Wikiseek Feedback
From Wikiseek Community Wiki
To add feedback or comments to this page, click the "edit" tab above, type your comments in the appropriate section, then hit "save". If you're having trouble, we still want your comments! Send them by email to: feedback at searchme.com. When possible, please include your query term and suggestion, so we can replicate the search.
- We're still working on the best way to collect feedback via this wiki. Please let us know if you have any suggestions on better ways to gather this information. Are there fancy Wiki tools that we don't know about that could be used to gather queries/results/issues in some kind of a template? Searchme chrisf
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[edit] Relevance
- Please enter feedback on general relevance. There is a new Query Reports page for feedback on specific search result sets.
Query: evolution. Relevance is really bad: none of the Wikipedia articles that turn up on the first page have anything to do with (biological) evolution. There is spiritual evolution, Pokemon evolution, Mitsubishi evolution and lots of Italian cities. (It turns out that the section title "demographic evolution" is frequently used on city/town pages. Errors like these might be avoided by weighting pages by the number the sought word is found in them.) The actual Evolution article didn't show up at all in the first five pages.
- The results for this query have gotten much better. The article about biological evolution is now in the first position. We also have the good vertical suggest of Evolutionary Biology. There are also Creationism and Intelligent Design vertical suggests. Searchme chrisf 15:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
External links are somwhat better: most are authoritative sites about evolution, but they tend to be too narrow (i would expect to find general articles describing evolution for such a search term, not specific issues like fact versus theory). The fourth externel link returned is http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1108206-evolution/ which is again not bad but I would expect IMDB to be the most authoritative for the movie, which again didn't turn up in the first five pages. --Tgr 12:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Query: list house episodes. This should have been trivial. List of House episodes doesn't even get in the first page. Selecting down to "Television series" gets it in the 3rd entry. Same query on google gets it as the first link
Query: accommodation Bratislava - some website about Croatian town Makaraska comes up as the first result. very bad relevance.
Query: serotype - redirect issue, to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serovar. (found here http://evanwbrown.blogspot.com/2007/01/searching-wikipedia.html) -chrisf
Many queries I have made have returned fewer than two results in wikipedia, and the ones that have been returned were mostly irrelevant. I have seldom gotten the actual article I was looking for, and I would be better off just going to the article immediately instead of using Wikiseek. Case in point (a recent example because I can't remember older ones), a search for "marijuana" returns ONE wikipedia article about decriminalization of it in the US and the rest are various websites.
[edit] Topic Suggestions
- Were the suggestions under the Refine by Category heading appropriate for your query? Please describe successes and failures here.
I made a search for NAS, knewing it was some IT abbreviation but not what it stands for. The Wikiseek results were not useful. IT or anything like that didn't even show up in the tag cloud. A search for NAS with Wikipedia's own engine led mit to the disambiguation page, which isn't well sorted but helped me find, what I was looking for [[1]]
[edit] Interface Issues
- How is the interface working for you? Please describe any interface issues here.
The results from wikipedia seem to appear in a separate div, make it collapsible for easy page surfing. In fact, many a times I decide to click on the link using the page title and website name. It will be nice to have an option of hide/show details for keeping page length small.
You should allow for category hold.
The search always gives you results, rather than taking you straight to the page when the search is a direct match(like the wikipedia search). Have you considered an "I'm feeling lucky" feature?
One thing that throws me in wikiseek is seeing the big W icon next to results in BOTH the shaded and non-shaded areas--i am so used to expecting those result areas to have totally DIFFERENT types of content.
- The Wikipedia results are not shaded anymore, though the W icon remains next to Wikipedia articles.--Searchme chrisf 07:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not immediately recognizing what the distinction in between upper and lower portion of the SERP. A little icon w/ a mouseover might
clear that up.
I preferred it when categories would appear on the main page as you typed in your search query. Now you actually have to do the initial search before you can filter it by categories. Sometimes that might be preferable, but sometimes it's useful to be able to narrow the search down with a category straight away like you could with searchme.com. Markdarb 22:36, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I found a major bug in your userinterface. daniel(dot)feurstein(at)gmail(dot)com
- Hi daniel! We encourage you to detail the bugs you find here on the wiki. You can also email feedback(at)searchme.com if you'd prefer. Searchme Alice 17:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Localised Wikipedia
The contents of Wikiseek are restricted to Wikipedia pages - actually it is restricted to english Wikipedia pages, might be worth to mention that somewehere. --Tgr 12:40, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Please add support for German Wikipedia :) --91.64.152.251 13:28, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
would be a benefit, if user can choose, which Wikipedia (de, en, it...)shall be used--195.3.97.222 08:51, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Please add French Wikipedia support :) --70.52.15.174 10:19, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Support should be added for localization. ITALIAN wikipedia support required...
We hear everyone loud and clear about international searching. thanks! -chrisf
Please add support for Dutch Wikipedia --193.191.137.130 12:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Miscellaneous Feedback
- This is your opportunity to speak up about anything you have to say regarding Wikiseek.
It shouldn't be spidering old pages that changed on the wikipedia, or be updated frequently. You're unwittingly helping spammers screw up real search engines. For example, Orlando Pest Control in google reveals wildlife pro / aaanimal control as the top result - your search engine reveals how they manage to hold that. 74.230.105.220 13:16, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
"WikiSearch" as mentioned above, is actually a software which is on the market for about 2 years now. Potential trademark issue.
The URL wikiseek.com results in the Bad Gateway error. Users have to type in www.wikiseek.com. Nowadays, many websites are accessible without the www prefix.
- This should be OK now. http://wikiseek.com
When using national letters in searches (in my case: åäö, since I'm swedish), the search engine stops reading before the local letters, and only searches for that part. For example: when searching for "gränser" (swedish for borders), it looks like I'm only searching for "gr".
Help build a list of Query Reports
- There's a typo within the "Skyscraper Wikiseek search box" at [2]. It's Wikimedia, not WikiMedia ;) - 17:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
- There is a typo on the Google AdSense ad, incorrectly spelling Wikipedia of all things. This should be corrected. Thanks, Tedc
YOU SHOULD GIVE AT LEAST ONE RESULT IF I SEARCH FOR "WIKISEEK" !!! DO YOU KNOW YOURSELF???
- Searchme Staff We didn't exist when the index was created. :) We'll be 'found' soon.
Would wikiseek be available to add to firefox, which is fast growing to be as popular as IE? thanks
- Wikiseek extensions and plug-ins are available for Firefox users. You can find the Wikipedia Search Extension here: http://www.wikiseek.com/tools/FF_extension/index.php and the Search Plugin here: http://www.wikiseek.com/tools/search_plugin/index.php
- I hope this answers your question! --Searchme Alice
