Have you seen the new help page search engine?

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

A few weeks ago we had discussions here about improving our help pages.

As a result of those discussions, we have now retired our old help page index, improved our help page categorization, added more cross-references, made help links  more prominent, and most importantly, created a new help page search engine. 

This tool only searches official, community-wide help pages and style rules. Many of you have created pages to help your fellow members, and many projects have style rules and guidelines for their particular focus. Some of these may later become community-wide rules, but we have a slow and careful process for adding and changing official instructions.

If you spot any problems, please let us know. If you have questions or suggestions, post an answer below. Comments at the top will be removed after they are read once. Thanks!

Onward and upward,

Chris and the WikiTree Team

Answer 1

Thank you, Chris!

Answer 2

It looks like a big improvement over the previous version.  Edit:  I've tried it out a few times now.  It seems like a huge improvement, including the foreign-language links.

Answer 3

SO MUCH BETTER!!!  THANK YOU!!!

Answer 4

Thank you everyone who worked on this!  Fantastic job!

Answer 5

Thanks Chris! This looks really good on the searches I've tried so far. Three suggestions to consider...

1. Would it be possible to include a copy of the search box again at the top of the results page (ideally pre-filled with the previous search terms)? At present if you want to vary your search, you need to go back to the previous web page.
2. The radio button "Require all keywords" is understandable when it's turned on, but what happens when it's turned off? Is the search then for any one or more of several keywords? Perhaps that could be fully explained. Maybe "all" instead of "any" would be better as the default.
3. A direct link to this help page search page would be great in the Find menu. At present as far as I can see you need to go to Find, choose Search, then scroll to the very end of the resulting page.

Comments

#1. There's a link next to the languages that says 'Search again'.  This takes you to the search box at the bottom of the page.  (But I agree it would be better at the top.)

#3. Help > Help Search

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Thanks Ian! Both of those are good, but perhaps could be made more obvious.

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We added a search box to the top of the results as well.

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Excellent! Thank you Jamie.

Answer 6

Even as a WikiTree newbie, I already had a wishlist started.  And one wish has already been granted!  FANTASTIC stuff!

What the heck - I'm going for a 'two-fer' ->

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1315863/anybody-else-better-favourite-button-question-threads-white

THANK YOU to the WikiTree Team

Answer 7

That is great.

With the category based help pages, we can now create a help index in other languages (German for us) once we have translated the categories. This will also make searching easier for non-English speaking members.

Answer 8

This is great, thanks so much for the work done to create this.

Answer 9

So happy to see the improvements!  I have been using this for a few days and I really like it.

Answer 10

How do I find the "centenarian sticker"?

Help Page Search

0 results for "centenarian sticker" / Search Again

Comments

try searching with just ''Centenarian''

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no luck searching on just Centenarian

Help Page Search

0 results for "Centenarian" / Search Again

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Stickers are not part of the Help pages. You can try WT+ search for pages https://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch8&Query=centenarian+sticker

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Oops. I apparently misunderstood what pages the Help Page Search feature was searching. I thought it was searching the whole site excluding member profiles, but now I see it is just searching the "Help" pages.

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https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:Centenarian

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Hi, Tommy --

Here's a little something that might help in the future.

If you search the help pages for "sticker," you'll notice that the help page for stickers is in the "stickers" category, and if you click through to that, you'll see all of the pages (i.e., stickers) that are available.

I know it's a bit confusing to type it out like this, but give it a try and see if it makes better sense through doing. :-)

Answer 11

Observation:  In searching for the Louisiana Sticker, it returned two pages with Louisiana and Sticker on it, but not a page with Louisiana Sticker on it.

So, the search engine is looking for "Louisiana" and "Sticker", but not "Louisiana Sticker".

Also, I observed that searching on "Louisiana Sticker" or Louisiana Sticker without the quotes returned the same results.  So the quotes are not necessary.

Comments

Tommy, in this example is this the result you were looking for?

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:Louisiana_Sticker

Perhaps the search is not looking in the Template: space, only the Help: one. If so, it might be good to extend it to Template: as well.

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Yes. That's the one I was trying to locate.

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Ok. I eventually found it under "L" in Category: Stickers, but it would be good if the new help search could find it directly.

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You can try WT+ page search.

https://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch8&Query=Louisiana+Sticker

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True, Aleš, but not as convenient as the new help search would be if it included templates.

Answer 12

Thank you, Chris! This will help a lot.

Answer 13

Yes, thanks for the help page improvements team.

Any chance the free-space page searches will be improved?  (old discussion - see https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1230051/how-difficult-would-it-be-add-freespace-pages-search-engine).

I added book source free-space pages back in Apr/May, but the search linked at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Free-Space_Profile doesn't find them.  

For example, search "kingsbury genealogy".

• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:The_Genealogy_of_the_Descendants_of_Henry_Kingsbury%2C_of_Ipswich_and_Haverhill%2C_Mass. shows up.
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:A_Pendulous_Edition_of_Kingsbury_Genealogy shows up.
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Kingsbury_Genealogy_-_Genealogy_of_the_Descendants_of_Joseph_Kingsbury_of_Dedham%2C_Massachusetts doesn't show up.

If we can find the pages we're looking for, we're less likely to create a duplicate page.

Comments

The Free-space search is powered by Google. Since this is a newer page it has not yet been indexed, and therefore is not visible to the search page.

From my understanding, this new search for Help pages is an entirely in house function now. This should pave the way for new search functions in other namespaces.

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Right, Steven.

Kevin, for what it's worth, you should be able to find this page through the "Name on Watchlist" feature at the top of every page. I'm sure most people don't know this, but that search includes your free-space watchlist.

By the way, I am a Kingsbury as well: Kingsbury-1. Thank you for your research.

Answer 14

Loving the help pages search. As a newcomer it was a bit of a memory test the first couple of months. This is WAY better!

A suggestion: images could really use more explanation. 

There is a page dedicated to "image types" which could possibly be renamed profile image types? It only discusses the photo vs source options for an image posted to a profile page.

For example, background image is not mentioned there.

And (my nemesis - where, oh where are you hiding?!), the template image.

Also, would be a good place to mention the inline image option and left/right align etc.

Comments

Annemarie, which template image?  Some templates come with a preset image, while others allow for user input.

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Aha, I didn't know some template images can/can't be changed. Yup, the more you learn the more you realise you don't know.

Happy to say I found the instructions for changing the One Name Study template's image so all sorted now, thank you!

Answer 15

Thanks Chris and the team!

Answer 16

Unexpected result:

I put in "US Black Heritage," and nowhere in the 53 results is the page for Project: US Black Heritage.

It would seem that the results are not being sorted by closest match, first and altogether miss the intent of the search.

I tried again with the "Require all keywords" ticked - narrowed to 14 results, none of which include the intended result.

Comments

It only returns results for pages in the "Help" namespace, which doesn't include Project pages.

Answer 17

I tried a couple of searches that worked really well then I tried  child death and infant death and got nothing that made sense I wante to fin he died young category coding  when yo see that you know there is no marriage or children for that person

Answer 18

Thank you very much, Chris. An excellent addition.

Answer 19

This is so much better!

Thank you for all the hard work!!!