The site's search engine does not seem to accept near-perfect matches at all in some cases.

Case in point:

The main article (here) is called Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack. However, doing a search for Final Fantasy XII Soundtrack yields an error saying that the page doesn't exist, and worse still, does not even list the correct page under its possible matches even though every word is in order, minus the word "original."

Perhaps Wikipedia should sit down and chat with the Google guys on how to make a search engine that quickly and effectively gets you what you want.

Yeah, I've often noticed how badly it sucks. A little hint for ya that I use: type "Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack wikipedia" into google, and it will bring up the page you need!

Yeah, just searching on google will often bring up the Wiki page in the first few results.

And this is the thing.

It's up to you, the person who noticed THE ****ING PROBLEM, to go and correct it by making a redirect.

Some guy did not manually visit and take note of every single website on the planet to create accurate Google search results either. You can't expect people to waste my time redirecting thousands of sites on Wikipedia if the search engine itself is flawed. A site such as Wikipedia should be based around the idea of letting people compose and edit articles, not fight the uphill battle of somehow trying to create a bizillion redirects in a vain attempt to make the damn search engine work as well as people expect.

But then again, that's just my opinion.

And I will use the Google idea from now on.

I think the better question is, why do I zone out during every lecture... yet somehow get sucked into learning about everything useless for hours on Wikipedia?

Thanks to today, I am an expert on ancient Uzbek history, the Hagia Sophia, and the life and times of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Wikipedia is starting to piss me off. The small number of pages that I have contributed to (by fixing misinformation and providing CITATIONS for what I put in) have been reversed because someone thought that his misguided uncited and unsupported preconception was actually correct.

Heh, me too. I'm the kind of weirdo that has a hard time sitting down a reading a book for long periods of time yet I strangely get addicted to reading wikipedia for hours and hours. I don't know what's my problem with that - could it be because it's more convenient to read off a monitor than to hold open a book? Damn I'm lazy, lol.

I'm only going to touch on a few things. I just got home from work. I'm tired.


Google != Wikipedia.

Wikipedia DOES NOT work the same as Google. Wikipedia isn't even HALF AS BIG AS GOOGLE.

Google doesn't really contain any information of it's own on it's search engine. OF ****ING COURSE it provides the "next best match" THATS WHAT SEARCH ENGINES DO. Wikipedia is a HUGE DATABASE OF SOME REALLY ULTRA-SPECIFIC STUFF. Which is WHY there are PAGE REDIRECTS, AND EXCESSIVELY LARGE SUBJECT TITLES.

Go read the encyclopedia. It's like the exact same thing.

Like, a book version of wikipedia?

The encyclopedia won't have the huge **** your friend tom took and decided to start a wiki for the world's biggest ****.

Ya think?

Wikipedia is not as big as google, more specific, and therefore, it doesn't deserve a better search engine? Ummm...no.

And the part where you quoted my post as "manure" makes you look like some little immature prick. I've seen emo kids with psychological issues that have fewer emotional outbreaks than you do.

You know, I was just thinking yesterday that Wikipedia's search needs a lot of work. I've not known the exact spelling of someone's name before, been off by one letter, and received no results because of it. I think I'm just going to stick to using google to search Wikipedia from now one.

I always search wikipedia by using google and prefixing my search with 'wikipedia'. Wikipedia even suggests doing that somewhere, that's how I picked up the habit.

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DID YOU NOT READ ANY OF WHAT I POSTED?


Obviously you didn't.

Or you're stupid. It's probably a combination of the two.

Which is what I said at the very beginning of the thread.

oh, and I'll throw in there, because I want to!

Your argument is that Wikipedia is "huge database of some really ultra-specific stuff" and therefore doesn't need a Google-like search engine, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

In your previous post, you've established the following:

1) Wikipedia is not Google.
2) Wikipedia is smaller than Google.
3) Wikipedia has its own content, whereas Google does not.

Yet any large information website needs easy and quick access to information which is done by letting users search the website's content quickly and effectively. One of the reasons people use an online encyclopedia in the first place is to get to information quickly.

The Wikipedia Search sometimes does not satisfy this need because
1) It relies too much on scanning the title of an article instead of its actual content (unlike Google)
2) It only accepts exact matches

These are flaws within the Wikipedia system that no amount of redirecting can resolve, and continue to frustrate hundreds of thousands of people that use the site every day.

Knobz, just stop.

Please.

(for lack of a point and laugh emoticon)

I'm with Bill, you're not really gaining anything by fighting about it.

Yeah, with all the time you spent complaining about it and posting here, you could have found whatever you were looking for 20 times over. How long does it really take to change your search phrase? A couple of seconds. Deal with it.

Knobz does have a valid point. Just because wiki searches its own content doesnt mean it shouldn't have a search engine that works well.

like aglar said, a search engine shouldnt punk out on you if you're only one letter off in the spelling, or missing a word from the title.

lay off guys. and knobz, try contacting wiki about the problem with the search engine, its possible they're working on it, or dont know about the issue.

Yeah, google is the real wikipedia search engine.

No he doesn't.

Search an encylopedia for something.

Be happy Wikipedia even gives you a helpful suggestion most of the time.

I'm sure if it was possible to give a printed encylopedia a decent search function they would have.

There is no reason to not give wikpedia a good search function just because traditional ones don't have them, technology is supposed to overcome problems not be stupidly restricted by them just for the sake of nostalgia.

Dude, even ENCARTA does the same thing.

It's not even a problem. Because the intent is that SOMEONE WILL MAKE A RE-DIRECT. Because, like I said, EVERYTHING ON WIKIPEDIA IS OF AN ULTRA SPECIFIC NATURE. And if Wikipedia's search engine were to start "determining" what should be re-directed there would be MORE OF A PROBLEM.

A decent search engine wouldn't automatically re-direct. It would show a list of articles related to the search query, in the hope that one of them might be what the user is looking for.

Agreed.

Wikipedia already does that.

I know Rob. Was just saying that's what a good search engine should do, Wikipedia or Encyclopedia or no.

Just supressing fire before someone was going to attempt to use dumb ammo.

(In other words, in no way directed at you.)

Except it doesn't, as with Knobz's example. The page has existed for 2 months and still hasn't been indexed by the search engine.

Wikipedia is not a regular paper encylopedia, nor was it ever meant to be. Why can't you search regular encylopedias? Because they aren't digital. Duh. Is that really such a terribly diffcult concept to understand?

Do paper instruction manuals allow you search their content? No. Do the internet support sites that offer the same content? Yes. That illustrates the difference between a regular encyclopedia and wikipedia.

Or perhaps I'm still not getting your argument.

So, Rob, do me a favor:

State what you're complete point is, in one sentence, without any of the childish insults, derogatory languance and emotional outbreaks that normally grace your posts. "Enlighten me" if you will, because I'm obviously too slow to understand your completely unmistaken intellecutal genius.

The point is that it doesn't do it well.

I'm done arguing, because it's fairly clear that you're never going to understand.


I will however, say one last thing. My last swing of the hammer if you will.


Wikipedia's search engine does EXACTLY WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO. It is upto THE USER TO DO REDIRECTION. I believe, currently the only thing Wikipedia does along that line by itself are disambiguation pages. Which is how it should be. If wikipedia suddenly decided what needs to be a redirection, there would be CHAOS. Thats now how things work. Get over it.

The end.

"Go" sends you to the article, "Search" does SEARCHING.

It is the responsibility of redirects to make the "Go" facility work, it's the responsibility of a descent search algorithm to make the "Search" facility to work. As it stands, the "Go" facility works just fine, the "Search" facility doesn't, it won't necessarily return the result you want even if your query is the exact name of the article itself.

Wikipedia does not have to redirect pages on its own - assuming its search engine provides an automatic list of possible matches when the search term does not have an article linked directly to it.

You've said Wikipedia already does this, while it's clear it does not as is evident by the example I posted at the beginning of the thread.

EDIT: And saying that I'll "never understand" is a cheap way of discontinuing the discussion. Just respond to this post and tell me why the argument I'm making is not valid, because it appears to be whichever way I look at it.

Saying you'll never understand and moving on is a better way to be a bigger person and not sink to the level of calling you an idiot.

Ooops.

Sweet Jebus it's the internet! If you've nothing better to do all day than try to get one over on each other arguing about the merits of Wikipedia's search function perhaps it's time to go outside some more - go to a barbeque, play some sport, anything to get away from this pointless bickering.

/minimod and not bothered tonight.