https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-searchoptions
The "Advanced options" section of the "Search" tab in MediaWiki currently looks like this:
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Advanced options
[ ] Search in all namespaces
Search in these namespaces by default:
[ ] (Main)
[ ] Talk
[ ] User
[ ] User talk
[ ] Project
[ ] Project talk
[ ] File
[ ] File talk
[ ] MediaWiki
[ ] MediaWiki talk
[ ] Template
[ ] Template talk
[ ] Help
[ ] Help talk
[ ] Category
[ ] Category talk
[ ] Thread
[ ] Thread talk
[ ] Summary
[ ] Summary talk
[ ] Manual
[ ] Manual talk
[ ] Extension
[ ] Extension talk
[ ] API
[ ] API talk
[ ] Skin
[ ] Skin talk
[ ] Module
[ ] Module talk
[ ] Translations
[ ] Translations talk
[ ] VisualEditor
[ ] VisualEditor talk
---
This list looks silly and excessive. While bug 37878 has requested a layout change, I think we need to reconsider how this list is implemented.
What about adding a checkbox to [[Special:Search]]'s advanced search section that looks something like this:
[ ] Use these namespaces as my default
This would de-duplicate the namespace listing (between Special:Preferences and Special:Search) and would allow the search user preference to be set more easily from the search interface itself.
Rather than using Special:Preferences and having heavy user interface exposure, any custom search namespace preferences could be "hidden" user preferences. That is, they'll still be stored if they don't match the site-wide default, but they'll not clutter up Special:Preferences.
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**Version**: 1.22.0
**Severity**: normal
**See Also**:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48615