Search should be better at handling typos (Community Wishlist/W258)
The default search has an "autosuggest" feature for when it can't find an exact match on page title, but it's very limited. It lacks the ability to handle common typos such as inputting a character extra times. Thus, even if a search query differs from an existing page title by e.g. the addition of an extra character, the suggest doesn't find it and tends to give only distantly related suggested results, likely not what the searcher was looking for. This seriously reduces the usefulness of it for the Average Joe. (So they mostly use external search engines instead.)
One example: Australite is an article, but a search for "Australlite" instead gives suggested results about "Australie". The relevant fancy term here is "edit distance": how similar two strings of text are. Many algorithms and software libraries exist for determining "edit distance" between strings, for functions such as spelling correction.
Unassigned
Anyone using search on Wikimedia projects
- Created: 03:46, 21 August 2024
- Last updated: 11:13, 20 March 2026
- Author: Slowking Man (talk)
This wish currently has 2 supporters. Voting for this wish is open until it is completed.