Community Wishlist Survey 2015/Search

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Image searches based on image recognition[edit]

This is mainly needed on Wikimedia Commons. But if we had it there it would be useful in many other places.

Image searches based on image recognition is a newish area of technology, I've seen it demonstrated at the British Library, it would have many interesting uses on Wikimedia Commons, not least in categorising new images; but also in enabling our GLAM partners and others to find new similarities amongst art objects and especially archaeological objects uploaded on Commons. Ideally it should work both from an individual image - "find images like this" from a category - these thousand images are examples of what a ship looks like, please find more like them, and from a highlighted area of an image. WereSpielChequers (talk) 21:03, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier discussion and endorsements
  • Endorsed Endorsed I think I also saw the presentation that WSC is talking about, a year ago by a couple of research students from the visual geometry group at Oxford. In a week, they downloaded a million images from the BL Mechanical Curator set, extracted a 100-element feature vector for each one, and were then able to show off these two demos using convolutional neural networks trained on the fly -- one giving total recall of similar objects from a sample image, without the very narrow limitations of the kind of perceptual hashing we've seen before; the other giving impressive thematic retrieval for arbitrary ask-the-audience themes. Very impressive, and it would be fantastic to have similar indexing, supporting similar tools, running on Commons. Jheald (talk) 23:13, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Votes[edit]

  1. Support Support --Minihaa (talk) 19:52, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support Support --Usien6 (talk) 20:58, 1 December 2015 (UTC) // As long as it doesn't burden the WMF (neither in computational resources, nor in developing/maintaining effort)[reply]
  3. Neutral Neutral I think this is useful and has the potential to become an important feature of Wikimedia's pages -- but I think it would take a lot of work to implement, and that it's not really a priority. -- 2ReinreB2 (talk) 21:40, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Support I'm currently studying this technology. We can also imagine to search an image from a drawing interface, or a sound by humming. JackPotte (talk) 21:52, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Neutral Neutral per 2ReinreB2. Stevie is the man! TalkWork 12:53, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support Support--Manlleus (talk) 15:43, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support Support Nikkimaria (talk) 00:37, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support Support Lots of underused images could be better found and categorized. Seems like a fine thing to explore. — Earwig talk 02:04, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support Support -- SantiLak (talk) 10:48, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support Support --Z 12:29, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support Support Alkamid (talk) 22:34, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Improve Special:LinkSearch[edit]

Special:LinkSearch presently provides a rather messy and inflexible interface. It is useful only for finding links to sites that are rarely linked, as the list quickly becomes cluttered. Of the possible improvements, two would greatly increase its usability for editors:

  • Allow the search to be easily limited to a single namespace. This would allow editors to focus on links appearing in articles rather than in talk-page discussions, userpages, etc
  • Identify whether the link appears in the article body, references, or at the end of the article. By consensus, certain links are not considered to be reliable sources but may be used as external links; generally, external links should not appear inline (except as interwiki links). Nikkimaria (talk) 00:45, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Earlier discussion and endorsements
Endorsed Endorsed Please note that the first bulletpoint is a duplicate of my proposal ("Linksearch per namespace") below. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 01:20, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Endorsed Endorsed. Add phab:T35030 (support for protocol relative URLs), phab:T14810 (default to all protocols -- HTTPS spam is becoming more common) and phab:T100807 (speedup) to the things that need to be done. MER-C (talk) 21:23, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Votes[edit]

  1. Support Support Add phab:T35030 (support for protocol relative URLs), phab:T14810 (default to all protocols -- HTTPS spam is becoming more common) and phab:T100807 (speedup) to the things that need to be done. MER-C (talk) 10:51, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support Support --MGChecker (talk) 19:35, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Support Orlodrim (talk) 20:34, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Support Nyttend (talk) 21:44, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support Support --Leyo (talk) 23:17, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support Support Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:25, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support Support tufor (talk) 15:52, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support Support The Wikipedia Library is already work on something similar, we could really use developer support to scale: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T102064 Sadads (talk) 16:11, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support Support Risker (talk) 04:30, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support Support Litlok (talk) 08:36, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support Support Graham87 (talk) 11:39, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support Support Stevie is the man! TalkWork 12:56, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support SupportNickK (talk) 15:26, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support Support Matěj Suchánek (talk) 15:38, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support Support--Manlleus (talk) 15:43, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Support Support SantiLak (talk) 10:48, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Support SupportRhododendrites talk \\ 01:21, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Support Support -- Juetho (talk) 09:56, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Multilingual search[edit]

Allow users to search across all languages of a project, e.g. to optionally return results of a search on English Wikipedia across all the Wikipedias. Fences and windows (talk) 12:37, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier discussion and endorsements
  • Endorsed Endorsed but with care - this will likely not be computationally cheap and wholesale "all-wiki searches" should be discouraged for that reason. However, searching over 2 or 3 languages is both useful and not-too-expensive. Davidwr/talk 06:06, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorsed Endorsed Ottawahitech (talk)

Votes[edit]

  1. Support Support It would really help to earn time. --La femme de menage (talk) 13:38, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support Support --Continua Evoluzione (talk) 15:06, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Neutral Neutral It is partly implemented. Maybe add a tick "search in other languages"? --Jarash (talk) 15:49, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Support --Dodi123 (talk) 17:07, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Oppose Oppose. Probably not feasible performance-wise. In the meantime, you can search "site:wikipedia.org X" using your favorite search engine. MER-C (talk) 12:14, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support Support but only if it can be done in a way to prevent performance issues. Stevie is the man! TalkWork 13:00, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support Support--Manlleus (talk) 15:43, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support Support Of course it's feasible performance-wise. It's only a matter of maintaining an index that covers multiple projects. Why this wasn't done 10 years ago is beyond me. —Pengo (talk) 21:45, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support Support -- SantiLak (talk) 10:48, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support Support -- Somej (talk) 07:31, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Provide a means of searching for deleted pages[edit]

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T109561

As an administrator, I want to search the archive table for deleted pages whose title I don't exactly remember, or are similar in nature -- e.g. "Dr. John Smith", "John Anthony Smith" and "John Smith". Bonus: add pagination to Special:Undelete (should be easy). MER-C (talk) 21:33, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier discussion and endorsements
  • Endorsed Endorsed --Edgars2007 (talk) 12:25, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorsed Endorsed Also, as a non-admin it would be lovely to be able to locate edits of mine which seem to disappear on a regular basis without any rhyme or reason. Ottawahitech (talk) 00:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorsed Endorsed and Comment Comment For that matter, the technical ability for any arbitrary member of any arbitrary user-group to search any revision they can see should be in the mediawiki code, with the Wikimedia-sponsored Wikis will not implement it for editors that have not been through some kind of community-confirmation process (similar to en:Wikipedia:Requests for adminship) without a community discussion. I expect that Wikis that already have a "researcher" user-group that requires credentials to obtain will approve adding this user-right to the "researcher" toolkit. Davidwr/talk 22:42, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorsed Endorsed since more than one year I have been saying that some kind of easier access to deleted information should be possible to non-admins. As I have pointed out, it can be adopted for certain namespaces and certain groups of users (rollbacker, long-term autopatrolled, autopatrolled or as a specific flag) depending on the local platforms. IMHO, the future of wikipedia, at least on platforms with many users, is in the flexible distribution of competences among the users, especially the ns0-related ones. I welcome every step in that direction.--Alexmar983 (talk) 02:48, 26 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    1) I don't think this proposal has anything it it about giving access to deleted material to non-admins, and 2) I think the Foundation is on record as saying that access to deleted material requires going through a community-approval process similar to the English Wikipedia's request for adminship process. In other words, giving non-admins access to deleted material will require either asking the Foundation to reconsider their stance on the issue or it will require an editors to go through an RFA-like process to get user-rights that are less than those of a full administrator. By the way, I agree with you at least in part: It would be nice to have a less-than-admin user-right/user-group that had access to some or all deleted material. Whether people holding that right should have to go through an RFA-like process first depends largely on what material is being accessed. For example, if a "delete content in own user-space, provided it has never been move" user-right exists, then a corresponding "undelete" user-right should also exist, and IMHO the Foundation should waive the "must go through an RFA-like process" rule for such a combined user-right. It's kind of a moot point on the English Wikipedia due to the strong headwinds against further user-right un-bundling, but I wouldn't rule out other Wikipedia communities desiring such a user-right pair. Davidwr/talk 16:04, 26 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    In the comments some user stressed this request. You are always free to ignore it, but you asked the feedback of the community and we can always shape the request into something else, it is part of the wiki-collaboration.
    The foundation can state whatever she wants and we will read the records with a lot of attention. Something formal and professional, of course, no "generic statement". Someone already requested a detailed statement with a real technical background on the topic. Whatever is the core idea behind an "RFA-like process" I think it is very weak from a legal point of view. Admins don't provide a IC card to the WMF to get their flag... Considering that RFA are also very different on different wikis, "collective" has a certain degree of ambiguity. You give a right with different collective procdures to a restricted group of users whose identity you don't verify. If you finally make it clear what "collective" means for WMF, I don't think that adopting a certain process for a flag is such a big deal. Of course, I'm not paid to be a lawyer, but I guess someone at WMF is. In additon to that, please consider that the fact that a collective process is required to access ALL the amount of deleted information does not imply that SOME amount of such information can always be accessed WITHOUT such process. For example I may not have access to the text of a deleted article, but why shouldn't I access its history? How knowing that User X crated that deleted article is legally critical for anyone? There is a clear margin here, we will start to explore it soon or later. --Alexmar983 (talk) 19:46, 26 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Votes[edit]

  1. Support Support as proposer. MER-C (talk) 10:18, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support Support Jenks24 (talk) 10:47, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Support. --Stryn (talk) 19:11, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Support .--Grind24 (talk) 20:46, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support Support - admins should have all the abilities with deleted pages that they do with non-deleted pages. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 21:23, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support Support Matiia (talk) 21:36, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support Support It needs to be a separate search page, lest I encounter deleted articles when I'm searching for information in existing articles. Nyttend (talk) 21:46, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support Support This, that and the other (talk) 22:29, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support Support This will save a lot of guesswork, and make it much easier to detect when an article is being re-created. DGG (talk) 02:24, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support Support --La femme de menage (talk) 13:34, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support Support --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 14:47, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support Support tufor (talk) 15:53, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support SupportSadads (talk) 16:11, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support Support Goombiis (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support Support Ckoerner (talk) 17:21, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Support Support -- FriedhelmW (talk) 17:40, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Support Support --Calak (talk) 18:24, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Support Support --Usien6 (talk) 21:02, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Support Support Stanko (talk) 22:17, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  20. Support Support --Emptywords (talk) 00:05, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Support Support Tar Lócesilion (queta) 00:12, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Support Support Spencer (talk) 01:07, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Support Support --Jarekt (talk) 04:12, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  24. Support Support Risker (talk) 04:31, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  25. Support Support Graham87 (talk) 11:40, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  26. Support Support Yes. Regards, Kertraon (talk) 13:25, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  27. Support Support Casliber (talk) 13:36, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  28. Support SupportNickK (talk) 15:27, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  29. Support Support--Manlleus (talk) 15:43, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  30. Support Support Mike Peel (talk) 23:21, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  31. Support Support --AS (talk) 09:57, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  32. Support Support Rzuwig 10:58, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  33. Support Support this will often help with undelete requests. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:19, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  34. Support Support -- SantiLak (talk) 10:48, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  35. Support Support GY Fan 11:36, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  36. Support SupportRhododendrites talk \\ 01:43, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  37. Support Support Matěj Suchánek (talk) 21:10, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Search edit summaries[edit]

I would like to be able to get a list of all edits made with a specific editsummary (but not limited to one specific editor, like this tool). The Quixotic Potato (talk) 06:41, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier discussion and endorsements
Endorsed Endorsed This is also something I have wished for, on more than one occasion. IJBall (talk) 03:42, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Votes[edit]

  1. Support Support This would be good for hunting socks.
    ⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 15:39, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support Support. --Stryn (talk) 19:12, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Support. IJBall (talk) 03:47, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Support --Arnd (talk) 14:56, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support Support this feature could be very useful. tufor (talk) 15:51, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support Support I think extending the hashtag tool from hatnote, and other string searching in edit summaries would be really useful Sadads (talk) 16:13, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support Support --Usien6 (talk) 21:04, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support Support Helder 23:35, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support Support --Emptywords (talk) 00:06, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support Support Tar Lócesilion (queta) 00:11, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support Support Chaoborus (talk) 02:33, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support Support Graham87 (talk) 11:46, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support Support--Barcelona (talk) 12:04, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support Support Stevie is the man! TalkWork 13:02, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support Support Casliber (talk) 13:37, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Support SupportNickK (talk) 15:27, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Support Support--Manlleus (talk) 15:43, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Support Support --AS (talk) 09:58, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Support Support Rzuwig 10:58, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  20. Support Support Nikkimaria (talk) 00:37, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Support Support -- SantiLak (talk) 10:48, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Support Support GY Fan 11:37, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Support Support --Yeza (talk) 16:57, 5 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  24. Support Support J36miles (talk) 00:58, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  25. Support SupportRhododendrites talk \\ 01:44, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  26. Support Support Matěj Suchánek (talk) 21:11, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  27. Support Support SteveStrummer (talk) 01:42, 10 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  28. Support Support Nocowardsoulismine (talk) 17:36, 12 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  29. Support Support Alkamid (talk) 22:35, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  30. Support Support -- Juetho (talk) 09:56, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]