Last modified: 2013-03-25 15:06:03 UTC
In MediaWiki there are two preferences: "Disable AJAX suggestions" and "Enable enhanced search suggestions (Vector skin only)". They are problematic for several reasons: Most average users don't know what AJAX is. This word just shouldn't be there. It should be just called "search suggestions". The first option says "Disable", but the second one says "Enable". It's confusing - both should say "Enable". "Disable AJAX suggestions" should become "Enable search suggestions", and the value of the checkbox must be reversed for all users. But better yet, the two options should be merged into one. "Disable AJAX suggestions" doesn't seem to do anything useful in Vector, no matter whether it's checked or not, and "Enable enhanced search suggestions (Vector skin only)", as its name implies is relevant only for Vector. Separating them may have been useful in the early days of Vector, but now that a year after the rollout Vector is rather stable, this doesn't seem to be useful any more.
MWSuggest was dropped and SimpleSearch is now universal. Anyone want to double check that the change fixed this bug?
Which of the two preference keys (not the UI label) should we preserve and should be add a step in the Updater to migrate values? (For large clusters that don't use update.php we can use maintenance/userOptions.php)
Amir: Could you answer comment 2 please?
(In reply to comment #2) > Which of the two preference keys (not the UI label) should we preserve and > should be add a step in the Updater to migrate values? We should probably remove mwsuggest-disable completely. Vector-simplesearch-preference should be renamed to "Enable search suggestions". All that said, Vector-simplesearch-preference doesn't seem to have any effect: I tried unchecking it on Wikipedia and on my test wiki, and I still see search suggestions.
