Hello Nik,

About a week ago I explained the nl-wikipedia community on the central discussion page about your message and asked them the question.
The result of the short poll is 19 users say yes to test, 4 say no, 2 say neutral.
In general they experience the current search limited and would like to see it improved. 2 of who say no have no problems with the current search and say that something does not need to be fixed if it isn't broken, while the visual editor should be fixed first as that one is broken much more on nl-wiki (yes the VE is a huge problem with messing up pages, but that is another subject). Apparently those two do not have the experience that the search is limited. Two others say no as they have had worse experiences with the visual editor (just as everyone else on nl-wiki: we had a poll on VE which clearly stated that the VE was absolutely working worse and hit a big gap in the trust in the developers), and would like to be assured that the new search isn't having too big bugs that disrupt searching normally.

In general saying there is a large majority for testing. Certainly for secondary testing at first, if it is stable enough also for testing in primary modus.

Romaine

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tech ambassador for nl-wiki

[Wikitech-ambassadors] Would any other wikis like to try out a new search?

Nikolas Everett neverett at wikimedia.org
Thu Oct 17 19:49:08 UTC 2013

Dear Ambassadors,

I'm looking for volunteer wikis to try out the new search that Chad and
I've been working on called CirrusSearch.

<sales pitch>Be a part of the second wave of wikis and influence new search
features!</sales pitch>

Reality:
* We're reasonably sure CirrusSearch's language support is better than the
current search.  [1]
* CirrusSearch indexes expanded templates.
* CirrusSearch indexes articles within a few seconds of when they are
changed.  Articles that contain a changed template take longer but they are
also updated.
* Most of the special search syntax is the same.  You can read the syntax
here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search/CirrusSearchFeatures

What it means to volunteer:
If you volunteer your wiki we'll turn CirrusSearch on in "secondary" mode
where it'll keep itself up to date but all queries will still go through
the old search.  You'll be able to get search results from the new search
engine for comparison by adding a url parameter to the search results
page.  If you and the community that you represent aren't immediately blown
away by how much better it works we'll work with you to make it awesome.

At some point, shortly after the new search has been deemed awesome, we'll
switch CirrusSearch to "primary" mode and all queries will go through it.
You'll be able to get at the old search results with a url parameter
similar to the one that you used to test CirrusSearch.  If anything goes
wrong we'll switch you back to the old search.  We'll keep that option open
for a few months.

So who is ready to help make search better?

Nik Everett

[1]: Some languages (20ish) will see a huge improvement because
CirrusSearch understands their grammar and old search doesn't.  Many other
languages will see an improvement because CirrusSearch is happy to search
all kinds of character sets while the current search isn't.  Esperanto is
very well supported by the old search so would get worse.  eo wikis should
probably wait until we've improved support.

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