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

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

1.0 Search for "Desayuno"
1.0 Search for "Quesadilla"

On mobile devices

Once user taps on search bar with no search term yet
User is in the midst of typing search term
Once user is done with search term & results to less than 5 articles
Once user is done with search term & results to more than 5 articles
Pulls down to see more search options
Pulls up docked search results from sister projects
No search results