Hi,

This is unworkable. I understand the reason why a part of the search function is removed, but I find it very annoying and it gives many wikipedians a real headache.

1. When you have made a new article, you want to find more possible pages for links to that article. That's one of the whole wiki-experience. 2. When you want to make a new article, you want to search if there are no paragraphs somewhere similar to your new article. 3. Sometimes there are synomyms of the same thing. You can solve this with a redirect. Yes absolutely, but you have to find those possible redirects and if you can't find them, people will write double articles. 4. Normal (read-only) users of the Wikipedia want to find simple things. Eg.: Search for 'Purple Rain' on the dutch wikipedia. No results. Normally it should point you to the Prince article.

Every site, with a minimum of a a few pages should have a search system and when the sites are as large as the Wikipedia sites, it should have an advanced search.

I remember how I discovered Wikipedia. I was installing a few Mozilla searchengines (mycroft) and found one for Wikipedia. I tried it, but to my suprise I came on a google search. So I lost interest. Later the search-engine was back and I became totally obsessed by the Wikipedia.

The last point I want to make is: I can understand that decisions of upgrades of sotware and hardware are made by the sysops on location, but when these kind of important and critical changes are made by people from the other side of the Ocean, without consulting the hardworking people on this side of the Atlantic, people can become very upset. I can't feel anything of a community-feeling in this way of acting.

Cheers,

Jeroen (Dutch Wikipedian)