[WikiEN-l] Re: Search engine disabled

Tue Mar 18 17:13:41 UTC 2003

I just wanted to throw in my two cents regarding the search engine.

Using Google might be a good temporary solution, but I think using it 
permanently, or even semi-permanently, would be a bad idea.  From an 
editing standpoint, as Erik Moeller rightly pointed out, it can lead to 
duplicate articles that aren't found for weeks or even months, if ever.

 From a user standpoint, it's even worse.  An example is [[Mexican Cave 
Fish]]; created over a year ago, it doesn't show up in Google at all, 
either under that name or under its current title [[Astyanax 
mexicanus]].  (As an aside, that page probably needs to be moved by a 
sysop.)  There is no way of easily telling how many pages are in a 
similar situation.

A search function is essential; this thing doesn't have a conventional 
index.  I strongly feel that Google is not up to the task.  I 
completely understand the problems with server load, and hope we can 
get that fixed in a more conventional manner soon (if another machine 
in the rack is what's needed, I'd certainly contribute toward that, as 
I'm sure would others).  However, I'm wondering if a more efficient 
short-term remedy might be to find some other function, one less 
integral to the use of the Wikipedia, to disable instead of the search 
function.

Hephaestos