The short description of a Wikipedia article or other mainspace page is a concise explanation of the scope of the page.
This is an information page. It describes the editing community's established practice on some aspect or aspects of Wikipedia's norms and customs. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. |
This page in a nutshell: All mainspace pages should have a description of what they are about in about 40 characters. These short descriptions are used in the mobile app and to augment search results. |
Eventually all articles should have a short description template, even if it is empty, so that it is easier to keep track of new articles which still need to have one added.
The Wiki Foundation (WMF) initially arranged for short descriptions to be drawn from the Description
field in Wikidata entries. Later, WMF made provision for these to be overwritten by short descriptions generated within Wiki ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ.
The short description is part of the article content, and is subject to the standard processes for content decisions, including but not limited to Bold–Revert–Discuss and the rules on edit warring and vandalism. Short descriptions are subject to many Wikipedia standards of content, including those found at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, though, like the title, they are not able to be referenced inline. Just like article titles, they are decided by editorial consensus.
The most convenient way to create and edit short descriptions is using the short description gadget. Please do not create or use redirects/shortcuts. The gadget does the job better, and redirects break the gadget's function. If you need to do a manual fix, please use the correct template name {{short description}}
.
This restriction does not apply to the use of {{short description}}
inside other templates for special purposes, like redirects, where a generic short description is added to a whole category of pages by transclusion in an existing template.
Wiki's mobile interface uses descriptions to augment searches, and the Wikipedia App also uses them below each article title. These short descriptions were implemented by WMF developers using the description for the article from Wikidata. (See Wikidata's "Wiki" entry: the description is below the title line.)
After concerns were raised about their accuracy, suitability, and the potential for sneaky vandalism on Wikidata, WMF developers created the SHORTDESC magic word, giving editors the ability to override the Wikidata description directly on Wiki ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ.
This was discussed in the following places:
If a short description for an article is not defined on Wikipedia, as of May 2018[update], the Wikidata description is still used. At some point, the Wikidata fallback will be removed.
This section is for historical interest, Do not use the bare magic word, use the template {{short description}} |
The magic word {{SHORTDESC: }} has been implemented and works from within the template {{short description}}. According to DannyH (WMF), the implementation will now proceed in two stages:
Stage 1: Wikipedia editors will populate the magic word (SHORTDESC) on Wikipedia pages by using the {{short description}}
. During that period:
Stage 2: Once Wikipedia editors write (or import from Wikidata) ~2 million descriptions, we will switch to entirely Wikipedia-hosted descriptions. From that point:
Use the template {{short description}} to add short descriptions to articles.
All articles should have a short description. If many articles share the same short descriptions, it may be a good idea to add the {{short description}} template to a template used by all these articles instead.
Per MOS:ORDER, place the {{short description}} template as close to the top of the page as possible, for ease of finding it. This means that it should be below any hatnotes, but above Deletion/Protection tags (CSD, PROD, AFD, PP notices), Maintenance / dispute tags, and English variety and date style.
| noreplace
to the magic word, which will allow it to be overridden by a manually inserted instance (for example, at the top of the article) that does not have the | noreplace
keyword. (The short description is normally invisible when visiting Wikipedia using a desktop browser. It is visible and used by the mobile interface.
There is no special code or alternate templates that make short descriptions visible in desktop browsers.
To see short descriptions from desktop browsers, you need to enable MediaWiki:Gadget-Page_descriptions.js from your Preferences in the Gadgets menu Testing and development section: Show page description beneath the page title (not compatible with the Page Assessments gadget). This makes the short description visible to you, but not to other Wikipedia readers using desktop browsers.
Red means that the short description is missing; orange means it's from Wikidata (you can click it to go there).
Editor hints are only available for those who are auto confirmed, and only work for Vector and Monobook skins. Coded by User:TheDJ. May contain bugs. (Display is somewhat erratic, you may have to refresh the page a few times to get it to show.)
For a more direct and robust approach that is compatible with the Page Assessment gadget, see user CSS instructions at § Testing; the code snippet there can simply be copy-pasted. This does not provide Wikidata color highlighting, however.
If the page isn't [directly] using {{Short description}}
, try these steps:
markup.{{Portal description}}
in the portal's code. You can add a |topic=
parameter to override to auto-generated topic name.Taking scuba diving (Q1096878) as an example:
{{short description/test|Underwater diving where breathing is from equipment independent of the surface }}
→ {{short description/test|none }}
→ {{short description/test|wikidata }}
→ .mw-page-description { background-color: #FF80FF; }
The template {{Annotated link}} can be used to automatically annotate a link in a list using the associated short description. This can be used in outline and index lists, and in shorter lists in articles such as "see also" sections, which will be automatically populated with annotations using the associated short descriptions. These will remain up to date when the short description is edited. Annotated link does not work via redirects, so if the link is to a redirect, check if it is a redirect with possibility of becoming a full article. If so, add an appropriate short description to the redirect page – this will also help when someone wants to make it into an article – or change the link to a direct link. Both of these options can be appropriate, and it is a matter of judgement which is better in a specific case. (Bold-Revert-Discuss applies)
{{Short description}} conflicts with the magic word #REDIRECT if placed in the standard position at the top of the page. If there is a short description first, the redirect becomes functionally a soft redirect – it will not take the reader directly to the target, but will work if the link is clicked on the redirect page. It also generates an edit summary that the redirect has been removed.
This may be fixable, but the workaround is to ensure that #REDIRECT is above {{Short description}}.
The short description helper gadget no longer causes this problem, as it now inserts the short description below #REDIRECT. Manual addition can still be done incorrectly, but the problem is trivially avoidable, and easily fixed.
Functions
A short description on a redirect page has two functions:
This is the way a short description can be made available for annotated links without having to creating a full article, which is useful if there is not enough reliably sourced information available to create the article yet, or insufficient time or inclination. The short description of a Redirect to section should refer to the section content, and should not generally be the same as the short description of the main article containing that section.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ article ᱣᱤᱠᱤᱯᱤᱰᱤᱭᱟ:Short description, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
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