Feature summary (what you would like to be able to do and where):
Originally posted on the technical village pump of frwiki:
why doesn't the article Edmond Saintonge appear when you do a search with the keyword "Saintonge"?
- Actually, the drop-down list of the search form doesn't suggest results like family names.
- Results in the drop-down list are differents from results in the Special Search page (sorted by relevance).
- When searching by keyword, results sorted by relevance should prioritize family names in the title
- Consider standardizing the suggested results of the two lists (see case 2)
- Consider using DEFAULTSORT to show relevant results too (see case 3)
Use case(s) (list the steps that you performed to discover that problem, and describe the actual underlying problem which you want to solve. Do not describe only a solution):
Case 1 (with redirect):
- go to enwiki and fill the form Search, for exemple with the keyword "Rossini" (in this exemple, you are a user searching for Gioachino Rossini)
- the most famous "Rossini" is "Gioachino Rossini", who is correctly the first result
- it is the first result because of the redirect "Rossini"
- you easily found what you were searching for
| Example (one click for getting my result) |
 |
Case 2 (with disambiguation and redirects):
- go to frwiki and fill the form Search, for exemple with the keyword "Bonaparte" (in this exemple, you are a user searching for Napoleon)
- the most famous "Bonaparte" is "Napoleon", who is not shown within the most relevant results in the drop-down list, but the disambiguation page is the first one
- in the drop-down list, click on the link "rechercher les pages contenant Bonaparte" ("search for pages containing Bonaparte"), which redirects to the Special Search page
- in the Special Search page, now you can see the list of Bonaparte as a family names (sort by releance): the redirect from Napoléon Bonaparte is the second suggestion
- the first suggestion is the redirect of the keyword "Bonaparte", which is correct
- but 1) here you can't see the disambiguation page 2) you have found what you were searching for, but with two click and looking at two lists
| Drop-down list (I don't find my result) | Special Search page (two clicks for getting it) |
|---|---|
 |  |
Case 3 (without disambiguation nor redirects, but with DEFAULTSORT):
- go to frwiki and fill the form Search, for exemple with the keyword "Saintonge", (in this exemple, you are searching for a person less famous then Rossini or Napoleon, with the family name "Saintonge")
- in the drop-down list only results beginning with the keywords appears, so you have not your result here
- so, in the drop-down list, click on the link "rechercher les pages contenant Saintonge" ("search for pages containing Saintonge"), which redirects to the Special Search page
- in the Special Search page (sort by releance), you have to scroll down a lot before to find the person with the family name "Saintonge" in the second page of results, displayed after results such as "Alphonse de Poitiers" and "Angoumois" without the keyword in the title
| Drop-down list (I don't find my result) | Special Search page - page 1 (I don't find my result) | Special Search page - page 2 (3 clicks for getting it) |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
Benefits (why should this be implemented?):
Biographies are an important part of articles on Wikipedia editions. Readers like searching for persons on Wikipedia. This may concern a lot of people.
Using DEFAULTSORT for relevant results should improve the processus of searching for biographies using family names as keywords (as redirects and disambiguations already do).
Actually, different search forms give different results to user. This can confuse users who have no idea that different enhanced search features exist (Vue or CirrusSearch).
When possible, please consider uniforming results of different lists, this may help people to understand how to compile the forms and make habits.