Thanks Trey,
Someone suggested that
search.wikimedia.org, which is
an API endpoint, should do something better than give an error at the top level—offer a
search box, roll over to the Wikipedia portal—something useful.
I'd suggest to make
search.wikimedia.org a search engine that searches Wikimedia
projects with tabs for encyclopedia, dictionary, images, videos (separate tabs though both
from commons), library, news, books, travel destinations, species, etc. and an option to
choose language. It could look similar to the standard search engine - a text box with
tabs at the bottom and a button to the right.
Various visualization options could be tried such as showing the location of the results
on a map or a timeline
It may improve discoverability of sister projects as not all of them are shown in the
'sister projects results' pane on-wiki.
This has been filed as
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T195436
I would really recommend against making it a Wikipedia-only portal, as one of the missions
of the discovery activities is helping sister wikis grow and making people aware of the
material that is presented there.
Regards,
Svetlana