The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard. The result of the discussion was Withdrawn by operator.
Function details: It's all discussed at Wikipedia talk:Short description#"Wikimedia list article". TLDR: There's a consensus that "Wikimedia list article" and "Wikipedia list article" are undesirable short descriptions and that no short description is necessary for most lists and a bot is the way to implement it. This bot is about as simple as they get and a trial would be a bit silly, but I can do it if so desired.
@Trialpears: You are a trusted bot op, but let's have a brief trial to sanity check ourselves. Could you please confirm whether this bot has any impact on Wikidata entities relating to these articles? Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. --TheSandDoctorTalk 01:03, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A list article affected by the trial is on my watchlist: I wouldn't mind this bot getting the prize of this year's most useless bot operation. For clarity oppose this bot. What would it do other than creating watchlist clutter? What would its actual benefit be? Edit-warring with bots or editors importing short descriptions from Wikidata? Really, this is the kind of bot operations we can miss big time. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:20, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Francis Schonken I'm trying my best to get the underlying concern of removing tens of thousands of useless descriptions. I brought up the watchlist spam concern at Wikipedia talk:Short description#"Wikimedia list article". It won't edit war with people since there will only be one run and it will use {{short description|none}} which prevents shortdesc helper from importing the description and hopefully it won't suggest it at all even when it isn't present soon. Could you go to the above discussion and express your opinion there? I will put the bot on hold for a bit. --Trialpears (talk) 07:44, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Expressed my opinion there. This bot should not, as in not ever be allowed, imho. Please think this through instead. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:05, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Example diff. How is "none" more useful than "Wikimedia list article"? You are replacing a relatively useless description by something that's absolutely useless. I oppose this task to make bad descriptions even worse. --mfb (talk) 08:14, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Mfb "none" won't actually be displayed as the description but is rather a special word that makes the article have no description at all. For instance if you search for "list of a" on the mobile site (image included) you will see basically all entries having either of the descriptions under the article name contributing nothing and being useless clutter. This bot task or the template solution I proposed at Wikipedia talk:Short description#"Wikimedia list article" would both remove this and make it look like the entry for List of Arrow characters. If you want it would be appreciated if you share your opinion at Wikipedia talk:Short description#"Wikimedia list article". Also, mostly due to curiosity, what would be the optimal short description for COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory in your opinion? --Trialpears (talk) 09:19, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If it's so critical to suppress two specific short descriptions then the template could do that, as proposed. The title of that article is a good description on its own I think, but not all list titles are that verbose. --mfb (talk) 09:37, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can see a benefit if we can make sure no future import will give these two or similar general short descriptions, but that would need to be done first. --mfb (talk) 09:42, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For clarity: the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Short description#"Wikimedia list article"shows no consensus whatsoever for the proposed bot operation (that is even before I added my opinion there). Can't you people read a discussion and see that it goes in all sorts of directions without the least bit of consensus? That is not a basis for a bot task as if there was some sort of approval for the idea behind the task; there is no such approval. The task should never have been proposed. Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:23, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My read on that discussion is that is that first there's broad agreement that Wikimedia/Wikipedia list article doesn't contribute anything as a short description. I propose that we edit {{Short description}} to ignore the descriptions and threat them like none. When I implement this after waiting a reasonable time for objections or counter proposals to be raised some editors say that they would rather see a bot replace the descriptions. MichaelMaggs starts a subsection about how the description should be removed whether by bot or template edits is preferred. A few people, me included are neutral on how it's implemented since there are pros and cons with both and the rest prefer a bot. A week after the discussion started I decide to file this BRFA to move the project forward and since noone actually objected to a bot that was the favored outcome by the participants. Given that the talk page is quite highly trafficked for an implementation discussion (many template edits get no input at all) I considered that suitable and since the trial was approved the bot approval group agreed. It is however great to hear your opinions at this stage and not when we've had a bot doing thousands of edits, but rather just 10. We will just have to wait and see where the consensus takes us. Could also put an RfC tag on the WT:SHORTDESC discussion if you want to get a 30 day discussion and a proper close at the end. --Trialpears (talk) 09:03, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah... messy discussion... no consensus... anyone can read in it what they want... no actual conclusion. As a minimum (even if no formal RfC had been initiated) it should have been listed at WP:ANRFC, so that someone uninvolved could have assessed the discussion for what, if anything, could be concluded from it. Note also the new subsection which I initiated in that discussion: I think you all started more or less from the deluded assumption that meaningful short descriptions for list articles are out of reach. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:34, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good question. I'm not done with this project of getting rid of useless descriptions, but I will probably not do so in the coming month. I'll just withdraw this and start a new one if and when this become relevant again. --Trialpears (talk) 13:54, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard.
Withdrawn by operator.
Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. --TheSandDoctor Talk 01:03, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
On hold. Until Wikipedia talk:Short description#"Wikimedia list article" is closed. --Trialpears (talk) 21:40, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
