Topic on Talk:Search/status

The following queries stopped working with the new search. I guess it has something to do with the localized namespaces.

• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=TMg+prefix%3ABenutzer+Diskussion%3A

  Current result

  Articles are found. It's like the prefix is ignored. When I try to use the namespace checkboxes instead they are ignored as well, as long as the prefix: is still in my query. I have to remove the prefix: from the query to make it work as expected. Isn't this strange?

  Expected result

  Only pages from the German "User talk" namespace.

• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=TMg+prefix%3ABenutzer+Diskussion%3ATMg

  Current result

  Nothing is found.

  Expected result

  Only pages starting with "Benutzer Diskussion:TMg", obviously.

On the second, no, it's for the space (confirmed it works with lucene): 33 results, 0 results.

Oh, thanks for the hint. Unfortunately this does make things more confusing. ;-)

1. TMg prefix:Benutzer_Diskussion:TMg is valid in both the old and the new search → OK.
2. prefix:Benutzer_Diskussion:TMg TMg with the two terms switched is not valid in both. According to Help:CirrusSearch this is by design → OK.
3. TMg prefix:Benutzer Diskussion:TMg was valid in the old search. According to Help:CirrusSearch it should be the same in the new search → bug.
4. TMg prefix:"Benutzer Diskussion:TMg" should be possible if the space does have a different meaning now → missing feature.
5. TMg prefix:Benutzer does not work but TMg prefix:Benutzer: does → missing feature.

Logged as bugzilla:60489. I feel bad about travelling last week. It is just when folks are really starting to leave lots of feedback.

I believe I have fixes for 3 and 4 (proposed, not merged or deployed). I don't _think_ Cirrus' behavior differs from LuceneSearch's for 5 some I reticent to change it. What were you looking for TMg prefix:Benutzer to do? Right now I believe what it does is search for articles in the content namespaces that contain tmg who's title's start with benutzer. Nothing to do with namespaces without the :.

Probably he means that the latter is enough to trigger search in an otherwise non-searched namespace, while the other doesn't. Someone proposed that if I search "help references" the search should select the "help" namespace too (was this on wikitech-l? can't remember if it's filed), but I'm not sure making prefix too smart is a good idea. For instance, how would I search subpages of "Benutzer" in main namespace, one could ask, adding to complications.

Yeah, doing too much "smart" stuff can get a bit scary. I was always in favor of using a suggest-like mechanism to ask folks searching for tables help if they actually mean to search for help with tables. Something the user will notice but can ignore if they don't mean it. "All we'd have to do" is detect the help namespace (in the language of the user or the wiki or both?) and then make a suggest like link that hits the help namespace with their search without the word "help" in it.

For now, I'm closing the bug. If I'm wrong in doing so either reopen it or file another. Or reply here. Either is fine by me.

You are right. Seems I got a bit confused. Searching for something like prefix:talk can mean two things:

1. Search for articles with that prefix.
2. Search in that namespace.

It would be possible to check if the prefix:... value the user entered is equal to a known namespace and if that is the case do both. This leads to the next problem: How to rank this? It's basically a mixture of two different queries. Probably more confusing than helpful. Shouldn't be done.