User talk:Pbsouthwood

This is Pbsouthwood's talk page, where you can send them messages and comments.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30: 30 days

Template:Archive box collapsible

^[1]

References

^

Tip of the day...

Highlight text on any website, then search Wikipedia for it with a single click

You can do this with bookmarklets, such as the one you can download on this page.
Follow the above link, and drag the Wikipedia search bookmarklet provided there to your browser's toolbar. This creates a bookmark called Wikipedia search which is actually the activation button for a useful javascript program. The next time you want to look something up while browsing any given web-page, highlight the term and then click on your Wikipedia search bookmark.

Prior tip – Tips library – Next tip

Read more: Bookmarklet
Wikipedia:Tools

Become a Wikipedia tipster

To add this auto-updating template to your user page, use {{totd}}

Women in Red World Contest

Hi. We're into the last five days of the Women in Red World Contest. There's a new bonus prize of $200 worth of books of your choice to win for creating the most new women biographies between 0:00 on the 26th and 23:59 on 30th November. If you've been contributing to the contest, thank you for your support, we've produced over 2000 articles. If you haven't contributed yet, we would appreciate you taking the time to add entries to our articles achievements list by the end of the month. Thank you, and if participating, good luck with the finale!

WikiProject Genealogy - newsletter No.5 -2017

Newsletter Nr 5, 2017-12-30, for WikiProject Genealogy (and Wikimedia genealogy project on Meta)

Participation:

This is the fifth newsletter sent by mass mail to members in Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy, to everyone who voted a support for establishing a potential Wikimedia genealogy project on meta, and anyone who during the years showed an interest in genealogy on talk pages and likewise.

(To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please see below)

A demo wiki is up and running!

Dear members of WikiProject Genealogy, this will be the last newsletter for 2017, but maybe the most important one!

You can already now try out the demo for a genealogy wiki at https://tools.wmflabs.org/genealogy/wiki/Main_Page and try out the functions. You will find parts of the 18th Pharao dynasty and other records submitted by the 7 first users, and it would be great if you would add some records.

And with those great news we want to wish you a creative New Year 2018!

Don't want newsletters? If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page.

Cheers from your WikiProject Genealogy coordinator Dan Koehl.

To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery

User talk:Fram#Short descriptions (eom)

User talk:Galobtter#Template:Infobox settlement/sandbox (eom)

Portals tasks requests: presented in the newsletter below...

Aquarium diving

Short description problem. Maybe after the redirect?Xx236 (talk) 11:01, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Xx236, I don't see a problem, could you describe it? Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:06, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You have created a number of redirects. I'm not sure if they redirect, I see them as texts.Xx236 (talk) 11:09, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Xx236, You are right, the short description seems to be interfering with the redirect. I will check what happens if the order is changed and let you know. This is probably a bug. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:11, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging Sam Sailor to keep discussion in one place. In reply to your edit summary question at Boat diving, This is a newly discovered bug with either #REDIRECT or {{short description}}. The quick work-around appears to be to move the short description to after the redirect, but this should not happen. I will investigate further and probably open a bug on it. Any further information on idiosyncrasies of the combination would be appreciated. The short descriptions are useful in {{annotated link}} which allows automatically updated annotations in list articles, such as WP:outlines, WP:indexes and any other place where an annotated list is useful.

These may only be useful where the redirect has potential to become a full article, or is to a topic too small to be a full article. Anyway, that is how I have been using them. I will go back and jury-rig the redirects I have given short descriptions so far. Unfortunately the gadget for creating them puts them right at the top of the article, which would be the best place without this bug, so some manual fiddling will be needed in many cases. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:36, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I notice that the edit summaries for adding a short description above the redirect claim "removed redirect" which correctly describes the effect, but the redirect code remains unchanged. It also affects the categories, Category:Redirect with short description if the SD is below REDIRECT, and article with short description if SD is above REDIRECT · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:11, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have moved all that I could find to fix the problem. If I missed any, either let me know or fix them, which would be easier and faster, and I will be notified anyway. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:14, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Peter. Yes, as demonstrated in this diff, {{short description}} should go on a new line beneath #REDIRECT[[target]]. If descriptions are to be used on redirects, perhaps the simple way forward is to ask the good Galobtter to stick in some kind of if exist ... then in User:Galobtter/Shortdesc helper.js. Sam Sailor 19:28, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sam Sailor, That is probably the way to go in the long run. To keep the work flowing I just move the short description below the redirect manually at present, which is easy enough. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:42, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't exactly a bug, basically any text or anything above/before a redirect breaks it, and this is known behaviour; that "Removed redirect" thing is an automatic detection by the software that you've made the page not a redirect. I'll take a look about fixing the script Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:45, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Galobtter, That is more or less what I expected, so have been moving them below, except every now and then it seems I miss one. Thanks Sam Sailor for fixing. I do get most of them right... Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:48, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(←) Peter, two things: (a) Looking at Category:Redirects with short description, why are so many pages categorized although they do not transclude a {{short description}}? E.g. why is Acevedo (surname) a member of the hidden cat? (b) What purpose does {{short description}} serve on Burn (stream) (please fix yourself), and North pole, and South pole? Sam Sailor 20:05, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sam Sailor, Burn (stream), North pole, South pole and many other alternative spellings are used in lists like Outline of geography, so having a short description is useful to the list article if is transcluded as a link annotation. There may be a better way to do it, but I have not thought of it yet. (The {{annotated link}} does not go to the redirected article as I have no idea how to do that).

I don't know anything about the Acevedo (surname) case, but will have a look and see if I can work out what is happening. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:17, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The generic short description "Surname list" appears to have been transcluded via the {{Surname}} template, in the same way as it is done for disambiguation pages. It can be overridden by a regular short description if anyone thinks a custom short description would be better for any specific surname page. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:17, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Ligand Pharmaceuticals

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Ligand Pharmaceuticals. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Interface administrators

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Interface administrators. Legobot (talk) 04:32, 4 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2018).

Administrator changes

Justlettersandnumbers • L235

Bgwhite • HorsePunchKid • J Greb • KillerChihuahua • Rami R • Winhunter

Interface administrator changes

Cyberpower678 • Deryck Chan • Oshwah • Pharos • Ragesoss • Ritchie333

Oversight changes

Guerillero • NativeForeigner • Snowolf • Xeno

Guideline and policy news

Following a request for comment, the process for appointing interface administrators has been established. Currently only existing admins can request these rights, while a new RfC has begun on whether it should be available to non-admins.
There is an open request for comment on Meta regarding the creation a new user group for global edit filter management.

Technical news

Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the Test Wikipedia and the Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
Because of a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.

Arbitration

The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, amended the procedure on functionary inactivity.
The community consultation for 2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
Following a request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:13, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Non-free content

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Non-free content. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Question about redirect shot descriptions

Hey, I was asking about adding short description to episode redirects (such as Into the Ring) and heard you've added to redirects and wanted to get your input on this. Is this OK or will I start getting mass amount of messages on this? --Gonnym (talk) 17:10, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Gonnym, I have been adding short descriptions to redirects where the redirect has potential to become a full article at some stage, and in a few cases for realistically alternative titles which are used in lists. I have not had any objections except where the redirect was broken because the short description was above it, which is easily fixed. As long as the short description will be useful to the reader, it will probably be accepted by most people. I don't edit television series articles, so have no idea of the local conventions. You may get more relevant opinions from the associated wikiproject. My guess is that a short description will generally be helpful for identifying a specific episode.

You say you were asking about it. Where was this? Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:34, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the answers! I was talking with Galobtter who was helping me when I started working on creating the television episode descriptions and asked him if he knew someone who was adding these to redirects as I wanted to verify it was ok. --Gonnym (talk) 08:22, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome. I trust you will come up with a satisfactory solution. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:26, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There is already one ready with Module:Television episode short description which is already implemented in Template:Infobox television episode. --Gonnym (talk) 08:53, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Notability (people). Legobot (talk) 04:34, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Shortness of short descriptions

My watchlist shows you adding a lot of short descriptions. Good, and thanks! However, have you used a phone to search for a topic using the Wikipedia app? For example, at Population genetics the description is:

Study of genetic differences within and between populations including the study of adaptation, speciation, and population structure

Using a large phone, searching for "population gen" shows several suggestions including the above article. This is what the screen shows when searching:

Study of genetic differences within and betwee...

With the phone tilted in landscape mode it shows:

Study of genetic differences within and between populations including the study of adaptat...

I suppose a lot more would be visible with a large tablet but phones are claimed to be a major source of readers (and all of the description is shown after displaying the article). I am just dumping my thoughts without any good suggestions but you might consider omitting padding such as "Study of" and "within and between". Brevity with less precision might be better because the aim of the short description is help the reader find the right page. The description is not intended to give an accurate summary of the article. Johnuniq (talk) 09:57, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Johnuniq, I understand the problem, but at the moment I am more concerned with getting short descriptions into articles that optimising them for mobile display. The target of 2 million is a long way off and I consider my time better spent on providing a larger number of descriptions rather than optimum brevity. My short descriptions can be considered to be a first approximation. If you or anyone else have alternatives which you think will work better, please feel free to go ahead and make the edits. I object when a short description is reverted, but not when it edited with the clear intention of improving it in any way.

The aim of the short description is not limited to what WMF reading team want now, particularly since they are not doing the work. Short descriptions are also called by {{annotated link}} as annotations for links used in list type articles, like Wikipedia:Outlines where the length is not a problem. It can be quite difficult in some cases to get a short description condensed down to fit into the preferred length and still provide useful information to the reader.

I think that the technological limitation on display length will probably end up being the easiest to fix, but that is not my field of expertise. I also expect at some stage that short descriptions will be provided in voice responses, so it would be good to keep that in mind. If the app developers want to trim some of the short descriptions down a bit to fit their available space they are welcome to try to get it right.

While not required to be an accurate summary of the article, that is a desirable feature, and the short description must also not be a misleading description of the topic. This is a problem WMF foisted on us without thinking it through adequately, and like the rest of Wikipedia, it will evolve and probably eventually stabilise as something useful, but not necessarily exactly what we are doing now. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:49, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	For adding a million Short Descriptions to all imaginable Evolution articles! Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:41, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Chiswick Chap: I wish! A million would be halfway to shutting off use of the wikidata descriptions, with all their errors and vulnerabilities. Thanks all the same. I am glad some people notice that it is happening. Please feel welcome to improve any for which you can think of better versions, and there are a few that defeat me completely. I am working my way through Outline of evolution and using the short descriptions as annotaions, thereby achieving two goals simultaneously, but may be missing some that are not listed in the outline. Let me know if you spot any of those. I will probably do palaeontology or geology next, also using the outline as a guide. No rest for the wicked... Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:34, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Portals WikiProject update #020, 12 Oct 2018

Whew, a lot has been happening.

A bit of defending of the portals has been needed. But, most activity recently has been directed upon maintenance and development of existing portals.

The majority of portals now use the new design, about 2400 of them, leaving around 1200 portals that still employ the old style.

Newest portals

Please inspect these portals, and report problems or suggest improvements at WT:WPPORTD. Thank you.

MfDs

Since the last issue of this newsletter, Nineteen portals were nominated for deletion. All posted by the same person.

Two portals were deleted.

One resolved as "no consensus".

Sixteen resolved as "keep".

Links to the archived discussions are provided below:

Many thanks to those who participated in the discussions.

To watch for future MfD's, keep in mind that the Portals WikiProject is supported by automatic alerts. You can see them at: Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Article alerts: portals for deletion at MfD

Creation criteria

There was also some discussion of creation criteria for portals. The result was that one of the participants in the discussion reverted the portal guidelines to the old version, which has the minimum number of articles for a portal included in there: "about 20 articles", a guideline that was in place since 2009.

Many of the portals that existed prior to April 2018 do not have that many (being limited to however many subpages the portal creator created), and therefore, these portals need to be upgraded to the new design (which automatically provides many articles for display). Using the new design, exceeding 20 articles for display is very easy.

Linking to the new portals

Efforts have been underway to place links to new portals (all 2200 of them created since April).

Link (portal button) from corresponding category pages. Done
Link from See also section on corresponding root articles. Partially implemented
Link from bottom of corresponding templates. Partially implemented
Link for each portal on Portal:Contents/Portals. Partially implemented

Your help is needed. It is easy to access the page mentioned in #1, #2, & #3 from the portals themselves.

AWBers could do these tasks even faster (that's how the category pages were done), except #4...

Item #4 above pretty much has to be done by hand. (If you can find a way to speed that up, I would be very impressed). The links needing placement can be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet. Instructions are included there.

The conversion effort: news sections

There are still around 1200 old-style portals that have only undergone partial conversion to the new design concepts, still relying on subpages with copied/pasted excerpts that have been going stale for years, out of date (manually posted) news entries, etc.

The section currently being tackled on these is news. You can help by deleting any news section on the old-style portals that has news entries that are years old (that is the dead giveaway to a manual news section). Be sure not to delete the news sections of portals that have up-to-date news, or active maintainers. For maintainers, look at the portal's categories, and/or check the participants list at WP:WPPORT.

Eventually, conditional news sections (that appear only when news items are available for display) will be added using AWB to all portals without a news section.

News items (and even the news sections themselves) are automatically generated for portals that were created using the Basic portal start page. On those portals, there is a hidden comment at the top of the page (that you can see in the edit window), that says this:

Design development

Presently, we are in the process of implementing the new design features, creating new portals with them, and installing them in existing portals.

But, what about development of new new design features?

We have a wish department.

Post your wishes at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design#Discussions about possible cool new features, and they might come true. Many have already, and for many of those, this is where they were posted.

Cascade effect

A resource that has been elusive so far will be obtained eventually: categories. That is, the ability to pull category member links to populate a page.

Rather than populate portals directly with such links, it may be more beneficial to the encyclopedia to utilize them in navigation footers, because portals already have the ability to generate themselves based on those.

So, this would create a cascade effect: auto-gathering entries from categories, would enable the construction of new navigation footers, that would in turn support the development of new portals.

The cascade effect would also be felt by existing portals, as existing navigation footers could be expanded using the category harvesting methods, which would in turn expand the coverage of portals that access those navigation footers.

You can help by providing leads about any potential category harvesting methods. Please report anything you know about harvesting categories at WT:WPPORTD. Thank you.

Looking into the future: the quantum portal?

One idea that has been floating around is the concept of a pageless portal. That is, a portal that isn't stored anywhere, instead being generated when you click on a menu item or button.

Many of the new portals were generated by a single click, and then saved via a second click.

Therefore, it seems likely that the portals of the future will employ the one-click concept.

Because of the need for customization by users, this concept would need to be augmented with a way to integrate user contributions. This could be done in at least two ways: posting an existing portal, autogenerating one from scratch if such does not yet exist, or have a special data page for user contributions that is folded into the auto-generated portal.

How soon? That is up to you. All that is needed are persons to implement it.

Until next time...

Keep up the good work on portals. They are improving daily. Thank you. — The Transhumanist 04:24, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Username policy

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Username policy. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Canadian roads)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Canadian roads). Legobot (talk) 04:29, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies). Legobot (talk) 04:31, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Leaverite

Apologies for my unfamiliarity with that template. I was tired, and tired of vandalism, and mistakenly undid your edit (reverting vandalism does not require an edit summary).--Quisqualis (talk) 21:58, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ok Quisqualis, it happens. Easily fixed. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 04:42, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Interviews

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Interviews. Legobot (talk) 04:32, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Long short descriptions

Hi Peter,

I originally became aware of "short descriptions" because of your work, and I know you've done a lot of work on them. I'm getting concerned that many short descriptions aren't short at all. As I understand it, the main purpose is as a quick disambiguator for mobile users; give them enough context to know if they want to click on an article.

Instead, many short descriptions (maybe semi-auto-generated?) seem to be approaching full definitions of the subject matter, even when that's way more than is needed to give basic context to a mobile user, and way more than the suggested soft limit of 40 characters. I've added the CSS so that I see them and they look very messy, and must look even much worse on mobile if the local ones ever go live (are they live?).

Since you add a large fraction of the ones I've seen, I think you could have a great impact in setting the de facto standard for people who don't read the background information of the project. Would you consider trying to keep to the 40-char limit when possible, and as close as possible when not? --Trovatore (talk) 17:07, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Trovatore, As soon as there are 2 million short descriptions on Wikipedia, and WMF stops displaying the Wikidata descriptions, I will have time to spend on optimising the length. Until then, I think it is more important to have a short description that is local and acceptably accurate. 40 characters was chosen as a target with absolutely no basis of practicality, merely that it is convenient for mobile display. There are many topics which may not be possible to reasonably describe in so few characters, and it seems inefficient for me to spend more than a minute or two trying to optimise them to that length.

There is also the matter of other uses within Wikipedia, which I find more compelling as a motivation to produce them. The short description can be used as an annotation to a link in a list article or section, by using the template {{annotated link}}. Use of this template makes outline lists and 'see also' sections much more informative, and for this purpose there is no downside to a slightly longer short description.

Thirdly, short descriptions are like any other content, they can be improved at any time by anyone who feels the urge. I hope this will be done wherever anyone notices a sub-optimal short description, but there is no rush. Most people probably still don't even know they are there.

It will probably be easier in the long run for WMF to produce a method of displaying a longer short description than to play Procrustes and force them all to be short to the detriment of their functions.

If one uses a voice system for searching, the length becomes irrelevant. I think this will happen in the not too distant future, as this was originally for mobile, where voice is the basic mechanism for communication.

I do try to keep then short as reasonably practicable given the circumstances. It is not often easy, so then I just use a longer description as better than none. The Wikidata descriptions vary from the extremes of as good as one is likely to get, through misleading or confusing, to simply wrong. I use the good ones, and they are seldom very short, but more often I modify something from the lead. Occasionally I have to read quite a lot of the article, and there are a small number of cases where I could not work out what the actual topic was supposed to be and have cut my losses. It has been an interesting journey.

If you have the time and inclination, you can do a few thousand yourself, and may come up with some useful suggestions for better ways to do it. I am lazy, and tend to stick to subjects I find interesting, and where I have sufficient understanding to be reasonably sure that my descriptions are at least not wrong, and are likely to be sufficiently right to pass muster. There has been a very small amount of pushback. In some cases by people unaware of the reason for doing this, sometimes accidentally, and one or two don't like it. In almost all cases a short explanation has solved the problem.

If you really think that it is more important for a short description to be short than useful or to exist loclly, we can discuss further. Meanwhile I will be creating them to the best efficiency I can manage, while it remains an enjoyable exercise, rather than spending 80% of the time to get a 20% improvement. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:03, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There have been a few cases where a generic short description has been added through a template. Some are better than others, and I have overridden a few where I could come up with something better without much effort. I do not use any semi-automated system myself, it is hard enough in many cases to do it manually, and my coding skills are not up to it anyway. The template generated ones are probably the bulk of those that exist.

As far as I know they are live, so the reader is getting a local short description when one exists, a Wikidata short description as fallback, and nothing if neither exist. I don't use mobile for data, so have not checked - I go on what I have been told. Nobody from WMF has complained about the local short descriptions yet, but this may not be particularly relevant. They may not care either way, as they have decided to do what they like anyway until we have those 2 million local short descriptions. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:24, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Question

What are short descriptions, and where are they? Borrowing from a quote by Blaise Pascal, I will simply say...."I have made this short description longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." 😂 ^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 18:51, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I see you have read my short explanation above;-)

The short answer is: Read WP:Short description. It is also the long and reasonably complete answer, but you can skip the RfC's if you want to avoid the why and accompanying dramahfest.

The longer shortish answer is they are a feature imposed on Wikipedia by WMF, which can also be used for useful purposes on Wikipedia, which take the form of a short description of the topic of an article encased in a template in which a magic word is embedded which allows the short description text to be extracted independently of the rest of the content, like an associated database record, which WMF then use on the mobile app as a disambiguator for search results, or so I am told. We have them because we don't want them to use the Wikidata description associated with the article, which is unreliable and can be vandalised without anyone noticing unless they use mobile.

They are there in some articles, but they are not visible on desktop view unless you use CSS or Galobtter's nifty short description editing gadget, which requires loading to your js page. I use it all the time, and have the CSS as well, as it also shows short descriptions applied by other templates, like for disambiguation pages. I consider this to be a really valuable feature, and the main reason why I am writing so many myself. When all articles have one it will be a really useful tool for annotation.

They are also visible as an annotation to a wikilink if you use the {{annotated link}} template. You can see an example of that usage in Outline of underwater diving where all the annotations are called from the short descriptions of the articles in the lists.

I will stop now as it is getting past the point where I can claim it to have any vestige of brevity. Ask me if you want to know more. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:24, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Damn. I forgot to ping you Atsme. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:27, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.14 21 October 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello Pbsouthwood, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

Backlog

As of 21 October 2018^[update], there are 3650 unreviewed articles and the backlog now stretches back 51 days.

Community Wishlist Proposal

There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding the drafting of a Community Wishlist Proposal for the purpose of requesting bug fixes and missing/useful features to be added to the New Page Feed and Curation Toolbar.
Please join the conversation as we only have until 29 October to draft this proposal!

Project updates

ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.

New scripts

User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel.js^(info) — A new script created for quickly placing {{copyvio-revdel}} on a page.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Article titles

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Article titles. Legobot (talk) 04:33, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:NPOV dispute

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:NPOV dispute. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Portals WikiProject update #021, 24 Oct 2018

Portals have passed the 4,000 mark.

More new portals...

Here's a list of portals created since the last issue

List of new portals

Please inspect these portals, report problems or suggest improvements at WT:WPPORTD, or develop them further (see below). Thank you.

What's next?

There is still lots to do...

There are many subject gaps that need to be filled. This can be done by creating new portals, or by adding Selected article sections to existing portals. To create a new portal, simply place {{subst:Basic portal start page}} on an empty portal page, and click "Preview". If the portal is complete, click "Save". After you try it, come share your experience and excitement at WT:WPPORTD.

Each new portal is just a starting point. Each portal of the new design can be further developed by:

refining the search parameters to improve the results displayed in the Did you know and In the news sections.
adding more specific Selected articles sections, like Selected biographies.
inserting a Recognized content section.
adding more pictures to the image slideshow.
placing a panoramic picture at the top of the intro section (especially for geographic portals).

Besides the new portals, there are still about 1200 portals of the old design that need to be converted to the new design.

Many portals need to be de-orphaned, by placing links to them (in the See also section of the corresponding root articles, at the bottom of the corresponding navigation footer templates, and on the corresponding category pages).

Many of the new portals still need to be listed at Portal:Contents/Portals.

Bugs keep popping up in portals. These need to be tracked down and reported at WT:WPPORTD.

Tools are needed to make developing and maintaining portals quicker and easier.

Dreaming up new features and capabilities. Innovation needs to continue, to design the portal of tomorrow, and the portal development-maintenance-system of the future. Automation!

So, if you find yourself with a little (or a lot) of free time, pick an area (or more) above and...

...dive in! — The Transhumanist 07:05, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What is this?

In the See also section of Tantra you modified the links to:

annotated link|Bacchus
annotated link|Dionysus
annotated link|Neotantra
annotated link|Tantra massage

I haven't seen this before. What is it? Editor2020 (talk) 01:42, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Editor2020. It is a template that converts a plain wikilink into an annotated link. That is a link followed by an annotation drawn from the short description on the linked page. You can see this on Tantra where Dionysus already has a short description and it is displayed as an annotation to the link, while Neotantra does not yet have a short description so remains unannotated at this time. As soon as someone adds a short description to Neotantra, any annotated link to that page will automatically get the short description as an annotation. If the short description is improved, all annotated links to the article are automatically updated. The intention is to give the reader a better idea of whether the linked article will be useful to them before clicking on it. It is particularly effective in long lists like outline articles. See Outline of underwater diving for an example where almost all links have an annotation drawn from the short description.

You can read up on short descriptions at WP:Short description, and the template specifications are at {{annotated link}}. If there is anything else you would like to know about this, ask me, I might have an answer. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 04:27, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!! - Editor2020 (talk) 20:30, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello.

I'm just informing you that the formatting you used for the short descriptions of the Moons of Jupiter and Neptune articles were inconsistent with each other and also with the Moons of Saturn and Uranus articles. I have edited their short descriptions so that all four match and are worded exactly the same way, just changing the planet's name. ― Дрейгорич / Dreigorich Talk 23:10, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Дрейгорич, No problem, short descriptions are like any other text. Anyone may improve or create them at any time. They do not have to be consistent, just correct and useful. Consistency within a group may be possible, and is OK as long as it does not conflict with other requirements, such as being verifiable in the article text. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 04:56, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Axestone?

Proposed deletion of Axestone

The article Axestone has been proposed for deletion. The proposed deletion notice added to the article should explain why.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.

Ding Dong!!

Happy Halloween!

Why are demons and ghouls always together?

Because demons are a ghoul's best friend.

What happens when you goose a ghost?

You get a hand full of sheet.

^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 00:58, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

<groan>... · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 03:53, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you agree

...with the removal of the unsourced sentence, moments ago, in teleology, please do what you can to support it. It is being described as a section blanking–it was a single sentence subsection, without any reference—and may be reverted immediately, as an edit from an un-logged editor. Cheers. 2601:246:CA80:3CB5:2135:4BEC:3A27:18E9 (talk) 18:17, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

[1] 

Tip of the day...

Highlight text on any website, then search Wikipedia for it with a single click

You can do this with bookmarklets, such as the one you can download on this page.
Follow the above link, and drag the Wikipedia search bookmarklet provided there to your browser's toolbar. This creates a bookmark called Wikipedia search which is actually the activation button for a useful javascript program. The next time you want to look something up while browsing any given web-page, highlight the term and then click on your Wikipedia search bookmark.

Prior tip – Tips library – Next tip

Read more: Bookmarklet
Wikipedia:Tools

Become a Wikipedia tipster

To add this auto-updating template to your user page, use {{totd}}

[1]