The 3 November 2021 StoryMaps Update added the feature: "When a story is published, its first few paragraphs are added to its ArcGIS item description."
An unfortunate side effect of this new functionality is that if a user crafted their own Description prior to 3 November, then it now gets wiped out when they next publish their StoryMap. If they go back and fix their Description, it is overwritten again the next time they publish their story.
This loss of content is not a behavior users are expecting, nor does it appear to be desired by any of our users. It seems others are experiencing similar issues with this change as well, such as @JosZwambach1 notes in Description overwritten by storymap.
Also, this a behavior that is not shared with other item types in ArcGIS Online, which contributes to the confusion.
What is the rationale for StoryMaps overwritten the Description in Item Details, in particular if a user has already provided their own content for it? Is there some benefit this enables that we are overlooking?
We would like to have full control over this field returned to the user.
Perhaps if there is a good reason to have StoryMaps populate the Description field with a story excerpt, then that could be an option controlled per item by the user, with the default being no overwriting? Or, perhaps the auto-updating during story publication should only happen if a user has not manually modified the Description already?
