[WikiEN-l] feedback on wikipedia's internal search

[private musings]

I thought it might be an opportune moment to offer some feedback about
out internal search, because I think there are a few pretty easy
changes which could help a lot - and also I wanted to offer thanks to
wherever it's due, because it's certainly vastly improved since I
first played around with it, and found it quite useless!

I tried a variety of searches, but the general points apply to this,
my latest, one;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=cambridge+UK&go=Go

First up I'd like to suggest some re-wording / re-flowing of the
information above the text box - if someone could point me in the
right direction for such suggestions it'd be appreciated! (mainly just
small things like establishing whether or not "No article title
matches" and "No page with that title exists." represent redundant
information - and just generally making a bit more sense to readers!

I'd also suggest that the search term text box be at the top of the page.

I'd further like to ask if there's any way that the text information
included in the search results could be reliably culled to be the
introductory text only (perhaps ignoring everything within {{ would be
a good start? - if that doesn't break something.....).

I think the size of the article is self explanatory, but would suggest
a "Date last modified :" explanation for that bit.

Finally, the results page has some interesting choices with the first
20 results, especially when compared to the index. This one;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri
seemed particularly esoteric, especially when compared to something like;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridgeshire
which doesn't appear until ~ 200 (although it is mentioned in the 4th
result... I wonder if there would be any way of having our search
function treat disambig. pages a bit differently, and providing the
links within them directly to the search results page? - a bit like
the Google style in the first result here;
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=wikimedia+foundation

that's enough to begin with! - I'm actually really heartened by the
improvements that seem to have been made on this, and hope that a few
more little ones might push it over the hump into something genuinely
handy!

cheers,

PM.

(ps. if still on moderation, could this please be lifted? thanks......)