Hello,
The Wikimedia Foundation Discovery Search team
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery/Search> has recently
discovered
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:From_Zero_to_Hero_-_Anticipating_Zero_Results_From_Query_Features,_Ignoring_Content.pdf>
that search queries that end with a question mark (i.e. "*how old is Tom
Cruise?*") can sometimes lead to zero (or unusable) results being returned.
This zero result rate is one of the primary ways that the Search team
determines how much our users are satisfied with their query results
<http://discovery.wmflabs.org/metrics/#kpi_zero_results>.
In order to improve the results that queries containing a questions mark,
we'd like to change the behavior of the search on the backend. However, we
would love to have feedback from the community to make sure that this is a
smart change to do.
If you are interested in how search works, or see this change as a possible
disruption for your work, please learn more about this potential change
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discovery/Handling_question_marks_in_search_queries>
and let us know your thoughts.
Cheers from the Discovery Search team!
--
Deb Tankersley
Product Manager, Discovery
IRC: debt
Wikimedia Foundation