Cross-posting from wikitech-l. Please discuss there.
Dan
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dan Garry <dgarry(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 10 August 2015 at 14:36
Subject: Maximum search query length coming soon
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello!
The Search Team in the Discovery Department is implementing a maximum
search query length <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T107947>. There are
two main reasons to do this:
1. Extremely long queries are almost always gibberish from things like
malfunctioning scrapers. These queries skew our statistics about the
usefulness of our search. Implementing a limit will reduce the magnitude of
skew.
2. Extremely long queries have a disproportionate impact on performance.
On its own this isn't enough, but considering point 1 above, limiting them
is unlikely to impact any actual users. Implementing a limit will improve
performance.
We've chosen a hard limit of 300 characters. If your query exceeds this,
you will be told that your query exceeds the maximum length. Based on our
analysis of typical query lengths
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T107947#1515387>, this change should
impact almost nobody. If you think you'll be adversely affected, please
reach out to us and we'll work with you to figure something out.
Thanks!
Dan
--
Dan Garry
Lead Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation
--
Dan Garry
Lead Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation