Help talk:Searching

drop-down list?

There reads: A list of matching page names drops down as you type the query. However, nothing "drops down". I looked the archives, and some suggested it might have something to do with JavaScript. I have JavaScript enabled, and it seems the problem has something to do with Internet Explorer. Maybe the only solution is to switch off from IE... 85.217.21.90 (talk) 03:19, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Strangely, I just noticed that Google gives me a drop down list. So, it must not be entirely the fault of IE. 85.217.21.90 (talk) 03:32, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

It works on all browsers (including IE), but a drop-down only occurs when there is more than one match for the letters you are typing in. Once you type in enough letters to preclude anything else, it will only list that item. Even if you only type in one letter, the drop-down will occur. Hope that helps. Softlavender (talk) 03:37, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I am unable to reproduce 85.217.21.90's issue. Both the basic search and Special:Search are offering dropdowns. I tested using the word 'test' in Firefox (v40.0.3), Chrome (v43.0.2357.134 m), and Internet Explorer (v9.0.8112.16421). --Marc Kupper|talk 17:37, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Update for Cirrus search

Since we've switched to a new search engine, the "Search engine features" section needs a careful overhaul. How much of the detail at mw:Help:CirrusSearch needs to be added here? What is the target audience of this page? -- John of Reading (talk) 08:00, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Here, Help:Search needs to be simple and entirely readable in one sitting for normal searches like other search engines. We need to update the changed stuff here: tightened syntax, changed semantics.

A new page Wikipedia:Search should offer the rest of the coverage, new stuff that is so awesomely thorough, it is for power users only. (You know project techies, like the kind now appealed to on the watchlist "if you do PHP or Linux, we're in dire need".) It's finally time to page fork, mostly because of the need to present a minimal amt of regex for everyone to get started using it, but also because the new stuff includes templates, which we don't want to have to explain. — CpiralCpiral 19:31, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

For starters there's mw:Help:CirrusSearch, Template usage, and Draft to consider. — CpiralCpiral 19:59, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

I've started a CirrusSearch techno-oriented, Wikipedia/project namespace, version in DRAFT. So you don't delete starter material I've dumped there on purpose, I'll post here when phase 1 is done. — CpiralCpiral 15:31, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Phase 1 is done. This phase of the draft uses documentation from

• Help:Searching/Features
• Help:Searching/Regex
• Help:Searching/Sandboxing

because advanced features like regex and sandboxing and hastemplate don't need to be on the introductory, exemplified Help version for newcomers, but do need to be on a complete Wikipedia version of Searching. The /Regex docs because of their special technical nature may need to be in various other venues.

@John of Reading: I've noticed Help:Searching documentation is not well sustained. I'm thinking that carefully compartmentalized subject matter, transcluded here, plus other places elsewhere will help. — CpiralCpiral 21:05, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Rough draft and section transclusions are done. Starting on integrating sections here and there on the wiki. Soon will cut and paste DRAFT to WP:Searching. — CpiralCpiral 08:42, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

What to tranclude where

I think we should keep Help:Searching and WP:Searching pure, and not transclude anything into them. This would simplify contribution attributions, and would also remove most of the confusion for new editors editing the whole page and seeing only a transclusion, or editing a section and ending up on another page.

I think adding section transclusion tags to Help:Searching#Search_results_page and WP:Searching#Search_engine_features is how to proceed. Currently the Help version has section transclusion tags on all subsections, so they can be transcluded as small sections into any other help page.

I think WP:Searching should then

• defer to Help:searching for users interested in "Other search tools" and "If you cannot find what you are looking for"
• transclude "Search results page" from the Help version
• host additional sections about regex and sandboxing, and anything else it needs to concerning the advanced search engine features

See subpages of Help Search to see what I'm getting at. We're already transcluding

• Help:Searching/Features at {{search link}}
• Help:Searching/Regex at {{regex}} — CpiralCpiral 17:50, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion

Maybe there could be a section for such search options? I'm talking about /\ and /i part. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 07:44, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Not just a section. The page is out of date. We have a new search engine that changed some old syntax and introduced some awesomely thorough new features and syntax. — CpiralCpiral 19:16, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Is there any Mediawiki documentation that explains what has been changed or added? --Marc Kupper|talk 17:28, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Paltry amounts about CirrusSearch, (now at special:version 0.2), even at MW:Help:CirrusSearch and its talk page, and at elastica, and at phabricator and at the village pump. I use trial and error in a sandbox with {{search link}} and {{regex}} to figure things out. Help:Searching/Draft is as good as it gets. — CpiralCpiral 17:38, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

"Give us your feedback" - Qualtrics survey?

Hi, where does this "Give us your feedback" link come from? It goes to a Qualtrics survey. (There is a link to a WMF "Feedback privacy statement" which curiously states "you agree (...) to license under either CC0 or CC BY SA 3.0.") Who is responsible for this survey? Where will the results be analysed? Links? --Atlasowa (talk) 23:40, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

This seems relevant: meta:Research:Measuring User Search Satisfaction by Oliver Keyes. --Atlasowa (talk) 23:56, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Outdated sections?

Cpiral, I reverted your addition of {{outdated}} hat notices to the "Syntax" and "Parameters" sections. I did some testing and did not see any evidence that the help text is outdated. Can you recall what the issue was? --Marc Kupper|talk 17:27, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

As part of my testing to see if anything was outdated I ran across an anomaly that I reported to WP:TECHPUMP#Using two sets of "quotes" in searches produces odd results. I suspect that finding is a CirrusSearch bug and not expected behavior that we'll need to document. --Marc Kupper|talk 18:12, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

It's true. See prefix:Help:Searching/. There are more operators, and subtle behavioral changes. They tried to keep it much the same, so you won't find much difference the way you went about it. It's mostly outdated by omission. Join me at the DRAFT. — CpiralCpiral 05:38, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Incorrect documentation of ?

The behavior of ? is not documented correctly. It functions as a wildcard character, as a quick search for superm?n demonstrates, returning both superman and supermen hits. The example on asking a question, how do clocks work? only happens to give decent results, because works appears in the articles in the results. The wildcard section should include ? with * and the question asking section should suggest dropping the question mark. 108.45.121.138 (talk) 15:11, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Not sure the HelpSearching version should cover wild-cards like the Wikipedia:Searching version will. (See Help:Searching/Draft.) I'll take a look at the example you mention, put the recently removed "Outdated" back, and put a new "Inform:DRAFT" hatnote. Happy editing! — CpiralCpiral 17:21, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

{{in title}} and redirects

I've been adding "In title" links to entries in List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names as a way of providing dab-like access to species names. But quite a lot of articles on species are at their common name, with a redirect from the latin name (eg Eudocimus albus).

Is there any way to search for a word in title or redirect title?

An ordinary search of the whole article is not helpful, as it can produce a lot of "noise" including articles with enormous navboxes such as {{Selachimorpha}} which are caught up in the search. PamD 16:08, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

@PamD: You can serach for a word in title. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:21, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

@AKlapper (WMF): Nothing there seems to show me how to search for a word in article title or redirect title: compare the result of All pages with titles containing Acaule and a straight search on "Acaule": two redirects are not picked up. That's what I'm looking for: a search which will find titles of articles and titles of redirects such as Lepidophyllum acaule but won't pick up an article like Purn Hill which happens to mention one of the species. Can you help? PamD 10:30, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

@PamD:I'm afraid I cannot help as I don't work on Search functionality - I hope that the mw:Wikimedia Discovery team can. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:04, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

@AKlapper (WMF): Well, thanks for taking an interest. I've raised it at Phabricator, will see what happens there. PamD 11:08, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Nice idea. Couple of problems, eh? Thanks for bringing them up here.

1) Redirects. Experimenting shows that intitle does not search redirects: although the wikilink operatingsystem (missing the space) exists, the same "title" intitle: operatingsystem does not exist. Sorry.

2) As far as filtering out articles that contain term but not in a pesky template? Well, what if it's in both the page and the template? If you want to filter all pages with that template, use -hastemplate: "pesky template". If you want to filter only pages with your term, see also

{{template usage | pesky template | your term | 0 }}

and the query from that search results page. After doctoring up the query you'd end up saying something like

: gigantus -insource:/{{ *[Pp]esky *\{{!}} *[^}]*gigantus/

That regexp only works where there are no embedded templates in the pesky template, or any right curly brace characters before the search term is found. — CpiralCpiral 22:14, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

@Cpiral: I only mentioned the templates as one example of why a straight "search" isn't as useful as "in title": but there are lots of other examples, eg Purn Hill where an "Acaule" species grows. I was hoping to find a way to search in titles of redirects. I've raised a query at Phabricator in the hopes that someone there can help. It would also be useful for looking for people by surname where there are variant spellings which have been used for redirects - and really any case where someone wants to search on a word in titles. It's been a shock to realise, belatedly, that "in title" doesn't search titles of redirects: I've always taken the line that it doesn't really matter that much what title we use for an article as long as there are redirects from all the other alternatives, but in this case it makes a massive difference (eg whether a plant's article is at common name or latin name). PamD 22:40, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

OK, there is a way to find a term in a redirect title: ~term. Try ~acaule, and you will see. You'll need to rely on the fact that titles weigh most heavily in page ranking to filter out the noise. Now, let that be a {{search link}}, and then add a note in the column of the table: {{nomirror}}←please read. — CpiralCpiral 01:35, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Enrique Peñalosa on mobile real-time search dropdown shows hilarious/inappropriate content

Hi everyone, when searching for "Enrique Peñalosa" in the mobile view of the Spanish version Wikipedia (es.m.wikipedia.org), not only does it show a match saying "Colombian Politician" (in spanish "Politico colombiano"), but also shows a joke/vandalism/inapprroriate sentence "eats his boogers" (in spanish "Se comia los mocos). How can one fix the mobile search result snippet so it doesn't show the inappropriate sentence? Thanks!--TuCove (talk) 19:25, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

@TuCove: This addition comes from Wikidata. I have removed the extra text. Thanks for reporting the problem! -- John of Reading (talk) 19:41, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Hey John of Reading...thanks so much! :) Learnt something new today. --TuCove (talk) 01:23, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

So did we all (I hope). So much for the authority of Wikidata. Cf. The Signpost: "Whither Wikidata"; be afraid, very afraid. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:06, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 February 2016

109.72.63.80 (talk) 16:33, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Cannolis (talk) 17:47, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Images

How to add a image? Scadgrad (talk) 01:38, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Maybe Help:Upload helps. Or Upload image (after reading the links there). -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:39, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 March 2016

213.233.64.186 (talk) 21:16, 12 March 2016 (UTC)