Cross-posting from wikitech-l. Please discuss there.

Dan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dan Garry <dga...@wikimedia.org>
Date: 10 August 2015 at 14:36
Subject: Maximum search query length coming soon
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org>


Hello!

The Search Team in the Discovery Department is implementing a maximum
search query length <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T107947>. There are
two main reasons to do this:

   1. Extremely long queries are almost always gibberish from things like
   malfunctioning scrapers. These queries skew our statistics about the
   usefulness of our search. Implementing a limit will reduce the magnitude of
   skew.
   2. Extremely long queries have a disproportionate impact on performance.
   On its own this isn't enough, but considering point 1 above, limiting them
   is unlikely to impact any actual users. Implementing a limit will improve
   performance.

We've chosen a hard limit of 300 characters. If your query exceeds this,
you will be told that your query exceeds the maximum length. Based on our
analysis of typical query lengths
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T107947#1515387>, this change should
impact almost nobody. If you think you'll be adversely affected, please
reach out to us and we'll work with you to figure something out.

Thanks!

Dan

-- 
Dan Garry
Lead Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation



-- 
Dan Garry
Lead Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation
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