Wikipedia talk:Searching

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[edit] Revise search page

Since this "Searching" page is a prominent link off the proposed main page redesign, the quality of this article needs major improvement. I have looked at other languages and find the de:Hilfe:Suche page on the German Wikipedia useful in its simple, concise layout.

From that, I am proposing here that:

  1. We cut down on the wordiness, and be concise.
    1. We could always split off more detailed info into sections such as Wikipedia:Advanced search, Wikipedia:External search engines, etc.
  2. I've added a TOC infobox to the page, which includes the all the primary links used in the proposed main page, as well as some key policies. At some point, it might be useful to have this infobox (improvements welcome) on all these key pages listed there, to make it easy to navigate this important information.

Any further ideas or suggestions? -Aude (talk | contribs) 21:04, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm thinking it might be easier/better to just link to Wikipedia:Look it up from the main page, and then refine this page into an "advanced search help" page. (The "searching" link was added to the MainPage redesign at the very last minute, i forget by whom) --Quiddity 22:30, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dynamic spelling correction?

I have been looking for a place to suggest this to someone, but I really don't know the proper place, so I thought I'd mention it here. I know that (apparently) wikipedia search engine seems to look first for an article or page of the same title, and take you there; if that fails, it will search for that/those term(s) in other articles and display articles that contain the word(s), with a small link at the top if you want to start a new article.

I'm curious if anyone has ever thought of, or considered the implimentation of a suggestive spelling error system for searches - particularly names of places or people suffer from this issue. If you goto dictionary.com and look up a word that is misspelled or not in the database, the result is a list of terms that you might have misspelled (say, for example 'enthousiasm' results in a list starting with 'enthusiasm, enthusiasms, enthusiast...'). Similarly, yahoo.com, if you search for a term with low results, will attempt to suggest a correction (Did you mean: enthusiasm ?). I often find myself forced to pull up a yahoo window, search for the name I'm looking for, get the suggested correct spelling, and then bring it back to wikipedia so I can find who or what I'm looking for. Would it be possible to impliment a similar suggestive system to the top of a failed wikipedia search? And/or, how would I go about suggesting this properly to the proper channels? Thanks TheHYPO 06:03, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

  • I was thinking about this as well, and was about to post a new discussion before I stumbled upon this one. I agree with what TheHYPO said, as I do tend to mispell some of my searches--those that I'm unclear about (thus my reason to search it on Wikipedia). Google also uses this feature as you can see here: a search on "snkae". I hope that this issue can be resolved quite soon. Thanks.

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Better search feature. This has been a requested feature for quite some time, but the current stance seems to be that it can't easily be done without adversely affecting performance. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:50, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] At the moment, the search engine uses an index that isn't updated at all.

What's up with that? This statement should really be clarified. Why is the search engine not updated? How are we supposed to make sure that we don't create the same articles over and over (with slightly different names) if we can't find them?--345Kai 09:26, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I cut that statement, which is badly outdated as "at the moment" refers to three years ago [1]. Please point out anything else that isn't clear, seems outdated, and feel free to just go in and fix things if you like. -Aude (talk | contribs) 00:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

YES.....finally some1 that is as bad at spelling as i am. i usally end up typing a word into google which corrects it for me and then searching for it in wiki. we should send and email or sumthing to make it so that there it is a spell checker. i think that there might even be a way to make google check the spelling for you. this is the ONLY problem that i have with wiki right now and if it is fix this will be the best site ever. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.4.168.17 (talk • contribs) 00:22, 25 May 2006 (UTC).

It looks to me like the index is again not being updated. As a "for instance", the article for Olin E. Teague was created 30 June 2006 and as of 26 July 2006, it's still not findable via search. A week stale is annoying, but given the mutation rate understandable and not so critical. A month stale hurts... --studerby 16:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Still true, as of 31 August 2006. studerby 02:38, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cannot Search Old Revisions

I wanted to run a search that doesn't just look at the current version of a page. I want to run a search that also looks at older versions of a page. I've been researching some vandalism, and would find such a seach capability helpful. -- fsk

This edit section could be moved to the bottom or deleted. User:fsk never examined the history or diff mechanisms.
Sadly this answer may never reach hirm. · Ken 15:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Search

Is it just me or the search isn't working properly? I tried to search "nip it in the bud" and it gave results where the words didn't appear in order. I was about to start an article on the idiom, but then decided to look for a list, and voila. List of idioms in the English language#N. Even if I had seached without the quote marks (which I did previously), shouldn't it give me the more relevant results first? Like one containing the full searched expression as asked? VdSV9•♫ 11:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

The WP search engine is terribly simple. It's a known problem. The few developers who might know how to improve it are constantly busy with more critical bugfixes. Last i saw, they don't envision getting around to improving it soon. (google is your friend ;) -Quiddity 17:14, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
On a personal note, I hope they would be able to fix this as soon as possible. --Siva1979Talk to me 18:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I was searching for "willig", and it returned results with "willige" and other variations. Is there a syntax which I should be using to indicate "this exact text with no wildcards"? Thanks! --Keeves 15:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stop words

Lucene still doesn't search for numbers. I've added this to the article. --Eleassar my talk 11:03, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] searching for contributions

Is it possible to search for contributions of others ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.232.235.239 (talk • contribs) .

Search searches the entire content of Wikipedia (as of the last time the index was rebuilt), which includes the contributions of everyone. If you're looking to see someone else's contributions like you can see your own by clicking "my contributions", when you're on their user or talk page there's a "user contributions" link in the toolbox or you can enter (or create an internal link to) special:contributions/username. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:21, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Search not finding article

I tried to search for Ecclesiastical heraldry (to find out how long the article is), but the article with that title is not in the list results. Should not articles matching the exact search phrase be first or very early in the list? Gimmetrow 16:44, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

The article was created on June 23. The search index has apparently not been rebuilt since then. When it is, the title will appear in the search result (probably first). -- Rick Block (talk) 18:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
OK that makes sense, but I expected the search index rebuilt more often than that, weekly or at least monthly. Gimmetrow 18:53, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism?

Has this article been vandalised?

Yes, this article has been heavily vandalised, please fix it. why doesn't wikipedia have a very simple button somewhere to report when an article has been vandalised? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.240.163.61 (talk • contribs) .

[edit] Link to a specific Google search

I added a sub-section: How to provide a link to a specific Google Search. This page was linked from Wikipedia:Tip of the day/August 7, 2006 but didn't actually have information on using [[google:XYZ]].

A minor issue with the software, re the approach of using a plus sign, +, to replace spaces in the search field... it works fine in Wikipedia, but when I tried to do it at meta.wikimedia.org and at Appropedia.org (also MediaWiki) it didn't work. Word or phrase searches worked fine, but as soon as I put in a plus sign, it didn't create a link, but just showed the [[google:XYZ+ABC]] in nowiki format. It still has the same problem that it turns spaces into underscores (which hopefully can be fixed at some point...) --Singkong2005 talk 00:12, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Varè, Daniele

Daniele Varè (1880-1958) was an Italian diplomat and author. During the 1920's he was the Italian ambassador to China. His best known books were the trilogy known as "The Novels of Yen-Ching". These were set in Peking during the 1920's, and carry the intriguing titles of "The Maker of Heavenly Trousers", "The Gate of Happy Sparrows" and "The Temple of Costly Experience". He also wrote several volumes of memoirs, including "The Laughing Diplomat" and "The Two Imposters" and a biography of the Chinese dowager empress, Tzu-Hsi.

[edit] apostrophe/single quote

Unless I’m mistaken, the reason for this behavior is so apostrophes will be recognized as part of a word. Wouldn’t it make more sense to mention that, then say single quotes are identical to apostrophes, rather than vice versa, and that’s why single quotes should be avoided? As it is, it just reads as a stupid bug (no offense to WP/WM developers). —Frungi 01:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] So when will the search database be updated?

Having had many frustrating experiences using the search function to find out whether articles exist (and it not returning results for articles which I know exist), I came here to find why it wasn't working properly. I understand from answers to similar complaints above that what is at fault is that the database that the search function uses is rather old and infrequently updated, and so more recently created articles don't appear. So does anyone know the answer to these questions:

  • When was the last update to the search database made?
  • When will the next update to the search database be made?
  • At what point does the gap between updates become so long that this is considered an urgent problem, which if left unaddressed undermines the effectiveness of the search tool entirely? (OK, I admit this last one is a bit loaded - but I did say it was frustrating.)

To put this in context, currently the search button doesn't recognise the article on James Alipius Goold, which was created on the 22nd of May, representing a lag of at least three months and counting (in which time something like 300,000 articles have been created). Thylacoleo 07:27, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

There's an existing bug request to add the ability to find out the last time the search index was rebuilt, see bugzilla:6090. If you have a bugzilla account, voting for this bug is a way to increase its priority. I've suggested the search page include a "results as of <last index build time>" indication as well. I believe the answers to your questions are: only the developers know, no one exactly knows since it's irregularly updated when some developer (I'm not sure specifically who) manually initiates it, search is considered to be a secondary feature given that reasonable alternatives exist (e.g. google). -- Rick Block (talk) 13:48, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the answer, although I'm afraid I don't have a bugzilla account, not being particularly proficient in technical IT matters. I suppose my main problem is that I don't like to leave Wikipedia to use Google when editing. I am a bit baffled that there is an attitude that the Wikipedia Search function can be allowed to atrophy to such an extent because there exists an external site which can do it instead. Especially as the Search function features so prominently in the side bar on every single Wikipedia page - it seems reasonable that a casual reader would presume that it is up to date and useful. Is there a suitable place where I can go to clamour for a more serious approach to the Wikipedia Search function? Wikipedia:Village Pump (technical) perhaps? (Hmm, it seems they already make brief mention of it in their topbox, noting "The search index is often out of date, sometimes taking weeks before it's updated. Because of that, recent changes are not immediately reflected on the search." It might be worth a try raising it again there, anyway.) Thylacoleo 01:23, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I think the problem is well understood and appreciated. I believe the issue is that the development staff is mostly volunteer (there are something like two paid developers) for a site that is in the top 20 (by traffic) web sites in the world. I agree that there's really no excuse for the search function to have such low priority, but the reality is problems that aren't critical have a hard time popping up enough on the priority list to get any attention. Can you keep another Window open? What I do is keep a Window open with "site:en.wikipedia.org" filled in the search box in google (this restricts google's search to this site). If it were up to me (it's not), the "search" function here would do this by default. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:52, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with Wikipedia:Look it up

I strongly believe that we need a cross-between a simple version of this page, and an expanded version of Wikipedia:Look it up, as the main Search Help page, that gets linked to from the Main Page and similar. The exhaustive list of options and details should be on a supplementary/sub-page. --Quiddity·(talk) 01:17, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

While I, as of yet, have no strong feelings on the merge proposal, I strongly object to having meta information - the merge notice - on the top of a page that is such high profile. We should direct that notice to the talk page - editors watching will still see it and the discussion can go on without distracting (and potentially confusing) new users. --Trödel 01:24, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
That was fast - thx Quiddity!!! --Trödel 01:51, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Wow, I can't leave this place for a week without people trying to change things. What do you mean by "an expanded version"? Black Carrot 02:43, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll elaborate:

I'm suggesting that this is a bit of a mess, and could be fixed.

Wikipedia:Searching also has a number of problems, which could be dealt with as part of a general overhaul. eg the historical tangent in "Avoid short and common words". Or the stub tag. Or the terrible link to fulltext search as a guide to boolean searches. Or the guides to all the old versions of Opera. etc.

One possible solution, is to make this page into a fairly short but useful overview with the most relevant details (and redirect Wikipedia:Look it up to here); and create 1 secondary page with all the complex/minor/arcane details (eg lumrix search and bookmarklets and browser specific help and tomeraider). Much like the duality of Introduction to general relativity and General relativity, or that of Wikipedia:Introduction and Wikipedia:Tutorial.

This is a full overhaul proposal (as was originally suggested during the Main Page redesign in April). I'm just offering one solution, and calling for further suggestions. Thoughts? --Quiddity 04:01, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I have no objections to such a discussion. And I appreciate your summary of my work, it captures the spirit quite well. Why do you say Look it up is "overly" short? What else might it include? More specifically, what else might it include that wouldn't clutter it? Remember, my original vision was to create something that 1)most people would bother to read, and 2)would encourage people not to ask dumb questions on the Ref desk. I can't say for sure that it's succeeded in either, but it does seem that fewer questions are answered with "There's a search box in the corner" or "Why don't you try the article?". I worry that lengthening it, or even making it less conversational, would damage that. Also, although I wouldn't stand in the way if you moved it out of Look it up entirely, I came up with that name for a reason as well. People seemed to have difficulty with the concept that this is an encyclopedia. A familiar phrase, the reasoning went, would steer people in the right direction. The content is also quite carefully chosen. These are things that aren't as far as I can tell explained in any other easily accessable place (such as America vs American Flag vs Flag vs Flag of the United States etc) and that make a real difference to whether or not you find what you're looking for. Black Carrot 22:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
That's a good point about keeping Look it up as short as possible. I retract the overly designation if I may. And the title would work fine as the intro-to-searching page.
Specifically, I'd suggest the "If you cannot find an appropriate page on Wikipedia" section be moved there, and the "Put your keyword in the searchbox." blue box might be better (shorter/clearer) than the intro paragraph currently there. I'd also suggest the "Skins" section be moved to here, or at least to the bottom, as it's not a central/common problem (afaik?).
I'll have time to show by example (merciless editing!) in a few weeks. --Quiddity 19:09, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed new section

I propose adding the following section under the "external searches" section:

[edit] Search engine settings

Please note that certain parts of Wikipedia will not be indexed by most search engines, due to how Wikipedia configures pages. Specifically:

  • URLs embedded in namespaces other than the main namespace have the nofollow attribute set; thus such links will not be followed by search engines. This includes user pages, talk pages, and pages in the Wikipedia namespace.
  • Old revisions of pages have the noindex attribute set.
  • Deletion discussions, the Wikipedia search facility, and other special pages (like Wikipedia:Recent changes) are disabled by the site's robots.txt file [2].


(end of proposed section). --EngineerScotty 19:03, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Macron folding

The section "Words with special characters" only mentions diaeresis. From experimentation, it would appear that Wikipedia search does not fold macrons. Is this by design, a known issue, or soon to be fixed? A (very long) discussion is now occurring on WP:MOS-JA. Properly writing Japanese terms in Latin script often requires macrons. However, some have argued that it hinders searching and thus accessibility. Any comments would be welcome. Bendono 07:03, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] watch

Dear Administrators, Because of repeated vandalism by unregistered IP addresses, I suggest that you make this page un-editable for newly registered&unregistered users. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Happy8 (talk • contribs) .

Semi-protecting this page permanently is a pretty good idea. Any admins agree? Or does it need to be put through the process: Wikipedia:Requests for page protection? --Quiddity 18:51, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Done. -Quiddity 21:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Search for article name not yielding article

Searches for 1997 Constitution of Thailand, '1997 Constitution of Thailand', and "1997 Constitution of Thailand" do not yield the 1997 Constitution of Thailand article. In fact, the 1997 Constitution of Thailand article does not appear at all in the resulting list of articles for any three of the searches. The article has been around since September. What is causing this problem ? Patiwat 06:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

There is no way to tell when the search index was last rebuilt without asking the developers, but it has in the past not been rebuilt over a span of several months. I would assume it has not been rebuilt since this article was created on September 20. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:29, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Searching for uploaded images

Is this possible? Would be useful to find pictures that might already be on the server rather than upload more similar ones to illustrate a point. 4wd 21:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

You can already do that. Just check the "Image" namespace button on the search page. Alternatively, one could search from Special:Imagelist. — User:ACupOfCoffee@ 21:22, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] alban skenderaj

Alban Skënderaj është një këngëtar shqiptar që vjen nga Shqipëria. Albani ka lindur në qytetin e Lushnjës, në 20 prill të vitit 1982. Me origjinë Albani është nga Vlora, por ka lindur në këtë qytet, pasi babai i tij gjatë asaj periudhe punonte në Lushnjë.Në moshën 15-vjeçare është larguar nga Shqipëria për në Itali, ku ka gati nëntë vjet që banon në Pistoja afër Firences.Është tip që i pëlqen natyra dhe beson se çelësi i sukesit të tij është për faktin se, prezantohet tek publiku për atë që është në të vërtetë.Albani tashmë ka bërë famë dhe preferohet nga shumë njerëz. Ai ka marrë në vitin 2005 çmimin kryesor në festivalin "Top Fest" me këngën e tij(me të cilën e filloi karrierën)"Për Ty". Edhe këtë vit në "Top Fest" fitoi çmimim kryesor në bashkëpunim me grupin e njohur kosovar "Kthjellu" me këngën e tyre të suksesshme "Diçka". Deri më tani Alban Skënderaj ka edituar edhe albumin e tij të parë që titullohet "Fllad në shkretëtirë". Gjithashtu këtë verë ka korrur një sukses të madh edhe me këngën e tij hit "Ky ritëm". Është vërtetë çudi se si një djalosh si Albani që më parë nuk e ka njohur askush tashmë të njihet nga të gjithë dhe të ketë shumë adhurues. Shpresojmë që të kemi edhe në të ardhmen të tillë talentë si Alban Skënderaj...

Anyone know what language this is or what it says? My guess is it has nothing to do with searching, but I'm not sure enough to just delete it. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:15, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Albanian, I think. Something about Alban Skënderaj, an Albanian singer. Prometheus-X303- 21:05, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I speak Albanian, and I'll translate it for you by the end of the day. - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 19:06, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Okay, the translation is as follows. Please note that I translated it exactly, and didn't make too many grammatical errors (except for clarifiaction). Translations of songs/titles are in italics. It's not very well written, and needs a lot of cleanup.

Alban Skënderaj is an Albanian singer that comes from Albania. Alban was born in the city of Lushnjë, on April 20, 1982. Alban is originally from Vlorë, but he was born in this city (Lushnjë), since his father worked in Lushnjë during that period. At the age of 15, he left Albania to go to Italy, where he had almost nine years that he lived in Pistoja near Firenze (Florence). He is the type that likes nature and believes that the key to his success is factual, for he is presented to the public for that which is true. Alban now has become famous and is liked by many people. In 2005, he received the main prize at the "Top Fest" festival with his song (with which he began his career) "Për Ty" ("For You"). And in this year at "Top Fest", he won the main prize for collaboration with the well-known Kosovar group, "Kthjellu", with there successful song, "Diçka" ("Something"}. Until now, Alban Skënderaj has edited even his first album, which is titled "Fllad në shkretëtirë" ("Breeze in the Desert"). As well, this spring he has reaped a great success with his hit song, "Ky ritëm" ("This Rhythm"). It is truly astonishing how a guy like Alban, who earlier had not been know by anyone, now is known by all and has this many admirers. We hope to have a talent such as Alban Skënderaj in the future.

[edit] Go button functionality

The Go button functionality part of "search" isn't well represented here. There is an article in help: Help:Go_button but it isn't linked. There is a different page linked at the very bottom of the article to Wikipedia:Go_button. The search function provided in "go" is fairly unique and not necessarily intuitive. It deserves to be better documented and that documentation easier to find. Maybe the first page of "search" should have just two entires: Go and Search.

Also, while we are on the search-go topic, the first letter case insensitive is more than puzzling. If I type in "ide" I get the "Ide" page but no hint of the "IDE" page existing. The result is very non-intuitive--except for the fish lovers in the crowd. Rman2000 15:05, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

There's a disambiguation link to IDE in the first line at Ide ;)
As for this page: I believe that this page and Wikipedia:Go button and Wikipedia:Look it up all need to be merged into 2 "search" pages - 1 simple and 1 advanced. But I haven't had the time/energy to create a draft proposal. -Quiddity 19:47, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
First-letter case sensitivity has little to do with the search algorithm (AFAIK) and much more to do with the fact that no article has a lowercase first letter. BigNate37(T) 14:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
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