https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22272
Summary: Search-suggestions should priorize Articles which
start with the exact charsequenze entered
Product: MediaWiki extensions
Version: any
Platform: All
OS/Version: All
Status: NEW
Severity: enhancement
Priority: Normal
Component: Lucene Search
AssignedTo: rain...@eunet.rs
ReportedBy: gnu1...@arcor.de
The new search suggestions is quite a nice thing, but there is a usability flaw
concerning special characters in german (umlauts, ß), french (accents) and very
likely a lot of other languages.
Since it is very unlikely that a german user enters an 'ä' accidentally instead
of an 'a', i think he can expect to be presented suggestions which start with
the exact character sequence he typed. This is not the case, like the following
example on de-wp shows:
If you enter the characters 'fü' in the searchbox, the following suggestions
appear: Fußball, Fußball-Bundesliga, Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft 2006,
Fußballverein, Fußballtrainer, Fulda, Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft,
Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft 2002, Fußball-Europameisterschaft 2008. Mainly lot
about soccer/football (Fußball in german), its coaches and championships, and
one town (Fulda). Only in the very last place, usually not visible if the user
does not notice the scrollslider, he will find the word 'Fürst' (sovereign). He
will not notice that there are a lot of other articles starting with this
sequence: Fürth, Fürstenfeldbruck, Fürstenwalde, Führer, Fühler and all the
principalities called 'Fürstentum xyz':
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial%3APr%C3%A4fixindex&prefix=F%C3%BC&namespace=0
Interesting enough: If you start typing 'Fue' (with 'ue' being the standard
transcription for 'ü' when your keyboard does not have the umlauts on it), you
are immediately presented a list with 'Fü'-words. This is really handy for
people who have no ü on their keyboard, but it is very unlikely that it comes
to a german/swiss/austrian users mind that, in order to get better suggestions,
he has to use a foreign-language-trick when he browses 'his' wikipedia with
'his' keyboard.
You'll find the same behaviour on the fr-wp, sv-wp and a lot of others.
So here is my appeal: Please change the search-suggestions in a way that
Articles starting with the exact sequence (e.g. when using special characters)
entered are priorized over those who are similar to a possible transliteration
of the special characters.
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