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Proposal: Link to a search of the same word in another language

I often use the Firefox search box to look for a word in Wikipedia. However, this will only search the english part of wikipedia. I would highly appreciate a language list on the search page which would switch to the search in another language, looking for the same word. Other opinions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.187.179.91 (talk) 08:21, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree and would highly appreciate this expansion

(213.100.22.98 (talk) 17:43, 16 November 2008 (UTC))

You can add search for other language versions of Wikipedia to your Firefox search box. Do like this: Just enter any page on for instance the German Wikipedia (or whatever language you are interested in), then click the icon to the left of the Firefox search box and you get a drop down list of search plug-ins you have, and below those you find the search plug-in that the site you currently are visiting suggests with the option to add that search plug-in.

However that only helps people with browsers that has that search plug-in feature. (I know that there are some more browsers that has it.) And it isn't a very visible feature even to Firefox users. So it would be very nice if the search page linked to searches in the other languages in some way.

So I tried to add normal interwiki links to the Special:Search page, that is links that are visible in the left side menu called "languages". I added the interwiki links by editing the MediaWiki:Searchresulttext, that is the text that is shown on top of every search result. Unfortunately that didn't work. But that would have meant about 250 links or so, so it would have been pretty messy anyway.

So the next option is to link from the text in MediaWiki:Searchresulttext to some page where we have links to the searches in other languages. And we already have such a page, the www.wikipedia.org page. Well, that one only allows searching the top 20 language editions of Wikipedia, but that is at least a good start.

An even better thing would probably be if we added the same top 20 language editions in the drop down list of search engines on the Special:Search page itself. Since then you wouldn't even have to type the word again. And that seems to be the original request by 129.187.179.91 above. I just realised I can easily add that to the code in MediaWiki:Common.js/search.js. Should we do that?

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:58, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Other external wikipedia search engines

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)

Do people actually use this?

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)

Advanced search

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)

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)

Search Engine is horrible

Can someone explain why the search engine is so horrible? I have had the following happen to me several times: type something into the search box of my browser and find no hits from Wikipedia, but then when I enter the same phrase into Google, the wiki article I was originally searching for is the first article that appears. I think that the default search of Wikipedia should use Google's algorithm's because Wikipedia has by far the worst searching algorithm I have ever seen on the internet. And seriously, Google's search is pretty much the best out there. </rant> --141.212.142.247 (talk) 16:23, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's search function uses the open source Lucene engine. It's at least a de facto policy of the Wikimedia Foundation to use open source software (Google's search is not). Given that alternatives (like Google) exist, improving Wikipedia's native search is not a high priority for the (mostly volunteer) developers who work on the software that runs the site. BTW - I think Wikipedia's search beats the hell out of Google's encyclopedia content. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I would differ greatly. Google provides for the creation of custom search engines. On my main health website, I have dropped Google's site search for a couple of different Google custom search engines. I would call them open source XHTML. They are as about as free as you can get.

I think that I will add a Wikipedia Custom Search feature to my blog. -- John Gohde (talk) 20:49, 22 December 2007 (UTC)bumface gronola

Contents

The Contents at the top of the page is wrong. Libcub (talk) 06:00, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Merging makes sense to me. Libcub (talk) 18:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, why is "Notes" indented to the left of the other level 1 headings? Libcub (talk) 18:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Removed section

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)

==Internal search engines (New)== Recently, new ''internal'' search engines were created. These search engines can search Wikipedia articles, meanwhile they are user-friendly and are integrated into Wikipedia for a good experience. They aren't as good as external search engines though. ===WikEh?=== WikEh? is a '''Wikipedian-friendly''' search engine that searches the articles you want fast. It also searches images that are on Wikipedia. Users can give it a try by clicking on the link below. * [[Wikipedia:WikEh?/Home/|Search Wikipedia with WikEh?]]

Stop Words

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)

Ouch < | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/special:search/ >.

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. ~~ Thank You. -]] 01:55, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Numbers have returned,.... How? Why?

[[ hopiakuta Please do sign your signature on your message. ~~ Thank You. -]] 01:30, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Context

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)

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)

I made the change after seeing [1]. 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)

Button name change

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)

That was one of many April Fools' Day pranks. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:59, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Wildcards in WP search

The following "help" is useless; it doesn't tell you how to use wildcards in WP searches:

Wikipedia:Searching#Wildcards

Please exercise self restraint when using wildcard characters, as they take a toll on the server. See Boolean fulltext search for details on their use.

Is there somewhere that does tell you how to use wildcards in WP searches? Pdfpdf (talk) 03:50, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Is Boolean fulltext search not clear enough? What are you trying to do? -- Rick Block (talk) 04:22, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Now that I know that "WP search uses 'Boolean fulltext search', as descibed in Boolean fulltext search", it probably is clear enough! Thanks for your help, Pdfpdf (talk) 04:41, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

What is wrong with the searching?

When you search, it only searches the text of the title and not the contents now, and you cannot make it search the contents of an article. That is annoying. Rcduggan (talk) 11:40, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

The Search facility now also doesn't present the previous options of searching through Categories, Templates, etc. What's up? Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:13, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I currently get this on any search: "Wikipedia search is disabled for performance reasons. You can search via Google or Yahoo! in the meantime". Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Where are the servers?? says other things have been down earlier. I guess we just have to wait for all things to be enabled. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:29, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I see that now. If in doubt, read what's on the screen. — apologies. Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

When there is no article on the word you typed in

Why not add the Google etc. links as is done when the search isn't working? If Wikipedia doesn't have an article on something it's at least nice to give people a leg up to a better site. Richard001 (talk) 08:37, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, a link to Wiktionary would be good to, as it's often difficult to know if a word will have its own article or not. Richard001 (talk) 04:41, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Auto-fill in search box?

I've recently noticed that the search box auto-suggests article titles based on my typing. Is this a MediaWiki feature in a recent version? An extension? How does it do this!? I'd like to add it — whatever it is — to wikis I administer. Timneu22 (talk) 10:12, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how to administer wikis but maybe you can find what you need at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#MediaWiki Suggest (for lack of a better link). PrimeHunter (talk) 00:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

There is a relatively recent posting about how this was implemented at Brion's blog (see the Open Wiki Planet aggregator blog). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:10, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

How do you turn it off? Frickeg (talk) 04:40, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

For your Wikipedia account, go to Special:Preferences, click the Search tab, check "Disable AJAX suggestions", click "Save" button. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:47, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Frickeg (talk) 06:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Do you have a direct link to the post, please? I couldn't find it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.195.86.40 (talk) 23:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Problem with auto-fill box covering Go and Search buttons

The auto-fill box now drops down and covers the Go and Search buttons. Great feature but this presents a problem for those who like the Search results page. Could the "drop-down" box come out on the side of the search box instead? It took me awhile to notice a way around this by pointing and clicking on a blank area, which makes the drop-down box retreat. Thanks 172.134.250.104 (talk) 00:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Image Searching Not Working

I'm searching "Google Earth" with only the "Image" checkbox checked. Nothing comes up. Subsequent searches for other things turn up nothing. It's worked before. Please help. -- VegitaU (talk) 05:58, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I get 271 hits in that search.[2] I don't know whether there has been problems with search earlier today. Do you still have problems? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:25, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Nope. Must've been a glitch last night. Thanks, -- VegitaU (talk) 21:49, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Hm. Maybe not it's not working at the moment (03:53, 22 May 2008 (UTC))). It seems to not work around this time every day. Is something up? -- VegitaU (talk) 03:53, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

It works for me now (and it displays the images which I haven't seen before). The time you give is not practical for me to test. I would be surprised if there is a specific daily time interval where image search fails, but there may be times where Wikipedia tends to get more traffic and expensive things like search are more likely to have problems. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:37, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Blank search

can the blank serch be made to redirect to the homepage.

1) why not

2)searchbars selecting wikipedia and enter should talk you home

3)allows binding of a "keyword" to wiki search so wiki foo goes to foo but wiki still goes to wikipedia

--82.35.192.193 (talk) 14:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Searching the database

Is there a way to search the raw source of the wiki with case sensitive or regexps without downloading the whole thing? A website that hosts a mirror of it, perhaps? Even an out of date mirror would be fine. For instance, I want to search for specific patterns to look for false positives for a Mediawiki proposal. — Omegatron (talk) 00:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

How about a tool to search old versions of an article?

It would be helpful before considering revising an article to see if a particular topic has already been added, removed, added, and removed. Not that that would always keep one from adding it again, but it would still be helpful to know about the earlier revisions. Often that sort of activity leaves a mark on the talk page, but not always. The tool I am thinking of would search for terms throughout the entire revision history of an article, and return them in the context of adjacent text, displaying the range of time over which the relevant text remained in the article. It should not be terribly difficult to write, as the links to earlier versions are all accessible on the history page. The trick would be in figuring a good way to display the results. Any thoughts on the utility of such a tool? Jbening (talk) 02:24, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Auto-fill suggest box thing

The text says "Wikipedia suggests articles matching your entry as you type in Firefox since version 2.x only; this function is not available in Internet Explorer 7.0." but I use internet explorer and it suggests articles to me. Not that I'm complaining! but shouldn't the text change to reflect that?

On another note, the reason why I came to this page, is there any way that the auto-suggest could be filtered to not suggest redirects? It would be a good way of finding article duplicates, badly named articles etc if it could. I must warn that I'm not technical at all at computers or script, so apologies if that was a stupid question! Jdcooper (talk) 00:57, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Problem with "exact match only"

I wanted to find an article with the word "owl" in conjunction with a specific username. Per WP:SEARCH I tried searching "owl" "username" and +"owl" +"username" (in my actual search "username" was of course a specific username).
Along with the correct hits I get false hits on such words as "knowledgeable", "Dowling", and "bowl" which contain *owl*.
Am I doing something wrong or is the search engine? -- Writtenonsand (talk) 13:46, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

The search is working but the results page is lying to you. All those pages do have the word "owl" by itself, but the code that finds and highlights the search terms in the results uses a simple pattern match to extract the search term in context. That means that if you search for "mac" "owl", you will get 154 hits (today), and every single one of them will have the words "mac" and "owl", but might also have false pattern matches, such as knowledge, bowling, Crowley, machines, or Macy's! I wish I knew where to report this really wrong behavior. -- Searchtools (talk) 23:22, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Special:Search

Is Special:Search discussed in the article? --Timeshifter (talk) 17:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Search article deletions and deletion reviews

Where can I search article deletions and deletion reviews for specific deleted articles by name? Is this discussed in Wikipedia:Searching? I did not see it. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:22, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

How does average searcher find Special:Search?

The search result page from sidebar searches does not link to Special:Search. Most search engines have a link to "advanced search"; either on the initial search page, or on the results page, or both. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:26, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Advanced search is difficult to find

I did not notice right away that advanced search is at the bottom of the regular sidebar search results page. Could a link to "advanced search" be put at the top of that page? --Timeshifter (talk) 16:50, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I provided a couple of links to it in the article. The advanced search form was hard to find. How ironic. I had seen it before, but couldn't find it until I finally saw it at Special:Search. --WikiWes77 (talk) 19:29, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

To suggest a link in the side bar, a good place would be WP:VPT --WikiWes77 (talk) 23:10, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I left a request there. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:02, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

That discussion and more is now located here:

MediaWiki talk:Sidebar#Placement of "advanced search" --Timeshifter (talk) 17:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

All-words search

Wikipedia search seems to pull up results that include only some of the words searched for. Is there a way to get it to only pull up results with all the words? --Timeshifter (talk) 16:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Clusty

How do you search using Clusty? I tried typing "sandwich" (with and without quotes) and got zero results. SharkD (talk) 21:24, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Link to add red-linked search term to watchlist

I find it most useful to add non-existent articles to my watchlist so that I will be notified as they are created. I don't suppose many people take advantage of this possibility, however, as I think it's a feature which many more people than myself will find useful, I propose that the page which is called when a search turns out negative includes this option of adding the search term to the user's watchlist. __meco (talk) 10:00, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Theoretically a "watch this" link could be added to the end of MediaWiki:Noexactmatch, except that it would be meaningless for IP users ... —AlexSm 14:38, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I often use this functionality too, but I find it easy enough to click on either of the two redlinks and add to the watchlist from the editpage. Think of it as an easter-egg for us smart cookies ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:29, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Default to an external search

Wikipedia's built-in search is bad. There are good external searches (Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, etc.) allowed as an option -- an option that I always end up taking, because the default search engine won't find the article that I need. The question is: what is more important: (1) Giving people easy access to the information that they need, or (2) A dedication to using exclusively open-source software? I feel that Wikipedia's purpose is (1), and that insisting on using an inferior search engine just because it's OSS is inflexible and self-destructive. And, after all, if we default to an external search engine and end up not liking it, we can switch back, no harm done. So how about it?24.84.9.2 (talk) 22:20, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Recent mods to Wiki:Searching

This section was moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Recent mods to Wiki:Searching, please continue any discussion there. --David Göthberg (talk) 11:22, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Recent mods in September/October 2008 to the search function have not necessarily been advantageous.

Amongst other things, around 5AM UTC, when Wiki search is presumably updating its lookup tables, the search function is turned off and finds nothing.

Try searching for the misspelled "diffrent". If a misspelling such as "diffrent" is corrected to "different" then the lookup table should ceasing finding the word under its old spelling and start finding it under its new spelling. Prior to September, this was as quick as pressing the "Refresh" button of IE or Firefox. Performing the search again, or moving from one page to another of the search results would also do a refresh.

Now this refresh seems to happen only once a day.

Tabletop (talk) 04:52, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I think you are correct in the discovery that the search index now seems to update much less often. It might be because lately they have had several problems with the Wikipedia servers and databases, so they have been turning off lots of "luxury" functions to save load and to avoid triggering some of the bugs. Or at least that is what it seems to me they are doing, based on some of the server admin logs and other comments people have pointed me to. And for instance Special:MostLinkedTemplates haven't updated for a month now. It used to update about twice a week before. :(

Anyway, I will move this report to the Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), since the devs and some of the people who manages the servers take a look there every now and then.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:17, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

This section was moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Recent mods to Wiki:Searching, please continue any discussion there. --David Göthberg (talk) 11:22, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Double quotes do not force an exact match

I have removed "exact match only" from the heading for "Phrases in double quotes" as it was misleading. Putting search terms in double quotes does not force an exact match search. For example, searching for "log in" finds Log cabin which does not contain "log in", but contains "logs in". Nurg (talk) 22:15, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Size of "No article title matches" section in search results

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like when a normal search from the sidebar returns no articles with matching titles, the results page has a lot more text up at the top than it used to. All the partial match results are still there, but now they're further down on the page, so much so that I have to scroll before I can see any of them. Instead, there's a really large section that takes up most of the page and gives info about how to phrase the search correctly or create new articles. Was this section always that large, or is my computer just acting strange? 76.28.10.13 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 01:23, 29 October 2008 (UTC).

The message currently seen by unregistered users is taken from MediaWiki:Noexactmatch-nocreate which was created 25 October. It sounds likely that unregistered users saw something shorter before but I don't know exactly what. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:47, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Searching article titles

Is there any mechanism for restricting a search to just article titles? (i.e. can I search for all articles with a particular word in their titles, like I can use the A-Z index to get a list of all articles that start with a particular word?) If not, has this idea ever been proposed?--Kotniski (talk) 16:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

It has just become possible with "intitle:".[3] PrimeHunter (talk) 22:00, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Search for one type of Wikipedia templates

Is this possible?

I've formulated a new WikiProject named WikiProject Haystack, which aims to highlight the most essential in Wikipedia by gathering the most important information into special templates. However, it would have full potential only if such templates could be searched separately. So before I officially propose it I'd like to know - is it possible to sort out such templates in the search-engine. One example would be to add another namespace, such as Essentials:(Article name). If that's impossible, could the search engine be modified to search through templates of a certain category, or having some kind of marker that the search engine can sort out? Mikael Häggström (talk) 17:35, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Icons of search engine plugins should reflect language of Wikipedias

---As David Göthberg suggests I copy this here from village pump (proposals). --Edupedro (talk) 02:00, 1 November 2008 (UTC)---

Hello: I think that many people like me look for information in different Wikipedias (different editions/languages of it). I believe that not few people, to save time, use the offered (in one of the first code lines, that begins with <link rel="search") search engine plug-ins for the browsers. If Firefox is used each plug-in comes with an icon (in this case a W). The problem is that, as the icons of the different Wikipedias are all the same, it happens to me often that I search in a Wikipedia that I didn't want to look for. I think that this could easily happen to more people. The solution is easy: to put a flag in a corner of the icon: for example the one of Italy for the Italian Wikipedia. Thanks, --Edupedro (talk) 22:29, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

But is English a UK, English, or USA language? Is Portugese a Portugese or Brazilian language? What flag would we use for Anglo Saxon? And the flag would be so small, it would be hard to work out what it depicted. DendodgeTalk^Contribs 22:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Hello: I would go to the origins and use the flag of England for the English Wikipedia and the one of Portugal for the Portuguese version. I imagine that some Australian, ... and Brazilian ... people would prefer to use different flags: the solutions is easy, create a page with the search engine plug-ins (for example Wikipedia:search engine plug-ins for the English edition) with different flags to choose from. For the Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia "ang" could be used instead of a flag. I've been using personalized icons for the Wikipedia search engine plug-ins from some months ago and can confirm that the flags are easily seen (and my vision is normal, not excellent) and really help to search faster, in a more comfortable way and not confusing looking for in a different Wikipedia. You can see a similar solution for the Dutch and Nynorsk editions in Mycroft and for Encarta in the same web. Thanks, --Edupedro (talk) 23:22, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

A person can already restrict searches to a particular language Wikipedia by adding a search term, such as site:en.wikipedia.org for the English Wikipedia. You can even create a "smart keyword" in Firefox so that you don't have to type as much. (Also, I think that the "W" icons you mention are actually part of the Firefox browser, rather than something provided by the Wikimedia Foundation; if so, it's somewhat pointless to make a suggestion on this page.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:44, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

That's not actually true. While Firefox does ship with a Wikipedia plugin, every WP page also uses OpenSearch to provide a search plugin for auto-discovery by any compliant browser. OpenSearch allows a site to specify a default icon. The request is perfectly cromulent when discussing them. Smart keywords are undiscoverable and are basically deprecated in favour of OpenSearch (and the Add to Search Bar extension, which is due for integration into Firefox in future), and are a workaround for the issue described rather than a solution. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:01, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Hello: In the past I searched sometimes from Google adding for example site:en.wikipedia.org in the end. I think it's useful, but the search engine plug-ins make the searches faster and more comfortable. I didn't know about the "smart keywords" of FF: I've tried them and find them OK. But if you usually search in more than 20 web sites or pages (like me) I find it difficult to remember so many keywords and when you use 2 or 3 versions of the same web (for example of WordReference or Wikipedia) it can be confusing. So I prefer the search engine plugins: they work with Explorer and Firefox. The first one only admits the OpenSearch format and doesn't show icons, while FF admits both OpenSearch and Sherlock and shows icons, which is really helpful. Every page of en.wikipedia.org has as one of the first lines of code this one: <link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="/w/opensearch_desc.php" title="Wikipedia (en)" />. It offers the search engine plug-in, located where href says: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/opensearch_desc.php. If we go to that page and open it with the notepad we can see the icon label (<Image height="16" width="16" type="image/x-icon">), that contains the URL of the icon for the plug-in: in this case http://en.wikipedia.org/favicon.ico (the favicon of Wikipedia, shown if we enter this URL in the address bar of the browser). My suggestion would be to use instead an icon with something to distinguish it from other Wikipedias (languages). To avoid controversy it could be just the "en" Wiki (abbreviation). And to make it more visual I'd create a page called Wikipedia:search engine plug-ins with several plug-ins, each one with the flag of England, UK, USA, Australia, ..... so anyone can choose the one which prefers. Regards, --Edupedro (talk) 23:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

You may want to move this discussion to WP:VPPR, as a proposal. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:24, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

←I'm thinking this probably isn't the greatest idea. It's just an invitation to drama and arguments over using the 'right' flag. Plus, I just don't see many people using it--and those who would, probably already know, or know where to ask, how to change favicons. [ roux ] [x] 23:33, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, to you Americans it might seem strange, but most of us Europeans speak several languages and regularly use several different language Wikipedias. (Consider that for most of us there are several countries within just some hours train ride.)

I use Firefox and I use the search plug-ins that Wikipedia offers, since they are very convenient and in many ways are better than using an external search engine. And since the search box on the pages don't open the result in a new window, then that box is not an alternative to the search plug-ins. I have a whole bunch of Wikipedia search plug-ins, but all of them have the same white [W] icon. So it is pretty confusing. It happens all too often that I can't find what I search for and try several alternative spellings until I realise that my search box has the German or Swedish search selected, not the English one.

One fairly okay alternative is of course as Edupedro suggested to use the short text form of the language, like "en" for the English Wikipedia. But we who use multiple languages know that it is a long standing tradition to use the "origin" flag of each language. That is, most multilingual web sites use the British flag for English, the Portuguese flag for Portuguese, and so on. I have actually several times seen Brazilian web sites where they use the Portuguese flag to mark the language, in-spite the site being very Brazilian.

And the flag doesn't have to be big, since it is merely a matter of telling apart a handful of known flags. One only needs some pixels to see the colour difference between for instance a British, German and Swedish flag. As little as 8×6 pixels can be enough for that. I think you can tell which one is which of these flags, with the Wikipedia favicon as size comparison:

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

That's Russia, Germany, and Swaziland, right? It's even worse on my laptop, where the first one is Puerto Rico and the third is Barbados, but I can't find anything with the black-and-yellow stripes of the second flag. --Carnildo (talk) 08:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

See WP:Icons for the issues with flags Gnevin (talk) 10:40, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Carnildo: I hope you are just trying to be funny, right? What I meant is that since I know that I speak English, German and Swedish, and have installed the search plug-ins for those languages, then those tiny flags are enough for me to tell apart which plug-in is which. And I would actually use slightly bigger flags, since there are plenty of space in the favicon. And the three examples above were resized by MediaWiki's SVG renderer. When I use a better tool for the resizing and do some hand tweaking the images become slightly clearer. Now, if I only had some tool to add those images to the plug-ins...

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm being completely serious. What I'm saying is exactly what I see when I look at those icons. You need to consider that not everyone has an LCD monitor capable of reproducing crisp single-pixel areas of color. My desktop monitor is an old CRT connected through a cheap KVM switch, while my laptop is an OLPC XO-1, which cannot display detail that is less than 2 pixels on a side (you should see the rainbow effects that result when someone tries to be cute and use halftoning instead of a 50% grey). --Carnildo (talk) 21:45, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Another option could be to precede or superimpose the W logo with a little language code. These could be created using a tiny pixel font, 5 pixels or so tall. —Michael Z. 2008-10-30 16:49 z

DE.W

EN.W

WPT

The last one needs a 1-px white outline for the language code, so it's clearly readable over the W. —Michael Z. 2008-10-30 16:55 z

Hello: The Wikipedia's search engine plug-ins that I have at the moment installed are the one for the English version and the one for Spanish. I did the procedure (easy and quick but "craftwork") that you can see in this user subpage of mine to see flags in the bottom of the icons with the W. These flags are bigger than the ones shown by David Göthberg. I can recognize well David's flags and very well the ones I use. I used the tiny command-line program of Fatih Kodak to covert the personalized icons to the code I inserted in the plug-ins (it can be downloaded from this page of him -for Linux and Windows- and also can be used online from this page also of Fatih). I have had a look to Wikipedia:Icons and seen that has nothing for these plug-ins. We could put a link there to a new page (for example Wikipedia:search engine plug-in) with different versions of the English search engine plug-in, each one with a different icon: the default one (W), one with "en" on the bottom of the W, another one with the flag of England, another with the one of the UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, ...... I think we shouldn't discuss about which one is the best, just offer the possibility to everyone to choose the one (s)he preffers. I think that page would really be helpful for many people (and avoid the "craftwork"). Thanks, --Edupedro (talk) 21:45, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Edupedro: Oh, thanks for the links! Now I have inserted flag icons in all the Wikipedia search plug-ins I use. It looks very nice in my Firefox, no confusion anymore. I actually use flags that are 13x8 pixels, placed in the lower right corner of the usual [W] icon.

And yes, let's make a how-to page named something like Wikipedia:Search plug-ins, where we can document all this. I see that Wikipedia:Searching#Browser-specific help does have some (outdated) information on this. An option would be to update that one instead.

I have now read up on these plug-ins and did some testing, and have a nifty image trick to report. (But let's agree on the page name for our how-to page first and then discuss more there, or move this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Searching.) But I think I have found out something even better:

Instead of uploading the plug-ins to our how-to page I suggest we create them at mycroft.mozdev.org. I took a close look at that site and there is much more to that site than first meets the eye. We can actually update the existing Wikipedia search plug-ins there and add new ones, with any images we like. (And many of the Wikipedia plug-ins there do need a work over.) That site has much better handling of plug-in creation, updating and installation than we would have on our how-to page. I will probably create some plug-ins with the language icons I have made, and do some updating of the existing plug-ins there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

End of section moved here from the Village pump (proposals).

Hello, David (everyone invited also, of course): I changed the icons of Mycroft for Wikipedia in English and in Spanish a couple of times (with flags in the bottom) but they put the previous ones again, without the flags. So I think it will be better to do all for these languages in the Wikipedia site. I think that Mycroft people don't want to change the plug-ins already in OpenSearch format. But I see many still with Sherlock format. This can be a good chance to put personalized icons with flags while we change those plug-ins from Sherlock to OpenSearch. I think we can also edit Wikipedia:Searching and/or create the page you propose: Wikipedia:Search plug-ins, and redirect to it Wikipedia:Search plugins, Wikipedia:Search plug-in, Wikipedia:Search plugin, Wikipedia:Search engine plug-ins, Wikipedia:Search engine plugins, Wikipedia:Search engine plug-in and Wikipedia:Search engine plugin. And, as you say, we can inform about all this in Wikipedia talk:Searching. Today I go for a trip of one week, so probably I won't be able to write in Wikipedia. But if you can and want go ahead, please. Thank you, --Edupedro (talk) 01:56, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, if the people over at Mycroft are reverting your flag additions, then I guess we have to make our own page here. But it sounds like you changed the images of the existing plug-ins over there? Then I agree with their reverts, since I think that was the wrong approach. The existing "default" plug-in over there should have the old default Wikipedia search plug-in icon, if nothing else to not provoke others who disagrees with the flags. What we should do is to add new plug-ins with new names and with the flags. So we should try that and see how they react.

But if that doesn't work then we have to make our own page here. It probably is a good idea anyway since then we get a talk page too where people can discuss the design of the icons and ask questions. And since this will mean a long list of plug-ins with icon examples and so on, and these plug-ins only work in some browsers, then I think the plug-ins should have a separate page instead of that we extend Wikipedia:Searching.

I have a number of ideas how to make our page work neatly. I'll put it on my to-do list and get to work with it when I get the time. And regarding the nifty image trick I discovered: I can make it so the plug-in file we store here doesn't contain the image, instead it links to the image as stored here at Wikipedia (the same image we will show in our list here). At least in my Firefox 2 the browser then automatically download and substitute the image into the plug-in file on first load. We have to check if that works for the other browsers that use this search plug-in standard too. This means people will get the latest version of the image in their plug-in when they install the plug-in. Which means we don't need to update both the image and the plug-in here each time we update the image. (But user's that already have installed a plug-in and want the new image need to get the plug-in file again.)

I think the search plug-in icons should be uploaded to Commons, and we need a category name for the images. We have to check what is the proper name for such a category at Commons.

It is currently not clear to me if we should (and are allowed to) upload the search plug-in files themselves to Commons, or if we should upload them here at the English Wikipedia. Or perhaps they should be uploaded to Meta-Wiki or so?

Actually, since we are going to make search plug-ins for many languages, then in theory it is kind of wrong to put the plug-in page itself here at the English Wikipedia. We should perhaps move all this to Meta-Wiki, and just link to that from the appropriate pages here?

--David Göthberg (talk) 21:05, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Searching for section headings only

Is there a way to search for section headings only? I'd like to find articles that contain (for example) == Bibliography == as a section heading, but not those that use the same word in the text or references (e.g., does not find "bibliography" in <ref>Smith, J. 2006. "A Complete Bibliography of Santa Claus's Writings." J Christmas.</ref>.)

So far, I've been using Special:Search and scanning for (section Bibliography). Any ideas? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Typo on Wikipedia:Searching

Search for '2or'. Missing whitespace. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 00110001 (talk • contribs)

I don't know what you are referring to. Can you clarify? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:27, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Presumably this. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:46, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikilink to Wikipedia search???

I'd like to create links using code such as

[[Special:Search?search=privledge&fulltext=Search|mysearch]]

but it appears that you cannot do such a wikilink. And have to do instead create an external link using code like

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=privledge&fulltext=Search mysearch]

Is there a reason why the internal link cannot be done? Jason Quinn (talk) 22:24, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Per m:Help:Special page#Links to special pages, simple searches work - e.g. Special:Search/searchstring. If you want any parameters other than the search string it appears you have to use the external link syntax. You can use a variable for the base URL, e.g. {{fullurl:Special:Search}}?ns0=1&search=privledge&fulltext=Search expands to //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?ns0=1&search=privledge&fulltext=Search. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:49, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Rick. I didn't know about the fullurl thing. Ok. The simple search doesn't really do what I do. I'll just have to use the full URL. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:15, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Random selection of searches

Is it possible to see a random selection of searches tried on Wikipedia? Bondegezou (talk) 17:19, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Tips for effective searches

I've rejigged the content of this section a bit. To relay some of the history: in November of 2008, the search function was radically improved and I asked at VPT whether there shouldn't be big banners to let people know this happened. At the same time AlexSm added a template here asking that the section be improved to better describe the new functions. Carcharoth made a temporary copy of the mailing list entry describing the new functions (violating GFDL a tiny bit). Ipatrol removed the improvement template as "spurrious[sic]" along with the source link to which Carcharoth referred, further obscuring the source text added here.

And no-one has addressed the issue of needing a major revamp to the section to provide good and easy examples of how to actually effectively use WP's new search engine! Thus, I've restored the tag asking for improvements to the section. Franamax (talk) 00:45, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Utilize searchbox usage data so that the quality of Wikipedia is improved

Administrators should analyse searchers' use of the Wikipedia search box to see which new articles there could be a demand for. Search logs from Wikipedia could be used to improve the encyclopaedia's relevance amongst readers if tools like Google Trends and Google Insights for Search were provided at least to high level admins, but based on the Wikipedia searchbox's usage instead ofthat of Google Search .

Of course, there could be privacy implications from this as user's data may have to be kept for longer.

Indeed, if the quality of the Wikipedia search service was improved so that more people would use it, then moe accurate and useful data could be gathered.

All the best, Shane (talk) 22:08, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Toolbars?

Aren't toolbars very old? New browsers often have this searchboxes on the right? --87.78.112.57 (talk) 16:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

What happened to Google

Resolved.

What's happened to the feature where you could use Google or other external search engines from within Wikipedia? BillMasen (talk) 16:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I checked Special:Search and you are right Bill, there is no longer the drop down box where one could choose which search engine to use. So I investigated:

There is a problem with the javascript that usually is loaded and adds that drop down box. So I have reported the problem to the guys who take care of those javascripts, see MediaWiki talk:Common.js#What happened to Google.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:54, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

See this. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:45, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Y Done - We have applied a fix so now the combo box is working again. If you don't see the combo box yet, then you need to bypass your browser cache. (You need to do that since Wikipedia tells the browsers to cache files like MediaWiki:Common.js/search.js for 31 days.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:09, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Win. BillMasen (talk) 00:03, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Accept URLs from browser address bar case-insensitively

Some of us likely type full URLs in order to skip a couple of steps. I type it in the form of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firstname_Lastname for a biography.

You mostly want as many readers as possible to fulfill their research desires. People tend to type URLs, like search keywords, in all lower case (some people probably think it's required on the Internet). Therefore, please adjust your server/s to accept case-insensitivity, as in <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firstname_lastname> or <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/firstname_lastname>.

I don't know your server setup, but possibly a single directive will suffice sitewide, precluding any need to write redirects for so many separate articles.

Thanks.

Nick Levinson (talk) 07:31, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Creating a generic search link

I'm sure this has come up before, but is there a clean way to create a generic search link for a particular search term? For example: [{{SERVER}}{{ScriptPath}}iki/Special:Search?ns0=1&ns14=1&ns100=1&search=%22a%20bacteria%22&fulltext=Search a bacteria] does appear to work (a bacteria) on both the secure and unsecure interfaces, but looks very hacked. I tried using [{{SERVER}}{{Script}}?title=Special:Search&ns0=1&ns14=1&ns100=1&search=%22a%20bacteria%22&fulltext=Search a bacteria] but it appears there is a name collision with a template named "script". I thought there was some sort of "full url" template? Thanks! Plastikspork (talk) 14:38, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

This was a tricky question. It took me some testing to find out the details. I will use "New York" in my examples here.

For most special pages you could just do like this: Special:Search/New York. Unfortunately the Special:Search interprets that as if you filled in the search box and clicked Go. So if there is an exact match it takes you to that page, instead of to the search results. And if there is no exact match it shows an error message "No page with that title exists" and shows the search results below that. But I guess both you and I want to "click" the Search button, right?

Then you need to use an URL that looks like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=New+York&fulltext=Search

Note that I had to tag on the "fulltext=Search" part to make it "search" and not "go". And the search term has to be "URL encoded", for instance spaces have to be changed to "+".

As you mentioned there is a shorter way to encode this. You can use the magic word {{fullurl}}. Then you can do like this:

{{fullurl:Special:Search|search=New+York&fulltext=Search}}

//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=New+York&fulltext=Search

If you want to automatically URL encode the search term you can use the magic word {{urlencode}}. That's especially useful when the search data is an incoming parameter to a template. Like this:

{{fullurl:Special:Search|search={{urlencode:New York}}&fulltext=Search}}

//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=New+York&fulltext=Search

And usually you don't want to show the whole URL but just a caption. Then do like this:

[{{fullurl:Special:Search|search={{urlencode:New York}}&fulltext=Search}} Find stuff]

Find stuff

You probably want to get rid of the external link icon. Then surround the search link with this code:

<span class="plainlinks"> ... </span>

Find stuff

We didn't specify what namespaces the searches above should be done in. So they will use whatever the user have set in "My preferences - Search - Namespaces". If you want to make it so your search link only searches for instance articles and article talk pages (namespace 0 and 1), then add the code "&ns0=1&ns1=1".

Here is an example with all the bells and whistles:

<span class="plainlinks">[{{fullurl:Special:Search|search={{urlencode:New York}}&fulltext=Search&ns0=1&ns1=1}} Find stuff]</span>

Find stuff

Ouch, that wasn't pretty. It seems we could have use of a template that could put that together for us in a more convenient way. I looked around a little, but could only find templates with more complex search functionality. See the ones listed in Category:Search templates.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:03, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. Should we create a template that just does what you have listed above? First entry is the search term, the subsequent ns#=x fields are the namespaces? This would seem very useful. I'm going to go do a big search and replace on Wikipedia:Lists_of_common_misspellings (A, B ...). Thanks again! Plastikspork (talk) 18:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I was hoping you would like to make such a template. Feel free to poke me on my talk page when you have made it, if you want me to check the code etc. I see several possible ways to feed the namespaces. I think you mean something like this, right?:

{{search link| New York | ns0=1 | ns5=1 }}

But it is also possible to make a template that works like this:

{{search link| New York | ns0 | ns5 }}

I think that would be easier to use. It took me some thinking to figure out how to implement that, but there is an easy solution:

{{#if:{{{2|}}}| &{{{2|}}}=1 }}{{#if:{{{3|}}}| &{{{3|}}}=1 }}

Come to think of it, this might actually be easier to use:

{{search link| New York | ns0=1&ns5=1 }}

Since then people can get the namespaces right by simply first doing an advanced search and click the namespaces they want there, and then copy and paste the namespace list from the URL they get. Of course, we can make the template understand more than one way to feed the parameters. Tell me if you need my help.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:20, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for encouraging me to try creating it myself (Template: search link). It looks like Template: search and Template: wpsearch have similar functions, but not exactly what I was looking for. I do like your idea of just pasting the namespace string, but it appears this would require manually adding curly braces around all the equal signs, unless there is some trick that I am missing. So, I went with the {{search link| New York | Search for New York | ns0 | ns5}} option ( Search for New York). It would be great to eventually make this flexible enough to support multiple methods for feeding the parameters and, at the same time, cover all the possible parameters. Thanks again for being so extremely helpful and feel free to modify what I have started. I was having some problems if the ns tokens were padded with spaces, but I believe I fixed this using the 'lc' parser function which strips the whitespace (and lowercases the tag). Plastikspork (talk) 04:07, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I just remembered a thing I had forgot: Using the {{fullurl}} magic word is much better than using a hardcoded URL, since {{fullurl}} gives the correct secure URL for users that are logged in through the secure server. (But I guess you already know that.)

And regarding feeding "{{search link| New York | ns0=1&ns5=1 }}": Oops. Right, when feeding content that contains an equal sign the parser thinks you are feeding ns0 = "1&ns5=1". So then you have to feed it like this:

{{search link| New York | 2 = ns0=1&ns5=1 }}

Note that "New York" here is parameter 1, thus the namespaces are parameter 2. But we humans tend to mix the numbers up and feed "1 = ns0=1&ns5=1". So then it is better we make the template use a named parameter, like this:

{{search link| New York | ns = ns0=1&ns5=1 }}

And when you need to strip away whitespace from a parameter but not lower-case it, then you can do like this:

{{#if:x| {{{1|}}} }}

The "x" is always there, so the if-case is always true, thus it returns the parameter. And just like many other parser functions the if-case strips away whitespace around the parameter. (I just learnt that trick myself some week ago.) But yeah, in this case we want to use {{lc:}}.

Since we are now talking template programming details, I will copy this discussion to the talk page of {{search link}} and continue there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:50, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Exclude "unprintworthy" from the search box autocomplete/suggestion dropdown

I like the concept of allowing many (even if incredibly uncommon) redirects based on unusual capitalization or pluralization, however has there been any consideration given to excluding these unprintworthy redirects from the suggestion dropdown that shows up when you start to type something in the search box? I think the search suggestion dropdown is very useful, but it becomes less relevant when the box is filled with multiple versions of the same article based on unprintworthy redirects. (cross posted here)     JCutter^{{ talk to me}}     23:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, this is a known problem and is being worked on. I'll try to see to it to be enabled sometime this week. --rainman (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Seconding JCutter. Even though the autocomplete feature isn't exactly a core issue for the site, the proliferation of those blasted redirects in the drop-down menu is one of the few compelling reasons for not creating improbable-but-plausible redirects with wild abandon. Hiding the unprintworthy ones would make searching for articles much easier (and prettier). Fried Gold (talk) 01:10, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Rainman - Thanks. Is there any update on the ETA this? I've been getting beaten up (not really) for RfDing some of these that are not only unprintworthy but violate WP:NAMING, and had actually forgotten that I proposed this (full disclosure, I am JCutter from above). Now more than ever I definitely think this is the right solution. Then the next step will be the massive undertaking of tagging those that are unprintworthy.    7   ^{talk | Δ |}   00:07, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Things are moving rather slowly ATM and there won't be a change until there is a software update, which is now about 7 weeks late... Hopefully it will happen soon ... --rainman (talk) 10:06, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - looking forward to it!    7   ^{talk | Δ |}   11:36, 14 May 2009 (UTC)