Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

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muzik
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Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by muzik » December 21st, 2021, 3:48 pm

Currently the search function of LifeWiki will only provide suggestions if the case the query is typed in (ignoring the first character as well as the contents of namespaces) would completely match that of the suggestions. I find this to be extremely irritating. For example, searching for an unnamed periodic object would require you to uppercase the "P" after the number, otherwise absolutely no potential results will be showcased.

I've tested this behaviour across other wikis and collections thereof: Fandom wikis as well as Bulbapedia are not subject to this problem, however Miraheze is. Ultimately the desired behaviour is the former.

Would it be possible to somehow change LifeWiki such that case sensitivity is not a concern for search queries?

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muzik
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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by muzik » December 21st, 2021, 3:51 pm

Some visual examples with "Beeh" versus "BEeh":

Minecraft Wiki: both return the same set of suggestions
Image
Image

LifeWiki: the latter returns absolutely nothing
Image
Image

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by Nathaniel » December 21st, 2021, 9:55 pm

I've looked into it, and this seems like it should be a doable change. Seems like a fairly benign change, but I might as well ask anyway: any objections?

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by Book » December 22nd, 2021, 1:42 pm

Nathaniel wrote:
December 21st, 2021, 9:55 pm
I've looked into it, and this seems like it should be a doable change. Seems like a fairly benign change, but I might as well ask anyway: any objections?
This has been a frequent annoyance. Go for it!
Phil Bookman

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by Nathaniel » December 22nd, 2021, 6:44 pm

This is now done, and some rudimentary testing suggests that it works. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by GUYTU6J » December 22nd, 2021, 10:56 pm

Related, is it possible to remove hyphen and space sensitivity as well? For example, Air force should go to the Airforce article directly, and both Ak47 reaction and AK47 reaction go to the AK-47 article directly. In this way we can get rid of some redirect pages, I think.

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by Nathaniel » December 22nd, 2021, 11:04 pm

GUYTU6J wrote:
December 22nd, 2021, 10:56 pm
Related, is it possible to remove hyphen and space sensitivity as well?
This is possible, but much more difficult to set up. The standard way to do this on a wiki is to change the search engine used by MediaWiki to something like Elasticsearch, which requires extra software to be installed on the server. I'll look into it, but I can't make any promises.

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by muzik » December 22nd, 2021, 11:05 pm

Related 2, is it possible to remove stuff like the lower character limit from forum searches? There are a lot of integral search terms that phpBB just throws out because it wrongly declares them unimportant, which gets incredibly frustrating.

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by Nathaniel » December 22nd, 2021, 11:18 pm

muzik wrote:
December 22nd, 2021, 11:05 pm
Related 2, is it possible to remove stuff like the lower character limit from forum searches?
Unfortunately, I don't think so. This issue has come up quite a few times, and I've never found a good solution. phpBB unfortunately is... less than optimal when it comes to searching.

I have the forum set to currently index all words with at least 2 letters. So, in theory, basically all words *should* show up in search results. However, for some reason that doesn't actually seem to happen in practice.

The only other search backend that I can reasonably switch phpBB to right now has the advantage that it supports exact phrase searches (i.e., you can put things in quotes), but the disadvantage that it has a mandatory word length minimum of 4 letters (so no words with 3 letters or fewer would ever be searchable).

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by muzik » December 23rd, 2021, 8:36 pm

Possibly as a result of this change, search suggestions don't seem to be given at all for namespaces (tested with User).

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by GUYTU6J » December 23rd, 2021, 9:34 pm

muzik wrote:
December 23rd, 2021, 8:36 pm
Possibly as a result of this change, search suggestions don't seem to be given at all for namespaces (tested with User).
Confirmed, and even worse is that no results (not only sugestions) will be provided when searching 14P2, despite the existence of 14P2.1, 14P2.3 and 14P2.4 (where is 14P2.2?)

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by Nathaniel » December 24th, 2021, 10:29 am

It looks like upgrading MedaiWiki to the newest version (1.37 from the current 1.33) should fix the namespace issue. Hopefully it'll fix the autocomplete for pages with dots in the name issue too.

However, I'm currently out of town so I can't do an update like that right now. Will aim to do it around January 1 or 2.

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by muzik » January 20th, 2022, 6:58 am

Impolite it may be for me to bring this back up, but it's been a few weeks since the start of January and the search functionality is still as broken as it was since my prior report. I presume either the upgrade is still yet to be done or it was unsuccessful in resolving the issue?

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by pzq_alex » January 21st, 2022, 4:47 am

muzik wrote:
January 20th, 2022, 6:58 am
Impolite it may be for me to bring this back up, but it's been a few weeks since the start of January and the search functionality is still as broken as it was since my prior report. I presume either the upgrade is still yet to be done or it was unsuccessful in resolving the issue?
Is it?
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?sear ... fulltext=1
\sum_{n=1}^\infty H_n/n^2 = \zeta(3)

How much of current CA technology can I redevelop "on a desert island"?

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by muzik » January 21st, 2022, 6:17 am

pzq_alex wrote:
January 21st, 2022, 4:47 am
muzik wrote:
January 20th, 2022, 6:58 am
Impolite it may be for me to bring this back up, but it's been a few weeks since the start of January and the search functionality is still as broken as it was since my prior report. I presume either the upgrade is still yet to be done or it was unsuccessful in resolving the issue?
Is it?
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?sear ... fulltext=1
It certainly is:
Image

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by Nathaniel » January 21st, 2022, 9:36 am

Whoops, sorry about that and thanks for bumping it. I'll aim to do the MW upgrade tonight.

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Re: Case sensitivity in wiki search suggestions

Post by Nathaniel » January 30th, 2022, 9:06 am

Finally upgrading MW right now. Will edit this post once I'm done.

Edit: Done the upgrade. Announcement here. Unfortunately, the TitleKey extension now seems to not be working at all. I will fiddle with it more soon.

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