diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 0f204772b..2dfb0cc13 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ Fish source should limit the C++ features it uses to those available in C++11. I
 
 ## Versioning
 
-The fish version is constructed by the *build_tools/git_version_gen.sh* script. For developers the version is the branch name plus the output of `git describe --always --dirty --tags`. Normally the main part of the version will be the closest annotate tag. Which itself is usually the most recent release number (e.g., `2.6.0`). It can be useful to create a lightweight tag to make it clear that a fish binary is based on a particular development branch. For example, `git tag 3.0alpha` to make it clear that fish was built from the 3.x major release development branch regardless of the branch name.
+The fish version is constructed by the *build_tools/git_version_gen.sh* script. For developers the version is the branch name plus the output of `git describe --always --dirty`. Normally the main part of the version will be the closest annotated tag. Which itself is usually the most recent release number (e.g., `2.6.0`).
 
 ## Include What You Use
 
diff --git a/build_tools/git_version_gen.sh b/build_tools/git_version_gen.sh
index b5bffa599..ac3c26186 100755
--- a/build_tools/git_version_gen.sh
+++ b/build_tools/git_version_gen.sh
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ DEF_VER=unknown
 if test -f version
 then
 	VN=$(cat version) || VN="$DEF_VER"
-elif ! VN=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)/$(git describe --always --dirty --tags 2>/dev/null); then
+elif ! VN=$(git describe --always --dirty 2>/dev/null); then
 	VN="$DEF_VER"
 fi