Hello-
We have been using MediaWiki 1.3 on MySQL 3.x for about two weeks now and have noticed some strange search behavior with the search button.
We have a two pages: "Migrating Old Code" "Migration"
When performing a search for "Migrating", the results are: Search results For query "migrating" No page with this exact title exists, trying full text search. Migration 77% (****)
Nothing else is returned. It says nothing about the "Migrating Old Code" page. At first I thought there was an issue with MediaWiki not searching page titles, so I tried a few tests and it worked fine. I also tried putting the word "Migrating" in the text of other pages to see if the search results (shown above) would change. They did not...
Anyone have some thoughts on why this might be happening?
-Matt
A while back I sent a note about strange search behavior in MediaWiki 1.3. Basically, when we search for some strings, we get back very limited partial search results. In the interim, we upgraded to MediaWiki 1.3.0beta6 and MySQL 4.0.18-standard, but are still having similar issues. Here is an example of the problem:
When we search for the terms "pids", we get the following results:
For query "pids" No page with this exact title exists, trying full text search. Fids 75% (****)
MediaWiki (or MySQL) seems to give up on "pids" and go for a match on "Fids". If I do a search for "PIDS" (all caps), these are the results:
No page with this exact title exists, trying full text search. Showing below 24 results starting with #1. Article title matches Music PIDs (888 bytes) Pids For Various Products (4662 bytes) ... Page text matches Sandbox (41 bytes) Reserved Pids (1089 bytes) ...
So, there are a lot of pages that match "pids", but depending on how you enter the query you get very different results. Does anyone have an idea as to why this is happening? I can provide more strange search results if needed...
-Matt
Matt Kaufman wrote: [snip]
So, there are a lot of pages that match "pids", but depending on how you enter the query you get very different results. Does anyone have an idea as to why this is happening? I can provide more strange search results if needed...
When you hit the "go" button it first tries some exact and approximate title matches before passing on to the regular (and slower) fulltext search. Since the title field is case sensitive, different cases don't always return the same matches in these checks.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Thanks for the quick reply.
Is there any way I can force the wiki to always perform a full-text search which (I believe) is case-insensitive or force the title search to be case-insensitive? In case it matters, I get identical results whether I use "go" or "search".
-Matt
-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brion Vibber Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 9:45 PM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] More Strange Search Functionality with MediaWiki 1.3
Matt Kaufman wrote: [snip]
So, there are a lot of pages that match "pids", but depending on how you enter the query you get very different results. Does anyone have an idea as to why this is happening? I can provide more strange search results if needed...
When you hit the "go" button it first tries some exact and approximate title matches before passing on to the regular (and slower) fulltext search. Since the title field is case sensitive, different cases don't always return the same matches in these checks.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Matt Kaufman wrote:
Thanks for the quick reply.
Is there any way I can force the wiki to always perform a full-text search which (I believe) is case-insensitive or force the title search to be case-insensitive? In case it matters, I get identical results whether I use "go" or "search".
It should always perform a full-text search if it doesn't find an exact match (in which case it redirects directly to the page). Unless, of course, you've disabled the full-text search.
There may be a bug in the sound-alike search that doesn't fall through.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Is there a way to disable the sound-alike search altogether and thereby force a fall through regardless of results?
-----Original Message----- From: Brion Vibber [mailto:brion@pobox.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 11:15 AM To: mkaufman@forterrainc.com; MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] More Strange Search Functionality with MediaWiki 1.3
Matt Kaufman wrote:
Thanks for the quick reply.
Is there any way I can force the wiki to always perform a full-text search which (I believe) is case-insensitive or force the title search to be case-insensitive? In case it matters, I get identical results whether I use "go" or "search".
It should always perform a full-text search if it doesn't find an exact match (in which case it redirects directly to the page). Unless, of course, you've disabled the full-text search.
There may be a bug in the sound-alike search that doesn't fall through.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Matt Kaufman wrote:
Is there a way to disable the sound-alike search altogether and thereby force a fall through regardless of results?
$wgDisableFuzzySearch = true;
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
I'm sure this has gone around the block before, but after a cursory search through the archives I could not find it :(
Can I make certain pages viewable _only_ by Administrators or operators?
Thanks in advance, take care.
- Abdon
abdong@sillypages.com wrote:
I'm sure this has gone around the block before, but after a cursory search through the archives I could not find it :(
Can I make certain pages viewable _only_ by Administrators or operators?
It's highly recommended that you not do this. MediaWiki is designed for open access, and there are very likely ways around restrictions to read access of pages.
Never, ever, ever put sensitive information in a wiki that's not protected from the *outside*.
Think of it like a book: if you hand out the book and say "don't look at page 63!" it's not going to protect you very much. ;) Put your secret information in a distinct book, and keep that book locked up (for instance in a password-protected portion of your site)
If you must try this, check the whitelist options (see info in DefaultSettings.php)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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