[WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] full-text searching since the Vector switch in en.wikipedia

[Carcharoth]

The link to Special:Search is the magnifying glass icon next to (or
in) the search box.

To get "Search" instead of "Go", do what Magnus Manske suggested a few days ago:

"just type your search query, then hit the "cursor up" key to select
the last point in the dropdown box, which is the good ol' search
function. Hit enter, and there you go."

The downside being that those who don't know this, and are taken to
the article we have by the name they typed (but they don't want), will
get lost and stuck (disambiguation pages are not always provided and
are not always complete). They may try searching again, but may end up
being sent time and time again to the page they don't want before
finding out how to do a proper search.

I suppose the idea is that most people using that search box want "go"
functionality, not "search" functionality, but seeing as Google's
default is "search" not "go", I suspect more people are used to
getting a list of search results and clicking the top one than might
be realised.

Carcharoth

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> cc'd to lists that people read
>
> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 4:03 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
> <amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>> I sincerely hate to sound repetitive and annoying, but since the switch to
>> Vector in en.wikipedia it's impossible to run a full-text search of
>> Wikipedia using the search box if there's an article by the same name.
>>
>> The "Search" button is gone, because it was supposed to be possible to run a
>> full-text search in the redesigned search box without that button, but
>> apparently this doesn't actually work. It's only possible to run a full-text
>> search by switching back to Monobook or by manually going to Special:Search
>> (there's no link to it anywhere).
>>
>> So basically, for five days already it's practically impossible to search
>> for information within Wikipedia. Read this again: it's impossible to search
>> Wikipedia. Am i crazy if i think that this is a very severe problem?
>>
>> This is reported as a bug:
>> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23558
>>
>> The right thing to do is to restore the go and search buttons immediately
>> and consider reintroducing the new search box after it has been thoroughly
>> tested. Is there any reason not to do this?
>>
>> --
>> אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
>> Amir Elisha Aharoni
>>
>> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>>
>> "We're living in pieces,
>> I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>