On 04 August 2021 at 11:24 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:

I do understand perfectly what has been said. However, the quality of Wikidata descriptions has been deficient when you compare it with the existing automated descriptions.

I guess there are at least two different views about Wikidata descriptions, and this debate can't really happen without some clarification.

What you can call the "historic view" dates from the time when Wikidata was defined by the interwiki graph. It is simple, and says that descriptions are just there to disambiguate, so that for example "disease" could be enough. When the item always has to have a sitelink, this could often be enough.

As we know, the scope of Wikidata was expanded - massively it turns out - by requiring only an external link. I don't know whether this step, around 2015?, was accompanied by a discussion of the new function of descriptions.

I think it is at least clear that descriptions then became more important.

Charles