Last modified: 2014-09-13 17:14:17 UTC

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Bug 16283 - "No page with that title exists" message on en.wikipedia.org is too long, confusing
"No page with that title exists" message on en.wikipedia.org is too long, con...
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: Wikimedia
Classification: Unclassified
General/Unknown (Other open bugs)
unspecified
All All
: Low enhancement (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
: design
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2008-11-08 15:54 UTC by Paul Boyce
Modified: 2014-09-13 17:14 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description Paul Boyce 2008-11-08 15:54:45 UTC
A search on 'dollar index' yields no results. A search on 'U.S. dollar index' yields an article.  Definitely something wrong here.

Paul
Comment 1 Robert Stojnic 2008-11-08 15:57:23 UTC
Link?
Comment 3 Paul Boyce 2008-11-08 16:19:25 UTC
I apologize--scrolling down reveals adequate search results.  My mistake.

Paul
Comment 4 Robert Stojnic 2008-11-08 16:20:39 UTC
You have a point however, those horrible whole-screen misleading messages really need to go... 
Comment 5 Brion Vibber 2008-12-28 21:43:07 UTC
Customized en.wikipedia.org message:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Dollar+Index&sourceid=Mozilla-search

vs MediaWiki default message (forced to en_GB):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Dollar+Index&sourceid=Mozilla-search&uselang=en-gb


The default message adds just two lines from the 'go' search mode:

  No page title matches
  There is no page titled "Dollar Index". You can create this page. 

then followed by *actual page text search results*.

The English Wikipedia customized message is followed by a giant pagefull of links to things you could do. On my laptop screen (1280x800) I can only see 4 pixels' worth of the first actual result at the bottom of the screen, which is the exact target a searcher would be looking for.

The giant list of links should, if needed *at all*, probably only be shown if you got no search results.
Comment 6 Aaron Schulz 2009-02-28 05:14:33 UTC
This seems like a local mediawiki message issue, not a software one.
Comment 7 Brion Vibber 2009-03-06 18:51:12 UTC
It's an issue which affects usability of the site -- it doesn't matter whose "fault" it is.

It may well be that changing how we handle the case more appropriately can be done with changes to the software which would discourage the crappy make-the-message-gigantic behavior on English Wikipedia. Or, maybe we just have to beat some people on the head and fix the message.
Comment 8 Nemo 2012-08-23 18:50:30 UTC
I don't see any such message any longer?
Comment 9 Matthew Flaschen 2013-02-21 23:51:25 UTC
Yeah, there is no longer any "pagefull of links to things you could do".  It actually might be useful if it did encourage action (e.g. making it easier to create a page).

See https://github.com/mattflaschen/CreateFromSearch for something I've worked on with E3.

But since there's no long message right now, I'm marking fixed.

Screenshots are helpful for this kind of bug.
Comment 10 Nemo 2013-02-22 05:38:54 UTC
(In reply to comment #9)
> Yeah, there is no longer any "pagefull of links to things you could do".  It
> actually might be useful if it did encourage action (e.g. making it easier to
> create a page).
> 
> See https://github.com/mattflaschen/CreateFromSearch for something I've
> worked
> on with E3.

In a Wikimania 2011 (?) workshop on interwikis/cross-wiki issues, the recommendation emerged to make the createpage (?) message, shown as placeholder when the page doesn't exist, suggest to read (or translate) the same article on another wiki. It's not that easy, though; maybe the proposal should be filed as bug dependent on bug 44420.
Comment 11 Nemo 2014-09-13 17:14:17 UTC
(In reply to Nemo from comment #10)
> In a Wikimania 2011 (?) workshop on interwikis/cross-wiki issues, the
> recommendation emerged to make the createpage (?) message, shown as
> placeholder when the page doesn't exist, suggest to read (or translate) the
> same article on another wiki. It's not that easy, though; maybe the proposal
> should be filed as bug dependent on bug 44420.

See bug 24767.

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