http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Aomiz+Sucharat says Did you mean: Aomiz Suchart so we click it, and then we are asked Did you mean: Aziz Suharto
Having been used to Google™, one feels a little like "goose chase".
It would be good if we could for each suggestion first run the query and see if it yields any results that wouldn't trigger the suggestion engine again (because it not only depends on the query, but also on the quality of the results, i.e. Did you mean... is always performed *after* the search). Unfortunately, we currently don't have the resources to do so, thus we use heuristics which mostly work, but not always..
As for comparison with Google, they are a multi-billion company specializing in search, while our Did you mean.. algorithm was essentially invented and coded in my spare time.
r.
On 19/06/11 00:58, jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Aomiz+Sucharat says Did you mean: Aomiz Suchart so we click it, and then we are asked Did you mean: Aziz Suharto
Having been used to Google™, one feels a little like "goose chase".
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Robert Stojnic wrote:
On 19/06/11 00:58, jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Aomiz+Sucharat says Did you mean: Aomiz Suchart so we click it, and then we are asked Did you mean: Aziz Suharto
Having been used to Google, one feels a little like "goose chase".
It would be good if we could for each suggestion first run the query and see if it yields any results that wouldn't trigger the suggestion engine again (because it not only depends on the query, but also on the quality of the results, i.e. Did you mean... is always performed *after* the search). Unfortunately, we currently don't have the resources to do so, thus we use heuristics which mostly work, but not always..
As for comparison with Google, they are a multi-billion company specializing in search, while our Did you mean.. algorithm was essentially invented and coded in my spare time.
Yeah, this is a rather nasty usability problem. I briefly looked for bugs filed about this, but didn't see any off-hand.
The main issue (to me) is that it says "Did you mean: [bold blue link]", which in this context I think most users would expect to be able to click and go directly to the article. It should be simple enough to query the page table for page existence, but perhaps two messages would be better here.
---- Your search for "Barack Obamaa" returned no results.
Did you mean: [[Barack Obama]]?
Search instead for [[Special:Search/Barack Obama]]? ----
I'm not sure if that would help matters or just clutter the page. This issue should definitely be addressed at some point, though.
MZMcBride
On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 8:40 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
The main issue (to me) is that it says "Did you mean: [bold blue link]", which in this context I think most users would expect to be able to click and go directly to the article. It should be simple enough to query the page table for page existence, but perhaps two messages would be better here.
+1, this has confused me for ages (at least make the link some other color than blue!)
Marco
* MZMcBride wrote:
Your search for "Barack Obamaa" returned no results.
Did you mean: [[Barack Obama]]?
Search instead for [[Special:Search/Barack Obama]]?
The search should perform the latter search automatically and render the article suggestion as first result when available (even if the search is not automatic, it should be much clearer that the first link there is an article and would not continue the search, more like "Wikipedia has an 'article on Barack Obama'", one reason being that that is how it works on Google).
The search should perform the latter search automatically and render the article suggestion as first result when available (even if the search is not automatic, it should be much clearer that the first link there is an article and would not continue the search, more like "Wikipedia has an 'article on Barack Obama'", one reason being that that is how it works on Google).
The challenge of this approach is that Google doesn't always do it. They seem to have a sophisticated algorithm behind it that sometimes shows the results of the original query, and sometimes of the "did you mean..." query. In some cases (e.g. when there is no results) it will probably be easy to implement it, in others not so much (given that our current "did you mean..." engine can be wildly inaccurate and thus provide useless first results).
r.
The main issue (to me) is that it says "Did you mean: [bold blue link]", which in this context I think most users would expect to be able to click and go directly to the article. It should be simple enough to query the page table for page existence, but perhaps two messages would be better here.
This link is context-specific. If the user comes to Special:Search by pressing enter (i.e. equivalent to what "Go" used to do), and Did you mean.. suggests a complete article title, the link will lead directly to the article. Only if the user is searching (i.e. by pressing the Search button or "containing....") then it won't.
This behaviour is the relic of the distinction between Search and Go. However, since the vast majority of users come to Special:Search with "Go", this link actually does what one would expect. I think the confusion mainly arises because it is not straightforward to know if one is in the "Go" or "Search" mode, nor if the suggestion is a whole article title or not. I wonder how much this actually matters to an average user that would click on a Did you mean link even before checking what the suggestion is believing it will magically show more helpful results (I at least do it in my everyday browsing).
Thus, I would find having two links for what should be one and the same even more confusing.
Also I believe this is a separate issue from the engine providing useless suggestions that just lead to other suggestions, which seems to be the theme of the original post.
r.
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