Advanced search functionality in Mediawiki

For as long as we know Mediawiki’s search interface is as rudimentary as it can gets and full-fills only basic needs. We acknowledged this fact a long time ago but we hope that with a refreshing focus (based on Wikipedia research)  things can get better and we can see some real improvements that allow to combine search patterns, combine external searches (with other web services), or even let emerge faced searches etc.

We always wondered why websites likes EBSCO or ProQuest that handle high volume data allow advanced search features but non of those has reached our beloved Special:Search page. The most advanced feature that one can work with is to eliminated search terms from  namspaces and if one is aware of “intitle:”, “incategory:”, “prefix:” can limit search results.

We would not ask for much and definitely not for a holy grail but things like adding different search terms with different options would be a start and should be standard within a website like Mediawiki.

Instead of being bound by a basic search input field, a bit more selectivity for the advanced searcher and researcher who uses such database on regularly basis would be nice.

External Search Engines

Mediawiki’s internal search is certainly a no-go solution and therefore another area of improvement is in how external search engines can interact with Mediawiki. Since SphinxSearch 0.8+ the extension is in compliance with MW’s Special:search page and a more comfortable solution than Lucene where it seems one has to pass a technical expertise course to get it up and running.

Helping extensions to access more meaningful search input and presenting search results is without saying a pressing matter.

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See also

The only tweak we found so far that makes search life in Mediawiki more satisfying is the fact that MW’s internal pages MediaWiki:Searchmenu-new and MediaWiki:Searchmenu-exists allows the display additional guidance. Enhancing those with some templates allows to display SemanticMediawiki information without any core development see also Combining full-text search and semantic search in an one-step-process.

An open buzilla report on the matter of advanced search functionality.

Notes

We are no experts nor developers and merely state our experience therefore we can’t give any advice beyond the description mentioned above and in future versions those information might be obsolete. We see information supplied here only as to share experience which can vary with different setup’s, people are encourage to make improvements beyond what is been described here. Screen dumps are for illustration and educational purpose only, and do not imply any copyright infringement. 

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