[Mediawiki-api] Search query returns missing pages

[Stephen Bain]

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 9:46 PM, Simon Lehmann <simon.lehmann at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> I am wondering if the search module should return pages that don't
> exist. If I am searching for something, I probably want to find
> something that already exists, especially if I use srwhat=text. I don't
> even know where the API gets the text to search in, for a page that
> doesn't even exist.
>
> Just look at the example:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?format=xml&action=query&gsrsearch=Does
> %20not%20exist&generator=search&gsrnamespace=0

The first few in the results there have been deleted. No "pageid"
attribute and the presence of the "missing" attribute indicates a
deleted page. The question of whether such entries should be returned
by default, as seems to follow from your observation, is still open,
but the software didn't make this up, it's just from a deleted
revision.

> Besides that, it also seems to find stuff that doesn't even belong into
> the main namespace, even if it existed, like:
...

The ones that look like user talk pages had been moved, and the move
destination was misspelled ("User taIk", with a capital I instead of a
lowercase l - you may need a serif font to see the difference). If the
software doesn't recognise the namespace, then it treats it as if
there is simply a colon in the title and puts it in the mainspace.

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com