Extension:RelatedArticles/CirrusSearchComparison

Introduction

This page shows what happens to the Cirrus Search results, used by the Related Pages feature, when we remove popularity from the factors.

With Classic Cirrus Search 2 types of score are combined:

• 'SIMILARITY': A score that computes the similarity between documents, this can be fine-tuned
• 'POPULARITY/QUALITY': A score (we call it "rescore") that use article metadata: 'boostlinks', 'boosttemplates'.
  • Boostlinks is a measure of how many articles link in, which is a mark of notability
  • boosttemplates are templates that tend to signal quality. Here is a link to the enwiki boost-templates (they vary from wiki to wiki):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost-templates

These 3 scores are multiplied together to achieve the final score. To use an example of a bad match:

Article: A_Summer_Bird-Cage

The score for "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" with boost links is:

• similarity: 0.3457441 (terms chosen: "from", "cage", "bird")
• boostlinks: 2.807535
• boost-templates: 2
• total: 0.3457441 * 2.807535 * 2 => 1.9413773

Below, you see 3 columns, showing results for different settings:

Score type	classic	classic noboostlinks	empty
Similarity	YES	YES	YES
Boostlinks (inbound links)	YES	NO	YES
Boosttemplate (featured article, etc)	YES	NO	NO

Community suggested list comparison, 20 Jun 2016

See phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128822#2372230

JKatz's list comparison, 20 Jun 2016

See phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128822#2372230

Random comparison of 10 articles, 10 Jun 2016