Voting on: A resolution to petition the developers to give bureaucrats the ability to specify which namespaces are to be searched by default for anonymous users and new users who haven't yet specified default namespaces in their preferences.
(Note that a vote is not necessary for petition, except as to demonstrate the backing of the Wiktionary community.)
SupportH. (talk) 14:39, 12 June 2007 (UTC) I support what the title of the vote suggests, but am unsure I understand the wording in the explanation. Anyway, it took me quite a long time to understand what this search preferences thing was, and I have been frustrated by not finding policy pages.[reply]
OpposeConnel MacKenzie 08:59, 8 June 2007 (UTC) There are much better things for developers to be working on...such as having an editable "robots.txt" that can pinpoint what namespace the search engines should be looking at (and which ones they shouldn't. E.g. skip the page WT:RFD.) Furthermore, the search page, as it comes up now, very clearly gives the option of expanding the namespaces searched, right at the end of the search results. If defaults are to be more maleable, I would hope we'd choose for much greater restriction of the initial searches, i.e. entries with ==English==, and not obsolete, etc., being the only results returned by default. (Assuming, of course, that corresponding checkboxes were added for the additional restrictions.) --Connel MacKenzie08:59, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Really, the biggest problems are that you can't get the list of namespaces until after you've searched for something — searching for the empty string pulls up the same, less-than-optimal search form — and that you can't restrict by language. I don't think there's a problem with pulling up "obsolete" words, as they generally direct people immediately to the modern term (if there is one). —RuakhTALK15:32, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
From my perspective (concentrating on automated lookups from external sources) having the default give wrong results is worse. I agree it would be nice to have a Search page somewhere clickable that allows one to toggle the checkboxes first. Um, perhaps we can... At any rate, that doesn't change my opposition (but perhaps would change your support?) --Connel MacKenzie22:35, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support DAVilla 17:05, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Oppose Connel MacKenzie 08:59, 8 June 2007 (UTC) There are much better things for developers to be working on...such as having an editable "robots.txt" that can pinpoint what namespace the search engines should be looking at (and which ones they shouldn't. E.g. skip the page WT:RFD.) Furthermore, the search page, as it comes up now, very clearly gives the option of expanding the namespaces searched, right at the end of the search results. If defaults are to be more maleable, I would hope we'd choose for much greater restriction of the initial searches, i.e. entries with ==English==, and not obsolete, etc., being the only results returned by default. (Assuming, of course, that corresponding checkboxes were added for the additional restrictions.) --Connel MacKenzie 08:59, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
