Brion - thanks for fixing the "search" button.
I said:
- Even if you hand-fix the search, the title search doesn't work
at all, nor is there any hint that the search wasn't performed. It should either do a title search (that's not expensive), or at least say "No title search performed, server too overwhelmed".
Brion Vibber vibber@aludra.usc.edu replied:
Jeebus, how many more disclaimers do I have to put into that thing?
You don't need MORE disclaimers. I think part of the problem is that the text labelled "Results:" above the disclaimer makes it appear that the disclaimer is irrelevant. The current display looks like the system _did_ do a search, with null results. It's then followed by some sort of disclaimer, saying that sometimes searching is disabled (during your peak hours). But since I got search results, clearly it's not your peak hours and searching is currently enabled. At least, that's what I thought the Wikipedia meant. Apparantly that's not what was meant. At least, I find it very confusing, and I suspect others will too.
When searching is disabled, I believe Wikipedia should NOT display the following text: "Showing below 20 results starting with #1. View (previous 20) (next 20) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500)." Instead, it should IMMEDIATELY display the disclaimer, and _explicitly_ state that searching is CURRENTLY disabled. How about this?: "Sorry, but searching is currently disabled. Wikipedia's internal search capability is disabled during peak hours (16:00-04:00 UTC / 9:00-17:00 PDT) to reduce server strain. As a temporary measure, you can search for text appearing in Wikipedia pages via Google, but be aware that the index is incomplete and some pages will be out of date. If you know the exact name of the article, just enter the title's name and press the 'Go' button at the top right side of the display."
If title searching is being disabled - and not just article title searching - I think the disclaimer should say that "text search" is disabled, not "full-text search" (as I've shown above). Some people (including me!) would presume "full-text search" to mean searching inside every single article's body, and wouldn't think that "title search" is the same as "full-text search".
If my understanding is right, this isn't really a "bug" - it's a user interface issue. I think the current text could confuse some people (it's certainly confusing me). By NOT displaying potentially confusing information, I think it'd be better.
Anyway, I hope I caused no offense. I really appreciate the work you do!