Talk:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Do something about Google & DuckDuckGo search not indexing media files and categories on Commons

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Related wish

Related wish: Community Wishlist/Wishes/(Commons) file description pages should be indexable by (Google) search (this has an unclear title, is not about DuckDuckGo, does not have concrete suggestions, and appears to assume without investigations that this can't be an issue of semi-censorship where the problem is not of technical nature)

I do not believe this criticism of another ticket (authored by User:TheDJ, who does not yet appear to have been informed) to be appropriate, nor valid. The title is appropriate and is an achievable outcome. Mentioning DDG is not necessary; the issue and potential solution apply to and affect all search engines equally. And it clearly identifies technical deficiencies ("content of the metadata on the file description page is not discoverable", "pages have a file extension in the end of the path"), which can be addressed by technical solutions, as discussed in that wish's linked Phbricator ticket. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:13, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

It is not criticism at all. I was clarifying why it's not the same and I wonder why you take it as a criticism but I have no problem with removing it in case it appears like so to users and/or if you see a problem with that. However, it looks you didn't read the full thing: the other proposal also assumes the technical issue is the problem and that despite of Google being a pretty large resourceful entity where one can assume that the search engine does not fail merely because a nonfile url ends in .jpg. Mentioning DGG may not be necessary but I choose to do so while the other proposal chose to only mention Google while ignoring all the other search engines. Also I informed TheDJ weeks in advance at the talk page of the other issue. You make it seem like I was hiding this proposal from him, thanks for pinging him. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:44, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I admit I missed that talk page discussion, but it is hardly clear about your intention to make this wish. I also don't think phrases such as "unclear title", "does not have concrete suggestions", and "appears to assume without investigations" can be taken as anything but criticism. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:53, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Well criticism is not a bad thing or forbidden. I pointed out the points there earlier after which the wish could have been edited. I don't have a problem with removing that part but I wonder whether people will then be confused. Removing it for now. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:06, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you

Hello @Pigsonthewing, thank you for sharing a problem with the Community Wishlist. We will get back to you with further questions if need be. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 14:03, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Focus area?

@JWheeler-WMF: Could you add this to the focus area Improved discovery of media files? It's linked from there so shouldn't it be in that focus area? That this wish is also about DuckDuckGo and Bing which many millions use is already a large difference between this and the linked related wish which is in that focus area – the main difference is that the other wish assumes to know what the (unlikely) cause of this problem is. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:46, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes - clerical oversight! JWheeler-WMF (talk) 16:42, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

In progress

We have a promising lead on what the problem is here in T54647, so moving this to "in progress"

CParle (WMF) (talk) 13:01, 18 June 2025 (UTC)