(sorry for cross-posting ...)
Hello all,
we're really happy to announce that the new AdvancedSearch interface got
deployed as a beta feature to
Mediawiki.org and test just 2 hours ago. [1]
AdvancedSearch enhances Special:Search through an advanced parameters form
and aims to make existing search options more visible and accessible for
everyone. [2]
The feature is a project by WMDE's Tech team and originates from the
Technical Wishes project. Many other people and teams helped making this
project happen, so stay tuned for the thank you section at the end of this
email :-) [3]
*Why AdvancedSearch*
The Search has great options to perform advanced queries, but often even
experienced editors don't know about it - this is what we found out when we
were conducting a workshop series on advanced search in several cities in
Germany in 2016. Together with contributors from German Wikipedia we've
discussed their desired search queries, explained how the syntax works and
how keywords like "hastemplate", "filetype" or "intitle" can
be used and
combined to get the desired results.
The idea for the AdvancedSearch feature results out of these workshops,
where we not only discussed search but also designed first mocks for an
advanced search interface. [4]
*The first version, more deployments and other next steps*AdvancedSearch
supports some of the special search options the WMF's search team has been
implemented in the last years. The way the interface works, users don't
have to know the syntax behind each search field, but they can learn about
it if they want to. The first version of the feature comes with a first
selection of advanced search options, e.g. including support for
"hastemplate" or "intitle". The WMF's search team has started to
work on a
'deepcat' functionality to make sub category search happen. We plan to add
support for this in the future, too.
If all goes well, we plan to deploy the beta feature on German and Arabic
Wikipedia by Wednesday, Nov 29. [5]
In the next 2-3 months we'd love to invite everyone to test the new feature
on those wikis: Comments, thoughs, bug reports ... - any feedback is much
appreciated!
Please see
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:AdvancedSearch for how to
use AdvancedSearch.
Deployments to other wikis can follow later.
*Thank you (finally!)*
This project was developed with the support from many different people from
the start, and this makes it very special to us: We would like to thank the
folks from the German Wikipedia community who participated in the workshops
and who were discussing and designing first ideas together with us. We
would like to thank all other people who gave valuable feedback on
Phabricator, onwiki and in real life. We would like to thank the Arabic
Wikipedia community for getting interested in AdvancedSearch, and for
offering to test this feature in an early stage. The credit for the
development work on AdvancedSearch goes to our FUN team, supported by the
team that usually works on Technical Wishes. Last but really not least we
would like to thank the great folks from the WMF's search team who have
supported this project from the start and who have done (and still do) the
necessary backend work that now got supported by the AdvancedSearch
extension.
Sorry for the long email, and thanks for reading :-)
Birgit (for the Technical Wishes team)
[1]
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T180147 (Deployment ticket group 0)
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:AdvancedSearch
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/AdvancedSearch
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/AdvancedSearch/Worksh…
[5]
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T180128 (Deployment ticket arwiki and
dewiki)
--
Birgit Müller
Community Communications Manager
Software Development and Engineering
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
http://wikimedia.de
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