Help talk:Searching/Archive 3

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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.[1] 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)

Id like to know this too! Tim1357 (talk) 22:20, 15 October 2009 (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)

That section now reads: "A phrase can be found by enclosing it in double quotes. For example, "holly dolly" returns six matches; holly dolly (two standalone words) returns 197." While this is factually correct, it is quite misleading, as it clearly gives the impression that an "exact match only" search is being performed. Yet when I search for "from from" (in quotes) I get a mix of results, some of which do not include the phrase "from from". I don't know whether this is a malfunction, or a feature I don't understand, but the project page does not explain its use in any satisfactory way.--Yumegusa (talk) 10:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

It's probably some kind of bug (Wikipedia's search functionality is - ahem - not always of the highest quality). You could try raising it at WP:VPT or at Bugzilla, where you might at least get some kind of explanation.--Kotniski (talk) 11:07, 27 May 2009 (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:".[2] 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)

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)

This has now be enabled. --rainman (talk) 20:57, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Search drop down name should be 'Yahoo!' with exclamation not just Yahoo

Just wanted to point out for accuracy sake, search drop down name should be 'Yahoo!' with exclamation not just Yahoo. --IncidentFlux ^{[ TalkBack | Contributions ]} 17:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Where do you see the search drop down name you refer to? PrimeHunter (talk) 19:38, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The drop down (with various search engines: MediaWiki, Google, Yahoo, Bing, Wikiwix, Exalead) next to the search input field, on the search results page e.g.: [3] --IncidentFlux ^{[ TalkBack | Contributions ]} 20:53, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I have copied your post to MediaWiki talk:Common.js#"Yahoo" or "Yahoo!". PrimeHunter (talk) 16:26, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Regular expression search

Is there any existing way to search Wikipedia using full-fledged regular expressions? Such as those found in Perl, PCRE, Python, JavaScript?

I started writing a Perl program that uses Parse::MediaWikiDump, goes over a dump and searches for regexes, but there are two problems with this:

1. Such a program probably already exists, although i don't know where. Can anyone point me to an existing tool? It can be in any other language, not necessarily Perl, but it should be portable - not Windows-only/Mac-only/Linux-only.
2. The info won't be up-to-date. Would it be too much to ask to search the database directly using regexes?

If problem number 2 is too hard to solve and nobody knows the answer to problem number one, then i guess that i'll publish my Perl dump searching program for the common good. (Why not Python? Because i know Perl better and Parse::MediaWikiDump works well enough for me.) --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:16, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

You might want to ask at WP:VPT. I vaguely recall seeing something there about regular expressions recently.--Kotniski (talk) 15:55, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

other search engines

These seem to have disappeared again. BillMasen (talk) 12:26, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Works for me on Special:Search, maybe a browser issue? JS turned off? --rainman (talk) 12:28, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. Back now. Never mind, carry on. BillMasen (talk) 15:15, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

No they're not, using Opera and I never turn off JavaScript. --IncidentFlux ^{[ TalkBack | Contributions ]} 17:56, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Works for me in latest opera. --rainman (talk) 22:51, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Not working in Firefox 2. Not fixed by bypassing the cache. In April I noticed the Javascript problem that was fixed above [4]. Milo 19:37, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the problem is the same as in April. Now we have double fullText and double title fields in the form, causing a similar problem. This was fixed, but people might have to bypass their browsercache in order to get the updated version. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:44, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Fixed? bugzilla:19747 is still open. Milo 19:59, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Well it was fixed in that the script is no longer generating errors and wrecking havoc on other scripts. The functionality is not yet fixed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:22, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Some changes to the selector

See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Experiment_with_the_Search_engines_selector. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:56, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to work

Using Wikimedia search to find category intersections--Alchemist Jack (talk) 13:39, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Please explain, give example ... also note it works only for "proper" categories, i.e. not those added by templates. --rainman (talk) 16:57, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The example provided in that section does not work, for example. --Alchemist Jack (talk) 17:21, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Can you specify which article you would expect as a result? --rainman (talk) 17:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I mean the example provided in that section does not work. You do not get -the suspension bridges in New York City. Have you clicked on the link? I don't now how to make it clearer._{maybe I do?} The method outlined in the section does not work at all. --Alchemist Jack (talk) 17:49, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The query doesn't return any results because there are no pages belonging to both categories, and the methods works just fine for me.. e.g. Special:Search/+incategory:"Swing bridges in the United States" +incategory:"Bridges in New York City". --rainman (talk) 20:49, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, but why does the example provided on the page in the section about category intersections create a page with no results? Is that a good example? --Alchemist Jack (talk) 21:06, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Probably gave results when the article was written. Should be changed... --rainman (talk) 21:26, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

At some point there were suspension bridges in New York City and they have since been removed?--Alchemist Jack (talk) 21:35, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Pages were moved to Category:Suspension bridges in the United States, updated accordingly, now works. Though this CI method is not optimal since it doesn't detect transclusion of categories. Cenarium (talk) 00:36, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

wildcard seemed not work ok

I download mediawiki and install it ,use mysql search engine, I found the wildcard * seemed not work ok, if there is a page contain abc,we search ab* ,it worked ok,but if we search *bc,it don't work,it can't find the page. why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.68.172.17 (talk) 06:38, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

The *bc wildcards are not supported by the mysql backend. --rainman (talk) 09:26, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

thanks,but http://en.wikipedia.org can support *bc, It didn't use Mysql engine? which engin is it used?--222.68.172.17 (talk) 03:55, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

mw:Extension:lucene-search --rainman (talk) 11:12, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

thanks ,rainman, I think zh.wikipedia.org is also use mw:Extension:lucene-search,am I right?--222.68.172.17 (talk) 08:53, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Cluster?

In regard to the section about Clusty, I wonder if the article could point somewhere to anything that might help readers understand what "cluster" refers to in this context, without their actually having to go to Cluster to find out. It confuses me anyway. The disambiguation term for "cluster" didn't help me find something to link the term to -- I'm not clear which of the computer-related artcles applies in this context. Thanks. Bacrito (talk) 06:33, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Wildcard search headache

I don't know if I am on the right page to ask this but here it is - How come this first search:

+Java +"programming language" +platform -[[Category:Java*

will give back this page (among other logical hits like PHP): Java_Platform,_Enterprise_Edition

and this second search:

+Java +"programming language" +platform +[[Category:Java*

will give back this page (among other logical hits like Java_(programming_language)): Computer

What am I doing wrong? --  A l a i n  R 3 4 5
 ^{Techno-Wiki-Geek} 05:56, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what you're trying to do there, but doing wildcards on category names won't work, further to check for categories you need to use the incategory modified. --rainman (talk) 06:15, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

OK but let's say I do this search on articles: +Java +("programming language" platform) -(incategory:Java* incategory:JVM* incategory:Eclipse* incategory:Sodaplay)
Why is it not working? Do you have any other solution to search for articles that are not in the correct categories? I mean, this problem has to be one of the top priorities of every WikiProject...How do they do it? Thanks for any help, --Alainr345 06:45, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Just hasn't been implemented yet, remember developers are also volunteers :) --rainman (talk) 11:01, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Well then I had to do this ridiculous search: Java ("programming language" OR platform) -incategory:"Java platform" -incategory:"Java programming language" -incategory:"Java device platform" -incategory:"JVM programming language" -incategory:Eclipse -incategory:"Java enterprise platform" -incategory:"Java virtual machine" -incategory:"Java specification requests" -incategory:"Java development tools" -incategory:"Java platform software" -incategory:"Free software programmed in Java" -incategory:"Java libraries" -incategory:"Articles with example Java code" -incategory:"Java APIs" -incategory:"JavaServer Faces" -incategory:"Java API for XML" -incategory:"Java Internet Relay Chat clients" -incategory:"Eclipse technology" -incategory:"Eclipse software" -incategory:"Java applications" -incategory:"Java platform games" -incategory:Sodaplay

This sinister episode tells me that Wikipedia search engine should NOT be left to volunteers; I think Jimbo is just too thrifthy on this one... In addition, those tests I did convinced me that MySQL search engine is not used directly and therefore this section is wrong and totally CONFUSING... (apart from other details, Wikipedia is implying there that a 2-term search without operators is implicitly ORed while in fact it is ANDed)!!!
--  A l a i n  R 3 4 5
 ^{Techno-Wiki-Geek} 23:21, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's so much the fact that devs are volunteers that's the problem (I've heard some of them do actually get paid) but that they inhabit their own world where responsiveness to user needs is not considered a virtue. (I was moaning about this at WP:VPT recently.) Certainly the search functionality needs improvement - even just some proper documentation would be nice.--Kotniski (talk) 07:47, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, in terms of search engine development, the total of 0$ was invested into it by WMF, and all of the works is done after-hours by mainly one person. I try to keep up with user demand, however, in many cases users mis-diagnose what is going on, and what is required to solve it. In many cases this is fueled with bad documentation or general lack of understanding. As for mysql, yes, we don't use if for at least 3-4 years, although the syntax is similar to the mysql syntax. I rewrote that section. --rainman (talk) 08:39, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

If that one person is you, then I apologize if what I said above sounded critical of you personally. But I think the devs as a group should pay much more attention to essential functionality like this. For example, I reported at bugzilla weeks ago the fact that there is no documentation linked to from the search results page - AFAICT nothing is being done about this obvious fault (which would presumably be trivial to fix). And there really ought to be proper documentation of the current possibilities and limitations of the search function - or is this page it? (Last time I looked at the MediaWiki site I couldn't find anything.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:58, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this is the page, and it is typical for non-essential bugs to be stuck in the pipeline for months because they are more important things to do... --rainman (talk) 10:27, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh right, I expected the master documentation to be at MediaWiki. (What do the other wikis do - or do they have different search engines?) The bug I mentioned is quite important I think, and very easy to fix - maybe it's not even a software bug, just that we don't know which MediaWiki: page we have to edit to get a link (to this page, presumably) to show up on the search results page. (Lack of such a link means that effectively all this functionality you've worked so hard on is hidden from the average user.)--Kotniski (talk) 13:09, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the rewrite! (but you're wrong here on one point: MySQL default for multiple terms is OR, not AND)...

Also I must say (I could not put it in that Bugzilla thing, I'm not a member) that there is a small but fooling bug somewhere: if you type "Alainr345/Sandbox" in the Search box, you will get items like: 'Portal:Java/Wikimedia (redirect from Portal:Alainr345/Sandbox/Wikimedia)'. That TEXT is wrong (although the links behind are OK), the second 'Portal:' should be 'User:' (the same phenomenom seems to occur for any other namespace)... Good luck and get a pay raise from Jimbo, he can afford it, --Alainr345

Well thanks, the thing is that I have other things to do, so even if I wanted to, I couldn't commit even part-time to this. And the bug, it's already in bugzilla. --rainman (talk) 23:38, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Merging, renaming and splitting

Deep breath, in order to clean up the searching help/guide I think we need to do the following ...Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 19:21, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Merging Help:Go button

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)  Done

Merging Help:Searching

The Help:Searching article is out of date and poorly structured compared to this one,I can't see that it adds much - in fact I'm not sure if there is much to merge! Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 19:21, 2 November 2009 (UTC)  Done

Move to Help:Searching

If the above merges are agreed and performed, there is no real reason to keep this in wikipedia space - it will never become a guideline and is a pure help page. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 19:21, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Split external searches

The section on external searches could be split to simplify the article and allow them to be expanded upon seperately, leaving the article to concentrate on searching within wikipedia ( which I hope will get ever more powerful as developement continues) Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 19:21, 2 November 2009 (UTC)  Done

Sounds a good strategy. I concur with all of the above proposals.--Kotniski (talk) 08:16, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Agree with all. Suggest also boldly merging/rethinking Wikipedia:Look it up whilst we're at it. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:43, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I saw 'look it up' but am unsure - it seems to be linked to and used a fair bit from the help desk, and a brief intro to searching might be useful to keep separate, currently neutral. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 23:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed with all 4, unsure about Look it up. I also suggested at WP:VPT to split the section on Browser-specific help and Searching with TomeRaider, just gotta find a title. Cenarium (talk) 22:02, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I've split External search engines to Wikipedia:External search engines and Browser-specific help to Wikipedia:Searching/Browser-specific help, and moved searching on TomeRaider to the page about it. The proposed merges would require more work... Cenarium (talk) 03:53, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Excellent work Cenarium!, this page is still on my target list for doing some other bits ... Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 23:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

And User:Gareth Aus has performed the GO Button merge.--Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 00:02, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Outdated information

There are some outdated info in the subpages Wikipedia:External search engines and Wikipedia:Searching/Browser-specific help. It doesn't mention Bing, Google Chrome, and other prominent search engines/browsers, or newer versions. Cenarium (talk) 03:59, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Box problems depending on browsers

The page says "Depending on the web browser in use, a box may still be checked from a previous search, but without being effective any longer! To make sure, uncheck and then recheck it.", and there's a hidden comment after "Is that really true?". Well, is it the case ? Cenarium (talk) 21:28, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd hope not... I haven't seen or heard about such behavior. I'll peruse the history. Try and find where it got from. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:07, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Redirects

Redirects cannot be searched in the normal interface. Is there a way to search them ? Before, according to this, you could include or exclude them. Now they seem to be always excluded. Cenarium (talk) 22:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Redirects are automatically searched. They are now listed after the the target. For instance. Search for "nine eleven". The results will show "September 11 attacks (redirect from Nine Eleven)". This used to not be the case (listing them both separately), thus requiring the option you are referring to. The url still has the option "redirs=1" btw. It might be that the option is still useful if you are using different mediawiki search backends, but I don't think it does anything functional atm. on the English Wikipedia. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

What I mean is that you can't search the content of redirects, this can be seen with incategory:Unprintworthy redirects which returns nothing. Cenarium (talk) 23:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

That's because the category "unprintworthy" doesn't exist. You need this: [5] —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:30, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

00:32 < thedj> question about redirs. Is it true that you cannot search the contents of redir pages atm ?
00:32 < rainman-sr> yes
00:33 < thedj> won't return either ?
00:33 < rainman-sr> why would you want to search content of redirects?
00:33 < rainman-sr> redirects show up as alternative titles
00:34 < thedj> well there could be content 
00:34 < thedj> non-visible content, but still
00:35 < rainman-sr> well i guess there might be categories or stuff like that.... 
00:35 < thedj> yes for instance
00:35 < thedj> protection templates
00:35 < rainman-sr> but i wouldn't consider it a major bug

So there is our answer from the search lord himself :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:38, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I had seen this initially with [6] which returns 6. It seems that a few somehow appear so, [7] returns 5 among thousands, while redirect category returns almost ~1700. We could have an option 'search redirects' (only) in the advanced options, but I'm not sure it would be that useful, maybe for category intersections... Cenarium (talk) 00:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Shortcuts and hatnote

Currently the page starts with "For a place to make test edits, see Wikipedia:Sandbox. "WP:S" redirects here. For the signature policy, see WP:SIG." Do we really need that ? I mean if people enter WP:S and are look for WP:SIG are we really concerned that the small amount of people who understand both shortcuts and guidelines won't know how to find WP:SIG ? And how would people get here to be looking for a sandbox ? This page is to help people, not to log all the idiotic shorts we come up with in our inner circle. at least that's my opinion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:14, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I was going to suggest removal myself - so have now taken out Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 02:16, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

note that "prefix" has to be last taken out - needs to be in there

A while ago, I added a note in the explanation for the prefix that this has to be last in the search argument. This isn't stated anywhere, but the search won't work with prefix unless you put it last (unless there is some trick for delineating the prefix from the following arguments.. and if there is, the documentation should be there). This was dropped here [8] along with the explanation of how to delineate different prefixes was dropped. Why drop an explanation of how something works when it appears nowhere else?

Rather than put it back in, I thought I would bring it up here as something a search feature that is useful, but not set up in a very user friendly way. I think a better way to have this on the search page would be an input box for prefix - with "prefix" text noting that the box is for prefix with a link to a page explaining prefixes, and another input box for intitle. This would make the search page easier to use. stmrlbs|talk 01:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Search wildcards

Note: This section has been moved from Help talk:Searching, [9]

Quote:

You can use a wildcard *, at the end of a search term only. To search for pages with the words "boat" or "boats", search for "boat*". You cannot use "*boat" to find Riverboat, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=*boat&go=Go

It works ... -- Cbf536 (talk) 00:41, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

it didn't work when I first tried it - but seems to now, might be an intermittent fault. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 15:04, 30 October 2009 (UTC)