Help talk:Searching

The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995

[edit] Search Function Bug?

Recently the search function on this page has been behaving strangely. As I type, the main page is replaced by a box with "Search for articles containing '...'" and "Search for articles named '...'" As it always comes up before I am finished typing (the rest of my letters filling in as I type) it is a little distracting. Is this necessary or intentional? ^{—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.136.33.199 (talk • contribs).}

It's a new feature that suddenly appeared a few weeks ago. I'm not sure I like it either, especially since it currently doesn't work properly. (It only searches the Main namespace, which is a shame because none of the things you're searching for are likely to be found there.) Personally, I'd favor getting rid of it, or at least making it an optional feature you can turn off in your preferences. And if it stays, it obviously needs to be fixed, because right now it's just useless. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 00:43, 30 November 2007 (EST)

Daveh enabled the Ajax search feature on 15th November, which is what caused the changes that you're noticing. I don't like the way the new search feature works either, and I made a request at the talk page requesting that it be turned off, but until now nobody else has followed up on the request and therefore I've been reluctant to press the issue. If there really are other editors who believe that the ajax search needs to be turned off, I'll followup with a request on Daveh's talk page. --00:50, 30 November 2007 (EST)

Well I'm not an editor (just a heavy user) but if it'll help, I'll create an account and add my voice to yours! 24.136.33.199 14:51, 1 December 2007 (EST)

Frankly, your opinion as a regular reader of the site is possibly even more valuable than an editor's opinion ;) Those of us who edit the site don't necessarily see the site's organization the same way as readers (i.e., it's easier to remember what content is on which page if you put it there in the first place ;) ). But despite the far larger number of readers than editors using the site, we rarely get feedback from readers. So it's good occasionally to hear what readers would find useful :)

In any case, philosophizing aside, I just bugged Daveh about it. Hopefully he'll have some time before too long to follow up on it. --Nephele^Talk 15:06, 1 December 2007 (EST)

[edit] Random Page Section?

I was thinking it would be helpful to put random page parameters in "my preferences" for people's accounts so if people are using it, they can narrow it down to whichever games they want. --Piercethetruth 16:35, 19 February 2008 (EST)

That's something that we can't do without changing the wiki software itself. I'd agree it would be nice, but I'm not sure it's that high up the list of priorities. One problem is that each change that gets made to UESP's wiki pages means more time at each upgrade and more chances that something goes wrong. So although it's a good idea, don't be surprised if it doesn't happen. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 16:42, 19 February 2008 (EST)

Interesting idea...technically it wouldn't be too hard to use the user's search preferences and grab a random page from those selected namespaces. The down side is that it would be non-intuitive, i.e., why should my search preference affect the random page selection? So interesting idea but way down on the list of things to do. -- Daveh 17:15, 19 February 2008 (EST)