Talk:Bertrand Russell

The short description is now simply too long. The test for this is as follows: while sitting at a computer (not a mobile phone), start typing "Bertrand Russell" in the Wikipedia search box. A list of article titles comes up, each title followed by the article's short description. When the title for this article is on the list, check if the short description is getting truncated. Right now, it gets truncated (on my own screen) after the dash after 1872. If the short description is getting truncated, it can't serve its purpose. (If you do this test on a mobile phone, you get much worse truncation, in the middle of the word "mathe...", which is probably why the guideline suggests 40 characters).

The earlier discussion of short description in this talk page, from about a year ago, seems to have ended peaceably in or near consensus. I will revert the short description to what it was a few days ago. Bruce leverett (talk) 17:02, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

I suspect that the short description would "serve it's purpose" even with that truncation after the dash after 1872. Especially as it's the top of the list? I have no intention of reverting you, although I now see, from the discussion in the "Short description" thread at the top of this page, that I had some problem with the logic a year ago. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:57, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

@Hittmanicverses: You have removed A Free Man's Worship (1903) from the list of Russell's Selected Works. Was this deliberate? I googled it, and the first thing that came up was the claim that it is "perhaps Bertrand Russell's best known and most reprinted essay" and "an historical landmark of early-twentieth-century European thought." So perhaps we should find a place to mention it? Bruce leverett (talk) 04:29, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

AH Yes, good catch @Bruce leverett, we should restore it. I deleted it because it was written "... and other essays", and there seems to have been no such 1903 collection. but the essay itself should find mention Hittmanicverses (talk) 21:18, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

For those interested, it can be read here. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:25, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

I am not sure what Wiki means by "scholar" here -- whether it refers to someone whose work is almost entirely dedicated to a specific author, or to someone who has studied that author deeply and written about him, without necessarily limiting the breadth of their production. Judging by the categories, the most fitting definition seems to be the latter, but I'll wait for confirmation. Laptss (talk) 03:34, 2 December 2025 (UTC)