Mailing List Archive: Search results - please let people know search is disabled.

Search results - please let people know search is disabled.

May 8, 2003, 2:33 PM

Post #1 of 5 (182 views)

When I type in a search request, e.g., "Unix" or "Europe",
Wikipedia reports "No article title matches" - even if there's
an EXACT match that "Go" will find.

Can "Search" do the following:
1. Report an EXACT match, if there is one, no matter what?
2. Report that title searching has been disabled (if it has),
instead of reporting that there are no matches?

I understand why it's been disabled (performance), but it
gives new users a MUCH worse impression of Wikipedia's contents
than is deserved. Currently, it looks like Wikipedia has no
content, and it CLEARLY reports that there are no title matches
even when there are. I suspect many people don't notice the
"Go" button - I didn't until someone else mentioned it
on the mailing list.

I put this in as a Bug report, but I'm not sure I made myself
clear. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Thanks.

Re: Search results - please let people know search is disabled. [ In reply to ]

lee at piclab

May 8, 2003, 2:38 PM

Post #2 of 5 (180 views)

Permalink

> (David A. Wheeler <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>):
> When I type in a search request, e.g., "Unix" or "Europe",
> Wikipedia reports "No article title matches" - even if there's
> an EXACT match that "Go" will find.

Hmm. I just got lots of article title matches on both of those.
Are you sure you're not reporting something that happened last
night while I was rebuilding the text indexes?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC

Re: Search results - please let people know search is disabled. [ In reply to ]

vibber at aludra

May 8, 2003, 2:39 PM

Post #3 of 5 (179 views)

Permalink

On Thu, 8 May 2003, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> When I type in a search request, e.g., "Unix" or "Europe",
> Wikipedia reports "No article title matches" - even if there's
> an EXACT match that "Go" will find.

I've gone ahead and re-enabled the title search for now.

It may make more sense to just replace 'search' with the 'go' function at
this point...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Re: Search results - please let people know search is disabled. [ In reply to ]

lee at piclab

May 8, 2003, 2:45 PM

Post #4 of 5 (178 views)

Permalink

> (Brion Vibber <vibber@aludra.usc.edu>):
> On Thu, 8 May 2003, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> > When I type in a search request, e.g., "Unix" or "Europe",
> > Wikipedia reports "No article title matches" - even if there's
> > an EXACT match that "Go" will find.
>
> I've gone ahead and re-enabled the title search for now.
>
> It may make more sense to just replace 'search' with the 'go' function at
> this point...

When the new server comes up, it might well be possible to re-enable
general text searching. If not, at least title searching.

What /would/ be nice though is if the "Go" button were first, and I'll
do that if I don't hear any objections.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC

Re: Search results - please let people know search is disabled. [ In reply to ]

david_a_wheeler at yahoo

May 9, 2003, 6:28 AM

Post #5 of 5 (177 views)

Permalink

I said:
> When I type in a search request, e.g., "Unix" or "Europe",
> Wikipedia reports "No article title matches" - even if there's
> an EXACT match that "Go" will find.

Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> replied:
> Hmm. I just got lots of article title matches on both of those.
> Are you sure you're not reporting something that happened last
> night while I was rebuilding the text indexes?

No, it's been happening for over a week.

Brion Vibber <vibber@aludra.usc.edu> then said:
> I've gone ahead and re-enabled the title search for now.

Hooray! Thank you very much! Title search is a really useful
feature, and I'm glad to see it back.

If you ever have to disable it again, it'd be nice if the
search results said so ("Sorry, title search has been disabled")
and at least identified any exact match. But
hopefully disabling title search won't be necessary again.

Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> said:
> What /would/ be nice though is if the "Go" button were first, and
> I'll do that if I don't hear any objections.

No objections. In fact, that's a good thing.
I know that I had a blindness to that particular button - I
always hit "search" and never even noticed "go".
That's probably because mentally I wanted to find something...
so once I saw "search", I pressed it, because that was
"obviously" what I wanted to do.