Mailing List Archive: More Strange Search Functionality with MediaWiki 1.3

More Strange Search Functionality with MediaWiki 1.3

Aug 23, 2004, 7:58 PM

Post #1 of 6 (1032 views)

A while back I sent a note about strange search behavior in MediaWiki 1.3.
Basically, when we search for some strings, we get back very limited partial
search results. In the interim, we upgraded to MediaWiki 1.3.0beta6 and
MySQL 4.0.18-standard, but are still having similar issues. Here is an
example of the problem:

When we search for the terms "pids", we get the following results:

For query "pids"
No page with this exact title exists, trying full text search.
Fids 75% (****)

MediaWiki (or MySQL) seems to give up on "pids" and go for a match on
"Fids". If I do a search for "PIDS" (all caps), these are the results:

No page with this exact title exists, trying full text search.
Showing below 24 results starting with #1.
Article title matches
Music PIDs (888 bytes)
Pids For Various Products (4662 bytes)
...
Page text matches
Sandbox (41 bytes)
Reserved Pids (1089 bytes)
...

So, there are a lot of pages that match "pids", but depending on how you
enter the query you get very different results. Does anyone have an idea as
to why this is happening? I can provide more strange search results if
needed...

-Matt

Re: More Strange Search Functionality with MediaWiki 1.3 [ In reply to ]

brion at pobox

Aug 23, 2004, 9:45 PM

Post #2 of 6 (997 views)

Permalink

Matt Kaufman wrote:
[snip]
> So, there are a lot of pages that match "pids", but depending on how you
> enter the query you get very different results. Does anyone have an idea as
> to why this is happening? I can provide more strange search results if
> needed...

When you hit the "go" button it first tries some exact and approximate
title matches before passing on to the regular (and slower) fulltext
search. Since the title field is case sensitive, different cases don't
always return the same matches in these checks.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

RE: More Strange Search Functionality with MediaWiki 1.3 [ In reply to ]

mkaufman at forterrainc

Aug 24, 2004, 8:07 AM

Post #3 of 6 (997 views)

Permalink

Thanks for the quick reply.

Is there any way I can force the wiki to always perform a full-text search
which (I believe) is case-insensitive or force the title search to be
case-insensitive? In case it matters, I get identical results whether I use
"go" or "search".

-Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org
[mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brion Vibber
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 9:45 PM
To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] More Strange Search Functionality with MediaWiki
1.3

Matt Kaufman wrote:
[snip]
> So, there are a lot of pages that match "pids", but depending on how
> you enter the query you get very different results. Does anyone have
> an idea as to why this is happening? I can provide more strange
> search results if needed...

When you hit the "go" button it first tries some exact and approximate
title matches before passing on to the regular (and slower) fulltext
search. Since the title field is case sensitive, different cases don't
always return the same matches in these checks.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Re: More Strange Search Functionality with MediaWiki 1.3 [ In reply to ]

brion at pobox

Aug 24, 2004, 11:15 AM

Post #4 of 6 (997 views)

Permalink

Matt Kaufman wrote:
> Thanks for the quick reply.
>
> Is there any way I can force the wiki to always perform a full-text search
> which (I believe) is case-insensitive or force the title search to be
> case-insensitive? In case it matters, I get identical results whether I use
> "go" or "search".

It should always perform a full-text search if it doesn't find an exact
match (in which case it redirects directly to the page). Unless, of
course, you've disabled the full-text search.

There may be a bug in the sound-alike search that doesn't fall through.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

RE: More Strange Search Functionality with MediaWiki 1.3 [ In reply to ]

mkaufman at forterrainc

Aug 25, 2004, 10:16 AM

Post #5 of 6 (994 views)

Permalink

Is there a way to disable the sound-alike search altogether and thereby
force a fall through regardless of results?

-----Original Message-----
From: Brion Vibber [mailto:brion@pobox.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 11:15 AM
To: mkaufman@forterrainc.com; MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] More Strange Search Functionality with MediaWiki
1.3

Matt Kaufman wrote:
> Thanks for the quick reply.
>
> Is there any way I can force the wiki to always perform a full-text
> search which (I believe) is case-insensitive or force the title search
> to be case-insensitive? In case it matters, I get identical results
> whether I use "go" or "search".

It should always perform a full-text search if it doesn't find an exact
match (in which case it redirects directly to the page). Unless, of
course, you've disabled the full-text search.

There may be a bug in the sound-alike search that doesn't fall through.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Re: More Strange Search Functionality with MediaWiki 1.3 [ In reply to ]

brion at pobox

Aug 25, 2004, 10:42 AM

Post #6 of 6 (1003 views)

Permalink

Matt Kaufman wrote:
> Is there a way to disable the sound-alike search altogether and thereby
> force a fall through regardless of results?

$wgDisableFuzzySearch = true;

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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