Hi!
Would there be any drawback with the following steps as way forward and possibility to learn more as we go?
- We return results for the Lexeme namespace only when people
explicitly select it
If you mean "it and only it" (as opposed to Lexemes + any other namespace), then yes, this is doable and this is probably what I am going to start with. However, a lot of people - as I observed with several community members - tend to use "All" option and expect it to work.
- We get feedback
- We go the "Best possible query" route when people select all namespaces
- We get feedback
- We go the "Best possible query" route for all searches if feedback
indicates this is useful (I don't know at this point)
I am not sure which mode is best for Wikidata now, there are at least several plausible ways do go by default for Special:Search: 1. Search in Items only 2. Search in Items + Properties 3. Search in Items + Properties + Lexemes 4. Search in Items + Lexemes 5. Any of the above plus some of the article spaces (i.e. Wikidata or Help)
This requires mixed search working (except for 1 and 2) but is a separate decision from it.