It should be possible to use normal wiki syntax (in particular, interwiki links) in the description fiels of entries, e.g. to make it possible to add a link to Wikipedia or Wiktionary if one uses a specific "terminus technicus" in the definition.
Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
See Also:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41749
Descriptions are mainly a means of disambiguation. Their purpose is to be shown along with the label to let people know which of the 20 entries called "Berlin" is the one they want. This will happen in popups, drop-down-menus, etc. You need to be able to click the text in order to select the entry. Links would get in the way and/or be meaningless in this context. Using technical terms is not helpful for this purpose either.
I think we should keep descriptions as plain text. We could however allow qualifiers for descriptions - so you could associate footnotes etc with it.
We could allow wikisyntax in the descriptions, but I think this will be better solved by linking to entities in the statements.
If we should choose to use wikisyntax we probably need a stripped version that can be made clickable.
Per design to only have plain text in the description. A link could frequently cause issues in the layout. I suggest for you to wait until Phase 2 and even maybe 3 are well there, and then reconsider if this is really wanted.