Re: [WikiEN-l] full-text searching since the Vector switch in en.wikipedia
On 20 May 2010 19:19, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: If we're in a proposal mood: Why not make it go, but if it go-es rather than takes you to special search put a small box of other search results above the article. (along with your advanced button, and an obvious close X to get rid of it if you're planning on printing or saving the article) Yes, I like this. If the page has been got to via search then display a search bar, like the current situation where if the page has been reached via a redirect it has a redirect note. Is mediawiki currently capable of detecting this? -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] full-text searching since the Vector switch in en.wikipedia
On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 17:40, Steve Summit s...@eskimo.com wrote: Carcharoth wrote: I suppose the idea is that most people using that search box want go functionality, Many tech-savvy editors, perhaps, but certainly not most readers. not search functionality, but seeing as Google's default is search not go, I suspect more people are used to getting a list of search results and clicking the top one than might be realised. Indeed. If there's to be one box, clearly it should be Search, not Go. (And the search results page already has a Wikipedia has an article on %s link right at the top, if there's an exact match. So, retconned, Go is/was kinda like the Google I'm feeling lucky button.) ... Yes, it makes a lot of sense that there would be such a button in Wikipedia, because quite a lot of the people who type obama probably just want the article about the president (but someone should research how many exactly). Forcing them to see a list of results and have them click on the first one wastes some time. But it also makes sense to be able to run a full-text search as easily as possible. -- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni http://aharoni.wordpress.com We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace. - T. Moore ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] full-text searching since the Vector switch in en.wikipedia
Amir E. Aharoni wrote: On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 17:40, Steve Summit s...@eskimo.com wrote: Carcharoth wrote: not search functionality, but seeing as Google's default is search not go, I suspect more people are used to getting a list of search results and clicking the top one than might be realised. Indeed. If there's to be one box, clearly it should be Search, not Go. (And the search results page already has a Wikipedia has an article on %s link right at the top, if there's an exact match. So, retconned, Go is/was kinda like the Google I'm feeling lucky button.) ... Yes, it makes a lot of sense that there would be such a button in Wikipedia, because quite a lot of the people who type obama probably just want the article about the president (but someone should research how many exactly). Forcing them to see a list of results and have them click on the first one wastes some time. But it also makes sense to be able to run a full-text search as easily as possible. I rarely feel lucky with Google. The search function should also make clear what Boolean options are available. The importance of beta systems can be misleading. Most of us who are not techno-geeks feel clueless about what is being done there, and are satisfied with a system that is familiar and works without any surprises. Even editing .js files is beyond us. The Classic skin was the standard when I first joined, and I'm happy to stick with it. Ec ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] full-text searching since the Vector switch in en.wikipedia
On 19 May 2010 15:51, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: ... Yes, it makes a lot of sense that there would be such a button in Wikipedia, because quite a lot of the people who type obama probably just want the article about the president (but someone should research how many exactly). Forcing them to see a list of results and have them click on the first one wastes some time. But it also makes sense to be able to run a full-text search as easily as possible. I think - with my librarian hat on, here - readers seemed to quite like the old mixed search functionality, which defaulted to go with a matching header and falls back on search otherwise. Having two buttons may well be confusing, but making them just use search at the expense of that direct leap is a regressive step as well. Bear in mind that Google (mentioned somewhere above) is not really a good comparison here; it's a search engine looking over a very wide range of sources. As such, you don't just want a single result, because it's very unlikely that a single result will reflect the bulk of what people are looking for. I mean, I've searched on obama - do I want the White House website, or a photo, or news stories about what he's done today, or blogs vituperating about him? I may want to read something that likes them, or something that's opposed to them, or I may not really care about the slant and just want something suitable for a nine-year-old. But in a more restricted domain like Wikipedia, there is one heading as an entry point for a topic, with one article under it - there's no real secondary entries in most cases, and only one viewpoint presented. If what you've searched on is a valid topic heading, it makes sense to take you direct to the material under that heading, since we only have the one type of article present. It's also not that unusual for comparable reference works. Using the default search settings, the (excellent) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography takes you straight to the article if there's one person with that name, and only falls back on search if you've given a partial name or an ambiguous one. The Oxford English Dictionary, likewise, leaps straight to the result if there's one fitting perfectly, and broadens out to search results if not. On the other hand, Britannica does a search even when there's an obvious first article, but then that search is more akin to Google - the results also include their image collection and some subsidiary resources, which we choose not to highlight in initial search results. Relatedly, a proposal! Search box, two buttons. One, search or go, acts as the old mixed-search go button - it is a direct leap to that title, else falling back on the search. The second button is advanced; it takes the content of the search box and puts it directly into special:search, and then presents that along with links to Commons, wikisource, etc, and - prominently - the various advanced-search options (search project space, etc). Thoughts? -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] full-text searching since the Vector switch in en.wikipedia
On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 2:10 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: Relatedly, a proposal! Search box, two buttons. One, search or go, acts as the old mixed-search go button - it is a direct leap to that title, else falling back on the search. The second button is advanced; it takes the content of the search box and puts it directly into special:search, and then presents that along with links to Commons, wikisource, etc, and - prominently - the various advanced-search options (search project space, etc). Thoughts? I like that better than some other possibilities. If we're in a proposal mood: Why not make it go, but if it go-es rather than takes you to special search put a small box of other search results above the article. (along with your advanced button, and an obvious close X to get rid of it if you're planning on printing or saving the article) So you still get the one step GO behaviour, but you also get a one step search behaviour... and finding more advanced search controls is never hard. One weakness of this is that care must be taken to avoid the case where the go works but the user misses the fact that the article they want is on the screen. One possibility would be to preserve the go result in the search list. Wastes a line, but if the user misses that the result is already there it only wastes a click for them. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] full-text searching since the Vector switch in en.wikipedia
Carcharoth wrote: I suppose the idea is that most people using that search box want go functionality, Many tech-savvy editors, perhaps, but certainly not most readers. not search functionality, but seeing as Google's default is search not go, I suspect more people are used to getting a list of search results and clicking the top one than might be realised. Indeed. If there's to be one box, clearly it should be Search, not Go. (And the search results page already has a Wikipedia has an article on %s link right at the top, if there's an exact match. So, retconned, Go is/was kinda like the Google I'm feeling lucky button.) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
