Cross-wiki Search Result Improvements/Design

This page documents and explores design ideas for cross-wiki search results. What are cross-wiki search results? They are search results from different projects, put onto the same results page. So for example, if you search for "pizza" on Wikipedia, you might see results from Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikinews etc. on the search results page. For general thoughts on this idea, please see Cross-wiki Search Result Improvements.

This is an open discussion and everyone is welcome to add their ideas or designs on this page. Your comments and thoughts are welcome on the discussion page.

Existing Solutions

Several Wikipedias have taken the initiative and implemented interwiki search features on their SERP (search engine results page). These solutions often use Wikidata as a central source that contains links to other wikis.

Current cross-wiki search implementations

• Cross-wiki search via it:MediaWiki:Search-interwiki-custom
• Article placeholder results via Extension:ArticlePlaceholder
• Wikidata info results via User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js
• Sister project search links via w:Template:Sister project links

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  Italian Wikipedia - Sister project search results (beta) in the sidebar.
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  French Wikipedia - Links to sister project search in the sidebar.
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  French Wikipedia - Wikidata search results, at the bottom of the page.
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  Haitian Wikipedia - Article placeholder results, bottom of page.

Separate versus Mixed results

A fundamental question about displaying interwiki search results is whether they should be mixed in within Wikipedia search results, or displayed separately elsewhere on the page. Current implementations (mentioned above) all display interwiki results separately on the page (this could be intentional or just out of technical ease).

Tabbed interface

Sister wiki projects could be treated as separate "search verticals" that are divided by tabs, which is typical for many online search engines.

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  Tabs at the top
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  Tabs to the right
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  Accordian style tabs containing miniature search results

Intermixed

Mixed results brings search results from different wikis onto the same page, interlaced with search results from Wikipedia. The biggest challenge in presenting results like this is determining search relevancy across multiple projects for the same search term. These mixed search results should be easy to identify, visually, on the page.

A simple solution to make mixed results more identifiable would be to place an icon near each result, like the following:

Mixed search results with icons

Sidebar

In current implementations, such as on Italian and French Wikipedia, cross-wiki search results are placed in the sidebar. This layout makes it clear that cross-wiki results are different than regular search results. The drawback to this layout is that the sidebar has less space, and can only fit a few search results. This is not entirely negative, as most research shows people only click on the first few results anyway.

This design show cross-wiki results in the sidebar, with only one result from a few projects. An icon and label has been placed below each cross-wiki result to describe which project it comes from. This design also contains elements of the visually improved search results mentioned in a section below.

Cross-wiki search results in the sidebar with more prominent project titles

Visually distinct cross-wiki search results

Make results from Wikiquote look like a quote and results from Wiktionary look like a definition?

Some search engines change how a search result is displayed, based on which search vertical it comes from. In our scenario, this would mean styling results differently, based on which wiki project they came from. The styling of the following distinct results draws from Wikipedia's own infobox feature, the hovercard, as well as from the mobile view - where smaller "bite-sized" pieces of information are highly prioritized:

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  Sample of a visually distinct Wikinews result
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  Sample of a visually distinct Wikiquote result
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  Sample of a visually distinct Wiktionary result

Additional examples

There are additional possibilities that could be used. Here are a few examples.

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  Example of a top banner with projects and article counts and tiles
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  Example of a expanded tiles of projects and article counts
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  Example with a box on the right hand side that shows sister project links that might be of interest
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  Example of article links from sister projects that might be of interest and is related to the original search, and a history of the page
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  Example search results page with an added tab for wiki projects

Thumbnails & visually improving search results

Thumbnails

Adding thumbnails to search results might help users quickly identify what they are looking for. However, thumbnails might also be distracting if they are not relevant. Given that most people only click the first search result, it might be a good idea to limit the thumbnails to only the first few results. Thumbnails should help identify a search result, but they should not be the main focus of the search result.

Example of an irrelevant thumbnail

Sometimes thumbnails do not clearly identify an article, which is why, in order to avoid confusion, they should not be highly prominent.

Large thumbnails

Large thumbnails might be distracting when someone is trying to scan the page for words. Large thumbnails also resemble the multimedia search results view.

Small thumbnails (preferred)

Small thumbnails beside the search results give more prominence to the title. The placement of the title also helps visually separate the search results from one another.

Font sizes

The image below highlights the currently used font sizes on Wikipedia search results. The font sizes do not reflect the importance of an element and fail to establish a visual hierarchy. Font sizes should indicate the order of important of each element in the search result. Currently, the meta information below the description (arguably the least important) is actually 2% larger than the description text.

Revised font sizes

Elements of a search result, by order of importance:

1. The title
2. Description
3. Meta information (word count, date published etc.)

The font sizes used should reflect this order. Below is a proposed adjustment of font sizes:

Comparison of current font sizes vs revised font sizes:

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  Original font sizes
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  Revised font sizes

Search result metadata & "Explore similar"

Metadata

Search results currently include the following metadata:

1. The size of the article in kilobytes (KB)
   • It is unclear whether this size includes images and other media not, if this is the size of the wikitext or rendered HTML, or if this size includes the size of the entire page (including skin), or just the content. Given that this item can cause confusion to many who might not know what KB  stands for, this item should be removed on the grounds that it provide little value to readers.
2. Article word count
3. The date the article was last updated
   • The current treatment does not make it clear what this date actually is. Is it the date updated? or created? This datapoint should be labeled.

Revised metadata proposal

Leave the word count and date, add the word 'updated' before the date, like so:

"5,674 words • updated 03:41, 7 September 2016"

It might also be worth revising the date format to conform to ISO 8601

NOTE: This metadata proposal should more deeply consider how word count is interpreted in non-latin languages. There are specific difficulties with the concept of 'word-count' in east-asian languages (a good article explaining the subject).

Adding categories to search results

When someone can't find the exact search result they are looking for, it might be helpful to show them categories related to their search results. This might help people discovery other articles in the subject area they are interested in. Below is a design that adds article categories beside the search result metadata. This tool can act like a dropdown, revealing the categories when a user clicks to expand them.

This image illustrates how page categories can be added to search results. Here one of the category dropdowns is expanded, while the rest are hidden.

Expanding categories

Because some Wikipedia categories might not be designed for general reading (such as hidden categories) or might be too broad or too narrow to be useful, it might be useful to link to related content in other ways. Asides from categories, Portal pages can also serve as a good entry point for discovering new content. Therefore if an article is part of a portal page, it might be useful to highlight that instead or along with the categories.

Explore similar

The RelatedArticles extension might be another way we can suggest similar content for a search result. Below is a design exploring how related articles can be integrated into a search result, along with a highlighted link to a portal page.

See also another cross-wiki topic: Help:Notifications/Cross-wiki