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Archive 1Archive 2

Bug with numbered SD

There is an issue with this template picking up short descriptions defined with a (correct if unnecessary) numbered parameter.

e.g. Outline of sports did have {{Short description|1=Overview of and topical guide to sports}}
The link {{Annotated link|Outline of sports}} then displayed the "1="

Edited the SD template to not use 1= and both page and link to it display OK.

There are 3,745 articles that have short description template and the |1= parameter. This search should find them:
  • hastemplate:"Short description" insource:/description *\| *1 *=/
That's too many to try to work-around manually, so we'll have to wait for the bug to get fixed. --RexxS (talk) 16:52, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
This appears to be a bug in {{Template parameter value}}. I have posted a bug report at the template's talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:38, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
I am not able to edit the Lua, so I created a template to test a workaround for the TPV bug. {{SDlink}} with tests in User:GhostInTheMachine/WIP. When TPV is fixed, SDlink can just become an alias for Annotated link. -- GhostInTheMachine (talk) 14:38, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

While the bug remains, use {{SDlink}} instead. This checks for and fixes the bad values being returned by {{Template parameter value}} — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 11:15, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

A trick such as this sometimes is necessary, if the shortdesc needs to contain an equals-sign. The alternate workaround of {{[[Template:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]]}} gives correct results. DMacks (talk) 17:56, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Anl and Anli

I am going to use {{Anl}} or {{Anli}} for abbreviation --BoldLuis (talk) 07:19, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

@BoldLuis: for what purpose? If it's WP:NOTBROKEN, it doesn't need fixing. Natureium (talk) 00:23, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
To long to write. They can be shortcuts, much used in Wikipedia. --BoldLuis (talk) 23:16, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

See also

I read that annnotated link is not recommended for disambiguation pages. What about See also sections? --Error (talk) 12:02, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

The Short description article says This can be used in outline and index lists, and in shorter lists in articles such as "see also" sections or disambiguation pages.
Try using {{Annotated link}} and see if it does provide a clearer link. If not, then consider changing the Short description in the target article. — Ghost in the machine talk to me 15:21, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
@Error and GhostInTheMachine: According to User:BilCat, this template is "not for use on disambiguation pages". But I've never seen a rule like this: why should this template not be used on disambiguation pages? Jarble (talk) 19:57, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 50#Use of annotated links. The description above is outdated, as DAB pages are no longer listed. @Bkonrad: any thoughts? BilCat (talk) 20:02, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
I don't have much more to say than what was said in the linked discussion. I think that captures well the issues with using annotated links on disambiguation pages. older ≠ wiser 20:07, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
It is perfectly OK to use {{Annotated link}} in a DAB page. Generally, you might think it better to use a plain link with a hand-crafted description — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 22:29, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
GhostInTheMachine, no it is not. The documentation for this template expressly states the template should not be used for annotating links on disambiguation pages and the linked discussion provides the rationale. Further the text quoted from The Short description article above from May 2020 was removed from that page. older ≠ wiser 22:34, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
Disambiguation is a messy word. It sounds like ways of making something smaller rather than way to indicate the correct choice. Moving on.
Short descriptions exist to disambiguate searches — where you looking for the heavy metal rock band or the steam locomotive? Since they are short, the language tends to be terse and much of the detail has to be cut from the description so that it is short enough.
A disambiguation page is much like a search result – the various links need descriptions to provide the did you mean.... As such, using the annotated link template is not evil – the short description really is a description intended to help with disambiguation. However, the disambiguation page allows for longer descriptions and so the short descriptions should be replaced with a description that is less terse and includes some of the detail that had to be cut from the short description. In other words – annotated links in a disambiguation page are not evil, but they are also not adequate.
I think that the archived discussion boils down to something like the above... — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 11:59, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
GhostInTheMachine, use of the annotated links template on disambiguation pages has been rejected. Reasons are not only what you mention. 1) format is not consistent with that for dab entries and 2) the purposes of a short description are not completely aligned with that of disambiguation pages -- there was objection to the fact that changes to a short description will result in a change in what is displayed on the disambiguation page but will NOT trigger any indication to anyone with that page on their watchlist unless they are also watching the source page. If you have an issue with this deprecation of usage, I suggest you take it up with WP:WikiProject Disambiguation or at WT:MOSDAB. older ≠ wiser 14:15, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
My thoughts are that this template should not be used in the "See also" section. My only and key objection is that as a template, this added complexity completely obscures the relatively easy-to-understand wiki-markup used in the See also section, a section that I believe serves an important area where brand new users start to decipher wiki-markup and thus is a bridge for new users. If we miss the "oh, I get it" moment the first couple times they look at the source, there's a good chance that we'll end up missing them entirely as new users. Templates are just confusing for newbies. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:57, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
Seriously? So a visitor who looks at the source (few indeed) is going to see many wikilinks all through the page. The idea that they would only first become aware of them in the wp:see also is very strange indeed, the number must be minuscule. So to mollycoddle that minuscule, you would rather that the huge majority be faced by a list of article names, some terse, some meaningful only the cognoscenti. Strange priorities. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:41, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes. Seriously. The value of wiki-markup is that it's simple and understandable and a person can figure out its syntax on their own simply by looking at it. The initial success of the WWW and Wikipedia itself are pretty much directly due to the simplicity of their markup languages. When things are easily to learn, people try it. That principle still holds today. Our template system is complicated for the average person. The complexity appears is like somewhere halfway to that of a full blown computer language. Anything that is not instantly understandable to many people will scare them away, or they'll just not bother trying to figure it out. So if some reader for the first time ever clicks the [ edit ] link of a See also section (you forgot we have section editing because readers don't have to look at the whole source), and they might see something like
           ==See also==
           * [[History of Earth]], Earth from its formation to the present day
           * [[Oldest dated rocks]], includes rocks from the Hadean Eon
           * [[Timeline of natural history]], history of Earth
and it is instantly understandable. In a few seconds they will have learn "oh, you use double equals for the heading, you use double brackets for the links, and those asteriks make bullet points" because the rendered information directly matches up to the wikitext. Confidence in something encourages people to continue. Compare that to
           ==See also==
           * {{annotated link|History of Earth}}
           * {{annotated link|Oldest dated rocks}}
           * {{annotated link|Timeline of natural history}}
which will render with extra text not even in the source. Okay, they'll guess the same about the heading and the bullet points, but we've completely puzzled them on wiki-linking. Not only that but they'll have no idea where the extra text that was brought in came from or how to change it. Changing that extra text might even be the thing that motivated them to try to edit in the first place and now that they tried to edit it, they don't even see where it came from! They will be perplexed unless somehow they manage to learn what templates, short descriptions, and Wikidata are and a bit about how they work. That is unlikely to happen and there's a good chance that person will close the browser tab and never bother editing again because they've picked up the idea that editing is hard and complicated, and rightfully so. This is a missed opportunity because a potential editor became permanent reader. And because adding or removing a See also entry is an easy baby step to the nervous first time editor, I do view this as a likely channel for new users. Jason Quinn (talk) 06:12, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
Your argument contains many hypotheses about new users that may or may not be true for any particular user, so your argument is unconvincing to me. If a new user doesn't understand what {{annotated link}} means, she can click the Help link and find how get help from more experienced users: no problem. Biogeographist (talk)

Deprecation in mainspace

For anyone watching here (but not there), please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Short descriptions#Annotated link template where I'm suggesting deprecating this template in article space. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 20:15, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Couldn't find your move via the link, but anyway I would like to move the same or a smiliar suggestion to deprecate this template in article space. This template is trash, and useless in most contexts, because one default annotation can not work well for several different contexts. Sauer202 (talk) 13:11, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
Well when you find it, you will see that the proposal failed for a number of reasons:
  1. The template displays the wp:short description, which is what most visitors see when they visit. So if it is not good enough, then improve it because that is what visitors are seeing. (Many SDs have just been transcluded from wikidata and are either uselessly short or grotesquely long (and get truncated to 40 characters when returned by a search.)) If you consider 40 characters too low a limit, see Wikipedia talk:Short description/Archive 9#Length – 40 or 90 characters??
  2. Many article titles are terse or use terms that mean little or nothing to those unfamiliar with the topic already. Exposing the SD gives visitors a clue as to why they might want to explore a [wp:See also]] topic. Serendipity is a key strength of Wikipedia: see also Guide to information sources
  3. If the result is inappropriate in a specific context, then either (a) don't use the template or (b) better still, supplement it. Like this
  • {{annotated link|Elephantidae}} (Elephants and mammoths)
which produces
  • Elephantidae – Family of mammals (Elephants and mammoths)
and more, as noted elsewhere on this page. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:25, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

This is highly offensive

I am among the most experienced Wikipedia editors and I find the existence of annotated links in Wikipedia highly offensive. Why is it a good idea to have links that cannot be edited? I don't know that I've ever seen and example that was not done in an illiterate manner in need of editing. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:41, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Michael Hardy, you can edit the annotations by editing the short descriptions. ~Kvng (talk) 18:30, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
Yes. And if a particular short desc. is good for the article but not good for a particular list entry (e.g. for contextual reasons), then don't use the template and do just do an entirely manual list entry.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:22, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
I agree with Michael Hardy. The usefulness of this template is debatable. The effect of this is (intentionally or not) spewing of more or less irrelevant short descriptions in See also sections. Being able to customize any short description of links where they are used based on the context (if such a description is needed at all) is paramount. Sauer202 (talk) 14:06, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
And I agree with SMcCandlish. I have done quite a few of these, in the many cases where the article names in the See Also were impenetrably cryptic, meaningful to those in the know but not otherwise. Pathfinding is one of the glories of Wikipedia and we should encourage serendipity. Yes, there have certainly been occasions where the short description has been unhelpful in context and I have had to replace it with something more meaningful. (This action is particularly likely to be needed when the link is to a section of a big article.) So if you find a case where you are not content with the SD displayed then (a) change the SD in the target or (b) write a relevant description. It would be better of course (IMO) if SDs weren't limited to a silly 40 characters but I've lost that argument. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:23, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
As far as I am aware the short description is not limited to 40 characters, that is the recommended length for where 40 characters works acceptably. If it needs more to work, it can be made longer. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 09:17, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: Are you sure? That is not the message I took from Wikipedia talk:Short description/Archive 9#Length – 40 or 90 characters?? and some of my SDs have been 'improved' to fit. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:36, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
John Maynard Friedman, Sometimes a short description that is useful and accurate cannot be written in lass than 90 or 40 or some other arbitrary number of characters. Apps can be rewritten, we should not be dictated to by app writers for their convenience, and WMF do not have editorial authority over Wikipedia. Sometimes short descriptions can be improved by shortening, sometimes they are still acceptable, but not as good, sometimes a Procrustean approach just results in a useless, confusing, inaccurate or misleading short description. Our first duty is to our readers, we do not knowingly mislead or intentionally confuse them to suit an arbitrary limit. Demanding that we do so, to quote the section title, is highly offensive. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 03:59, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
Which was exactly my argument. See Wikipedia talk:Short description/Archive 9#Conclusion, where I list the many reasons why the current policy is fundamentally wrongheaded. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:55, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Documentation clarity

In "The handling of short descriptions is changing, so this template may not take default short descriptions from Wikidata", it's unclear what "may not" is intended to convey (i.e. "must not" vs. "might not").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:20, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

"does not" was correct in this context. This template cares only about local descriptions and ignores Wikidata descriptions (and has since its creation). A edit in August 2020 to the doc page confused how this template fetches short description (always local) with how Wikipedia apps and other users fetch short descriptions (at the time local by default but Wikidata if no description is defined, currently also always local). I've reverted that edit. * Pppery * it has begun... 01:23, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Annotated redirect?

Is there something equivalent for use with a redirect to a section? Praemonitus (talk) 02:22, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

@Praemonitus: This template already works with section redirects. Here's an example:
If the redirect has a short description it will be displayed. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 09:20, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@Jarble I agree with Peter, if the linked article does not contain a short description, the one from the redirected article should be added.
Right now it does not work. Example:
Meat analog – Plant-based food made to resemble meat --AdrianHObradors (talk) 19:38, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
The text of a short description is written on the assumption that it will be seen alongside the title of the article, not that it will be seen alongside the title of a redirect to the article. It might not make any sense in that second context. That's especially likely if the redirect is to a sub-section. So I think it's appropriate that this template does not extract a short description from a redirect's target, as it might not make sense.  Dr Greg  talk  20:20, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
And I disagree with Peter. There are many cases where the section targetted by the redirect is too small to have its own article but is reasonable to include in a broader topic article – but to use the ultra-terse SD for the overall article would mislead. So if you are applying ANLI and see no SD, then it either put the overall article in the ANLI (instead of the redirect) or add an SD to the redirect. There are still so many articles without SDs that you have to investigate anyway so it is not much extra hardship. I'm not sure if this amounts to the same point that DrGreg is making?--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:30, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes, we are in agreement.  Dr Greg  talk  20:36, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
I see and I understand. We all on agreement then --AdrianHObradors (talk) 23:22, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Discussion relevant to effective use of this template

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Short description#‎But what about wp:think of the reader? to which editors interested in this template may wish to contribute. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:13, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Collision with markup

If the original article is in italic – a book title or non-English language, for example – the template is putting the short description into italic too. Can this be corrected? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:41, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

The 'piped link' option almost does it, see
but this example really should use {{lang-la}} but it doesn't work. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:53, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
Test cases
Article Italics? Output from {{Annotated link}}
Renovatio imperii Romanorum title is not italic Renovatio imperii Romanorum – Intention to restore the Roman Empire
Prometheus (2012 film) title is part italic Prometheus (2012 film) – Film by Ridley Scott
Alien 3 title is fully italic Alien 3 – 1992 film by David Fincher

Sorry, I don't understand. None of the above show an Annotated link with italics — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 19:02, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

No, they don't but arguably they should. What I was looking at is this form: ''{{Annotated link |Renovatio imperii Romanorum}}'' which has this result:
which is not correct, the short description should not be in italics. It should appear as
but of course it would be impossible to write {{anli}} to have any awareness of what markup surrounds it. No, my main concern is this: the ''...'' markup for non-English text is deprecated by MOS:ACCESS, a {{lang}} template should be use to advice screen readers to use the appropriate 'voice' (makes more sense for e.g. French than Latin, obviously). So I'm looking for this template to be able to 'nest' another template, so as to cope with {{Annotated link |{{lang|fr|À la recherche du temps perdu}}}}, which right now it can't:
Any clearer? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:55, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
I just had a thought that maybe piped argument might work {{Annotated link |À la recherche du temps perdu|{{lang|fr|À la recherche du temps perdu}}}} but no:
Unless I've mistyped? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:14, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
Do'oh, that's a redirect! :-( --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:16, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
That works! So just need another example in the template doc. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:18, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
I would just keep it simple. This works... Renovatio imperii Romanorum – Intention to restore the Roman Empire — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 20:27, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
But unfortunately it uses the deprecated markup for foreign languages. I definitely consider it would be useful to add use of a nested Lang template to the examples. I'll try to find an example that isn't Latin. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:23, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I have added these three lines to the examples on the doc page:

Piped to use template:lang per MOS:FOREIGNITALIC

{{Annotated link|Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques|{{lang|fr|Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques}}}}
Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques – International organisation for underwater activities

I assume that there are no objections. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:01, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

At Village Pump (Technical), John of Reading explains that "When used in mainspace, the {{lang}} template also spits out [[Category:Articles containing French-language text]], which breaks the syntax of your intended wikilink. You can add nocat=yes to avoid this." so I have revised the doc page accordingly. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:38, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Incompatible with {{=}}

Looks like this template is incompatible with {{=}}. I've written up the problem I observed at Template_talk:=#Incompatible. -- Mikeblas (talk) 23:39, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

This is a problem because it's also incompatible with the other way of putting equal signs into short descriptions, {{short description|1=A short description with an = sign}}. The annotated link template incorrectly shows the "1=" part of short descriptions whose argument is formatted with |1= like that. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:22, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 5 March 2022

Add None (note the caps) to the list of short descriptions to show as blank, which I think is: {{safesubst:#switch:{{safesubst:Template parameter value|{{{1}}}|Short description|1|1|1}}||blank|none|null|not required|redundant| per User talk:Qwerfjkl#Short description case issue. Qwerfjkltalk 18:19, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

I am opposed to this. I do not think it is broken. The editor assumes that "lowercase short description searches" need to be upper case, but the documentation was clear a while ago and was changed by IceWelder (talk · contribs) without explanation or valid reason. Leave it as is until consensus is reached that upper case should be used at all. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:29, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
My change was not really without reason. WP:HOWTOSD requires that all short descriptions start with an upper-case character. "None" does not pose an exception to this as far as I can see. I quoted HOWTOSD when I made the edit; sorry if that was not clear enough. Furthermore, it would be consistent with many recent bot changes (like this one), and I agree with Qwerfjkl's notion that "none"-SDs should not interfere with (and much less be the target of) the work of editors explicitly seeaking out and correcting lower-case SDs.
Lastly, I think the most elegant fix for Qwerfjkl's request would be to make the #switch input case-insensitive by converting it to lower-case and thus not requring hardcoded upper-case variants of any keyword. IceWelder [✉] 19:09, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
 Not done for now: looks like a consensus needs to be established for this alteration. Please garner the needed consensus before using the {{edit template-protected}} template again. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. put'r there 18:48, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Remember that "none" is not itself a Short description — "none" is a flag to the system meaning that there is no Short description. The question instead should only be: Do the various parts of "the system" handle "none" and "None" in the same way? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 22:40, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

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