OK, I deduced how to trigger this short description on the old LMS courses page. Does it make sense to tie this option to whether or not the "about page is editable"?

With our current code, the short description would be editable on edge and not on edx.org. Does that make sense? I'm afraid that authors on edge will be confused because they will never see the short description. Perhaps we need a different setting to determine whether or not the short description is editable. And then it might make sense to move the short description into its own portion of the course setting page to make it clear that it is not shown on the course about page.