Hi Romaine,
Yes, the search box on the wikipedia.org portal only shows results for the language that you're currently searching in (which can be changed by selecting a new language in the dropdown located in the search box). We don't yet have the ability to search in all wikis at once but we'd like to have that capability in the future.
I agree completely with your second point, the language question is a difficult one. We have so many English readers that the search box is used quite a bit on the portal, but quite a few other visitors click on one of the primary language links around the globe and then (presumably) do their search on that particular wiki. We visualize this information on our Portal Dashboard http://discovery.wmflabs.org/portal/#action_breakdown, if you're curious to find out more.
We fully intend to use translatewiki.net to help with our sister project descriptive text once we get the framework setup on the Portal side to incorporate the push files from translatewiki as they get updated.
Thanks again for the questions and compliments! :)
Cheers,
Deb
-- Deb Tankersley Product Manager, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 6:33 PM, Romaine Wiki romaine.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Deb,
Thanks!
I just realised that also the search bar is based on detected language. This is logic, but at the same time I miss the option to search in all Wikipedias at once, instead of only the one language.
The question about the language is a bit complex for me, especially the second part/option of the question. I am just thinking that if I visit an internet café or I use the laptop from an other language speaking friend, I would like the option to read the page in my own language, instead of the browsers language. Of course the detected language is a good starting point for most people.
If I visit the portal page and I see a search option, and I do want to search something, I would try the search on the portal page. (But I am 100% sure that other people see their own language mentioned first and click on it.)
About the to be translated text from sister projects, can translatewiki.net be used as for many other translations of system messages?
Thanks for the work! :-)
Romaine
2016-06-07 17:51 GMT+02:00 Deborah Tankersley dtankersley@wikimedia.org:
Hi Romaine,
We're glad you like the new page functionality! I've opened up a ticket https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T137215 to fix the Dutch phrase translation typo, thanks for letting us know. :)
For your comment about adding in an option to change the language, I'm curious about something, as this has come up before. Would you prefer to use the portal page in the language that is detected (as we do now) or in a different language but not actually searching on that language's wiki?
For instance, if your preferred language is Dutch: would it make sense for you to click on that language link on the portal page to go to nl.wikipedia.org and then do a search? Or, even if the browser's language is detected as Dutch (nl) would you rather use the portal page to search in a different language, like English?
Yes, thanks for asking, the sister project links will be translated and we have a ticket https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136441 open to get that started. We wanted the descriptive text to be visible on the page to give more insight into the sister projects, even though we don't have the text translated yet.
Cheers,
Deb
-- Deb Tankersley Product Manager, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 5:13 AM, Romaine Wiki romaine.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Deb,
Great improvement!
Looking at the page, I only notice one major error. My language is Dutch (nl), and so my browser/computer system is set that way. However the phrase is spelled wrong: it says: "De vrieje encyclopedie" while it should say "De vrije encyclopedie". So: vrieje -> vrije. "vrieje" is not a Dutch word. Can this be fixed?
Further I would recommend one thing to be added to the page. Because large parts of the word visit Wikipedia through internet cafés and computers elsewhere, I would suggest in the top right/left corner an option to change the language.
And one final question: will the bottom section of the page also be translatable?
Thanks! Romaine
2016-06-07 0:05 GMT+02:00 Deborah Tankersley dtankersley@wikimedia.org :
Hello,
The Discovery team recently updated the wikipedia.org portal page to detect what the visitor's browser's preferred language(s) are and then arrange the language links around the globe to match those language preferences.
Earlier this year, we ran a successful A/B test https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal_A/B_testing#A.2FB_test:_browser_language_detection_.28completed.29 that proved promoting our visitor's preferred languages resulted in increased visibility and interest into these projects. Also, the display of '*The Free Encyclopedia*' phrase is now localized to the visitor's first preferred browser language. If there isn't a translation available, the phrase will be displayed in English (view a screenshot https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWikipedia_portal_top_10_links_re-sort.png) as it currently is today.
Additionally, a new A/B test https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal_A/B_testing#A.2FB_test:_languages_by_article_count_.28in_progress.29 will kick off this week to determine if the listing of languages by article count can be displayed in a more modern and streamlined way without decreasing usage of the links. Our goal is to promote easy scrolling through the long list of languages by article count, but in a dropdown format while also providing greater discovery of the sister wiki project links.
More information on past and future work can be found on the wiki page https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal as well as the sprint https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-portal-sprint/ and backlog https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-portal-backlog/ boards. We're always interested in receiving constructive feedback from the community: if you have a question or comment, please start a discussion on the talk page https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikipedia.org_Portal.
Cheers,
Deb
Deb Tankersley Product Manager, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation
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On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 3:18 PM Deborah Tankersley dtankersley@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Romaine,
Yes, the search box on the wikipedia.org portal only shows results for the language that you're currently searching in (which can be changed by selecting a new language in the dropdown located in the search box). We don't yet have the ability to search in all wikis at once but we'd like to have that capability in the future.
Actually we do have the ability to search all wikis at once, it's just really really slow because of how Nik and I chose to setup the indexes ~4 years ago. This could be fixed though :)
-Chad
On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 3:28 PM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 3:18 PM Deborah Tankersley < dtankersley@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi Romaine,
Yes, the search box on the wikipedia.org portal only shows results for
the
language that you're currently searching in (which can be changed by selecting a new language in the dropdown located in the search box). We don't yet have the ability to search in all wikis at once but we'd like
to
have that capability in the future.
Actually we do have the ability to search all wikis at once, it's just really really slow because of how Nik and I chose to setup the indexes ~4 years ago. This could be fixed though :)
Technically possible, yes. Doable with the current architecture and query load though, not really feasible. The current architecture (as i'm sure you're aware) would mean having the elasticsearch servers convert what is currently a search against 1 index into a search against 900 indexes. Many of these indexes are small, but a 900x increase in volume is nothing to scoff at. We do +- 31M full text searches a day, so it's not a tiny amount of work. It would be asking our servers to process an extra 28 billion index searches per day.
We are doing some initial work on figuring out how to reduce this count. Over the next two quarters discovery will be looking into how to merge indices of the same language (eswiki, esnews, eswikivoyage, eswiktionary, eswikiversity, eswikisource, eswikiquote) into a single index per language, which will make searching between projects in the same language performant, and will hopefully pave the way for future architecture changes that will allow more native cross-project searches. Look for this in the coming months :)
Erik B
-Chad
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 4:14 PM Erik Bernhardson ebernhardson@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 3:28 PM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 3:18 PM Deborah Tankersley < dtankersley@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi Romaine,
Yes, the search box on the wikipedia.org portal only shows results for
the
language that you're currently searching in (which can be changed by selecting a new language in the dropdown located in the search box). We don't yet have the ability to search in all wikis at once but we'd like
to
have that capability in the future.
Actually we do have the ability to search all wikis at once, it's just really really slow because of how Nik and I chose to setup the indexes ~4 years ago. This could be fixed though :)
Technically possible, yes. Doable with the current architecture and query load though, not really feasible. The current architecture (as i'm sure you're aware) would mean having the elasticsearch servers convert what is currently a search against 1 index into a search against 900 indexes. Many of these indexes are small, but a 900x increase in volume is nothing to scoff at. We do +- 31M full text searches a day, so it's not a tiny amount of work. It would be asking our servers to process an extra 28 billion index searches per day.
We are doing some initial work on figuring out how to reduce this count. Over the next two quarters discovery will be looking into how to merge indices of the same language (eswiki, esnews, eswikivoyage, eswiktionary, eswikiversity, eswikisource, eswikiquote) into a single index per language, which will make searching between projects in the same language performant, and will hopefully pave the way for future architecture changes that will allow more native cross-project searches. Look for this in the coming months :)
Awesome! This was always our goal but some early architecture decisions we made has made it harder than it needed to be for the scaling reasons you point out.
Great to see work happening towards resolving this and making real cross- wiki searches much closer to reality :)
-Chad
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org