Steps to reproduce:
- Go to pt:wikipedia
Expected:
In the sidebar for interwiki searches some images of milk from commons, e.g. commons:Special:search/~milk
Actual:
Sidebar with interwiki results but no images from commons.
Topic on Talk:Cross-wiki Search Result Improvements
I think this was only meant to be disabled on english wikipedia.
Thanks for letting us know about this issue. I've filed a task on Phabricator and we'll take a look at it soon! :) https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T232032
You're welcome.
As a sidenote, I think the reason people didn't realize it was missing is partly because it is completely random whether anything will ever appear because the sidebar with search results isn't always there. I noticed this problem months ago, but originally thought perhaps the images were simply not matching or it was taking a long time to load.
As a potential future change it might be useful to keep a heading or button always available to show potential results, consider for example, if one searches in google (www.google.com/search?q=lx14566&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjYns3wnMTkAhWTlFwKHTD8DHsQ_AUIEygC&biw=1299&bih=637) for a non-existing image. One would note that despite the search not "currently" showing any images it still contains a heading that people can click on to see if there are any.
Perhaps there could be a button like "Show sister wiki results", or something like that. Just a thought.
Thanks for the suggestions! :) The patch is rolling out this week on the train, please let us know if you see more weirdness on the search results page.
It seems to be working again.
Although it is odd that the same search string (in different wikis) may not always bring up commons search results. For example:
Leopard seal
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=leopard+seal (some multimedia results e.g.: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Leopard%20seal%20in%20antarctica.jpg)
- https://pt.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=leopard+seal (no multimedia results)
shrimp fisherman
- https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=shrimp+fisherman(no results)
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=shrimp+fisherman(some results , e.g. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Shrimp%20fisherman.jpg
What makes it weird is that the file title actually contains those strings. On a positive note, it seems to be nicely matching some commons structured data, so while it can't seem to find the content in one label, it finds it in another, e.g.:
- https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=Lamantino(italian label)
- https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=マナティ (japanese)
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Manatee_photo.jpg
It also seems to be quite accurate when searching for a single word, presumably if that's at least included in the title. But with two or more words it seems to fail fairly often, even in cases where there is a perfect match in the title, e.g.: "leaning tower of pisa" , https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=leaning+tower+of+pisa->https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leaning_tower_of_pisa.jpg.
Apparently this issue came back, none of the links above seem to show any commons images.