The search part seems to be working correctly. When we have a namespace prefix we seem to be successfully limiting the search to that namespace. At least, that is what my debugging shows.

It would be nice if we could update the "profile" on the search page based on the namespace prefix but this isn't how it works now (see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=talk%3Acatapult&title=Special%3ASearch&fulltext=1).

As far as searching without the namespace restriction if you don't find any results with the restriction, I'm open to this but I don't think that it is a now thing. I've made similar comments in Bug 52904 but left that one high priority due to relevance issues. I think the namespace filter is more deliberate than extra search terms. It is special syntax you have to know and use.

Triaging to low because both potential fixes seem low priority, at least to me.

(In reply to Nik Everett from comment #1)

The search part seems to be working correctly. When we have a namespace
prefix we seem to be successfully limiting the search to that namespace. At
least, that is what my debugging shows.

You're right.

It would be nice if we could update the "profile" on the search page based
on the namespace prefix but this isn't how it works now (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.
php?search=talk%3Acatapult&title=Special%3ASearch&fulltext=1).

Actually I'm not so sure. I think the current behavior's pretty predictable as it is. I'd get kind of confused as a user if the profile just changed on me.

As far as searching without the namespace restriction if you don't find any
results with the restriction, I'm open to this but I don't think that it is
a now thing. I've made similar comments in Bug 52904 but left that one high
priority due to relevance issues. I think the namespace filter is more
deliberate than extra search terms. It is special syntax you have to know
and use.

Triaging to low because both potential fixes seem low priority, at least to
me.

This part is still possibly worth doing.

Retitling bug, marking as enhancement, lowering priority further.