Help talk:Searching

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Merging Help:Go button

Note: This section has been moved from Help talk:Searching, [1]

THe Help:Go button article is very short and is really just a specific use of the search function. I think it would be a better context to merge it entirely. Current we only have 'go button- see 'go button' and a refrence or two to it in the rest of the text. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 17:47, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, good idea, as part of a much-needed general cleanup and update of this page. (I understand the most current technical documentation on the search function - which I would have expected to be at mw:Help:Searching - is actually on en.wp at WP:Searching.)--Kotniski (talk) 18:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Update I have changed the merge destination to WP:Searching As I am about to propose we merge this entire article to that one ....Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 19:13, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done User:Gareth Aus has performed the merge, many thanks.--Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 00:02, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Viewing search results

Resolved

I feel it must be my fault, but I presently appear only to be able to view the first 51 results of a search. I have created a page tacksman and am interested in seeing what other articles may contain references to a "tack", i.e. a Scottish form of lease. A search for "tack" produces 2,288 articles and displays results 1-51. How do I get to see results 52 to 2,288? The rubric at the bottom ("View (previous 500 | next 500)...") looks promising but does not actually provide a link. Any help gratefully received. 45ossington (talk) 10:56, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The hard limit is set to 50 temporarily until we get some new servers. --rainman (talk) 11:23, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It seems the hard limit only applies when choosing to view 100 or more items at a time. If I view 20 or 50 items at a time I can continue far beyond the first 50 items without any problem.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:50, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The hard limit has been removed, we can again see more than the first 50 search results.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Help links on Special:Search

Parts of this message is for Alan Liefting, but most of it is also relevant for anyone else reading this page so I leave it here instead of on his talkpage. (I'll tell him to come here.)

Hi Alan. I did some actions today that probably looks strange and proably makes you feel overrun, so I want to explain what I did and why I did it:

First of all, I do agree with your general idea to write shorter more reader oriented help pages for several of the more important help areas. But today I reverted your "creation" of Help:Searching and again made it a redirect to Wikipedia:Searching. The reason is that much of Wikipedia:Searching already is meant for readers. Or rather, both readers and editors have use of about the same search advice. Although this page could use a better lead section.

Soon after that I protected Help:Searching. The protection was not to prevent you from trying to create it again. But because today I re-added the help links on Special:Search. (Note that for technical reasons the help links are currently only shown after a search has been done, so you don't see them immediately when going to Special:Search.) We used to have those links, but they were removed kind of by accident. See discussion about the re-adding of the help links at MediaWiki talk:Searchmenu-exists#Request. And the help link of course points to Help:Searching, not Wikipedia:Searching, since that is a better name, at least when shown as a help link. (We probably should move Wikipedia:Searching to Help:Searching.) Since we now again have that link on Special:Search that pagename becomes "highly visible" so it now is a high-risk target. So from now on Help:Searching needs to be protected.

But Wikipedia:Searching is only semi-protected, so you are welcome to help make this page better.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:22, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Searching is very much a reader oriented page and is more comprehensive than my Help:Searching stub. What I am trying to achieve is separation of reader and editors pages. This is not set down as a policy from what I have seen but it should be. Wikipedia namespace is the sole domain of editors and the Help namespace is for readers and editors. Personally I would like to see it used more for readers but that is not so important. We achieve separation between content and project quite well in article namespace but not so well in category, template and help namespaces. Content categories get littered with User and Template pages for instance. Since Wikipedia:Searching is reader oriented why don't we move it to Help:Searching? -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:13, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result was move to Help:Searching . -- -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 07:11, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Searching → Help:Searching — The page is aimed at readers. Wikipedia namespace is project space for editors. Help namespace is for reader help (and editor help but I feel that Wikipedia namespace should be for editor help). I am in the process of developing help pages aimed at readers alone and I want a search help page for readers. See Category:Reader help for some of the other pages that I have created. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 00:44, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

Support - thought we had moved this already!! Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 01:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I hadn't moved the page. I created a stub page but it was redirected here. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 01:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - This is a help page, so naming it "Help:Searching" is clearer. Especially if/when linked to without any text around it that tells what the link is for. And I also agree with the general idea that reader oriented help should be in help space, and when we also have an editor oriented help page on the same subject then we should place it in Wikipedia space. If we only have an editor oriented page on a subject, then it doesn't matter which of the two namespaces we put it in. --David Göthberg (talk) 02:25, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support although it isn't the case that the Help namespace is only for reader help, nor that help on searching is entirely reader-oriented. However, whichever way you look at it, this is Help-type help and not Project-Space-type help (policies and guidelines and so on), so it belongs in Help space.--Kotniski (talk) 08:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Any additional comments:

We don't need the separation to be so complete, searching is a good example, it is mainly for readers, but a few extra bits to cover editors is a small price to pay instead of trying to maintain two searching pages, and yes many of the pages can be drastically improved for both readers and editors! Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 01:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am not aiming for 100% separation between reader and editor help info but I want pages aimed at readers uncluttered with the technicalities of editing. Editors are a small subset of the total number of visitors to WP. This page, as it currently stands, is aimed predominately at the reader which is why I suggested a page move. In retrospect I want to have a Help:Searching and a Wikipedia:Searching, the latter to be a more extensive page for editors. If Help:Searching is linked to Wikipedia:Searching the needs of editors and readers is satisfied. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 01:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done, I moved the old history to Help:Searching/history. Cenarium (talk) 17:17, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Infoboxes

Search does not return results for data in infoboxes. BTW Google does so if your lookin for some Infobox data then the best tool appears to be Google. SunCreator (talk) 23:54, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

sorting by date

Is it possible to get search results sorted by date? I.e. I want to see all the articles matching some search terms, starting with the most recently edited and going backwards from there. Thanks. 66.127.55.192 (talk) 07:36, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately it's not possible, but there's a bug request for it. Cenarium (talk) 21:52, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I wrote a hack with the search API to retrieve and sort the search results on the client side. It's still not really what I want but it's a start. 66.127.55.192 (talk) 08:56, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see the title of my article among the suggestions in the searching box

Yesterday I created a page about the Turkish TV series Geniş Aile, but when I type the first letters in the searching box, I can't see "Geniş Aile" in the suggestions. How can I see it? Mutlu mpal 5591 (talk) 10:25, 15 February 2010 (UTC) [reply]

it's there now so there (when I type genis ') must be a slight delay Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 14:51, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It takes a while for the search index to update after you create or edit an article. I think this is in the docs somewhere. It is hard to get around this without taking a big performance hit in the search system. 66.127.55.192 (talk) 01:14, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sort order

What is the algorithm for the sort order for search results? Libcub (talk) 06:20, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

mw:User:Rainman/search internals. --rainman (talk) 11:48, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Updating search index" out of order?

Every search result is dated to the 16 February 2010 or older. Is it possible, that somebody check the bot??? THX --Pitlane02 (talk) 21:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, wrong place! --Pitlane02 (talk) 21:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

weird false positive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=cluebot finds the word "cluebot" in Preamble to the United States Constitution/text. Examination of that page, including a fair amount of its revision history, doesn't show any occurrences of that word.

66.127.52.47 (talk) 21:11, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You need to look at the source of the page. If you click the "edit" button you will see it is indeed there as a template parameter. --rainman (talk) 22:40, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 09:08, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]