On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 17:40, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Carcharoth wrote:
I suppose the idea is that most people using that search box want "go" functionality,
Many tech-savvy editors, perhaps, but certainly not most readers.
not "search" functionality, but seeing as Google's default is "search" not "go", I suspect more people are used to getting a list of search results and clicking the top one than might be realised.
Indeed. If there's to be one box, clearly it should be "Search", not "Go". (And the search results page already has a "Wikipedia has an article on %s" link right at the top, if there's an exact match. So, retconned, "Go" is/was kinda like the Google "I'm feeling lucky" button.)
... Yes, it makes a lot of sense that there would be such a button in Wikipedia, because quite a lot of the people who type "obama" probably just want the article about the president (but someone should research how many exactly). Forcing them to see a list of results and have them click on the first one wastes some time.
But it also makes sense to be able to run a full-text search as easily as possible.
-- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni
"We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore