Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Search and Categories/Add "Sorting order by alphabet" in Special:Search

Random proposal ►◄ Search and Categories The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Add "Sorting order by alphabet" in Special:Search

Problem: If you use Advanced search (example) you can choose between the three following sorting orders:
1. "Relevance"
2. "Edit date - current on top"
3. "Creation date - current on top"

Or if you are skilled enough you can use some more, but no "Sorting order by alphabet"

Proposed solution: Add "by alphabet" (and also maybe some others) as a possible selection for sorting order under Advanced search.
Who would benefit: probably all editors and readers
More comments: Thank you!
Phabricator tickets: T40403
Proposer: W like wiki (talk) 04:44, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

by alphabet of which word / which part of the search result (snippet, title, section headers, categories the page is in, pdf contents... all those can be partially matched search results) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:56, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @TheDJ:, ok, thanks to your question I realised that I made a mistake in the search link above: it should be searching in title! (and not searching in fulltext). So simply I meant sorting by title. Regards --W like wiki (talk) 01:29, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This was discussed nearly a decade ago and it was decided that for performance reasons alphabetic results were not possible. I don't know if that's still the case (I presume it's still not easy; there are more sort orders documented than are available in the UI, but still none for alphabetical). I'm thinking this should be closed as not possible, but will see if we can get clarification first. I'm not sure if it helps, but the list of categories for the example above (starting with "Categories by") can be done on Quarry. —SWilson (WMF) (talk) 09:27, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @SWilson (WMF): Thank you for the 100% links!

So I checked the phab discussion, here an update: The discussion was paused in 2014 with doubts about the performance, as you mentioned. In 2017 it was restarted. At least a posted quote from the IFLA Statement of Principles (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) 7.2 state:

"When searching retrieves a large number of [results], results should be displayed in some logical order convenient to the [search] user [...]. The user should be able to choose among different criteria: date of publication, alphabetical order, relevance ranking, etc."

made it clear that it is maybe worth to try it. The discussion is still in progress.

The Quarry Link is great, it offers what I was looking for (sorting by title) and even more. It is maybe a bit of what TheDJ was asking: different sorting possibilities. But one big disadvantage: Quarry is an extern link! So first you have to leave wikipedia/commons and go to Quarry. Than people have to understand how Quarry works (for me I dont know yet). But even when they are able to use Quarry, than the search results are still not linked! So for each search result you are interessted to open, you have to do manuelly copy paste to commons/wikipedia, hmm... --W like wiki (talk) 01:29, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@W like wiki: Oh, absolutely. I wouldn't recommend Quarry as an end-user sort of tool! It's mainly good for queries that are not possible in any other way, generally things that are of too limited scope to be worth building into the software proper. Note that it is an external tool, but it's still within Wikimedia (i.e. it's hosted by Wikimedia Cloud Services). For more info about Quarry, see Research:Quarry. SWilson (WMF) (talk) 01:41, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Support It would be really useful. —2dk (talk) 19:16, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I use en:User:The Transhumanist/SearchSuite for this but built-in is better. Certes (talk) 21:36, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Jensbest (talk) 23:32, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Smasongarrison (talk) 23:36, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Jesielt (talk) 00:10, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Magnoliasouth (talk) 00:13, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Skimel (talk) 00:18, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 01:22, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Jurbop (talk) 07:59, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Кирилл С1 (talk) 14:34, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ekrembjk09 (talk) 19:37, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support --NGC 54 (talk｜contribs) 00:59, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Thomas Kinz (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Libcub (talk) 05:28, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Erbiton (talk) 21:03, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Elilopes (talk) 19:06, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support INS Pirat (talk) 10:54, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support De un millón (talk) 23:29, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Doktor Züm (talk) 07:03, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Aishik Rehman (talk) 08:04, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support مهدی بهرامی مطلق (talk) 10:13, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support β₁₆ - (talk) 15:55, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support MASUM THE GREAT (talk) 16:37, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support ~ Eejit43 (talk) 18:27, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support —‍(ping on reply)—‍CX Zoom (A/अ/অ) (let's talk|contribs) 21:35, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Luckyfuy (talk) 07:44, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support BitterLemon2021 (talk) 09:29, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wire723 (talk) 11:47, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Herbert Ortner (talk) 13:26, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:16, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support This should also be added in the wiki. Thingofme (talk) 15:35, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Aspere (talk) 15:58, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support cyrfaw (talk) 14:57, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support schurdl (talk) 15:17, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 11:41, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support NaBUru38 (talk) 18:44, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Argeste (talk) 08:31, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Morten Haan (talk) 18:45, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support E0126E (talk) 02:22, 24 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support CmdrDan (talk) 17:15, 24 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]