Search/Old/Design

Search Wikipedia!

We want to ensure that the rich & variety of content, resources, and community on Wikipedia & Wikimedia are accurately reflected. Never a dead end.

Content flaunt

❶    	Exact search keyword match first, always, regardless of language, priority given to current WP language used.

❷   		Results within articles

❸   	Results in other WP languages

❹   	Faceted search results (Wikiprojects, namespaces, categories, length of article, # of contributors)

❺   	Results from other sister projects

❻   	Results from local media files (images / audio / videos)

❼   	Related content suggestions

Too much information!

If search term results in a large amount of information, organize the results with faceted search by:


 * Namespaces
 * Wikiprojects
 * Categories
 * Length of article
 * Number of contributors
 * etc.

Did you mean..?

If user searches for a vague search term, show suggestions to specify the subject they are looking for.

If user searches for a search term with potential typographical error, show suggestions of what they could be looking for. For example:


 * Search for “ Monef "
 * Did you mean “Monet”?
 * Results within articles of all language Wikipedia
 * Results of similar keywords: “Monet," “Money,” etc.
 * Call to action to create a draft “Monef” article
 * A link to Articles for Creation or Wikiproject Articles 			for Creation where users can find help to create the article “ Monef
 * and other results

But.. if I got nothing?

If search term has no result on Wikipedia, surface results from other sister projects and related searches.

If search term has no result from Wikimedia either, suggest to create the article and show the support available from community in making that happen. For example:


 * Search for “Aegyo Sal”
 * egyo Sal is a beauty trend originated from Korea


 * No results found in any Wikimedia projects
 * Call to action to create a draft “Aegyo Sal” article
 * A link to Articles for Creation or Wikiproject Articles 			for Creation where users can find help to create the article "Aegyo Sal"
 * and other results

Foreign language searches


 * Search for “Desayuno” in English Wikipedia.


 * "Desayuno" is a Spanish word that does not have an exact search result in EN Wikipedia.


 * Current results:
 * Desayuno Continental
 * containing… Desayuno


 * But there is an exact keyword match in the ES Wikipedia. Hence, the proposed result of the “Desayuno” search is (1.0)


 * (ES Wikipedia) Desayuno


 * (EN Wikipedia) Desayuno Continental


 * (EN Wikipedia) Search results within articles containing Desayuno


 * and other results


 * Search for “Quesadilla” in English Wikipedia.


 * "Quesadilla" is a Spanish word exists on both EN and ES Wikipedia.


 * Current:


 * (EN Wikipedia) Quesadilla
 * (EN Wikipedia) Quesadilla cheese


 * Proposed (1.1) :


 * (ES Wikipedia) Desayuno


 * (EN Wikipedia) Quesadilla
 * (ES Wikipedia) Quesadilla
 * and other EN Wikipedia results

Help me choose!

Not all articles are created equal and not every user has the same intention when searching for a subject. Below are some suggestions to help users choose a search result that would best serve them:


 * Language of article content (when results contain more than one language)
 * Short description of the subject fetched from Wikidata (or first few characters from the article)
 * Article status / notability (draft / stub / work in progress / featured)
 * Article size / length
 * Quality of article (based on popularity in the past hour / days / week, # of articles linked to the article, # of articles it links to, # of references in relation to article size, )
 * # of search results found in the page
 * When it was last edited
 * Edit activity trend
 * Recency of article creation
 * Does it need help? (# of calls to action for references, images, etc)
 * etc.

Design progress

On desktop