced such systematic standardization is useful.--Ipigott (talk) 11:26, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any policy that governs adding short descriptions. However, I've sometimes recommended using a short description of "Wikipedia list article" for lists when a short description is not needed. That short description adds nothing to an understanding of the contents of such list articles, because the title should be sufficient, per se, to fulfil the purposes of a short description as well. Of course, if you feel that you can usefully improve a short description, please do so.

On the other hand, consider List of English women artists. What short description would be serve any function over the article title? It's clearly a case that the article needs no short description. Unfortunately, until we get to 2,000,000 articles with short descriptions, "no short description" is not an option. If we were to remove "Wikipedia list article" from List of English women artists, the software would use the Wikidata description ("Wikipedia list article") as the short description. When fetching from Wikidata is turned off at some point in the future, it will be far easier to remove redundant short descriptions by bot if they have a standard format. --RexxS (talk) 12:22, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I would pretty much echo what RexxS said. While anyone is more than welcome to give a more specific short description to any list article, the titles should generally be self-explanatory. These can all be removed, if necessary, once fetching from Wikidata (which is far easier to vandalize) is turned off. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 13:43, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

RexxS, Lepricavark: Thanks for your explanations. I see that the Q13406463 actually points to "Wikimedia list article" and has some strange translations and equivalents in the other languages. If the main reason for short descriptions is to identify the origin of a deleted item, then I suppose this is better than nothing. But I thought the short description was also intended to assist mobile users. If so, it might be good to specify that the list comes from the English version of Wikipedia. As for "List of English women artists", rather than "Wikipedia list article" (which also links to Meta lists, etc.) it might be an improvement to have "EN-Wikipedia list of visual artists born in or associated with England" - but that is of course longer than the 40 characters you recommend. At the very least, I think "EN-Wikipedia list of English artists" would be better. It might be interesting to see if Oronsay, Rosiestep, Missvain or Tagishsimon have any views on this.--Ipigott (talk) 15:08, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Pardon my ignorance (I seldom use the mobile version of Wikipedia), but wouldn't any mobile user already know which version they are using? LEPRICAVARK (talk) 15:11, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ipigott: Since the Wikidata description is monolingual text – that is, each language has its own description – the Wikidata description in English only shows up on the English Wikipedia. So there's no point in telling someone looking at the English Wikipedia that the article is on the English Wikipedia. Similarly, the local short descriptions that we are adding are only visible to people looking at the English Wikipedia. The main use of short descriptions remains being a disambiguation aid when searching on the mobile platform, as shown at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Short descriptions #Shortdesc punctuation. and for that purpose the title of a list article is almost always going to be enough, therefore the short description is not needed. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:19, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Unless I have misunderstood something, RexxS, that seems to be a serious constraint. Do you mean that if I am using a mobile phone which uses Danish as the basic language, none of the Wikidata in English will show? I know that when I normally search in Danish, most of the EN Wikipedia articles show up even if the Google search is in Danish. But from what you say, the meta entries will simply not show. Then we are not anything like as multilingual as I thought. It certainly looks as if all my efforts on adding short descriptions have probably been a waste of time. --Ipigott (talk) 17:42, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ipigott: No, MediaWiki software generally doesn't read the phone's language (not to be confused with software like QRpedia which always does). It simply returns the content in the language of the wiki on monolingual wikis, such as the Wikipedias, Wikivoyage, etc. So an article on the Danish Wikipedia will be connected to the Danish version of the Wikidata description. If you look at da:Influenza, for example, you see in the link Oplysninger om siden (page info) that the Central beskrivelse (central description) is infektionssygdom (infectious disease), which is taken from the Danish description of influenza (Q2840) on Wikidata. Everybody searching the Danish Wikipedia on a mobile device for 'Influ' will see infektionssygdom immediately beneath the Influenza link.

I really should make it clear that the searches I'm talking about are when you search from within Wikipedia, not Google searches, which handle languages differently and we have no control over. Of course, there are multilingual sister projects like Commons and Wikidata, where the language you get depends on your user preferences, and short descriptions work with your preferences in those cases. I hope that makes it clearer. --RexxS (talk) 19:38, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for inviting me to the conversation, Ipigott. I have to say that my experience with this issue is limited. I preferred the Wikidata description being visible at the top of the Wikipedia article instead of the current practice. But I haven't paid attention to the reasons for the change so I'm probably not best positioned to comment on the issue associated with short description naming convention for list articles. --Rosiestep (talk) 00:31, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Isn't it better to short-desc 'List of Thomas Jefferson memorials' not to 'Wikipedia list article' (which doesn't describe the page, could just say 'Wikipedia article' and get the same reader comprehension) but to 'Thomas Jefferson memorials' as I've recently reedited? Randy Kryn (talk) 15:54, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

That is redundant to the title. For the moment it's no less useless than "list article", but eventually I would expect articles like this would include no short description at all, as none is needed. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:01, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Redundant and pointless, those additions should be reverted. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:49, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

The rationale for these descriptions has been provided on numerous occasions, including this very thread and your ill-fated AN report. You have yet to say anything substantive in response to that rationale. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 00:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

The rationale for these pointless and useless descriptions is bunk to begin with. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:46, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

You still haven't said anything substantive. I'm not married to these descriptions and would gladly remove them myself if consensus were to shift in that direction, but I'm not going to adjust my behavior to satisfy one editor who refuses to engage in meaningful conversation. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 01:06, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Here's substantive in black and white. These descriptions are pointless and useless. They should not be placed on any article. They should be removed from every article that have them. There is no consensus for them. They are a detriment to Wikipedia. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:22, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Get consensus and I'll happily implement the removals myself. In the meantime, I'm going to continue operating as I was before you began issuing arbitrary ultimatums that are based solely on your personal preferences. You'll probably have to drop your tactic of talking to the rest of us as if we are small children, because it doesn't seem to be working. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 01:35, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Where is your consensus to begin with? You've been challenged, you keep insisting you are right in the face of opposition from multiple people, and you wow to plow ahead. If you do so, I will seek to have you blocked as a WP:MEATBOT operating without approval. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:41, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

You should have asked about consensus before you started barking orders at me, not after. You didn't merely challenge me; you had your mind made up before you even posted on my talk page and had zero interest in hearing anything from me other than complete submission to your demands. I'm not seeing this so-called opposition from multiple people; it's pretty much just you saying the same things in slightly different words. Feel free to pursue having me blocked, but I suspect it will go about as well as your first AN thread. You've still made no effort to discuss this with me in a respectful, collaborative manner. I'm not a vandal or a POV-pusher; I'm a good-faith contributor and all I ask is to be treated like one. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 01:57, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

And you should have had consensus before going on a spamming spree. There are multiple people having issues with this approach in this very thread. I also have tried talking to you on your talk page first, but that went nowhere. Resume at your own peril. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:02, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

You did not try talking to me. You gave orders and quickly escalated to AN when I did not immediately comply with demands that you had no authority to issue. No competent individual would mistake your actions at my talk page for reasonable treatment of a fellow editor. For the time being, I will refrain from continuing to add this particular short description until the issue is sorted out below. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 02:08, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I did, but you weren't interested in pressing the pause button and insisted on plowing through. No dialogue is possible in these conditions. But I'm glad that you will refrain from continuing while things get sorted out. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:18, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

You didn't ask me to press a pause button. You demanded that I come to a full stop. If someone showed up at your talk page and made similar comments in a similar tone, you would not assume that they were trying to open a dialogue. I am only agreeing to refrain from making the edits now because I don't feel like being dragged to a noticeboard for a second time in two hours. In the midst of your ongoing threats and insults (yes, calling me a 'meatbot' is an insult), what you seem to have completely missed is that the AN thread participants were not favorable to your interpretation of the situation. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 02:42, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I asked you to please stop those, if you want to interpret this as a "demand", that's really up to you, but those words are synonymous. As for WP:MEATBOT, see WP:BOTDICT#Meatbot. If you felt insulted, then I apologize for that, since no insult was intended. I don't doubt that you made those edits in good faith, but they did not/do not have consensus, and plowing ahead with mass edits in the face of opposition is grounds for a block. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:20, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

In fairness, you did say 'please' the first time. Even so, that's not the same as seeking to initiate a conversation. You had already decided what needed to happen and were asking me to comply with your wishes. You had made the determination that the descriptions were unneeded. You didn't stop to get my input before making your pronouncement, which you apparently expected me to follow. I was supposed to just stop what I was doing because you didn't think it was necessary. You didn't explain why it was unnecessary; your say-so was supposed to be good enough for me. (Even after the conversation moved to this page, it took a while to get you to actually engage with opposing arguments instead of merely repeating the same platitudes as if it was beneath you to explain your reasoning.) Moreover, after I explained that the subject had already been discussed at length, you displayed no interest in reviewing those prior discussions and instead demanded that I stop before immediately dragging me to AN when I didn't comply. I don't know why you chose to approach this matter as if you were an admin and I was a disruptive editor, but you did and as a result this became far messier than it needed to be. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 05:02, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Some background

I understand that editors will have different takes on what short descriptions should be, but perhaps a simplified outline of our options would help each of use see the other's view?

At present we have two options:

1. Leave a article with no short description, in which case the software pulls the description from Wikidata, which is more prone to vandalism;
2. Add a local short description to an article, using the template, which then is mainly used to help searches on mobile distinguish between articles with similar titles.

There is no option to have no short description at present. However, when 2,000,000 articles have short descriptions, the WMF team responsible for implementing short descriptions has promised to turn off fetching the description from Wikidata. That will then allow us to have articles with no short description.

Most articles benefit from a short description. For example, if someone looking for a benzopyrene compound that causes cancer from smoking, starts typing Benzopyrene in the mobile site search box, the first three hits they might get are:

• Benzopyrene family of isomeric compounds
• Benzo(a)pyrene Chemical compound
• (+)-Benzo(a)pyrene-7,8-dihydrodiol-9,10-epoxide Cancer-causing agent derived from tobacco smoke

The mobile user can see that the third suggested result is the article they want.

However, if they were looking for a list of Irish women artists, they will find List of Irish women artists once they type list of Irish w, no matter what the short description is. For many list articles, the title does the job of the short description, so we don't need one. Unfortunately, we can't have that option until we've added short descriptions to 2,000,000 articles. In the meantime, it makes sense to add short descriptions where we can, as it brings us closer to our goal of switching off the fetch from Wikidata. For that reason, I would ask Headbomb not to remove short descriptions such as "Wikipedia list article" from articles like List of scientific publications by Albert Einstein, please, because the software just will pull the description from Wikidata (ironically "Wikimedia list article" at present), and that is one less toward our target.

Does it matter what we use as a short description for these list articles? Not much, because they are not going to be used for anything. Nobody needs to be told that List of Irish women artists is about Irish women artists, or that it's a list article. But for now, we have to have something, and I recommend "Wikipedia list article" because it will be easy to remove as redundant by bot when we gain the option to have no short description. Hasten the day. --RexxS (talk) 00:11, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I would suggest that perhaps rather than adding short descriptions which ultimately don't benefit the encyclopedia that time be spent on adding short descriptions to articles where there is benefit. That still gets us closer to 2,000,000 and adds longterm value in addition. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:34, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata is the issue here, and it is Wikidata that should be fixed, Wikipedia should not have pointless and useless short descriptions to fix an issue at Wikidata. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:43, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

The whole point is that we want local control over this. Wikidata's counter vandalism is inferior to what we have here. Having short descriptions be controlled locally does fix an issue here of us being at the mercy of Wikidata. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:04, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

If we want local control, then disable Wikidata's short descriptions. Replacing them with our own pointless descriptions is silly. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:06, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Nobody is stopping you from opening an RfC. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 02:43, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Information about our being able to create blank short descriptions is at Wikipedia:Short description#Implementation, under "Stage 2". The sooner we get to two million short descriptions (the category says that we are at almost 1.8 million, so we are close), we will be able to replace non-useful short descriptions with blank short descriptions. Until then, the goal is to get to two million. Replacing these local "Wikipedia list article" short descriptions with blank descriptions after that point will be a trivially easy bot job, so the addition of those short descriptions now is useful and not harmful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:17, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

That's gaming the numbers and defeating the entire point of the phase in/out. Spamming hundred of thousands of descriptions only to remove them means those shouldn't be added to begin with. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:29, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Here's a saner system if you simply want to override the basic Wikidata descriptions for lists, add {{Short description}} (by bot, so people aren't flooded for no reason) to lists and leave the first parameter empty. Add a check so that if title begins with List of..., then automatically emit "Wikipedia list article" or even better, simply emit nothing. People can then add basic list descriptions if the default needs to be overridden. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:35, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately that does not stop the mobile display showing the Wikidata description with its potential for vandalism and other problems. WMF specifically stated that if there was no content for a short description they would fall back on Wikidata. This has been explained before, and you can look it up in the original discussion with WMF. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:04, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

{{Short description}} can be updated to invoke an empty string, or a purposefully empty Q object. And it if can't, it can still be made to give a default string in List of... articles. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:27, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Do you think we haven't tried that? When I wrote {{Short description}}, I included code to force it to emit an empty string, but the MediaWiki software simply switches to the Wikidata description in those cases. I really wish you would check previous discussions before trotting out the same unworkable suggestions. We can't "disable Wikidata's short descriptions". We have consensus for that but DannyH (WMF) failed to abide by the consensus. It is not "silly" to add local descriptions (pointless or otherwise), because that prevents the situation where a vandal changed the Wikidata description of a BLP to "loves dick", which remained in view on mobile devices for several hours before being reverted by an enwiki editor who knew where to fix it. That would never happen to local short descriptions on enwiki because RCP and Cluebot would revert that sort of vandalism inside a minute. --RexxS (talk) 14:30, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@RexxS: like I said, if emitting an empty string isn't possible, there's always the possibly of emitting a default string when you have a List of... article or pointing to purposefully empty Q / blank object or similar. That hasn't been tried. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:16, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Headbomb: It is being tried now, with "Wikipedia list article" as the default being added manually. It doesn't work because other editors keep on removing it. --RexxS (talk) 17:39, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

The point here would be to add it automatically via {{Short description}} instead o {{Short description|Wikipedia list article}}, so that maintenance across thousands of articles can be done at once, usage tracked, and so that people who are looking to actually provide a useful short description don't have to remove "Wikipedia list article". Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

First of all, it is perfectly possible for the template to emit a completely empty string: →{{short description|none}}← gives →←. However, that doesn't help, as was already explained.

Secondly, I'm not happy with imposing an automatic solution in cases where there is disagreement over doing it manually. A number of editors have been sanctioned in the past for creating that sort of fait accompli. If we ever get consensus for having the default short description for list articles set to "Wikipedia list article", I'd be happy to implement it by making a call to a module. However, none of those would count towards the 2,000,000 target: "Once Wikipedia editors write ~2 million descriptions, we'll switch to entirely Wikipedia-hosted descriptions".

Thirdly, if we consider something like List of United States Congress members who died in office (1790–1899), there's a good argument for overriding a default short description like "Wikipedia list article" with 1790–1899. That will make a mobile search much easier as it quickly distinguishes the article from the other three lists covering different year ranges. That means we must be able to override any default that the template might provide.

As anybody trying to override a manually added "Wikipedia list article" will simply replace those words with the improved short description, I don't see what the benefit is of "people who are looking to actually provide a useful short description don't have to remove "Wikipedia list article" as they will still have to add their version to the template or use the 'Short decscription helper'. Deleting three words at that point is hardly an extra imposition. --RexxS (talk) 18:44, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

You don't have to repeat the empty string issue for the 234th time. I'm perfectly capable of understanding the implication of an if clause. However, still unaddressed is the possibility of pointing to an empty/blank Q object. The template right now imports a short description from the article's associated Q object in Wikidata. It could import the short description of a different Q object, one that is purposefully blank, or non-existent. Also if you're trying to avoid a "fait accompli", then that's equally applicable to spamming "Wikipedia list article" on a bunch of lists. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

And you don't have to state that "{{Short description}} can be updated to invoke an empty string" for the 233rd time. I know it can. I wrote the code to do it. But it doesn't result in an empty short description, so what's the point of you raising the issue?

There is no possibility of "pointing to an empty/blank Q object". That's pseudo-techno babble. The template emits wikitext. Nothing else. No pointers. Just text.

This is the basis of your misunderstanding: The template does not import "a short description from the article's associated Q object in Wikidata". The mobile search function and other applications read the API to get a property called 'description' from the database. That property is derived from the 'Local description' field if it exists, and the 'Central description' field otherwise. You can follow the [Page info] link (in 'tools') from any article to see those two fields. The 'Local description' field is populated from the {{SHORTDESC:}} magic word, and the 'Central description' field from the Wikidata description field. The template clearly can't "import the short description of a different Q object, one that is purposefully blank, or non-existent."

If you want to change the behaviour of the {{SHORTDESC:}} magic word to "import" some other short description, try convincing the WMF team at phab:T184000 to implement your suggestion. Good luck with that.

There's no 'if' about me trying to avoid a fait accompli by automated means. I told you that was what I would not be doing. if you don't understand the seriousness of what you're suggesting, try a search for fait accompli in the Arbitration archives. If you want to contest other editors' ability to add short descriptions to articles, please feel free to start an RfC to overturn the consensuses establish in the discussions linked from Wikipedia:Short description #Background/overview. See how far you get with that. --RexxS (talk) 21:26, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

"The 'Local description' field is populated from the {{SHORTDESC:}} magic word, and the 'Central description' field from the Wikidata description field." Highlighting the relevant part. For list of particles, the Wikidata item is Wikidata:Q783766. The short description is "Wikimedia list article". There is no reason why {{short description}} cannot be made to fetch a different item's short description (e.g. Wikidata:Q#####) which is purposefully empty/blank, when specific conditions are met (such as a title beggining with List of...). And if that's not a possibility, for whatever reason, we can still provided a default string for lists in lieu of importing the Wikidata description. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:17, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but "There is no reason why {{short description}} cannot be made to fetch a different item's short description ..." is simply untrue. There is a very practical reason: the WMF team won't allow it. End of story. You can't just change the way MediaWiki software works without agreement, and the Reading Team won't accept anything that circumvents having a short description until we have written 2,000,000 local descriptions. I truly wish it wasn't so, but this entire sorry story is littered with examples of the Reading Team deciding that they know best, and ignoring input from the volunteer community.

I couldn't agree more with your suggestion to provide a default string for lists in lieu of importing the Wikidata description. Please, let's agree on the default string. Please, let's get unimpeachable agreement for the template to automatically emit that default string. And please, stop reverting editors who are adding the default string manually in the meantime. --RexxS (talk) 22:43, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

There is nothing here that changes how the software works. If an infobox can query a random property of a random Wikidata item, there is zero reason why {{Short description}} can't do so either. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:47, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Hell, I'll do so here. Fetching P31 from Wikidata:Q783766: Wikimedia list article. There's zero reason why Q783766 can't be Q#whatevernumber# that purposefully has a blank description/empty description. There's even fewer reasons why {{Short description}} can't have a default "Wikipedia list article" string no pages with List of... as a title. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:57, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

You do realise I wrote the getValueFromID function? Why on earth would anybody write code to fetch the instance of (P31) from list of quantum particle types (Q783766) in order to get the words "Wikimedia list article", when I can write the string "Wikimedia list article"? What do you think would happen with your scheme if somebody vandalised the P31 property in list of quantum particle types (Q783766)? A hundred thousand articles vandalised in one edit - Artemis Jarlaxle would love you. --RexxS (talk) 23:32, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Protection exists for a reason. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:13, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Does it? Try getting an entity protected on Wikidata so that enwiki doesn't get vandalised. They'll laugh you off the site. --RexxS (talk) 15:34, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Contradictory directives

Under content we are advised both to "focus on distinguishing the subject from similar ones" and that "Duplication of information already in the title is to be avoided". These directives are, in many cases, completely contradictory. As an illustration, someone added to List of fishes of Missouri, "Wikipedia list article", which fails the first directive. My inclination would be to use something more descriptive like "List of Missouri fishes", which fails the second directive. Which directive should take precedence? WolfmanSF (talk) 23:51, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

See the discussion immediately above this one for answers to your questions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:53, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

@WolfmanSF: Fixed. --RexxS (talk) 02:32, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, and my bad for not reading the preceding discussion ahead of time. WolfmanSF (talk) 04:45, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

AN thread

This AN thread is relevant to the above discussion. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 23:10, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Just saw this at ANI. Not read all of the above discussion (TL/DR!), but I've seen Lepricavark add the standard "Wikipedia list article" in the short description. I've simply changed it to something else as and when I've come across them. Example. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:22, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I understand the sentiment but from my background I deeply appreciate consistency. Think of the purpose of short descriptions, namely, to disambiguate articles when people search for a topic on a mobile device. A person seeing "Wikipedia list article" would quickly get used to what that meant and would automatically know to either pay attention to such hits or ignore them. Changing the description to "List of cyclists" adds to their mental burden with no benefit—the article title tells them the topic. Johnuniq (talk) 08:48, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

"Wikipedia list article" in no way disambiguate the topic. If topic is a list of cyclists, the topic isn't "Wikipedia list article". A person seeing

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/ > wiki
List of cyclists - Wikipedia
This is an incomplete list of professional racing cyclists, sorted alphabetically by decade in which they won their first major race. This transport-related...

Would know that the link is about a list on Wikipedia (and one concerning cyclists). This is not something that needs disambiguation, unlike the various James Adams, which do. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:44, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. Most list article titles contain enough information to allow a mobile user to pick the one they want, as I wrote in the thread above. So they don't need a short description. But "No short description" isn't an option. So we have to have something for now. Therefore it simply doesn't matter what you write as the short description for these sort of list articles, because nobody will ever make use of them (other than to keep out any vandalism from Wikidata). --RexxS (talk) 14:42, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Note: The AN thread is archived here. 207.161.86.162 (talk) 06:56, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

56,000 articles

I just found this because I was trying to figure out any explanation for this entirely useless descriptor we have, and found that it is attached to 56,794 articles at present. I just looked at the AN thread and I don't see that there's an actual resolution to this issue that has metastasized across wikipedia. I don't think the idea that we need to have a certain number of short descriptions to stop wikidata is an acceptable reason for this. Natureium (talk) 18:33, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

@Natureium: The explanation is that it's better to have an entirely useless short description sourced locally from the English Wikipedia, where editors can quickly fix vandalism, than to have an entirely useless short description sourced externally from Wikidata, where it's out of our control. The only way we're going to get rid of entirely useless short descriptions is to reach 2,000,000 short descriptions locally, and I find that the efforts made to reach that target constitute a perfectly acceptable reason for this particular short description. What's your alternative? --RexxS (talk) 18:49, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Also, once we get to having only non-Wikidata short descriptions, we can determine whether the consensus is that those "WP list article" descriptions should be removed. If so, it will be trivial to remove them with a bot. We are not yet at the point where doing so would be useful, however, because Wikidata typically has the same description; until we are no longer pulling short descriptions from Wikidata, nothing will change for readers if we remove the local SD. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:01, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Jonesey95, Here, here. Wikipedia/Wikimedia list article stutters. Yuck. —¿philoserf? (talk) 20:11, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

An alternative would be to create a {{List article}} template to be inserted into all of the list articles instead of {{Short description}}. This would be modeled on {{Disambiguation}} — which uses {{Disambiguation page short description}} to set the short description for all DAB pages. The {{Disambiguation}} template also takes parameters that define the categories. The {{List article}} template would probably do the same – set the SD via {{List article short description}} and accept parameters to define categories. This will take some pondering — there are a fair number of DAB categories and we would need comparable logic in the template and a suitable collection of List categories. Of course, we could have a bot do the first 56,000 articles for us. -- GhostInTheMachine (talk) 20:47, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 1#Update: Scheduled shutdown of Wikidata descriptions on EnWiki

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 1#Update: Scheduled shutdown of Wikidata descriptions on EnWiki. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 14:32, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Short description broken at COVID-19 pandemic and possibly elsewhere

 Fixed

At COVID-19 pandemic, the short description recently changed to "Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on environmental issues", even though the short description wikitext was not changed. I suspect it may have something to do with the fact that the environmental issues article is excerpted into the main article, but the excerpt text was not recently changed, either. Can you please roll back any change you might have recently made, and can we figure out what's going on here? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:31, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

See the documentation for Template:Short description to see how to deal with this situation. In the transcluded article, I added |2=noreplace to the short description template so that when the lead is transcluded, it does not change the short description in the target article (the last short description that appears in the article is the one that is rendered). This option is normally used for templates, since articles and article sections are not normally transcluded. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:40, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

The relevant transclusion includes preamble templates such as {{short description}}, as it uses {{#lsth:} rather than excerpts. Certes (talk) 23:29, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

@Certes and Jonesey95: thank you both. I assume the switch to #lsth was made for some reason, probably related to size, but if it causes other issues we might want to look at switching back to {{Excerpt}}. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:44, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Pagetype

There does not seem to be any use of the |pagetype= parameter. Should it be removed or should there be a push to make use of it?  — Ghost in the machine ^{talk to me} 16:05, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

TODO

• Remove {{oldtfdfull}} from Template talk:Short description?

  Fairly sure it should have only been put on Template talk:SHORTDESC

  Maybe replace with some sort of "See also" if there really does need to be a ref to the TFD

• Add details the template doc covering use of {{{2}}} Y
• Make it clear that the template does not take a list of alternative descriptions
• Explain {{{Pagetype}}} and how it is used (only in templates?) Y
• List some of the categories fed by the template Y

 — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 18:37, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Category fix needed

This breaks when used on a category as at Category:CS1 maint: archived copy as title where it creates the ugly Category:Categorys with short description - it needs to be a bit more sophisticated to be able to spell categories when in category space. And per WP:REDNOT it should be detecting the attempt to use a non-existent category and not insert it (but instead trigger a tracking category), by the look of the Category:Categorys with short description this is not the first time. Le Deluge (talk) 19:26, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

@Le Deluge: I've implemented a slightly more sophisticated means of returning plurals for the namespaces in Module:Pagetype/sandbox, and changed the calls in Template:Pagetype/sandbox and Template:Short description/sandbox. So for this page:

• {{pagetype/sandbox}} → page
• {{pagetype/sandbox |plural=y}} → pages

Testing with a category page:

• {{pagetype/sandbox |plural=n |page=Category:CS1 maint: archived copy as title}} → category
• {{pagetype/sandbox |plural=y |page=Category:CS1 maint: archived copy as title}} → categories

I've temporarily changed the call in Category:CS1 maint: archived copy as title so that you can see it now places the page into Category:Categories with short description. It's still redlinked, but presumably that tracking category should exist, so just needs to be created.

If the changes get consensus at Template talk:Pagetype, I'll do the updates for the main templates, etc. --RexxS (talk) 23:21, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

[Update]: The changes are now implemented and should propagate, clearing the category Category:Categorys with short description. --RexxS (talk) 16:29, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 8 June 2020

Currently, the template puts categories in Category:Categorys with short description. However, it should be Category:Categories with short description. Can someone fix that? CrazyBoy826 18:52, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

@CrazyBoy826: It can be fixed if consensus can be established for the changes at Template_talk:Pagetype #Plurals, which is the template that actually detects the namespace and returns its name. See #Category fix needed above. --RexxS (talk) 19:26, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Disabled request as it is not this template which needs changing. I have added my wish for this fix to be implemented without delay — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:26, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

@CrazyBoy826: It's implemented. Thank you, Martin. Part of the problem is that every category with a short description needs a null edit to force the update, so propagation can be slow. I have a script in User:RexxS/common.js that 'touches' every article in a category and I've set it running on Category:Categorys with short description. Hopefully that will resolve the issue, otherwise simply opening a category still showing "Categorys with short description" for edit and previewing or saving it should force the update. --RexxS (talk) 16:40, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

A city of two tales

I see that many articles such as London and Paris have two short descriptions: one from {{short description}} and one from {{Infobox settlement}}. There may be as many as half a million cases. This can be fixed by removing {{short description}} after transferring its text to {{Infobox settlement}}'s |short_description= if it is an improvement. Is this something we would want to fix by allowing one description to override the other, or by transferring the text to a parameter with a bot, either now or once Wikidata is out of the picture? Certes (talk) 15:17, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Both London and Paris have only one short description. That is shown in the "Local description" found by looking at the "Page information" in the 'tools' sidebar. The short description for London is generated by {{Infobox settlement}}. For Paris it comes from the {{short description}} at the top of the page (which is not replaced by its {{Infobox settlement}} because that contains a noreplace parameter). Short description templates have precedence over properly-coded infoboxes that set noreplace. There's no need for any transfers. --RexxS (talk) 16:07, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks RexxS. I see that the HTML for London has both div class="shortdescription...Capital city in England and div class="shortdescription...Capital of the United Kingdom, though of course they're set to display:none. It seems that search handles this well and ignores the superfluous "England" description generated by the infobox. Certes (talk) 16:37, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Non-article mainspace pages do not need short descriptions, and boilerplate definitions are not descriptive anyway

What's the point of generically defining disambiguation in the {{disambiguation}}? It doesn't describe the disambiguation page any more than "Wikipedia article about the titular topic" describes every Wikipedia article. Similarly, redirects don't need description (exception for R with possibilities, if the description describes that potential topic). I also see a lot of mainspace list articles with a useless "description" of "Wikipedia list article", which should also be omitted, but at least they don't appear to be shoehorned in by templates. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:24, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

JHunterJ, As I understand it, if we don’t we get whatever Wikidata has for any article. I have found graffiti and other cruft mixed as well as useful info there. —¿philoserf? (talk) 20:31, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

We are at or close to 2 million descriptions, at which milestone WMF may stop forcing Wikidata descriptions onto our pages, allowing us to leave pages which would not benefit from a description undescribed. Certes (talk) 21:51, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

@JHunterJ: You're right that a lot of pages have a useless "description" which should be omitted, but at present there is no way of omitting a short description. If we don't have a local short description (which is under our control), the MediaWiki software simply uses the Wikidata description field (which isn't under our control). If you want to complain about that, direct it to DannyH (WMF). For the background, please read #Some background above. --RexxS (talk) 22:21, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

This guideline says to skip the description if no useful one is possible. It seems that we should either follow that (and mediawiki will do whatever it does) or change the instruction to "include a short description regardless of usefulness". -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:25, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

@JHunterJ: Please observe MOS:LISTGAP.

We really don't want content displayed on enwiki that is prone to vandalism and cannot be held to the standards we require here. So we really, really don't want MediaWiki software to display descriptions we don't control. I've removed the poor guidance that was confusing you. --RexxS (talk) 23:43, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks -- I wasn't confused by the former guidance, I understood it fine, which is why it needed to be changed. :-). Oh, and the listgap issue is apparently part of the mobile web edit interface. It put the gap in, not me. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:14, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, it's my poor choice of wording: I meant that bit of guidance was contradictory compared with everything else that has been generally agreed. I'm astonished by the behaviour of the mobile web interface, but it could explain a lot. I'll investigate and see if we need to file a bug report. Thanks! --RexxS (talk) 13:08, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

or set {{short description|none}}?  — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 16:29, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

@GhostInTheMachine: At present, that simply ends up with the Wikidata description field being used. When the fetching from Wikidata behaviour is switched off (if ever) it will work as intended. --RexxS (talk) 16:38, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

What is the "best" thing to do where a SD seems unnecessary — do not add any {{short description}} / add {{short description|none}} / add {{short description}} ? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 16:51, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Each of those will use the Wikidata description field, so we end up with things like a famous basketball player described as "loves dick" and iCarly described as "child pornography", etc. No thanks. The best thing to do is to add a really generic short description like "Wikipedia list article", whose only function is to block the potential vandalism leaking from Wikidata. If we ever get the Wikidata fetching turned off, then it will be easy to find those with a bot and convert them to "none". --RexxS (talk) 17:19, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Category rename

Category:Disambiguation page with short description is to be renamed to Category:Disambiguation pages with short descriptions following a CFD discussion but it is not at all clear what needs changing to move the thousands of pages over. What is generating this category? Timrollpickering (talk) 15:56, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Timrollpickering,  Done Also worth noting that Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/Manual is also patrolled by people with the knowledge to handle things like this. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 17:03, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@Timrollpickering and Trialpears: thanks for the fix, Trialpears, I've updated the Category:Disambiguation pages with short descriptions top-blurb to indicate the template that generates the category, which should simplify the job of tracking it down in future. --RexxS (talk) 20:24, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Right now there are the existing Category:Disambiguation pages with short description and the newly moved Category:Disambiguation pages with short descriptions. Can the code be updated to handle both pagetype=disambiguation page and pagetype=disambiguation pages to point them to one category (if that's what's causing them both to be populated)? -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:30, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

As far as I can see, that's not what is causing the changeover. As it currently stands, the Category:Disambiguation pages with short description will eventually become empty because it's not populated through any route that I'm aware of. However, that may take some time because there are around 150,000 pages presently in that category that are going to move to Category:Disambiguation pages with short descriptions. I'm now running a script to refresh each page, but it's going to take about 40 hours. Folks should consider the actual work needed to implement these category renamings before agreeing such arbitrary moves. --RexxS (talk) 19:47, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

I managed to speed up the script, so it's finished "touching" each page in the category Category:Disambiguation pages with short description, which is now empty. It can be CSD'd as G6 or C1 or we can leave it for a day or two to make sure. --RexxS (talk) 14:11, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Full protection?

2.4 million transclusions is well beyond what I'd consider it appropriate to apply full protection for high-risk templates, but given that {{Short description}} has been recently edited by a number of template editors, I think maybe it's worth discussing first. cc recent editors (Trialpears, DannyS712, Jonesey95, and Gonnym) as well as Primefac and Galobtter. I'm open to being wrong, but it's a massive public-facing template that will only grow, so I think it's inevitable if not overdue. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:10, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

I won't object but I'm unsure if it's really necessary with both {{navbox}} and {{infobox}} are used significantly more than this and are much more visible and still only have template protection. I would also imagine this being one of the most frequently edited templates with over 2 million transclusions making the harms of increasing protection here larger than for most templates. --Trialpears (talk) 00:49, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if 2.4 million transclusions would normally warrant full protection but that seems reasonable to me. This year there has only been one edit by a non-admin, one edit by an admin, and one mistake that was self-reverted. It is probably a good idea to require a discussion before editing such a widely used template, even if the discussion is only a proposal with no objections. Johnuniq (talk) 00:57, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

There aren't that many template editors on en.WP, and my experience has been that most of us are pretty careful. Especially with a widely transcluded template, I would expect to see non-trivial changes tested in the sandbox and discussed at the talk page before implementation. If TEs are were making bad, undiscussed edits to this template, I would support full protection or possible removal of TE rights. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:04, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

I have complete faith in our template editors to edit a high-use template responsibly. They all have to demonstrate a level of technical skill (that admins don't have to demonstrate when given the right to edit templates), so I don't think we have much to fear. If consensus is for full protection, then I won't object, but I will promise to keep the template on my watchlist and to attend to edit requests promptly. --RexxS (talk) 01:49, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

I think it's a fair concern (to both of you). The granting guidelines for TE are pretty reasonable, and I'd worry about inflation there and acting beyond community consensus. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:15, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

There is no need to extend to full protection just because there are too many transclusions, as that's what the TE right is built for. IMO only the templates used in interface messages should be considered for full protection. SD0001 (talk) 06:02, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Granted, but this template is used and seen more than most interface messages. Indeed, given traffic reports, it's probably a reasonable approximation that, even at 5% of articles, it's seen by visits by readers. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:15, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Short descriptions in the Android app

Hi, this is just a heads-up that the Wikipedia app is working on paying more attention to English Wikipedia's short descriptions from an editing perspective. You can read more in phab:T257488.

(While I'd normally follow up here and reply to pings and so on if there are any questions, I'll be out of office for a while, so asking in Phabricator will probably be a safer way to get replies. If you're uncomfortable doing so, leave a note on my talk page and I'll get back to you later, but be aware it might take a while.) /Johan (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Report-assisted importing of short descriptions

I wrote this over at the bot RFC, but I wanted to suggest it as a standalone item here. This is an idea for a report-assisted import tool for short descriptions. Here's the functional description; I have no idea how it would be programmed.

I have populated a few thousand short descriptions, and some categories of articles appear to be pretty consistent in their quality. Sportspeople of various types tend to have reliable short descriptions. A human could identify a parent category on Wikipedia like Category:Association football players, or dig down into a subcategory like Category:English footballers (22,000 articles). Within those categories, exclude articles that already have a short description, then run a report that shows a list that includes the article name, maybe the lead sentence, and the Wikidata description for each article.

A human could look at a report on 100 or 1,000 articles at a time, manually eliminate pages with bad Wikidata descriptions, and do a batch import of the rest (the eliminated pages could be picked up on a second round; the idea for now is to bring in lots of good short descriptions quickly). It wouldn't be an automated bot process, but I think that once you got the system set up, it would be quick for a detail-oriented editor to process many thousands of articles per hour.

We could ask on this project page for likely categories. In footballers alone, you could probably add 100,000+ short descriptions in a couple of days. The same process could be used for species, books, movies, video games, and other items where the Wikidata bot that created descriptions had an easy time processing the lead sentence (or whatever information it used). – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:11, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

See also the proposal I made earlier this afternoon on the Wikiproject page: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Short descriptions#Bot proposal to create short descriptions from scratch, for articles requiring one. Happy to work together if we can find a programmer! MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:22, 7 August 2020 (UTC)