Wikidata:Contact the development team/Archive/2021/06

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Deletion of personal data

[redacted]  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gmcaporale (talk • contribs) at 18:04‎, 6 June 2021 (UTC).

Search results

There is problem with search results so I can find "live result" of phrase like "Category:Songs written by Basshunter" in the left sidebar search but when I press enter there is no results in index.php?search. Eurohunter (talk) 09:59, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: As noted on project chat, CirrusSearch has a prefix and namespace search function which restricts searches to discrete namespaces. Category: is one such namespace - wikidata does not make much use of this namespace: see https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:Categories

So when you launch a search on WD for Category:Songs written by Basshunter, CirrusSearch notes the Category: element, determines your search is a namespace search, and so looks for a WD category with Songs written by Basshunter in the category name string. There is no such WD category, so no results. Exactly the same search on En WP finds the category, since En WP has such a category.

On WD, a search for "Category:Songs written by Basshunter" including the quote marks finds the item for Category:Songs written by Basshunter. The quotes prevent CirrusSearch from treating the query as a namespace query.

So. This is not a bug, but a feature. If you give CirrusSearch a search which includes the pattern for a namespace, it will interpret the search as a namespace search. It's a useful feature when used knowlingly, but a trap for the unwary if the user is unaware of the function.

By contrast, the dropdown search suggestions displayed when entering a search term into the search box uses some sort of AJAXish tech to do a lookup on item labels. It's a completely different search technology and does not have CirrusSearch's namespace search behaviour; and so it will dropdown a suggestion for the category based on the item's label. --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:45, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

@Tagishsimon: So why it's not searching in all namespace by default and why it can't just ignore "Category" when all we know there is for sure thing such as "Category:Songs written by Basshunter"? Why both seach use different technology instead of the same? Eurohunter (talk) 16:33, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: In this example, the search string causes CirrusSearch to enter a specialised search mode (which has an unfortunate consequence when the user does not realise they have entered a search string which will trigger this mode). The specialised search mode is useful if the user wants to search by namespace. It does not search all namespaces by default because it has been designed to search only the specified namespace. If you want to search all namespaces, then enclosing the search string in quotes causes the search to consider all namespaces. Ultimately, it is what it is: a switch which enables a restricted search mode, but a switch that may not be recognised by the unwary user (most of us) who have not read and digested the manual pages for CirrusSearch.

The dropdown search is a useful utility which, for very many searches, surfaces the item being sought. It does its job well, which is, I guess, why it is deployed. Its utility is mainly in avoiding having to use the full CirrusSearch and instead traverse directly to the item - I suspect the vast majority of searches are answered by the dropdown, with only a small minority of searches being taken to the full text engine.

It could be argued that since CirrusSearch recognises when it has been tasked with a namespace-specific search, it could do more on the results page to make that fact evident to the user who, like you, is aware of the item and puzzled that the search has not returned any results: <<<You have searched for Category:Songs written by Basshunter; the search engine has searched for a Category called Songs written by Basshunter. If you wish to perform a text search for the full string, enclose it in quotes or press here>>>

It could also be argued that the search UI could use some other method to switch into namespace search mode, but I guess there has not been enough demand arising out of reports of confusion to warrent such a change.

Finally it could be argued that CirrusSearch for WD should not have the namespace search switch because WD does not make great use of namespaces, and instead contains millions of items that have namespaces in their itemlabels, which is likely to give rise to exactly the problem you're describing. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:27, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Andre Mario Smith

Good day, why do you hate Andre Mario Smith? If not, why do you keep allowing information about him to be deleted?  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by 41.13.134.173 (talk • contribs) at 10:42, 12 June 2021 (UTC).

Content not conforming to the notabilty policy gets deleted. Please provide the item identifier at WD:AN if you are contesting deletion of it. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 17:42, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

I cant create title for "Kourosh zz"

Moved to WD:AN. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 14:05, 30 June 2021 (UTC)