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I noticed that a tag wiki excerpt which I suggested an edit to was heavily trimmed down. The resulting excerpt is a bit too short for my taste as it fails to even briefly describe the topic.

Was the originally proposed tag wiki excerpt too long? Should I always include a brief (perhaps ten words or less) description of the topic in a tag wiki excerpt? If not, when should such a description be excluded?

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Excerpts need to be as long as they need to be.

Often, they're not needed at all as the tag is self-explanatory.

If it needs to break two lines, then it's too long. It should be short, sweet and to the point.

Yes, the original was too wordy and needing hedge trimming.

Excerpts are great for disambiguation, where it will go on to be ignored all the same. They need to describe use case of the tag over its product definition. If there's no real need for the former, have a tidy and succinct (and originally worded) latter.

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    "where it will go on to be ignored all the same" if people write more useful ones I assure you they will be people reading them.
    – Braiam
    Commented Jul 31, 2014 at 22:23

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