Page MenuHomePhabricator

Make Wikidata search more flexible in Article Guidance
Closed, ResolvedPublic2 Estimated Story Points

Assigned To
Authored By
Pginer-WMF
Apr 9 2026, 3:46 PM

Description

As part of Article Guidance (T396029), for the initial step of "Title entry and topic matching" users can search for Wikidata items.
The search is capable to find Wikidata items and their associated outlines. However, at times it feels that small variations on the search quickly lead to "no results found."

In the following examples, I'll compare search results for queries using Article Guidance, and Direclty on the wikidata.org website:

QueryArticle GuidanceWikidata.org
Titanic
b24e11a4f1.catalyst.wmcloud.org_wiki_Special_NewArticle(Wiki Mobile) (15).png (568×320 px, 63 KB)
www.wikidata.org_wiki_Wikidata_Main_Page(Wiki Mobile).png (568×320 px, 45 KB)
Titanic film
b24e11a4f1.catalyst.wmcloud.org_wiki_Special_NewArticle(Wiki Mobile) (16).png (568×320 px, 31 KB)
www.wikidata.org_wiki_Wikidata_Main_Page(Wiki Mobile) (1).png (568×320 px, 26 KB)
Titanic (film)
b24e11a4f1.catalyst.wmcloud.org_wiki_Special_NewArticle(Wiki Mobile) (17).png (568×320 px, 32 KB)
www.wikidata.org_wiki_Wikidata_Main_Page(Wiki Mobile) (2).png (568×320 px, 18 KB)

This ticket proposes to explore the possibility to adjust the search to produce similar results to the examples above do on Wikidata.

Event Timeline

Pginer-WMF triaged this task as Medium priority.
Pginer-WMF raised the priority of this task from Medium to High.Apr 10 2026, 7:54 AM
SBisson changed the task status from Open to In Progress.Apr 14 2026, 1:58 PM
SBisson claimed this task.
SBisson moved this task from Prioritized to In-progress on the LPL Hypothesis board.

Change #1270954 had a related patch set uploaded (by Sbisson; author: Sbisson):

[mediawiki/extensions/ArticleGuidance@master] Use wikidata search instead of wbsearchentities

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1270954

Change #1270984 had a related patch set uploaded (by Sbisson; author: Sbisson):

[mediawiki/extensions/ArticleGuidance@master] Show unmatched search results

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1270984

Change #1270954 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/ArticleGuidance@master] Use wikidata search instead of wbsearchentities

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1270954

Pginer-WMF moved this task from Design Signoff to Product Signoff on the LPL Hypothesis board.

Testing this in the beta instance shows results for all the examples used in the ticket description:

en.wikipedia.beta.wmcloud.org_w_index.php_title=Special_NewArticle&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile(Wiki Mobile).png (568×320 px, 44 KB)
en.wikipedia.beta.wmcloud.org_w_index.php_title=Special_NewArticle&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile(Wiki Mobile) (1).png (568×320 px, 37 KB)
en.wikipedia.beta.wmcloud.org_w_index.php_title=Special_NewArticle&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile(Wiki Mobile) (2).png (568×320 px, 38 KB)