Help talk:Searching

Search Function Bug?

Recently the search function on this page has been behaving strangely. As I type, the main page is replaced by a box with "Search for articles containing '...'" and "Search for articles named '...'" As it always comes up before I am finished typing (the rest of my letters filling in as I type) it is a little distracting. Is this necessary or intentional? — Unsigned comment by 24.136.33.199 (talk) at 04:33 on 30 November 2007

It's a new feature that suddenly appeared a few weeks ago. I'm not sure I like it either, especially since it currently doesn't work properly. (It only searches the Main namespace, which is a shame because none of the things you're searching for are likely to be found there.) Personally, I'd favor getting rid of it, or at least making it an optional feature you can turn off in your preferences. And if it stays, it obviously needs to be fixed, because right now it's just useless. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 00:43, 30 November 2007 (EST)

Daveh enabled the Ajax search feature on 15th November, which is what caused the changes that you're noticing. I don't like the way the new search feature works either, and I made a request at the talk page requesting that it be turned off, but until now nobody else has followed up on the request and therefore I've been reluctant to press the issue. If there really are other editors who believe that the ajax search needs to be turned off, I'll followup with a request on Daveh's talk page. --00:50, 30 November 2007 (EST)

Well I'm not an editor (just a heavy user) but if it'll help, I'll create an account and add my voice to yours! 24.136.33.199 14:51, 1 December 2007 (EST)

Frankly, your opinion as a regular reader of the site is possibly even more valuable than an editor's opinion ;) Those of us who edit the site don't necessarily see the site's organization the same way as readers (i.e., it's easier to remember what content is on which page if you put it there in the first place ;) ). But despite the far larger number of readers than editors using the site, we rarely get feedback from readers. So it's good occasionally to hear what readers would find useful :)

In any case, philosophizing aside, I just bugged Daveh about it. Hopefully he'll have some time before too long to follow up on it. --Nephele^Talk 15:06, 1 December 2007 (EST)

Random Page Section?

I was thinking it would be helpful to put random page parameters in "my preferences" for people's accounts so if people are using it, they can narrow it down to whichever games they want. --Piercethetruth 16:35, 19 February 2008 (EST)

That's something that we can't do without changing the wiki software itself. I'd agree it would be nice, but I'm not sure it's that high up the list of priorities. One problem is that each change that gets made to UESP's wiki pages means more time at each upgrade and more chances that something goes wrong. So although it's a good idea, don't be surprised if it doesn't happen. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 16:42, 19 February 2008 (EST)

Interesting idea...technically it wouldn't be too hard to use the user's search preferences and grab a random page from those selected namespaces. The down side is that it would be non-intuitive, i.e., why should my search preference affect the random page selection? So interesting idea but way down on the list of things to do. -- Daveh 17:15, 19 February 2008 (EST)

Talk searches

Is there a way to search only talk pages, or only a specific namespace's talk pages? --GuildKnight^Talk2me 02:38, 14 August 2008 (EDT)

What I've done in the past is to edit my search preferences to include just the places I want to search and then change them back again afterwards. It's inconvenient but gives you the specificity that you don't get from the search page itself. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 02:59, 14 August 2008 (EDT)

Simplifying Namespace Searches

Is there any way to not require the colon when specifying a gamespace to search? "oblivion:vampire" and "oblivion: vampire" both return the proper page, but "oblivion vampire" returns a results page. It seems safe to assume that if the first word is one of our namespaces then that's the namespace that needs to be searched, but I have no idea if or how it can be done. --GK^talk2me 01:57, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

If your worried about length you can use the namespace shortcuts (OB, MW, etc.) while searching. You still need to use the colon, but it's marginally faster. Elliot (talk) 02:40, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

For myself, yes, but I'm thinking that for most readers they won't know to use a colon... if they're looking for armor in Morrowind, they'll type "morrowind armor", or at least I would assume they would. It would be more intuitive if it worked that way. --GK^talk2me 04:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Mapping a search term to a page ("go" search)?

A go search for with friends like these will not link to the page or dispaly a result for the quest with friends like these...(including the three trailing periods). Adding the periods does direct to the quest page. If a fairly-new editor like me notices something like this, can/should I change it? Or is there a best place to bring it to someone's attention for consideration? This also seems to imply that periods should be included in the list of punctuation marks recognized and processed by the search engine Help:Searching#Search_Index. --Jreynolds2^Talk 07:26, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Creating a redirect could fix this case, but wouldn't help in general. --Alfwyn 13:06, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Deprecated features

This article goes into great detail about the differences between "go" and "search", but the go function doesn't seem to exist anymore. I can see from an old version of the sidebar that the buttons were there in the past. Maybe the feature is hidden somehow? Either way, the section needs updating. —Dillonn241 (talk) 15:40, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm probably wrong, but it is mostly depreciated. The page doesn't appear to have had any serious attention since 2009 so there seem to be a few things out of date, but mostly to do with the appearance of buttons. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 18:05, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

It still exists in the original Monobook, as you can see if you look at Wikipedia's monobook skin. We deliberately removed it from our version of Monobook...I believe because it was more confusing than helpful, but it might've been just for aesthetics. I honestly don't remember the reasoning at this point or even whether it was Dave, Nephele, or the community at large that made the decision to do so. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 05:17, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Reviving this convo—we should remove the references to the "Go" button if it no longer exists. (I wish it did, though—it was very useful not to have to type in namespaces for everything!) — Will • B ^[talk] 01:38, 14 May 2023 (UTC)