Talk:Community Wishlist/W77

Thank You

Hello Keith D, thank you for sharing a problem with the Community Wishlist. We will get back to you with further questions if need be. You might also want to check out the question below from a colleague volunteer. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 12:42, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@Keith D

Thanks for your patience!

While reviewing this with the team, we were unsure about some important details to understand the feasibility of the wish - it would require complex parsing and index building to support the example use cases. Would you mind providing more details and updating the wish? @Prototyperspective and @Pppery have provided some pointers in the thread below (thank you both!), which you can consider to update the wish under the content page. Then we can circle back with stakeholders. MikeZ-WMF (talk) 16:47, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

A bit unclear

What do you think about this proposal to enable searching fields of the File information template on Commons?: How to search the fields of the File information template on Commons? Prototyperspective (talk) 18:32, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Good start

That would be a good start, but you would have to consider templates nested in the information template such as Credit_line which can have the same field names such as author. Keith D (talk) 14:53, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

This seems to be about Commons (too?) so I'll add the tag. Please remove it or clarify if it isn't much about Commons. Secondly, you can already exclude categories via the -incategory:"catname" or -deepcategory search operators where the former always works but only excludes files directly within that category and the latter often doesn't work but also excludes files in any of its subcategories or their subcategories. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:31, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

This has now been set to accepted by Pppery but I find it very unclear; @Keith D: could you please answer these:

• maybe addition of a simple keyword to the string for each case. which case(s)? What would these keywords search – various common regexes so the user doesn't need to know regex but can use common regexes? If so, which?
• The two cases I am thinking about are to exclude searching in URLs from the search this can already be done using -insource:url so what are you asking here for? Are you asking for these things to be added to the GUI so people can enter it in a inputbox or sth like that?
• and to exclude parameters of templates from the search How? Concrete example(s)?
• Another case would be to exclude file names. What do you mean? You mean certain text in file names? If so, one can already use -intitle:"text in title"
• Further would be a keyword to exclude categories. As explained above, one can already do so. Thus, the what remains unclear is which change you are asking for – a GUI input box that says "Excluded categories" maybe?

It may be a good idea to also add an infobox about things being unclear and asked on the talk page for wishes like this where lots of things are unclear. This motivates and facilitates these points getting answered and for readers of wishes to easily see that it's not just them to which the wish is unclear and that there are questions etc (e.g. it's demotivating and cognitively straining to read complex unclear wishes and think hard about what may be meant which inhibits participation by the wider Wikimedia community or makes people leave after checking just a few wishes instead of it being a fun experience). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:59, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

I was thinking of making it easier to perform searches. For example "insource:/fred/" search includes all of the text. I was thinking that you need some key word to exclude it searching in URLs so it does not pick up "https:/www.other.com/freda/text". Similarly another for excluding file names where the seach results would exclude "File:Freda_Briggs_at_London", and another for excluding Categories to avoid returning "Category:Fred Smith". The other case would be to not return results where the string is part of the text of the parameters of a template call so {{template|para1=In freda/para2=London}} would not get returned. Keith D (talk) 12:24, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanations; edited the wish to make it much clearer. You could check if I got anything wrong or if things could be improved/be made clearer further. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:07, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

I accepted this because JWheeler-WMF had accepted it under the old system, and that acceptance mark was lost with the migration to the new system. It's a procedural action, not an assessment of the merits. If you want me to restore it back to Under review, I could. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 15:38, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. In this case I would have said it would be better to keep/restore the Under review status. However, due to the explanations given by Keith D above today and the subsequent edit to the wish, things are clarified and quite clear now so the status is fine again. Thanks, Prototyperspective (talk) 15:55, 21 November 2025 (UTC)