You were saying that price caps ARE shortages.

I said no such thing.

You said:

The formal definition of shortage is: A situation where an external mechanism, such as government intervention, prevents price from rising.

That’s what those words mean. Read what you wrote carefully.

The formal definition of shortage is: A situation where…

“A shortage is when…”

…an external mechanism, such as government intervention prevents price from rising.

“…there are price caps (or something similar)”

Therfore you said:

“A shortage is when there are price caps (or something similar)”

That’s what you said.

but when something doesn’t seem quite right, one interested in the topic will ask questions to try and resolve the discrepancies

Yeah, that’s why I asked who is using that definition, and proposed one I liked.

[A shortage is when] …buyers want to purchase more at the market price than the quantity of the good or service that is available.

Does not need additional context to be understandable. It’s what a shortage is. It may mostly be caused by price rigidity, but the price rigidity isn’t the shortage (which IS what you said).

My best take is that you are trying to say is that I was being too technical for an audience not familiar with economics and that I should not have left them needing to do some research of their own to understand the bigger picture the original definition exists in. Am I close?

I’m saying that if someone objects to the way you’re defining something show them where you got the definition. And if you insist that your definition is correct make sure you said what you think you said.