Hoi,
I totally agree with Frederico. The search functionality for other languages is not seen as strategic at this time. This is because the flaws are seen from "our" perspective and the benefits for "our" readers are not understood.  When we promote the use of the multilingual search capabilities of Commons, a meaningful reference is the support Google provides in finding pictures for a language. The results are not great. It follows that the benefits are not based on what you/we experience but on what our readers experience.

When we promote the use of Commons for other languages, a teacher may add labels in THEIR language to the search item that is important in the curriculum for the students. When one teacher adds them for his class, all other classes and schools using the same curriculum will benefit. When someone adds the "depicts" statement to a picture, it can be found in every language that has a label for any picture with that "depicts" statement.

Such an approach is a Wiki approach ... please consider this approach.
Thanks,
       GerardM

On Wed, 24 Feb 2021 at 07:56, Federico Leva (Nemo) via Commons-l <commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Keegan Peterzell via Commons-l, 23/02/21 22:36:
> Special:Search also functions at its best in English, and is not
> necessarily friendly to other languages.

This is not true. I think you meant to say that the text in Commons is
mostly English, while the new structured search is expected to be able
to leverage more multilingual content.

What's the rationale for changing the search bar autocompletion from the
title prefixes to the structured search? The non-prefix search has
caused much trouble in Wikidata for years. What kind of use cases were
considered for this part of the matter? (I know you can disable that in
the preferences.)

Federico

_______________________________________________
Commons-l mailing list
Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l