Wikipedia talk:Short description

Ethnic groups in short description

Recently, I've massively changed to Ethnic group that contradicts with WP:SDNOTDEF. Most ethnic groups, such as Russians, Jews, Bengalis, etc. of country/region is redundant per WP:SDNOTDEF. But in French people, which People of France is set to none, to avoid duplicating information that is already in the title. Absolutiva 21:29, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't mind using ethnic groups in the short description. However, in the case of "East Slavic ethnic group" for Russians, this descriptions requires someone to know what East Slavic means (unless you are counting on the article name providing context). While this will not work for all, another possibility is to describe people by their general geographic area instead of OR in addition to their ethnicity. For example, "Slavic group from Eastern Europe", "Eastern European Slavic group", "Ethnic group from Eastern Europe", "Cultural group from Eastern Europe" or "Slavic people from Eastern Europe"--assuming we want to avoid "People from Russia". That being said, East Slavs has the short description "Subgroup of Slavic peoples" which would also apply to Russians. Rublamb (talk) 22:19, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Ethnic groups also referred to "Indigenous peoples" for example:

• Alaskan Natives – Indigenous people of the United StatesPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Quechua people – Indigenous people of South America
• Tupi people – Indigenous people of Brazil

Absolutiva 01:02, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Indigenous has a different meaning than ethnic, indicating that the group originates from that location and still lives there. An ethnic group can have a shared culture, history, and language but does not need to live in their place of origin. For example, Russians and Jews who live in the US are part of an ethnic group but are not indigenous to the US. (There is probably cultural bias in the usage of indigenous that might be worth considering. That is, we seem to acknowledge mobility for some groups, but others seemed fixed to a specific location.) Another difference is that Alaskan Natives is an artificial grouping based on geography that includes several different tribal cultures and ethnic groups; thus, it is the opposite of an ethnic group. Rublamb (talk) 01:38, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Notice that I made a mistake as mentioned in my talk page. Absolutiva 03:03, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Going back to the original question, "East Slavic ethnic group" is seriously POV. It is an argument for "ethnic purity": a person who is not "East Slavic" ipso facto can't be Russian. No. A Russian is a person who is a citizen of Russia. (Or arguably, if a first or second generation immigrant family who could be described as "Russian-American", someone whose ancestors were Russian citizens.) 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:49, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, a Russian can be "a citizen of Russia". That would be a modern geo-political viewpoint. However, the article in question, Russians, is about "an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. Their mother tongue is Russian, the most spoken Slavic language", according to its lede. This makes sense because the country Russia has not always existed, for example during the era of the USSR, but the Russian people still existed as a cultural group. Rublamb (talk) 17:27, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Russia has not always existed... someone should have told Napoleon, saved himself a lot of bother. And obviously Peter the Great and Catherine the Great must have been playing Risk – pity Putin hasn't done likewise rather than trying to recreate Greater Russia. And Rus existed in modern Ukraine when Moscow was a village in a swamp – another of Putin's insane rationales.

for example during the era of the USSR Eh? See Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1917 to 1991). 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:36, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

You're still thinking of modern geopolitical divisions. The Russian cultural and language group dates to around the 9th century, before there was nation called Russia. Rublamb (talk) 20:06, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

"Each short description should ... avoid using a final full stop (period)" and abbreviations

Does that bit of WP:SDFORMAT apply if the last word in the short description is an abbreviation that's normally ended with a period? Or does that really mean "the SD shouldn't be a sentence and, as such, doesn't need and shouldn't have a sentence-terminating period"? Guy Harris (talk) 18:08, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

Both-ish. The SD is not a sentence and so does not need to be terminated. The SD should avoid using abbreviations and so there should not be an abbreviation needing a terminating full stop. Do you have a specific example? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 18:31, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

See, for example, this edit to Worldwide Developers Conference's short description. If SDs should avoid using abbreviations, the right answer might be to say just "Apple" rather than "Apple Inc.". Guy Harris (talk) 21:15, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

Agree. I removed the "Inc". Apple is a well understood company name — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 22:15, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

Earlier today I'd added the proper name Washington, D.C. as an example to the essay and it was reverted (this was after an editor changed the short summary to 'DC' on several articles). Randy Kryn (talk) 22:06, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

There are obvious exceptions to every rule. Murmur (album) is a "1983 studio album by R.E.M.", of course, and George Washington University is a "Private university in Washington, D.C.", where "D.C." matches the title of our Wikipedia article that has had multiple move requests to "Washington, DC" rejected. Wikipedia is mostly clear on how to write "D.C." for the US capital district. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:57, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for this discussion. I think it would be better to note the "obvious exceptions," as the D.C. and R.E.M. examples indicate, in the rule. (I edited the rule along similar lines but was reverted.) Fine to note a general inclination against using abbreviations, as well. My reason / example is in a recent edit to the SD of The Plain Dealer - from "Major newspaper of Cleveland, Ohio, U.S." to "Major newspaper of Cleveland, Ohio, US" - citing a violation of this rule as the reason. I don't know -- or care, really -- whether the better style for this SD is (1) "US" or (2) "U.S." or (3) "United States" or (4) none, just stop at "Ohio". They all seem more or less OK to me. And MOS:ABBR is agnostic between "US" and "U.S.", saying: "Both variants are used, but avoid mixing dotted and undotted within the same article". But I don't think a rule against ending a SD with a period / full-stop should be the deciding reason to use the no-periods / undotted version of this abbreviation.Sullidav (talk) 03:18, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Our guidance on short descriptions is intended to provide general direction, not as an exhaustive, legal-style code covering every possible scenario. The examples given here are exceptions (no final full stop/period) to other exceptions (no abbreviations). Introducing further complexity to account for edge cases is not the solution — such issues are better addressed on the article’s talk page. See WP:CREEP. MichaelMaggs (talk) 07:28, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

The problem is that the language remains unclear that exceptions like Washington, D.C., do exist, as evidenced by a discussion with LucasBrown who made good faith reductions in short summaries from D.C. to DC because of it. It is not unusual to provide a couple of examples in policies/guidelines/essays to illustrate exceptions to usual formatting. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:05, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Yes to Randy Kryn. And same with the descriptions ending in U.S. and R.E.M. People editing them and degrading them to comply with this rule is a bad result of this rule being stated so absolutely. The rule should either a) add waffle language (e.g., "generally" or "most of the time" -- or "see talk page for discussion of obvious exceptions") to reflect the view stated by MichaelMaggs that its nature is "general direction" rather than what it sounds like, an "exhaustive" rule, or b) as I and others have proposed, add a specific exception for the case where a period is part of the description's final word.Sullidav (talk) 03:04, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

I have added waffle. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:28, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Now LucasBrown is removing the period from Martin Luther King Jr.'s name in short descriptions, in good faith but also changing a proper name (he was the editor who was naming the capitol city of the United States Washington DC in short descriptors). Several examples should be added to clarify this essay, including these two, so editors don't use it as gospel? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:46, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Same with That's Entertainment! (SD: "1974 American film by Jack Haley Jr."). I reverted and referred to this discussion in explanation. Sullidav (talk) 12:52, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

As to styling, American English, which covers these topics (Dr. King and the film), uses the comma after Jr. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:59, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Do you mean the comma BEFORE Jr.?

From a quick look, according to MOS:FAQ2 the Wikipedia MOS dropped it "several years later" than "about 2005," Chicago style dropped it in 1993, AP style does not use that comma, nor does NYT style - per a recent obit- but MLA style still required it in 2016 (based on the previous, 8th, edition of the MLA Handbook). Sullidav (talk) 01:34, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

What we are trying to avoid here is editors writing SDs as full sentences, and using a full stop as closing sentence punctuation. I've suggested "avoid using a final full stop (period) as end-of-sentence punctuation; a short description is not a full sentence". MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:16, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

A good point, but it results in changing proper names. Lesser of two evils. Rewording so that the full name is either at the start or middle of the short summary would be an option. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:52, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

MichaelMaggs's suggestion results in changing proper names? How so? "Book by Martin luther King, Jr." doesn't use the period as end-of-sentence punctuation, so "avoid using a final full stop (period) as end-of-sentence punctuation; a short description is not a full sentence" would allow leaving the period after "Jr" in, right? It also would, as I read it, allow "Private university in Washington, D.C.", "1983 studio album by R.E.M.", and "Major newspaper of Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.", to cite examples used earlier in this thread. Guy Harris (talk) 17:31, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Yes indeed. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:52, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Agreed that the period should stay in, regardless of where in the descriptor it's at. The point is to explain that to other editors who are misreading the essay, which could be done by adding a couple of examples of when to use the period, (i.e. Martin Luther King, Jr., Washington, D.C.). Randy Kryn (talk) 22:43, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

See Abbreviations section, below. MichaelMaggs (talk) 02:58, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

Abbreviations

Should our guidance cover abbreviations? Current guidance doesn't explicitly mention them, but in practice they are often edited out on the ground that SDs should "avoid jargon, and use simple, readily comprehensible terms that do not require pre-existing detailed knowledge of the subject". But there seems no reason to avoid abbreviations that are (almost) globally known to speakers of English. I suggest adding avoid abbreviations unless well known globally such as "TV", "U.S." (or "US"), "Washington D.C." and the like. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:49, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

As long as it's not written in a way that encourages people to make dumb edits like "Martin Luther King Junior".

And I'm not sure how "globally known" D.C. is; at least I have met a significant number of people outside the United States who don't know that it stands for District of Columbia.Sullidav (talk) 01:53, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

Notification of a discussion that is relevant to this template

See Template talk:Infobox UK legislation#Short description generated by template: not so clever! (with my apologies for "leading the witness" in the title). 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:34, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 26 August 2025

(Block GitHub)

 Not done, request doesn't make desired edit clear. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:00, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

"Health in (country)" articles and short descriptions

Should "health in (country)" articles have short descriptions? I've noticed that some of them do (ex. Health in South Korea) and some don't (ex. Health in North Korea). I believe that these short descriptions should be removed, as they aren't very helpful. Whether you agree or not, I don't think it makes much sense to leave this situation as it is. Chess enjoyer (talk) 22:27, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

With the exception of some patent nonsense (my thanks to User:GraziePrego for removing it), No one has replied here in a few days. I'm going to assume I have silent consensus to remove the short descriptions. I have also realized that short descriptions of other "x in (country)" articles should probably be removed for the same reason. If you can think of any reason that they should stay, please post them here. Chess enjoyer (talk) 17:50, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

For "Health in [country]", follow the the rules at WP:SDLIST. Since "health" is a common word, you'd want to use "none" unless the country name is itself relatively obscure. "x in [country]" titles will depend on whether "x" is well understood globally. As WP:SDLIST says, you should never use "none" purely because the title is of particular form. Instead, consider each article individually and create a short description that provides the reader with some useful information about x. Only if the meaning of x itself is reasonably clear to English-speaking readers worldwide is the short description "none" appropriate. MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:11, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

@MichaelMaggs Except the articles I'm talking about aren't lists? In any case, I agree with all the points you laid out. If you look at my contributions, you'll find that I went on something of a removal spree. I don't think the short descriptions I removed said anything you couldn't infer from the title, which is why I thought they were unhelpful. I also believe that, in those articles, x is a common term that didn't necessitate a definition in the short description. Articles like Basketball in the United States might benefit from a definition of the sport, but I'm not sure if you could do that while keeping the short description, well, short. Chess enjoyer (talk) 21:11, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

This is useful feedback, and we should clarify that "x in [country]" titles, and perhaps more generally "x in [place or concept]" (eg Health in China,15th century in literature) fall within the scope of the guidance. I've made some tweaks and have added a new named redirect WP:SDOFIN to avoid any implication that it's all about lists. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:22, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

Migrating the "Recent progress" graph to Charts?

After the Graphs extension was disabled, the "Recent progress" graph at Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions#State of the project has been unavailable, although GhostInTheMachine has still been diligently keeping the graph data up to date with the table. Now that mw:Extension:Chart is available and is more or less usable, I wonder if we should switch over to the new extension?

I've already drafted a chart using the data on the WikiProject page (I think I got everything right, though I used an LLM to help parse the data into json). The data table is at c:Data:Sandbox/Liu1126/SdescProgress.tab and the chart is at c:Data:Sandbox/Liu1126/SdescProgress.chart. This is what it would look like in the same image frame as it is on the WikiProject page:

Extended content

Recent progress

Thoughts? Liu1126 (talk) 10:59, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

diligently? Diligent would be the same day every month. Moving on ...

My first attempt to use the chart thingy back in June was not very pretty, but recognise the data? See User:GhostInTheMachine/TestChart. The Image frame would seem to help with setting a chart width, but sadly we still cannot set the chart height. There are also display issues when the chart is combined with {{cot}}/{{cob}}. I have met some gossip that talks about a way to get the new chart system to collect data from the article as it used to, but the method still seems rather dirty. I think that we need to wait until the chart thingy is genuinely "production ready" — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 14:47, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

"Crime labels" in a short description...a quandary

I came here looking for guidance on a crime label used in a short description. Perhaps this guidance can be revised to better help users on the issue. There is an essay WP: Crime labels that has influenced changes to guidance on biographies. Here is the specific problem at the moment: An editor, @Sebbog13, recently changed the short descriptions for Sara Jane Moore and Squeaky Fromme to read: "American attempted presidential assassin". The description has some logical confusions, but also it uses the crime label that the subject is a "presidential assassin" - e.g., it could be taken that that's their identity and permanent occupation, c.f., the essay noted above.

Biographical article guidance is that rather than employ a crime label for a subject, just a statement as to the nature of the crime is to be given. Such a statement, while more objective, NPOV, and accurate, is necessarily longer than a label. In this present case, a short description for Moore (who recently died): "American who tried to assassinate President Ford (1956-2025)" might be preferred, though this description is 61 characters; perhaps others can suggest a shorter form. Per this article, this length is longer than 98% of Short descriptions. I write this to request two considerations for the guidance of Short descriptions: (1) that as tempting as they may be to use, "crime labels" are to be avoided, and (2) perhaps allowances can be made in such cases for longer descriptions, or examples given as to how a Short description can avoid the label, be ca. 40-character brief, yet still accurately reflect the subject. Bdushaw (talk) 11:47, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Don't worry about the 40-character recommendation. Sixty-one characters is fine if they are all useful and help us comply with policy and guidelines. We are currently hunting 95-character descriptions, so 61 is way down the priority list. Please do use a dash in the year range, though: "(1956–2025)". – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:55, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

The 40 character limit is arbitrary and arose because of a technical limitation in the app for iPhones. Yes, SDs should be short, even terse, but they must be useful to someone who needs to have some clue as to the content of the article. So no shorter than they need to be – but equally no longer than they need to be either. Perhaps originally SDs were only written with the app in mind but nowadays {{annotated link}} is widely used to annotate articles listed in WP:See also sections, to help readers identify which topics they might want to explore further. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:55, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

I am glad the SD lengths are not quite as strict as I thought. Bdushaw (talk) 14:57, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't think we can issue general guidance against crime labels in SDs. There are many assassins, mobsters, murderers, pirates, etc. whose SDs would be much less informative if they didn't focus on the main aspect of notability. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:04, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Sure, there is no hard and fast rule, to be sure. Al Capone was "a mobster", Bonnie and Clyde were "bank robbers"; no one would disagree. My concern is that crime labels in many subjects are inappropriate, while the length requirements of a SD beg for the use of a label. Elizabeth Holmes, the article where I first encountered this issue, is NOT "a fraudster"; rather, she was "convicted of fraud". Perhaps the request here is to note that an SD should respect the label usage, or absence, of the article it is to represent. In the biographical articles noted above, the "assassin" label is not used, hence I should conclude the SD should not use that label. Bdushaw (talk) 14:57, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

With Elizabeth Holmes, the short description is currently "American businesswoman". That seems to skip over why she is notable. I don't have a issue calling her a fraudster, after all that simply means "a person who commits fraud, especially in business or commercial dealings". Thus, someone who is convicted of a fraud, is correctly called a "fraudster", if that is why they are notable. Given the discussion here, "American businesswoman convicted of fraud" seems like a good solution. Rublamb (talk) 19:04, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Either one is fine, because either one briefly describes her and distinguishes her from Elizabeth Holmes (writer) and Beth Holmes and Elisabeth Holmes Moore. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:48, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

There was an RFC on the label "fraudster" and Holmes that clearly decided the label was a bad idea. There have been a multitude of other similar RFCs for other subjects and similar labels with the same result, and so on, hence the motivation for writing the essay on the subject noted above. One of my secondary aims for this inquiry here is to continue to raise awareness and sensitivity to the issue that often such labels are a bad idea. The definition argument you give has been worked over time and again. (And Holmes was a notable, high-profile businesswoman well before the fraud became apparent, but that's beside the point here; and not that I agree with that SD...) I similarly think it is a bad idea to have an article that studiously avoids such labels, and then have such a label creatively and carelessly employed for the Short description. As noted in the essay, the discussions on the crime label issue have been voluminous - we should avoid repeating them! Bdushaw (talk) 20:13, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Remember that all the SD is to be used for us to help disambiugate when search on a list particular via the mobile. The SD need not be precise, just enough to distinguish. So when including crime labels, we should be careful about going too far. So using the word "assassin" seems very strong, and in a case like Moore, something like "American convicted of presidential assassination attempt" Masem (t) 15:47, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Where the SD tends to be on the longer side, as here, dates can be omitted. WP:SDDATES says that "biographies of non-living people ... generally benefit from dating, but since the description should be kept short, other information may need to take precedence." In these examples, if the consensus is that a slightly longer text is needed to avoid what you call a 'crime label', I'd leave off the dates. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:34, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

There is no good reason to omit the dates. The reason for the 40-character advice is that in some edge cases, SDs are truncated. Truncating the dates in those edge cases while providing them in the majority of cases is user-friendly behavior. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:52, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks to you all for the discussion - I've gone with "American convicted of presidential assassination attempt" with the date. For me it has been useful, I hope also for the guidance for Short descriptions. Bdushaw (talk) 09:02, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Incorrect short descriptions

Brad Meador, Paul Friedman (announcer), and Jeff Fair all use Template:Infobox baseball biography that is generating short descriptions of 'Baseball player' - which are incorrect in these cases. My bot's import of these to Wikidata was reverted, but I'm not sure how to fix that here. Can someone help please? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:18, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

According to Template:Infobox baseball biography, you can override the auto-generated SD by manually adding a normal SD template with a suitable description. I'm not sure if your bot would then port the right one over to Wikidata. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:21, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, OK, I tried changing the short description at Brad Meador to use a new one on Wikidata per the template instructions, but it now just displays 'wikidata'? Mike Peel (talk) 17:51, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I think you'd want something like {{Short description|American baseball executive (born 1975)}}. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:56, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Enabling the gadget called "Shortdesc helper" in your Preferences makes it very easy to override the default short description generated by the infobox. I recommend it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:24, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

It's fixed on Wikidata, how do I get that to display here? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:52, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

GhostInTheMachine already fixed it :) Putting "wikidata" into the template won't transfer the description on wikidata over here. You have to manually set the description here yourself, like in the suggestion of Firefangledfeathers above. YuniToumei (talk) 18:57, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Mike Peel: The English Wikipedia does not display descriptions from Wikidata. This is on purpose and by design. In order to get short descriptions to display on the English Wikipedia, the {{short description}} template is required, either in the article itself or in a template that is transcluded in the article (almost always an infobox). Putting a {{short description}} template in the article will override any automatic short description created by transcluded templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:28, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

SDFORMAT: "plain text"

The guideline currently states:

Each short description should:
•   be written in plain text – without any type of markup or pictorial elements

This does not define "plain text" as ASCII. It seems, however, that there is a bot that is flagging anything else as an error.

So I want to propose that the guideline [sic] be clarified so that it does not preclude

• letters with simple diacritics typically encountered in English language texts such as ó, ò, ö, â, ā, ñ (French, German, Irish, Māori, Scots Gaelic, Spanish).
• extensively used typographic symbols like @, ©, #, ¶, § and so on.
• Mathematical signs widely seen outside mathematical text books and journals, like +, −, ±, /, ÷, ×, ~, ∴
• Various brackets and dashes like (, [, {, ⟨ and their mirrors, endash and emdash

Discuss. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:49, 2 November 2025 (UTC) Added ñ to letters-with-diacritics samples --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:16, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

JMF, what bot? — Qwerfjkltalk 12:07, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, some error report. @GhostInTheMachine tells me that Pilcrow (SD:Symbol ¶ used to identify a new paragraph) and Plus and minus signs (SD: Mathematical symbols (+ and −)) "are being flagged in an error report". My perspective is that Symbol used to identify a new paragraph and Mathematical symbols are uselessly uninformative at best. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:12, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

JMF, I suppose you mean Wikipedia:Database reports/Short descriptions containing possibly invalid characters. — Qwerfjkltalk 12:25, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, that's obviously the one. And I see it does invite reviewers to regard its output as potentially infringing. But clearly some editors regard it as definitive. Most of what it flags make sense but just taking the first three that caught my eye,

• Breve Diacritical mark, ◌̆
• Bullet (typography) Typographical symbol (•)
• Cedilla Diacritical mark (¸)

These are all valid SDs that are sensible and helpful to readers. The symbol shown should be left in place.

It is not obvious why endash and emdash should be declared ineligible. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:43, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Most of these have specialist or non-English uses. Since short descriptions are intended to be widely comprehensible to English-language readers worldwide, it's not evident to me that many of those could be validly used. Do you have any apecific examples in mind where these characters would be needed? MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:49, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

The specific cases that caused me to raise this are pilcrow and section sign because to return "typographic symbol" is uselessly uninformative and even insulting to the reader's intelligence. For the SD to have any meaningful value, it must include the symbol – if only so the the reader can tell this is indeed the article they wanted. Same goes for division, multiplication (hybrid sign).

Words that contain letters with diacritic are not usual in English but not exceptional. (Perhaps less true in en.us? except ñ.)

I fail to see any rational basis to exclude characters that are in routine use. ASCII is a very long time ago, I can't believe that there is any debate about accepting The ISO Latin-1 set. I guess the Unicode basic plane will have to wait another 50 years.

Finally and to be clear, I am not bidding to add another rule to SDSTATUS, but just have whatever it is that checks for errors to lighten up. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:12, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I disagree that the SD for pilcrow needs to include the actual symbol. If I am wondering whether a "pilcrow" is some sort of bird, or a made-up word from Lewis Carroll, or a punk band from Omaha, the SD of "typographical symbol" is enough to set me straight. If I'm wondering which specific symbol it is, I can go to the article. The same goes for all of the symbols currently included in short descriptions – I think they can all be removed without making the SDs worse. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:25, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I suspect that you are thinking only of searches, where the user already knows the word pilcrow and there your assessment is correct. But equally important, if not more so, are WP:annotated links in See Also lists. These are immensely helpful to readers who don't know what the symbol is called, but recognise it when they see it and can see where to go next. This kind of serendipity is what makes Wikipedia great. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:19, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Formally...

• So to state this formally, I am requesting that the term "plain text" be taken to mean U+0020 thru U+007E and U+00A0 thru U+00FF. (Same as is illustrated here, 20–7E and A0–FF). I exclude non-standard use of codepoints in the U+0080 thru U+009F range (used by Windows-1252 and MacRoman). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:57, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

• Now that I have seen Wikipedia:Database reports/Short descriptions containing possibly invalid characters and the exclusion list it contains, another option would be to add to the exclusion list all the symbols given at List of typographical symbols and punctuation marks?
  • Does context matter? For example, would we want to accept U+2122 ™ TRADE MARK SIGN anywhere except in the SD for Trademark symbol, given its sarcastic usage in other contexts?
  • Maybe we just need to strengthen the rubric at 'Short descriptions containing possibly invalid characters' to emphasise potentially to assert that context matters? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:56, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Context does indeed matter. The SD for Pilcrow, for example, seems fine, but I doubt that the symbol would be acceptable in many other articles. Some of the potential issues listed at Wikipedia:Database reports/Short descriptions containing possibly invalid characters are similar explanations of symbols, but I don't think we can just amend that list to accept everything you mention. The list is useful in flagging up chemistry and mathematics SDs that attempt to define the topic or that use technical terms (WP:SDNOTDEF / WP:SDJARGON). Better to clarify the rubric if need be. None of the symbols are blocked, just flagged for attention. MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:12, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Agreed, I think that this can be the easiest way to resolve the issue without introducing additional bureaucracy. (But see Pilcrow: Revision history for yesterday: the conflict of perspectives has been a real issue and source of friction for some time.)

How about this additional sentence in the rubric in Wikipedia:Database reports/Short descriptions containing possibly invalid characters:

In an article about a specific non-ASCII symbol, it is helpful to readers for the SD to include that symbol (in parentheses). In such cases, the SD should be allowed to stand, but not otherwise. (For example, the SD for the Trademark symbol reads Symbol (™): an unregistered trademark and this is a valid use – but it is not valid to use the ™ symbol in other SDs, whether alongside a trade name, used sarcastically or otherwise.) Similarly, correct spelling of the names of some localities requires use of diacritics and these should not be discarded.

Does that hit the spot? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:15, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I created this report and have made all or most of the adjustments to its documentation and exceptions. I welcome better documentation if there is evidence that reasonable people do not understand the caveat in the emphasized word "potentially" that is currently the fourth word on the page, or the word "possibly" that appears in the page title. (It is much harder to help unreasonable people or those who simply will not read documentation.)

I think it works well to highlight real problems; it originally contained about 2,000 SDs and catches many minor problems such as misused en-dash-like characters. I think that including all Unicode characters would cause the report to be a lot less useful. Including characters like the em dash, precomposed fractions, guillemets, and other characters at list of typographical symbols and punctuation marks would make the report a lot less useful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:25, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Accepted. I recognise that my first proposal was overkill and I am abandoning it. I found the comment by @MichaelMaggs persuasive and am now content that it will be sufficient to improve the rubric. I will do that now: further tweaks can be resolved there, 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:10, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

There is no need for additional language about diacritics; the report documentation already explains that "Other non-ASCII letters, such as Roman letters with accents" are accepted by the report. If you find a specific character that is needed for a place name and that the report does not accept, please note it on the report's talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:01, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Announcing new userscript: FormatSeeAlso

Hi everyone. Since this page discusses using short descriptions in "See also" sections via {{Annotated link}}, I think editors here might be interested in a new userscript I've developed: FormatSeeAlso.

It's designed to help editors format "See also" sections per MOS:ALSO. The script converts plain wikilinks to use {{anl}}, pulling in the articles' short descriptions. It also formats section links with {{slink}} and optionally sorts the list alphabetically, while preserving formatting like italics or quotes, and handling redirects.

The script includes an initial step that scans all the "See also" links and presents a dialog with the articles that are missing a short description. This makes it easy to identify and populate missing SDs before adding the annotation templates.

Thanks to JMF for coming up with ideas and beta testing the script - couldn't have done it without you! If anyone has questions or thoughts, I'd love to hear them. Anne drew (talk · contribs) 14:51, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

I would like to endorse this tool, it works brilliantly. If you have been using {{AnnotatedListOfLinks}}, this is a gear change in convenience and performance. It identifies many of the usual errors and encourages action to fix them. And, like AnnotatedListOfLinks, it identifies the (still too many) cases of articles that lack an SD and does a great job of encouraging the user to contribute such. And yes, from time to time, to identify that the generic SD is not going to be good enough in a particular article and stop to give it a hand-tailored annotation instead. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:16, 8 November 2025 (UTC)