*Medianama : "Wikimedia India Rolls Out Realtime Search; Supports Indic
Editions"
*
http://www.medianama.com/2012/03/223-wikimedia-india-rolls-out-realtime-sea…
*It looks like Wikimedia India has implemented a project by engineering
student Shrey Gokani to roll out an instant search engine of its own at
live.wikimedia.in. The site is under a creative commons license, with the
code dual licensed under GPL and Creative Commons. The Wikimedia Instant
site does appear to have additional functionality over Gokani’s version,
with the ability to choose an Indic Input keyboard, since the service
supports Indic language editions of Wikimedia services.
The search engine works quite similar to Wikilive, another student project
about which, we had written in November 2011. And similar to what we had
wished, Wikimedia Live also covers Wikipedia, Wikitionary, Wikibooks,
Wikiquotes, Wikiversity, Wikinews and Wikisource, and their Indic editions,
in realtime. The site also offers other relevant Wikipedia search results
on the top, followed by a preview of the most relevant Wikipedia article to
the search query.
Indic Language Support: The site allows users to type in queries in 21
Indic languages including Kannada, Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Sanskrit, Bangla
and others. How it works is that the search engine allows the user to
choose the language of his preference, following which he has to choose an
input script which is apt for his language. For instance, if one chooses
Kannada as his preferred language, he has to choose between the Kannada
transliteration option or choose the Kannada Inscript option, however if
you choose Hindi as your preferred language, you will have to select the
sole Hindi Inscript option.
Irrelevant Results? We weren’t too happy with results generated through
Indic language transliteration input, since it delivered wrong results in
most cases when we gave it a spin (we tried it on OS X Lion on Google
Chrome). We hope that Wikimedia works on delivering better transliteration
support or improving the results for Indic languages. However, we got
accurate results with the Hindi Inscript input option.
Similar Portals: Deepanshu Mehndiratta, a second year engineering student
at BITS-Pilani KK Birla Goa Campus, had created an instant Wikipedia search
called ‘Wikilive‘ which allowed users to type in a search query and get
relevant Wikipedia article and topics instantly. WikiInstant and The
Instant Wiki are other portals which allow users to search Wikipedia in
realtime. *
Regards
Tinu Cherian
press(a)wikimedia.in
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news
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