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Let users of non-English wikis continue search in the English version
Open, LowPublicFeature

Description

Let's face it: any non-English Wikipedia contains much fewer articles that the English one. As a consequence of this, searching a local Wikipedia often leads to "no results". What is a user's need at this point? They still need a result. Any result. Sometimes a user also posesses English and other (to them) foreign languages. I think that it would be a great opportunity to let them continue the search in another wiki with one click.

Maybe this click could happen in the interwiki section, where currently some settings are hidden (as for me, it's unexpected to see it there). Or maybe somewhere else, but it general, it should be near.

Another use case here is that, for example, my mother tongue is Russian so I usually lurk around the Russian Wikipedia. But sometimes I suddenly need to search for something in the English one.

Current path: click the main page, switch to English, search there. Not sure why, but I just don't like that path. Maybe because it's counter-intuitive: I need to search but I click somewhere else instead (to the main page).

I wish I could:

  • click Search - enter term - specify other wikis where to search.
  • or click Search - (if not already added as a saved setting) add English wiki in settings - enter a term.

Event Timeline

Aklapper changed the task status from Open to Stalled.EditedAug 31 2020, 9:39 AM

Hi @Nikolay_Komarov, that's partially also the case. See T149806, T145918, T145917, etc.

Can you please follow https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_report_a_bug and provide clear and exact steps to reproduce, with full URLs, so someone else could try the same steps and see the same situation? Thanks!

Also removing unrelated project tags (see their project descriptions).

Sorry that I failed to find the non-duplicate item to contribute to. I would call it a feature request, not a bug, that's why I didn't put the steps.

Anyway, here they are. Steps:
Search for "99 Ways to Die"
Read "Nothing found in the Russian Wikipedia or sister projects"

2020-08-31_12-32-40.png (691×934 px, 47 KB)

Expected -
I click "Add namespace English Wikipedia" and search again.
or even just so: just by the fact the if has been searched and found, at the right side there would be this English page shown:
Or I move my pointer to the interwiki section and see the Interwiki caption: "Go to wiki and search there" with links under it: English, German, etc.

2020-08-31_12-40-42.png (847×852 px, 88 KB)

I click "English" and appear here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Ways_to_Die . So in one click I would do what I now do...

Currently:
Click the globe, come to Russian main page: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Заглавная_страница
Click English, come to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Enter "99 Ways to Die", use expanded result,

2020-08-31_12-36-14.png (268×934 px, 25 KB)

come to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Ways_to_Die_(album). What a long way!

Aklapper changed the task status from Stalled to Open.Aug 31 2020, 2:03 PM

Thanks a lot! Could you also imagine to show search results from e.g. English Wikipedia on Russian Wikipedia, in a side bar next to the Russian Wikipedia results?

Thanks a lot! Could you also imagine to show search results from e.g. English Wikipedia on Russian Wikipedia, in a side bar next to the Russian Wikipedia results?

Yes, I've seen the pics in the related topics, it looks fine. Various users possess various languages. If that sidebar will pay attention to that and show articles in the relevant languages, then my suggestion might be unnecessary. Or it could be shown in parallel, just in case someone wants to see *all* the results, not only proposed articles. Or if someone wants to search in an unexpected language.

CBogen moved this task from needs triage to Feature Requests on the Discovery-Search board.
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Closing out low/est priority tasks over 6 months old with no activity within last 6 months in order to clean out the backlog of tickets we will not be addressing in the near term. Please feel free to reopen if you think a ticket is important, but bare in mind that given current priorities and resourcing, it is unlikely for the Search team to pick up these tasks for the indefinite future. We hope that the requested changes have either been addressed by or made irrelevant by work the team has done or is doing -- e.g. upgrading Elasticsearch to a newer version will solve various ES-related problems -- or will be subsumed by future work in a more generalized way.

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Re-opening tasks and removing from team workboard per IRC feedback given yesterday and discussion with MPham.

Aklapper changed the subtype of this task from "Task" to "Feature Request".