Short descriptions: One year later

In focus

Short descriptions: One year later

You can see short descriptions in grey beneath the article title. These descriptions, along with the thumbnail for the article, make it easier for the reader to understand what the article is covering.

Short descriptions: One year later

One year ago, I put forward a challenge to the English Wikipedia community: In one year, every remaining article will have a short description (or will be marked as not requiring one due to a self-explanatory title). At that time, the count of articles not meeting this was ~770,000. As of March 2026, the number is ~538,000. Unfortunately, we did not meet this goal. But not to worry! I still have confidence that the community will come together to reduce this count to zero. I would like to introduce some new ideas and strategies for the community, from my new experiences and from others who commented on last year's article.

New and revised strategies

In my article last year, many commented that the number often increases due to new articles being created and not being provided with a short description. Articles for Creation has done a great job of providing short descriptions to new articles created through AFC. In addition, the New Pages Patrol states that articles being reviewed can be provided with a short description if they weren't given one by the article's creator. I urge Wikipedians to join both communities if they haven't already, not just to add short descriptions but to clean up the many new articles added to Wikipedia.
- However, I need to stress that in the new article creation and review process, short descriptions are not a priority.
Some users also mentioned using LLMs (large-language models) to generate descriptions. However, AI can create inaccuracies and utilizing it requires articles to be marked as containing LLM generated content.
There are a number of helpful tools available for the purpose of adding short descriptions to articles and I encourage everyone to consider these for the purpose of adding short descriptions.

Closing remarks and new challenge

I think my initial challenge was a little too lofty, but we have made progress since last year at this time! Since then, we've added short descriptions (or marked articles as not needing one) to ~232,000 articles. Dividing the number remaining (538,000) by 232,000 leaves us with a value of about 2.32 years. My new challenge to the English Wikipedia community is to have added short descriptions to every article on Wikipedia by March 2029. I think this is a more reasonable challenge and I intend to make updates every year on this goal until we have accomplished it!

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The lack of short descriptions is an issue with the Recommended Reading List as well as hopefully some upcoming feed in the Wikipedia app. One then first has to go to the article to see whether it's of (potential) interest. See this wish in the Community Wishlist: W515: Add short descriptions from Wikidata to Wikipedia articles without short description via bot/script. And please think of the volunteer time required; that time and effort is to be respected. Lastly, many short descriptions are not helpful/fitting so need to be changed/checked and some articles where the short description has been makred as unnecessary would benefit from one. --Prototyperspective (talk) 14:04, 10 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the information and the link to the Wishlist entry! Urban Versis 32^KB ⚡ ^{(talk / contribs)} 15:49, 10 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I probably overuse user scripts (especially given the recent Wikimedia episode…) but Shortdesc Helper is handy. Anytime I see the red text at the top of the screen indicating a missing shortdesc I’m compelled to fix it. It’s an easy fix, and when there is a shortdesc on Wikidata that isn’t in sentence case (no need otherwise), all you have to do is click “import”. ASUKITE 23:37, 10 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SDH for the link Czarking0 (talk) 00:45, 11 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For people interested in finding batches of articles in need of easy short descriptions, I have recommended this method in the past, and it is still valid: Go to a person-related category like Category:1746 births, and use the shortdescs in category script to show the short descriptions. On the first page of that category, I see 30 articles (15%) without short descriptions. All but two of them have Wikidata descriptions that should be easy to modify (if necessary) and import using the shortdesc helper gadget. When you're done with that page, go to the next page alphabetically. When you're done with that category, go to the next year. You can add a thousand short descriptions in short order. Make sure to read WP:SDEXAMPLES and the rest of the guidance on that page before embarking on your work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:17, 19 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like a very inefficient way to do this. A better way would be a tool where you enter a category title and it outputs all the articles without short description along with their Wikidata description that you can modify for import and then can click one button to import these, partly modified or removed, short descriptions all at once. I don't understand why there is so little respect for volunteer time and so little concern with efficiency and scalability. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:50, 19 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. However, it could still be challenging to do this because many articles don't have Wikidata descriptions at all (as the article has not been connected to a Wikidata item or the item doesn't have a description) or have descriptions that are unfit for Wikipedia, e.g. "entry in Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715-1886", from Q108527645. (This was taken at random from Wikidata items, and I concede that an item taken at random wouldn't necessarily be connected to an article on Wikipedia.) Therefore, using that method could also require a large amount of work modifying imported Wikidata descriptions for use on Wikipedia. The central issue here is that it is very difficult to mass import short descriptions to Wikipedia, as articles each have unique requirements for short descriptions. I've even tried to create a bot for this task (UrbanBot 2) (UrbanBot 3) which was declined primarily because of scalability issues. I think this is why not all pages have short descriptions; too much volunteer time is required and the task is almost inherently not mass-scalable. I don't think Jonesey95 was implying that the community hasn't put in enough effort; I think they outlined one of the best methods for adding short descriptions. Unfortunately, there is no good scalable solution for short descriptions at this time, and short descriptions aren't (and shouldn't) be at the top of the priority list for a volunteer-run project. Thank you both for your comments! Urban Versis 32^KB ⚡ ^{(talk / contribs)} 22:30, 19 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
First I need to clarify that my comment reads not like it was meant: I think Jonesey provided some useful info and doing what he described would be very constructive. could also require a large amount of work modifying imported Wikidata descriptions for use on Wikipedia. yes but it would be much faster and efficient. Additionally, there could be some X button with which one remove items that need more editing than one is comfortable doing. Maybe I should visualize the interface concept. as articles each have unique requirements for short descriptions they're often similar for items within a category though. Additionally, one could maybe load the lead inline to aid the adjustments to the description. short descriptions aren't (and shouldn't) be at the top of the priority list which is why it would be good to minimize time required for them and even so some short descriptions turn out suboptimal (these can be edited). They get increasingly important with the Recommended Reading List and related feed. very difficult to mass import short descriptions to me it so far seems like most of the time, the WD description can be imported as is after a short checking. Exceptions could be quickly removed or adjusted. Afaik other languages import them too. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:09, 19 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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