915187 - Improve search

Status: NEW

(Websites :: wiki.mozilla.org, enhancement)

Description

[Mark A. Hershberger (hexmode)]

WikiMo needs improved search re Gerv.  This BZ ticket is to track progress on that.

Comment 1

[Mark A. Hershberger (hexmode)]

http://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Extension:TitleKey -- Used on Wikipedia.  Provides suggestions based on title matches.

http://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Extension:MWSearch -- Used on Wikipedia.  Integration with Lucene-search (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Lucene-search)

http://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Extension:Google_Co-op_Extension -- Used quite a few places.  Nice if we don't want to run Lucene.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Multi-Category_Search -- Adds semantic qualities to regular MW(?)  Probably not needed/wanted.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SearchExtraNS -- Used on Commons.  Will investigate if requested.

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

hexmode: status update? :-)

Gerv

Comment 3

[Mark A. Hershberger (hexmode)]

I've done nothing on this since my last message.  However, in the meantime, a lot of work has been done on MW Search in the form of Cirrus Search (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CirrusSearch).  I'll be in SF late next week for the MW architecture summit and I'll try to corner Chad and Nik during that time to see if what is involved in using it. (This would be used in place of MWSearch and Lucene-search).

Comment 4

[Mark Côté [:mcote]]

I'm not sure if my use case is covered by one of the links above, but I would love to have the ability to search particular subpages, or at least categories.  Right now it appears that you can only restrict searches to namespaces via Advanced Search, not subpages nor categories.

My specific use case is for the Bugzilla pages.  They use namespaces, e.g. Bugzilla:Developers, Bugzilla:Meetings, Bugzilla:Meetings:2014-10-22, etc.  This means users can search only within Bugzilla pages using Advanced Search by restricting results to the Bugzilla namespace.  Some contributors find this very handy.

However, I personally like subpages, e.g. Bugzilla/Developers, Bugzilla/Meetings, Bugzilla/Meetings/2014-10-22, primarily for navigability, since there are bread crumbs presented above the body.  But if I were to switch all pages to that, we'd lose the ability to search only within Bugzilla pages.

I would also accept searching within categories; it's a bit annoying to have to add a [[Category:...]] tag to every page, but we try to do it anyway, for a different type of navigability.  Searching within a category doesn't seem possible right now either.

Comment 5

[Gordon P. Hemsley [:GPHemsley]]

(In reply to Mark Côté [:mcote] from comment #4)
> My specific use case is for the Bugzilla pages.  They use namespaces, e.g.
> Bugzilla:Developers, Bugzilla:Meetings, Bugzilla:Meetings:2014-10-22, etc. 
> This means users can search only within Bugzilla pages using Advanced Search
> by restricting results to the Bugzilla namespace.  Some contributors find
> this very handy.
> 
> However, I personally like subpages, e.g. Bugzilla/Developers,
> Bugzilla/Meetings, Bugzilla/Meetings/2014-10-22, primarily for navigability,
> since there are bread crumbs presented above the body.  But if I were to
> switch all pages to that, we'd lose the ability to search only within
> Bugzilla pages.

To be clear, there is only one namespace per article. In particular, the page "Bugzilla:Meetings:2014-10-22" has the namespace 'Bugzilla' and the page title 'Meetings:2014-10-22'. Though off-topic for this bug, if the 'Bugzilla' namespace were kept, it would still be best practice to move this page to "Bugzilla:Meetings/2014-10-22".

> I would also accept searching within categories; it's a bit annoying to have
> to add a [[Category:...]] tag to every page, but we try to do it anyway, for
> a different type of navigability.  Searching within a category doesn't seem
> possible right now either.

That would probably be a feature request for upstream MediaWiki, if there is not already an extension for it.

Comment 6

[Mark Côté [:mcote]]

(In reply to Gordon P. Hemsley [:GPHemsley] from comment #5)
> (In reply to Mark Côté [:mcote] from comment #4)
> > My specific use case is for the Bugzilla pages.  They use namespaces, e.g.
> > Bugzilla:Developers, Bugzilla:Meetings, Bugzilla:Meetings:2014-10-22, etc. 
> > This means users can search only within Bugzilla pages using Advanced Search
> > by restricting results to the Bugzilla namespace.  Some contributors find
> > this very handy.
> > 
> > However, I personally like subpages, e.g. Bugzilla/Developers,
> > Bugzilla/Meetings, Bugzilla/Meetings/2014-10-22, primarily for navigability,
> > since there are bread crumbs presented above the body.  But if I were to
> > switch all pages to that, we'd lose the ability to search only within
> > Bugzilla pages.
> 
> To be clear, there is only one namespace per article. In particular, the
> page "Bugzilla:Meetings:2014-10-22" has the namespace 'Bugzilla' and the
> page title 'Meetings:2014-10-22'. Though off-topic for this bug, if the
> 'Bugzilla' namespace were kept, it would still be best practice to move this
> page to "Bugzilla:Meetings/2014-10-22".

Yes, having everything in the Bugzilla namespace is what we want (and have already); I was hoping we could keep that but then have all pages in the namespace *also* be subpages, for navigability.

> > I would also accept searching within categories; it's a bit annoying to have
> > to add a [[Category:...]] tag to every page, but we try to do it anyway, for
> > a different type of navigability.  Searching within a category doesn't seem
> > possible right now either.
> 
> That would probably be a feature request for upstream MediaWiki, if there is
> not already an extension for it.

Yeah.  Sounds like my other request should go there too.  I find it so weird that (searchable) namespaces and (navigable) subpages are such totally different things in MediaWiki...