Porject search in other plugins is even more of a mess. E.g. the general search has a field for "in any project" but nor for "in all projects". Pholio cannot search for projects at all, even though Pholio items can be assigned to projects.

Speaking about the projects related fields, I don't think they are a mess. The four options correspond to AND, OR, NOT, MY. I haven't heard other complaints about this.

All the rest belongs to other reports, if you still want to report it.

I would decline this task.

The four options correspond to AND, OR, NOT, MY.

I've never heard of "MY" as an operator. That said, if that's the expected interpretation, why not say so clearly?

I haven't heard other complaints about this.

Doesn't tell us anything. Do user even find the maniphest advanced search? Are they just used to phabricator search being useless? Is everyone using Google? Etc.

In T1378#1020575, @Nemo_bis wrote:

The four options correspond to AND, OR, NOT, MY.

I've never heard of "MY" as an operator. That said, if that's the expected interpretation, why not say so clearly?

Example: many OPAC forms have a dropdown "AND" vs. "OR" vs. "AND NOT" (sometimes also "phrase" etc.). http://opac.sbn.it/opacsbn/opac/iccu/avanzata.jsp The interface would certainly be much, much clearer with a dropdown.

All fields are ANDed with eachother (which, as far as I know, is pretty standard for search forms?), so the meaning is:

• task is in all projects in field "In All Projects", AND
• task is in at least one project in field "In Any Project", AND
• task is not in any project in field "Not In Projects", AND
• task is in any project of any of the users "In Users' Projects"

The latter is not immediately obvious, though (it could as well have been 'in any project that all these users are a member of').

In T1378#1020675, @valhallasw wrote:

The latter is not immediately obvious, though (it could as well have been 'in any project that all these users are a member of').

I doubt anyone uses that field for anything else than searching for their own projects, much less fill it with multiple users at once.

Anyway, this discussion could use more data. I filed T88863.

This task is in practice stalled and I don't see much point in having this discussion among ourselves here, without the Phabricator maintainers. I propose to close it. You can report it and discuss it upstream if you wish.

It will be hard to convince Phab maintainers or even have a useful discussion if we don't know ourselves how the search form is used. Upstreaming this is effectively blocked by T88863.

I don't think stats are needed to see that the current form is a total chaos without any logic.

Sure, nitpicking over polish of individual fields, positioning and so would need some factual basis. However, a simpler option is to just adopt widespread and established practices of search forms.

This has changed with today's update. Hard to tell if it's better, but it's different. Sadly you didn't take any screenshots when filing this, so it's difficult to compare.

The old form is visible at https://web.archive.org/web/20150406105343/https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/advanced/
The current is https://web.archive.org/web/20150507133958/https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/advanced/

If I understand correctly, they removed the inconsistency by eliminating boolean options from the field(s) which previously enjoyed them? Ah, no, when you type in the "Projects" field every option can actually an OR, AND or AND NOT. AND NOT is called "Not In", which might be ok, while "OR" is called "In Any" which makes no sense for a single item. Also, the inconsistency persists in that only one field allows boolean options.

On the other hand, grammar of the field labels was fixed. \o/

Screenshots are like, the best thing ever.

Old:

Also, it looks like the default boolean for all fields is now OR, while AFAIK it used to be AND (for assignees, subscribers and authors).

As I remember it, the different fields were ANDed together, but the
different values within a field were ORes. I.e. (author = valhallasw OR
author = nemo_bis) AND project = phabricator

Updates to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Help#Searching_for_items are welcome, especially mentioning the AND between two criteria.