Help talk:Searching/Archive 2

message: 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:
# We cut down on the wordiness, and be concise.  
## We could always split off more detailed information into sections such as Wikipedia:Advanced search, Wikipedia:External search engines, etc.
# 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Revise search page 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Dynamic spelling correction? 

message: 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)
replies: text: I cut that statement, which is badly outdated as "at the moment" refers to three years ago .  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)

text: Still true, as of 31 August, 2006. studerby 02:38, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  At the moment, the search engine uses an index that isn't updated at all. 

message: 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, I can't find wat i'm looking for this website is CRAP
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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Cannot Search Old Revisions 

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

message: 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)
thread_title:  searching for contributions 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  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)
thread_title:  Search not finding article 

message: 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)
replies: text: I've removed the suggestion that such a link might be acceptable in the external links section of an article.  It's not acceptable - search results change all the time, and a search that returns more than one result forces the reader to (in theory) look through all the results to find something useful.  John Broughton  |  (♫♫) 15:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link to a specific Google search 

message: 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)
thread_title:  apostrophe/single quote 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title:  So when will the search database be updated? 

message: I propose adding the following section under the "external searches" section:
===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 .
(end of proposed section).
--EngineerScotty 19:03, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: * I agree that we should disclose what's indexed and what's not.  It might even be useful to have a separate page about Wikipedia and Search Engines.  We can add some comments there about how it's not productive to use Wikipedia for link spam because...  This may help discourage people from linkspamming, or at least it will provide rational arguments that others can use to educate the public about Wikipedia.  Does there happen to be such a page somewhere already?  If so, I haven't seen it.  Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 16:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed new section 

message: 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 .
(end of proposed section).
--EngineerScotty 19:03, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: * I agree that we should disclose what's indexed and what's not.  It might even be useful to have a separate page about Wikipedia and Search Engines.  We can add some comments there about how it's not productive to use Wikipedia for link spam because...  This may help discourage people from linkspamming, or at least it will provide rational arguments that others can use to educate the public about Wikipedia.  Does there happen to be such a page somewhere already?  If so, I haven't seen it.  Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 16:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Search engine settings

message: 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)
thread_title:  Macron folding 

message: 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)
replies: text: Done. -Quiddity 21:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  watch 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Search for article name not yielding article 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Searching for uploaded images 

message: 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)
replies: text: Albanian, I think.  Something about Alban Skënderaj, an Albanian singer. Prometheus-X303- 21:05, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I speak Albanian, and I'll translate it for you by the end of the day. - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 19:06, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  alban skenderaj 

message: The results for searching for "observer":
Observing
Relevance: 100.0% - -
Observations
Relevance: 98.7% - -
Observables
Relevance: 98.7% - -
Observer
Relevance: 97.3% - - 
How come there are 3 matches that are higher than the actual word itself?
--202.45.98.233 00:07, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Higher matches than exact match!? 

message: Under browser specific help, perhaps someone could add instructions for setting up the automatic Wikipedia search in the new IE7 search. Drwhit73 05:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Internet Explorer 7 

message: It deserves something better. And I don't think using Google for searching Wikipedia is a good alternative. But currently, why not just shut down the internal search and rely on Google for now until a working search is ready?
This is not trolling, I'm serious. Wikipedia's search is unusable.--87.122.45.130 20:53, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, in case you wonder "why disabling" when you don't have to use it? - It saves CPU time.--87.122.45.130 22:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia's search is aweful! 

message: Can someone explain capitalisation to me? iphone works as a search term and returns Apple's iPhone page. iphone (linksys) does not return Cisco's iPhone (Linksys) page or any other results - for that you have to enter iPhone (linksys). How stupid is that? The search terms should be case-independent.
Lloyd Wood 00:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Capitalisation matching kicks in after the first letter.  iphone goes to iPhone, because someone created an iphone article (actually Iphone, it's a limitation of the underlying software) and redirected it to iPhone.  I've created a similar article and redirect for iphone (linkys), so it will redirect properly now!  --Steve  (Slf67)  talk  04:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalization in search terms 

message: I would like to see a function that list say top200 of typed entries but not found ie like this:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex
    Telex not found etc..
  1. 'Telex'
  2. ...
  etc..
Any possiblity to implement this..?
Can't be that hard..
Electron9 11:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to find sought but not found keywords? 

message: Is there a page that reflects acknowledgment of the issue?  Is there a page that gives status updates?  It's tedious to keep checking, I would rather just put an update page on my watchlist.  Joie de Vivre 17:11, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update on the broken Search function 

message: Why is the contents page for this page constructed manually? Carcharoth 14:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange contents page 

message: It says "Search is case sensitive". I thought it was case INsensitive? 81.244.151.163 16:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  please correct 

message: Why can't one erase their search history from the search bar? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Richbank (talk • contribs) 04:54, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Is this a function of your browser?  In any case, it looks like entries can be deleted individually (I'm on Firefox; YMMV).  -- John Broughton   (☎☎) 19:11, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  erasing searches 

message: The project page says:
:"Wildcards
:"Be careful about limited wildcards, as they take a toll on the server. See Boolean fulltext search for details on their use."
There is absolutely no reason to be worrying about a "toll on the server".
The biggest problem is that this links to a totally incomprehensible external page, something that provides no clue as to what you might enter in the Wikipedia search box to make it work.  Nothing I tried works.
Does it ever work at at all?  Whether it does or not, it is irrelevant nonsense that ought to be removed from the talk page unless it can be better explained.  Gene Nygaard 14:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Utter nonsense about wildcards 

message: Numbers are sufficiently frequently used in searches that I think their current obscure behaviour in search should be made quite explicit.  I would give specific examples - e.g. that in text search "1984" fetches nothing, and "U2" gets the articles: U1, 'U', U571, U7, U-2 etc.   On the other hand, in title search ("Go"), the right thing happens.  I would hope that eventually the search behaviour will be fixed so this (embarrassing) explanation can be removed.
JMPrager 16:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  More on Numbers 

message: I've just spend half an hour trying to use the search page to find the article about the McCarthy 91 function: I could remember the "91 function" part, but not "McCarthy."  Of course, searching for the word "function" alone gives rather a lot of matches--103698 at the moment--but narrowing it down by searching for "91 function" (with or without double quotes) doesn't work: I get even more matches (104037).
I don't understand!
(At the risk of going off on a tangent, it would also be very useful if a search could be restricted to page titles only; perhaps this is already possible, but it wasn't obvious how.)
-Alexander Hanysz 203.122.212.109 11:43, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If your initial search is unsuccessful, you're much better off doing a google search of the English-only Wikipedia (follow the link on the project page) rather than continuing to spend time on internal search.  It is widely acknowledged that the Wikipedia internal search engine is not very good.  For example, google has the inurl parameter that allows searching on page titles, while internal search has no equivalent.  -- John Broughton   (♫♫) 15:58, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are numbers treated specially?  Where is this documented? 

message: can anyone tell me about the periods of significant change along the adelaide coast
:This type of question should be asked at Wikipedia:Reference desk.  -- John Broughton   (♫♫) 16:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  please help me 

message: I know Wikipedia uses some Lucene-based search engine these days, yet this page still links to the MySQL FULLTEXT implementation of boolean search operators.  The boolean syntax for Lucene's queryParser is different from MySQL FULLTEXT's.  Shouldn't we perhaps link to the Lucene doc on queryParser syntax?  Obviously a lot of this isn't relevant since it includes functionality that may be disabled or stripped out by Wikipedia's search front end.
On that note, is there any information available on how the search implementation works and what Lucene features are accessible to end users?  I tried using Levenshtein fuzzy keyword matching (the tilde character), but the search front end spits out an unhelpful error message when I do, so I assume that the front end is stripping out the character and then assaulting me with an awful default (and perhaps misleading; I never get a different result on subsequent trials with the same query) error message.  Incidentally, I get the same unhelpful error when I attempt to use wildcards (which are allowed according to this page).  If the search front end isn't helpful enough to explain that this functionality is intentionally disabled, shouldn't we specify that here?  This page needs some serious revamping considering that full text search is a rather important function on a site with a mass of text of the magnitude of Wikipedia's.  -- mattb @ 2007-03-08T22:42Z
:P.S. - Lucene's searching/indexing classes are NOT case-sensitive, so the tidbit regarding case-sensitivity on this page doesn't make any sense unless there is some weird quirk in the Lucene front end that would cause this.  Some informal testing seems to indicate that the current search engine is not, in fact, case-sensitive (even the example case given matches correctly with all manner of capitalization variation). -- mattb @ 2007-03-08T22:46Z
::The bit about case-sensitivity is likely referring to Go's case sensitivity (which has fairly arcane rules that generally mask even its case sensitivity).  I believe all MediaWiki code is open source, so should be available online somewhere.  If you are a Lucene expert, I'm sure your help would be welcomed by the developers.  user:Brion VIBBER is Wikimedia's chief technical officer (aka "head developer dude").  user:Tim Starling is the main database guy.  Another approach might be make suggestions to the wikitech-l mailing list. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:36, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this a bit outdated? 

message: A google search for wikipedia+jericho yields:
:Jericho - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
:Encyclopedic entry includes details about the archaeology of this ancient city.
:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho - 58k - Cached - Similar pages
:Jericho (TV series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
:Article provides a synopsis, episode listing with screenshot with original airdate, characters and trivia.
:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(TV_series) - 87k - Cached - Similar pages
But the descriptor strings, ie "article provides a synopsis", don't appear within the article itself and don't appear to be present in the page source fed to Firefox.  Are they manipulated by the Wikipedia, or are those descriptors set by Google themselves?  I note that searches for less common articles, like David Duchovney just return strings like "Return to Me was directed by Bonnie Hunt and starred David Duchovny as Bob and ... Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., ...", so it certainly looks like the metadata is being manually written at some point. MrZaiustalk 02:25, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Google is getting this annotation from http://dmoz.org/Arts/Television/Programs/Dramas/Jericho/.  See http://www.samspublishing.com/articles/article.asp?p=608629&rl=1 . -- Rick Block (talk) 20:00, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  metadata - where's it come from? 

message: is it possible? has it been discussed? i currently use google adding 'wikipedia' after words to have it autocorrect my clumsy typing. --Leladax 18:26, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  google-type autocorrection 

message: Interestnig,  vandalism cannot be undone, because of: Note: This page has been semi-protected so that only established users can edit it. So this means, that an  established user   (Cruci-fix) wrote " 	FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCM< fkljakls" ??? Apparently more established than me...
greetings, Ziga 20:38, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: wikipedia has the crappiest search engine ever. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 136.150.200.99 (talk) 00:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Known issue; that's why there is a "External search engines" section on the page.   -- John Broughton   (♫♫) 01:33, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  crappy search engine 

message: Is it possible to change the stopwords on a local mediawiki software, without using another search engine like lucene? where can I find the list of stopwords. --141.113.85.21 16:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Mediawiki uses mysql FULLTEXT indexes for searching by default.  You can change the default stopword list by defining the ft_stopword_file system variable.  Be forewarned, however.  MySQL FULLTEXT doesn't scale very well, and reducing the stopwords list will exacerbate this problem. -- mattb 16:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  delete some stopword on a local Wiki 

message: I recently posted a question to VP/T, concerning the fact that for some searches, both the Go and the Search button will lead you to a search results page which redundantly includes all redirect pages (example: Search, Go). I know that Google can be used to circumvent this issue (and also the lack of fuzzy logic keyword analysis), but for new readers that option may not be obvious. I believe it would be a genuine improvement if the result pages where made to exclude the redundant redirects. —AldeBaer 06:00, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirect pages in search results 

message: The search button on the home page is very unattractive and I believe we should replace it with something more professional, or at least make it an image instead of a simple character ">". Also, the actual text inside the search box should be smaller to correspond with the size of the box. If the text size is not changed then the size of the search box should be increased because their current proportion is mismatched. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 134.173.169.36 (talk) 10:12, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Search button on home page 

message: When a non-existent category is linked to, clicking it brings it up for editing and presents an option to "browse the existing categories before creating this page." However, this link just takes me to the index. I have a request for a way to have an automatic search occur, like with non-existant articles, except just in the category namespace. As it is now, I have to click on a letter on that category index in order to bring up the all articles (categories) search field and then manually type/copy-paste the category name in--annoying. It would be better to have an automatic category search occur on the non-existent category, as with non-existant articles. This would just take the category name and stick it in the same search string: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=test&namespace=14 (in this case, "test" is the string). -Eep² 00:49, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  automatic category browsing 

message: Hi, 
I user the search page and found that the dropdown list haven't any favicon so i made a small page to show the result.
A little bug with the selected option : no image, don't know why.
 - lyhana8 (Talk) - 22:19, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  favicon on dropdown list 

message: It used to be possible to type in 'wp' in the url bar for Firefox and it would take you to the page %s, which in turn redirects to the main page. Now when typing in 'wp' it redirects to , the number at the end of the url appears to be randomly generated. Who can I talk to to get this fixed so that it redirects to the main page gain? --Android Mouse 01:29, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Firefox 'wp' shortcut has been broken 

message: An option to search only in article titles (vs. the entire article) would be nice. ∞ΣɛÞ² (τ|c) 09:50, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Google can do this.  Add "allintitle:" to the search criteria (and "site:en.wikipedia.org" to restrict the search to the English Wikipedia). -- Rick Block (talk) 13:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks...but this is another example of why MediaWiki's search function sucks (and why a better navigation/search function needs to be developed/implemented). :/ ∞ΣɛÞ² (τ|c) 15:19, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  title-only search 

message: For some reason, pluralised redirects seem to be coming up first.  eg. I search for "Hapa".  The first result is "Hapas" which is just a redirect to "Hapa".  The exact match "Hapa" is listed second.  Why is this and can it be fixed?  I've noticed it on other searches too.  Thanks.--Irrevenant [ talk ] 01:34, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pluralised redirects coming up first? 

message: The search URLs like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org+%s
are mentioned for Firefox.  
FYI and possible update I run them in Opera 9.22 (WinXP) and it probably works in many older Opera versions too.
80.251.192.5 23:07, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Search URLs work with Opera too 

message: Mention if searching for A B finds pages with A and B, or A or B in them,
And say how to do the other operation. Jidanni 19:46, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems as though the search terms are all required. I searched somalia tanzania; all of the top four results I checked included both terms. Neither Somalia nor Tanzania appear as search hits. BigNate37(T) 19:53, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  and/or 

message: Is there a way to search only pages within a certain category? Let's say I want to search for the words "lake" and "wood" in all articles that use the Category:Africa. How would I do that? Mlewan 08:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think searching for "category:africa" lake wood should do this, but it apparently doesn't.  I don't know of a convenient way to do this. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:05, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Searching within a category? 

message: Search boxes can be added to pages:
type=search
width=42
buttonlabel=Go
searchbuttonlabel=Search
break=no
Should we add one here? And/or an image of the position of the search box on the wikipedia page (it's easy to miss on the left hand side, a picture might help a little). Yours --h2g2bob (talk) 23:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shouldn't we add a search box? 

message: Suthun Music Entertainment is an American Label Started in 2002 By Arthur Burton. The Label Is Specializing In Promoting,Recording,Distributing Urban/Hip Hop Music
Current Artist
Scrooge
Lamar Richardson
Alphy Nics
South Maine
Ladi Unkutt
Presidential Tripz
[1]-Official Myspace Page [2]-Official Website
Currently Suthun Music Entertainment is Working With 20 Ent/Universal Records  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Suthunmusic (talk • contribs) 23:36, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suthun Music Entertainment 

message: There are some other websites indexing wikipedia's articles. To name a few: seariki.com, wikiseek.com. Should they be included?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.57.167.154 (talk) 08:25, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other external wikipedia search engines 

message: I always just look for things by typing the article title into the web address. That's the way I have always done it, and I'm wondering whether people do the same.--h i s   s p a c e   r e s e a r c h 10:00, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do people actually use this? 

message: An advanced search link would be included near the search box, to look for in some concrete name spaces (i.e. wikipedia: image: and so on), without change every time the search preference (i.e. it can be interesting to look for in the wikipedia: meta pages once, but no forever). --Nukeless 10:54, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this is a great idea.  This page would have (at a minimum) the same checkboxes as the "Search in namespaces" box found at the bottom of a search results page.  --AlastairIrvine (talk) 14:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

text: A very good idea, sadly still not implemented.  Is it possible in some other way to do a search for articles which have a certain word in the title, where that word is not the initial one? Шизомби (talk) 17:03, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, use intitle:xxx in the search field.--Kotniski (talk) 08:06, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Advanced search 

message: The Contents at the top of the page is wrong. Libcub (talk) 06:00, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a customized short version, but all the links work. The full ToC is very long.  -- Quiddity (talk) 07:20, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I can see why one might not want all the level 2 and below headings to show, but shouldn't it at least show all the level 1 headings? It's missing Internal search engines (New),Searching with TomeRaider,If you cannot find an appropriate page on Wikipedia, and Notes. Libcub (talk) 18:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Poor upkeep? A half-hearted attempt to keep things simple? I don't know. I've added them, except "Notes" which doesn't really need one, and removed "Internal search engines" (see below). -- Quiddity (talk) 20:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

text: This page needs an overhaul in general. I still believe some sort of merge (archived proposal) with Wikipedia:Look it up is worth thinking about. -- Quiddity (talk) 07:20, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Merging makes sense to me. Libcub (talk) 18:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Has now been merged. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 00:38, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

text: Also, why is "Notes" indented to the left of the other level 1 headings? Libcub (talk) 18:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contents 

message: I'm removing this section (and copying below), as it doesn't appear to do anything useful currently (development halted since March 2007). -- Quiddity (talk) 20:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed section 

message: Before when nothing was found after a search links would come up to external search engines such as Google to search the site for the same keyword.  This has been replaced with a information box about stop words, which according to the article about them are no longer an issue due to changed software.  Can this error be reverted? 76.24.87.115 (talk) 18:22, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stop Words 

message: Search used to result in an estimate of how many pages it had thought that it had located; this number had frequently been less than accurate: ostensibly it does not communicate w/ itself very well.  Now, that number, in the past several days, has disappeared.
Why?
 hopiakuta  Please do  sign  your  signature  on your  message.  %7e%7e   Thank You. - 01:55, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The count is sometimes inaccurate because it is cached and thus delayed by 1 day or more (it reports what was true yesterday). Why it disappeared in Mar '08, I'm not sure - I see it there now. –xenotalk 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

text: ? –xenotalk 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Ouch]] < [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/special:search/ | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/][[special:search/ ]]>. 

message: Somebody removed the section that said "By default, when a search is performed with no user logged in, context is not displayed in the list of search results. When a user is logged in, context may be displayed, and this parameter is modifiable in "My Preferences". "   Why?  74.69.82.49 (talk) 20:24, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The change in question. I'm not at all sure, but possibly due to a few of the items in these lists of "Fixed bugs" and "Other changes": Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-24/Technology report#Fixed bugs. Lots of tweaks to the search lately. That help? -- Quiddity (talk) 21:40, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

text: I made the change after seeing . When I log out, I get context in searches, also after closing and reopening the browser. Is it different for you? Maybe there is something in my browser cache influencing results but I don't want to clear the cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:28, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Context 

message: Hmm. That was odd. Though it's cleared up, I could have sworn the "Go" and "Search" buttons had been briefly replaced by "I'm Feeling Lucky"—a la Google.com—and "Wacky Search," respectively. Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 22:25, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That was one of many April Fools' Day pranks. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:59, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Button name change