Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions

‹The template below is included via a redirect (Template:For2) that is under discussion. See redirects for discussion to help reach a consensus.›

Template:Wikiproject status Template:Infobox WikiProject

Some users are working on the top 2500 most viewed pages without short descriptions. Want to help? Contribute here!

This is a project to populate all Wikipedia mainspace articles with a suitable short description, and to improve existing descriptions.

State of the project

There are a total of 18,685 content pages in the main namespace, of which 0 are disambiguation pages.

Out of 18,685 articles, 1,480 have a short description and 17,205 do not have a short description.

1,480 / 18,685

7.921% complete

This search finds all articles that have had the {{short description}} template added. The remaining descriptions are generated by infoboxes or other templates.

Recent progress

Approximate statistics since July 2020
Date	Articles with short descriptions	Total number of articles (including disambiguation pages)	Percentage of articles with short descriptions
8 July 2020	1,100,000	6,115,000	18.0%
29 December 2020	1,440,000	6,215,000	23.2%
15 April 2021	2,027,000	6,282,000	32.3%
22 June 2021	2,225,000	6,321,000	35.2%
19 October 2021	2,478,000	6,396,000	38.7%
12 November 2021	3,791,000	6,406,000	59.2%
15 February 2022	4,009,000	6,452,000	62.1%
23 May 2022	4,364,000	6,503,000	67.1%
23 August 2022	4,579,787	6,574,000	69.7%
23 September 2022	4,616,358	6,554,500	70.4%
26 October 2022	4,654,836	6,568,500	70.9%
25 November 2022	4,719,196	6,579,000	71.7%
23 December 2022	4,746,240	6,591,300	72.0%
3 January 2023	4,781,930	6,597,400	72.5%
7 February 2023	4,827,834	6,614,500	73.0%
26 March 2023	4,861,734	6,635,109	73.3%
23 May 2023	4,918,542	6,659,081	73.9%

Note: The article counts prior to March 2023 are rounded values taken from Size of Wikipedia: The data set.

See checklists of current progress.

Why help to make sure that all articles have a short description?

Short descriptions appear in Wikipedia mobile and some desktop searches, and help users identify the desired article. When viewing an article, some mobile Wikipedia Apps also display the description below the page title. Short descriptions are likely to become more widely used, both within Wikipedia and by third parties, as the proportion of articles lacking one falls.

Articles that are lacking a short description appear in search result lists simply by their titles, with no annotation. If all titles were self-evidently clear, it would be immediately obvious which one relates to the article of interest, but very often that is not the case. Titles alone can be ambiguous or otherwise not comprehensible to non-specialist readers, as well as to readers who are not fluent speakers of English.

How to write a short description

Nkhani page: Wikipedia:Short description

The easiest way to add and edit short descriptions on desktop is to make use of Shortdesc helper. Alternatively, in the source code editor insert the short description template to the very top of the page, above all other article headers and templates. The format to use is {{Short description|Your short description here}}.

If a short description would be redundant you can use "none", thus: {{Short description|none}}. See WP:SDNONE.

Adding and editing short descriptions

Short descriptions can be added and edited using the standard wiki markup editor (edit source), but it is often easier to enable Short description helper in Preferences | Gadgets, in the Editing section.

Editing using Shortdesc helper gadget

File:Shortdesc helper editing screenshot.png

Editing with shortdesc helper

If you click on (Edit), (Add), (Import), or (Edit and Import), it should open a small editing window in the third line with the current short description and give the options (Save) and (Cancel). Edit will import the description from Wikidata and allow you to change it before saving, while Import will import the Wikidata description as is and save. It can be edited later. Edit and Import will open the edit window with the Wikidata description and allow you to edit it before clicking on (Save) or (Cancel).

If adding a new short description, either type it in from the keyboard, or drag and drop from the article text and edit as appropriate.

By default, adding short descriptions to an article also adds the description to Wikidata if Wikidata has no description. This can be changed in the settings. To edit a short description that is already on Wikidata, click on one of the links (not shown in this example) in the Wikidata item description or Q-number to open the item at Wikidata.

Difference in formatting conventions for the description:

Wikidata: text always starting only with a lower case;
Short description in Wikipedia pages: Sentence case: Text starting with a first letter in upper case.

When the description does not yet exist in Wikidata and one types all the text in lower case using Shortdesc helper, it sends the description in lower case to Wikidata while simultaneously formatting the short description of the Wikipedia page in Sentence case. However, when exporting a modified short description back to Wikidata, it is not the case. Then, it is necessary to manually edit the Wikidata description to change the first Uppercase letter of the sentence into a lower case.

The Shortdesc helper will provide a standardised edit summary describing the edit. A custom edit summary can be added using the "summary" button.

Other useful scripts

The script User:SD0001/shortdescs-in-category shows the short descriptions of pages while viewing a category
The SDlinkBuilder user script helps you build a TODO list - taking all of the article links in a page and showing their current short descriptions.

What if I want to see the text that is used on Wikidata?

Wikidata maintains its own texts which are not linked in any way with Wikipedia short descriptions (although Short description helper can display the Wikidata text to help editors construct a suitable description for Wikipedia). Wikipedia descriptions and Wikidata texts serve different purposes and are not required to be the same. If you want to view the Wikidata text, you can:

Configure Short description helper to show the Wikidata text at all times; or
Click on the Wikidata link in the sidebar to go directly to Wikidata, where you can view and edit the information.

Auto-generated and bot-generated descriptions

As the short description is article content, any bot or template generated short description may be overridden with a better short description by an editor. If there is a dispute about whether the new description is better, discuss on the article's talk page. If the lead section of the article is so confused that it is not possible to work out what the article is about, leave an appropriate maintenance tag, or if you can, fix it yourself.

Auto-generated from infoboxes and other templates

Already done

Template	Approximate number of articles
`{{Disambiguation page short description}}`	348,368
`{{Infobox settlement}}`	554,768
`{{Infobox Australian place}}`	15,236
`{{Infobox element}}`	334
`{{Infobox number}}`	404
`{{Infobox musical artist}}`	120,036
`{{Infobox musical interval}}`	42
`{{Day}}`	365
`{{Year nav}}`	2,751
`{{Given name}}`	17,619
`{{Surname}}`	64,930
`{{Infobox museum}}`	3000–4000 / 10,105 (when Type includes one of: Museum / Hall / Gallery / Center)
`{{Infobox hospital}}`	6,162
`{{Infobox church}}`	14,365
`{{Infobox television episode}}`	11,397
`{{Year nav topic5}}`	6,997
`{{Infobox album}}`	160,085
`{{Infobox professional wrestling team}}`	651
`{{Infobox kana}}`	57
`{{Infobox dam}}`	5,500
`{{Infobox Unicode block}}`	338
`{{Infobox Doctor Who episode}}`	479
`{{Infobox radio station}}`	21,685
`{{Humorous essay}}`	226
`{{Wikipedia how-to}}`	328
`{{Infobox football club season}}`	19,446
`{{Infobox NRHP}}`	72,000
`{{Infobox professional wrestling event series}}`	227
`{{Infobox royalty}}`	21,000
`{{Infobox rugby club season}}`	108
`{{Infobox television station}}`	3,700
`{{Infobox UK place}}`	25,000
`{{Information page}}`	? / 354
`{{Infobox song}}`	Some portion of 70,000
`{{Infobox sports season}}`	5,200
`{{Infobox video game}}`	27,000
`{{Infobox NFL biography}}`	21,000

To do next

{{Infobox sports competition event}} – about 11,500 articles
{{Infobox religious building}} – about 12,000 articles
{{Infobox book}} – about 51,000 articles
{{Infobox military installation}} – about 9,600 articles

Bot-generated

User:DannyS712 bot Task 4 – Short descriptions for articles about bilateral relations (approx. 3,000 articles)
User:DannyS712 bot Task 20 – Short descriptions for outlines (approx. 400 articles)
User:ShortDescBot – about 300,000 articles

Templates and modules

Templates and modules that are useful for this/created for helping with short descriptions:

Module:Plain text, for removing extraneous markup
Module:Type in location, for formatting input from |location= and getting shorter location
Module:Is infobox in lead, for checking if the infobox is the lead infobox and the only lead infobox
Template:Auto short description, for tagging templates that have code that automatically generates a short description.
See also Category:Modules that create a short description

Can I use the Wikidata text if it is good?

Yes, but only if it complies with the guidance at WP:SDFORMAT, including the length recommendation (the vast majority of short descriptions are shorter than 40 characters). If it is good, you can copy it to Wikipedia in one click using the helper gadget, or choose to edit the text beforehand. There is no legal issue with copying, as all Wikidata texts are in the public domain.

Can I use a bot to copy over text from Wikidata?

No. The idea of bulk-importation from Wikidata has been rejected in an RFC. Wikidata texts are often not suitable as they are not subject to Wikipedia's policies, and have a different purpose.

Which articles can I work on?

Start with topics where you are sufficiently familiar to be able to write a good short description. If you run out, do anything that you are confident you can handle. If in doubt, leave it out.
If dealing with biographies, follow the WP:BLP policy scrupulously. Don't add a date of birth unless it is properly sourced in the article
Consider working though your watchlist (or part of it), or a WikiProject's articles, or a category
- add the User:SD0001/shortdescs-in-category user script to help working on categories
If you like Outlines, work through one, they may be a good source of short descriptions if well annotated, and if not, you can annotate with the short descriptions as you create them.
All articles need a short description. Featured, Good, A and B class could be prioritised.
If you are a bot operator, there are bot tasks to be done.
If you don't have the time or inclination to work on this systematically:
- consider just checking and adding a short description on articles that you will be editing anyway.
- search for -incategory:"Articles with short description" -incategory:"All disambiguation pages" — this ignores any disambiguation pages, as they are being handled separately. You could add something like articletopic:physics or neartitle:"San Francisco" to limit to topics or places of interest.
User:Uhai/Pages without short descriptions by view count, updated monthly

How do I find articles with no short description?

The search parameter -hastemplate:"Short description" identifies articles that do not have the template {{short description}}.

You can simply use the input box below:

What should I do about a bad short description?

Fix it: this is Wikipedia.
Follow Bold - Revert - Discuss, or you can start with Discuss in uncertain cases. The short description is just another piece of content.
In the case of a content dispute, get talk page consensus.
For a BLP violation, remove or preferably replace the description, providing an edit summary to explain.

Join the project

Add your signature to the bottom of the list of project members.

Userbox

Add {{User Short descriptions}} to your user page to be included in Category:WikiProject Short descriptions participants. The userbox looks like this:

This user is a participant in WikiProject Short descriptions.

You can also display a top icon as well, by adding {{Short descriptions topicon}} anywhere in your user page.

Tracking categories

Counts of different types of pages having short descriptions

Category:Articles with short description (1,480)
Category:Redirects with short description (1)
Category:Pages with short description (0) — this should be empty; pages should either be in one of the above categories, or not be categorised in this way after Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2022 December 15

Categories for this project

Counts of Short description vs. Wikidata

Counts of modules/templates that create short descriptions

Maintenance categories

Maintenance category to identify problems with the template parameters

Category:Pages using short description with unknown parameters (0)

Maintenance categories to list pages with descriptions over 100 characters

Issues with Short descriptions

Category:Pages with lower-case short description (0)

Category tree

To display all subcategories click on the "►":
WikiProject Short descriptions (1 C, 3 P) Templates that generate short descriptions (42 P)

Monthly checks

Review Category:Wikipedia pages with long short description (0)
This TemplateParam report lists articles where the SD template has a missing or blank description.
The main TemplateParam report can also highlight cases where the template has too many parameters.
Also Template:Short description#Maintenance categories

Discussions

Previous and current discussions on English WP short description and WikiData descriptions

Note: Template talk:Short description redirects to Wikipedia talk:Short description

Discussions related to short descriptions
When	Where	What
2017-03-27	Administrators' noticeboard	Hard to detect mobile vandalism
2017-03-28	Village pump (technical)	Discussion at ANI about Wikidata use in mobile view
2017-03-30	Village pump (proposals)	RFC Remove description taken from Wikidata from mobile view of en-WP — 2017-03-30 Withdrawn
2017-03-30	Village pump (proposals)	Blockers to having short description on mobile
2017-11-09	Template talk	Some history and explanation of this template for those without the time or inclination to read the full discussion
2017-12-08	Village pump (proposals)	RFC Populating article descriptions magic word
2018-02-07	Wikipedia talk	2018 State of affairs - Short descriptions
2018-02-17	Manual of Style talk	(position of) Short descriptions (in articles)
2018-04-14	Template talk	Infobox settlement - short descriptions
2019-04-13	Manual of Style talk	Where to put {{short_description}}
2020-05-15	Village pump (WMF)	Update: Scheduled shutdown of Wikidata descriptions on EnWiki
2020-08-03	WikiData	Pi bot 14 — Import short descriptions from the English Wikipedia (bot task to copy English WP short descriptions to WikiData) Y 2020-10-20
2020-08-03	Wikipedia talk	Copying short descriptions to Wikidata — Reference to Pi bot 14 / Pi bot 5
2020-08-03	Wikipedia Bot Requests	Pi bot 5 — Synchronise short descriptions with Wikidata (bot task to copy all WikiData descriptions to English WP) — 2020-09-15 Denied
2020-08-06	Village pump (proposals)	RFC Synchronising short descriptions and Wikidata descriptions — 2020-09-05 Closed No
2020-08-07	WikiProject talk	+ RfC on bot-importing short descriptions to and from Wikidata — Reference to the above
2020-08-07	WikiProject talk	Bot proposal to create short descriptions from scratch
2020-08-07	Wikipedia talk	+ Report-assisted importing of short descriptions — Reference to the above
2021-07-20	Redirects for discussion	Proposal to delete the 7 Aliases for Short description template — 2021-07-29 closed as Clear consensus to delete the first 5 — 4 deleted

Phabricator tickets

Some of the Phabricator tickets related to short descriptions
Opened	Ticket	Title	Closed
2018-01-03	T184000	Magic word on English WP to override display of Wikidata short description	2018-04-09
2018-05-04	T193857	Support 'noreplace' keyword in {{SHORTDESC}}	2018-07-02
2020-03-25	T248457	Fully terminate use of Wikidata item descriptions as short article descriptions for English Wikipedia articles	2023-01-29
2020-06-30	T256817	[EPIC] Replace Wikidata descriptions on enwiki with local descriptions — Parent to T257486, T257488 and others	2022-01-28
2020-07-08	T257486	Switch search to use local descriptions on enwiki	2021-04-26
2020-07-08	T257488	Adding/editing descriptions should modify the local article, not Wikidata	2021-04-26
2020-07-13	T257867	Adding/editing descriptions should modify the local article, not Wikidata — iOS task	2021-04-26
2020-08-04	T259617	Article description editing API — Overview of managing local descriptions
2020-08-04	T259622	System Administrator disables Wikidata fallback for article descriptions — Live on 2020-10-13
2020-08-25	T261237	Update terminology for "Article Descriptions" to match across feature — iOS app	2021-04-26
2020-09-03	T261977	Add tool tip for editing Wikidata descriptions in the iOS app	2021-04-26
2020-09-21	T263493	Reader gets appropriate article short description in search results — REST API — Live on 2020-10-13 (First direct display of Short descriptions on desktop skins)	2020-10-19
2021-04-08	T279702	Suggestededit-add_1.0 is suggesting bad short descriptions on en.WP; short description feature should be disabled until fixed	2022-04-21
2021-08-18	T289214	Switch to OOUI TitleInputWidget for the link-inserter in WikiEditor — Live on 2021-10-14	2021-11-08
2021-12-09	T297341	Brand-new editors are still being guided to adding terrible short descriptions on en.WP (follows on from T279702)