Hi Lars– Searching on Commons does indeed leave much to be desired. My team (Structured Data) has been working on a new search experience that is hopefully better; it involves both some back-end improvements to the algorithm (adding structured data on File pages to the search index) as well as a new UI that’s better suited for media-based results.
This project is still kind of in beta but it’s live now at Special:MediaSearch <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MediaSearch?type=bitmap>. We’re still making improvements to both the back-end search as well as the user experience. Here’s a little more about the project; feel free to share any thoughts or feedback on the discussion tab. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Media_search <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Media_search> Best, Eric — Eric Gardner Software Engineer, Structured Data Wikimedia Foundation > On Nov 16, 2020, at 1:38 AM, Kosta Harlan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Special:MediaSearch seems to work better: > https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MediaSearch?type=bitmap&q=exterior+lantern+corner > , if I've understood what you're looking for. > > Kosta > > On 16/11/2020 01:18, Lars Aronsson wrote: >> I've been contributing to Wikipedia since 2001 and to >> Wikimedia Commons since 2005. I'm not new to this. >> Wikimedia Commons now has millions of images and thousands >> of categories. But it's really hard to find anything. >> >> Today I was looking for photos of buildings that have >> an exterior lantern on their corner. This is common >> in the countryside, where there are no streetlights >> and no other buildings nearby. You put a lantern on >> the outside of your house, and you put it on the >> corner to cover two sides with one lamp. >> >> So there are categories for buildings and for houses. >> And by country and by county. And by building >> material. And there is a category for exterior >> lanterns, but none of the photos there are really >> corner-mounted. >> >> When I arrive at Commons, there is a search box and so >> I type "exterior lantern corner", but all it does is to >> search text content and descriptions. So I get lots of >> hits in scanned documents, which is not what I wanted. >> I can limit my search to the "File" namespace, but >> that includes both JPEG photos and PDF documents. >> >> Here are indeed some corner lamps, but not the rural >> kind I wanted, >> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tinghuset_(lanterne).jpg >> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fanal_públic_LED.JPG >> >> Here is what I search, but the lamp (in the upper left) >> is too small to be useful in this photo, >> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vårdinge_församlingshem.JPG >> >> This is where I want to find more images like these, >> not in the same category, just similar photos. >> Surely, such a search function could be implemented >> in 2020, in addition to our current text search? >> Hasn't anybody done this already? >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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