I and others been trying to change this for a long time:
http://meta.philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/277/can-we-modify-the-sites-short-description
(It was actually deleted up until a second ago when I undeleted it; I'm not sure why @CodyGray deleted it in the first place as it was still an ongoing discussion in my mind, and clearly more and more people are recognizing this.)