[WikiEN-l] Updated new search interface on the prototype

[Carcharoth]

I like the changes from what I can see so far. Some of the stuff I was
saying earlier had gone is now back, so it looks like it was a
temporary thing while the changes were made. I like the way the text
now adjusts to being left-justified so you can see the whole text. I
now need to try typing the title of the longest article (which was
mentioned somewhere recently) to see if that will break the new gizmo.
:-)

Carcharoth

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 4:20 AM, Naoko Komura <nkomura at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Just a quick update:
>
> Updated search interface was rolled-out to English Wikipedia earlier
> today. Thank you all for your quick feedback.
>
> Regarding the search location, we understand the inconvenience and the
> sense of disorientation when the frequently used tool is moved around.
> However, we found from the usability study that the interaction to
> search field/interface increased significantly when the search location
> was moved to the top right. Improvement of the search experience was
> also contributed by the improvement of the search engine (lucene), and
> the clean-up of the search result page where the relevant results
> received high-priority in ranking than missing pages or error messages.
> We are monitoring the search query volume before and after the Vector
> launch to compare if the search location change had an impact on the
> search query volume. We hope to publish the stats next week.
>
> Regarding the default behavior whether it should go to an article or
> full-text search when an enter key is hit, it is a bigger discussion.
> Based on the feedback during early prototype phase, we dropped the idea
> of reversing the search behavior to give full-text search instead of
> article search, as article search and serving matched article is unique
> to Wikimedia projects and it showcases how many topics we cover. The new
> search interface gives user an option to chose from the article name
> space or full-text search from the drop down menu.
>
> So, will you give another try?
>
> - Naoko
>
>
> Naoko Komura wrote:
>> Hi, everyone.
>>
>> We have received problem reports and feedback that search queries were
>> truncated sometimes and the search suggestions were hard to read or
>> chose due to the limited width. We apologize for introducing broken
>> behaviors in using the search.  In order to mitigate spreading the
>> problem, the new search function was disabled on May 15, and the search
>> field was increased by fifty percent on May 18. We are aware that this
>> temporary fix still does not accommodate the search for long article
>> names.
>>
>> We have updated the new search interface to address the issues above and
>> it is currently staged on the the prototype [1]. This update addresses
>> the reported issues such as truncation of search queries [2] and the
>> search suggestions are cut-off [3]. Prototypes in various languages are
>> also available here[4].
>>
>> Please give it a spin and let us know your feedback. If the
>> functionality is confirmed solid, we would like to re-enable the new
>> search feature later this week.
>>
>> Thanks a bunch in advance,
>>
>>
>> - Naoko
>>
>> User Experience Programs @ WMF
>>
>>
>> [1] http://prototype.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org
>>
>> [2] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23498
>>
>> [3] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23558
>>
>> [4] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Prototype
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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