Topic on VisualEditor/Feedback

Media search suggestions fail randomly

7
NH (talkcontribs)

Open a page for editing. Place the cursor in the text. Click Insert > Media.

Try typing various beginnings of sensible search term snippets in the search field without hitting Enter, for instance "ark" (which should match names containing the word "Arkansas", among other things).

Sometimes the "throbber" (progress indicator) first appears during typing, and then relevant matches are shown. But sometimes the throbber is not shown, and no results either, but only the text "No results found.", although there are certainly lots of media with names matching the text snippet currently in the text box.

You will have to try this out yourself a few times, with different text snippets, because the behaviour is erratic and random. I have a suspicion the severity of the problem is related to the quality of the Internet connection used, but I haven't been able to verify this.

(Safari 11.0.3)

Elitre (WMF) (talkcontribs)

@NH, hello, sorry for the delay. Is this still happening?

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I found that if I add another letter to the search term (maybe backspace over the last letter and re-type it), it re-searches for me. Does that work for you?

NH (talkcontribs)

Yes, this is still happening.

Adding another letter, or hitting backspace often makes it re-search. This re-search can either result in "No results found." (although there might be search suggestions in next attempt with the same letters) or search suggestions.

The problem seems somehow to depend upon the time interval between keystrokes. If I type very slowly (one keystroke in every 3 seconds), then there is always new search suggestions for each added letter. If I type faster, it sometimes gets stuck showing "No results found." although the same letters do produce search suggestions when typed at a slow rate.

(Same problem in Firefox 59.0.2 and Safari 11.1)

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talkcontribs)
NH (talkcontribs)

I think it could be different symptoms of the same underlying problem: Whether you get any search suggestions or not depends upon how and at what speed the text is entered into the search field.

NH (talkcontribs)

Let me add: Other search fields on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons etc do not behave this way.

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