Topic on Extension talk:CirrusSearch

Suggestion: Make it possible to search by page author /contributor/ uploader

4
197.218.91.135 (talkcontribs)

Problems

  • As a user, I'd like to discover more files or content made / created by a specific user.
  • As a user, I'd like to find specific content without paging through Special:listfiles.

Background

Currently there is no way to distinguish between search results uploaded or created by a specific user. Paging through special:listfiles is not an activity any sane person would do for users with massive uploads, e.g. Special:ListFiles&dir=prev&user=Ruthven. Attempting to view massive new pages by a specific user (special:contribs) will also result in a timeout on a big enough wiki, especially if the namespace parameter is used).

Also, for regular pages, this provides a sensible and easy interface to see and count all (existing) pages created by a user as this would naturally include the matches.

Other Use cases:

  • Looking into discussions (Talk pages) participated
  • Looking into pages they created with a specific keyword
  • Readers looking into interesting pages or media initially created by a specific contributors
  • Anti vandalism - looking into pages created / edited by a specific user and containing a specific term.

Proposed solution

  • Add a new search keyword "author:", e.g. "author:User1"; AND
  • Add a new search keyword "contributor:" to list all pages a edited by particular user;
  • Possibly make it possible to include more than one author, e.g. "author:User1|user2|..." or alternatively "author:User1 author:User2"

Note: A file page may be created before a file upload (by another user). So there may be a need to distinguish between an uploader and a file page creator.

CKoerner (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Hm, this is an interesting proposal. Given that it's a more contributor-focused tool, I wonder if this might be more appropriate for the AdvancedSearch project Wikimedia Deutschland is working on. I don't think "contributor" is a current field, but it might be a welcome suggestion.

It also sounds a little like maybe an updated Special:Contributions or Special:ListFiles would serve a better job than through CirrusSearch. Given that Special:Search is so general and broad. If other folks from the Search team are reading this, please tell me if I'm wrong!

IP, I'd be happy to create a phab task or two if you think that would be helpful.

Humor: Or maybe we need a one-sided Interaction timeline! :)

197.218.84.219 (talkcontribs)

My guess is that perspective is based on a wikipedia centric view.

The "contributor" keyword might be more related to editors, but readers are 100% interested in knowing the creator / uploader of a file or page in certain contexts. For instance, in wikibooks, one may be interested in stories (pages) created / published by a specific user. While for wikipedia itself, it often doesn't matter who created the page, knowing who uploaded a specific file is still useful, perhaps a particular user uploads images of new species of animals or some other interesting topic. That is entirely distinct from the photographers, who the uploader may or may not know, the reader may still be interested in seeing more of those rather than simply finding out who photographed one particular creature.

In the "real" world, it is also very common for people to buy (read / view) books / movies from the same author / writers, exactly because they appreciate their expertise and / or writing style.

> Special:Contributions or Special:ListFiles would serve a better job than through CirrusSearch. Given that Special:Search is so general and broad.

Not really. Remember that special:search gives the powerful ability to add extra filters that neither listfiles nor contributions will likely ever have, e.g. "keyword, title, geoip", etc. Also while people do enjoy deceiving themselves, the average person can't deal with vast amounts of data. Those pages have close to infinite paging as a poor man's alternative to the lack of a proper filtering capability.

> IP, I'd be happy to create a phab task or two if you think that would be helpful.

Feel free to create them. The feature suggestion is still valid, in my opinion.

CKoerner (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Fair enough. :)

I filed a task: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T188125

> the average person can't deal with vast amounts of data.

An author (to your exact example!) I enjoy once talked/wrote about this. He called it a problem of "filter failure".

Oh, and since I can't Special:Thank you, let me just state it plainly. Thank you.

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