Greetings,

Here is this week's update from the Discovery department.

* Trey did a quick analysis of the effects of putting ascii-folding (mostly removing ᶁỉäçȑîṭĭčś) before stemming (making it so searching for "jump" finds "jumps", "jumped", and "jumping") in English Wikipedia. Overall, it's a net positive! [1]

* Blog post on our recent release of stripping question marks from search queries was released on Thursday, Aug 11. [2]

* Stas created a nice demo of integrating WDQS and the vega graph designer (click the download button), and demo'd three other WDQS GUI improvements in this month's CREDIT showcase. [3] [4]

* Our newest member of the Discovery Department started this Monday: Chelsy! :)

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:TJones_(WMF)/Notes/Re-Ordering_Stemming_and_Ascii-Folding_on_English_Wikipedia

[2] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/08/11/question-marks-search/

[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F4346786

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOj6nDbdPMA&t=53s

----

The full update, and archive of past updates, can be found on Mediawiki.org:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Status_updates

Interested in getting involved? See tasks marked as Easy or volunteer needed in Phabricator.

[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/qW51XhCCd8.7/#R

[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/5KEPuEJh9TPS/#R

Yours,

Chris Koerner

Community Liaison - Discovery

Wikimedia Foundation