Last modified: 2006-07-12 21:56:30 UTC
At the en: help desk, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk, one of the more frequently asked questions is "why can't I find my article" and the reason is often that the article is not found by steps 1-4 of the description of the go button (link to meta provided as reference URL). Generally the issue is the title has a mixture of uppercase and lowercase initial letters, like http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwich_City_player_of_the_year. According to step 5 of what "go" does, if steps 1-4 don't result in a match it then does a case insensitive search (also matching partial page titles). Perhaps the software might have done this in the past, but it doesn't now. If this behavior could be restored, it would eliminate a fair amount of user confusion. My general answer at the en: help desk is "create a redirect" (in this case either http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwich_city_player_of_the_year or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwich_City_Player_Of_The_Year is sufficient), but if "go" could be changed to include what step 5 says this would not be necessary.
Fulltext search is case-insensitive. Note that the search engine may currently take up to several weeks to update for new articles.
To clarify, this request has to do with "go", not "search". I understand "search" is case-insensitive. "Go" is not. If you read the description of what "go" does (from the link provided above), it includes a step that does not currently happen but perhaps did in some previous version. If this "go" behavior could be reintroduced, it would be helpful.
Go performs several case-sensitive checks, then runs search. It has never been any different.
Would it be possible to add the check described as step 5 at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_The_Go_button, before running search but after the case sensitive checks currently made? Specifically, the check is described as "try a case insensitive title search that also matches partial page titles". I'm less interested in partial page title matches than the case insensitive search part if that makes a difference.
That's what the search does. It can't be run directly against the database because the fields are not case-insensitive.
(sorry to be a pest about this - I promise this is the last comment) Even though the fields are currently case-sensitive can't they have a case-insensitive index - either as a secondary index (I don't know if the DB supports multiple indices to the same records) or with a duplicate case-insensitive record? If neither of these are feasible, I'll update the description at meta (and en:) about how "go" works (I'll delete step 5, since the next thing it does is simply "search") and continue recommending folks add a redirect as a workaround.
