Wikipedia talk:Short description

"Sex offender" in short description

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

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

and for deceased persons:

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

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

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

Absolutiva 14:06, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

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

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

Short descriptions should be useful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Second, taking the example you cite,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Peru
  • Bolivia
  • Paraguay
  • Chile

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Some responses:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding auto-generated short descriptions?

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

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

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

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

Why dates on bios?

The current text says:

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

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

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

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

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

Political persuasion

There is a bit of a discussion on dewiki and wikidata about what is suitable for a short description. It might be useful to gauge opinion on enwiki too. Is this suitable or encouraged?

• Tino Chrupalla - right wing German politician

In my opinion "right wing" is subjective and/or controversial and we should better stick with facts, e.g.

• Tino Chrupalla - German politician
• Tino Chrupalla - German politician and member of AfD party

The current one is German politician (born 1975) which seems sufficient — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:04, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

I agree. "[nationality] politician (birth/death range)" should (nearly?) always be sufficient to distinguish the person from other people with similar names. I imagine that there are a few instances of two politicians with the same name, but additional disambiguation can be provided in those rare cases. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:43, 25 June 2026 (UTC)