Making WordPress.org

Opened 6 years ago

Last modified 5 years ago

#3338 new enhancement

Plugin author search doesn't return relevant results

Reported by: magicroundabout's profile magicroundabout Owned by:
Milestone: Improved Search Priority: normal
Component: Plugin Directory Keywords:
Cc:

Description

This ticket has been spawned from #3327 which was about exact-plugin name searches and how to install a plugin that you know the name of when it doesn't appear (high up) in search.

During my attempt to install a plugin that I knew the exact name of (the plugin was https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-help/) I searched for the plugin author's name. Firstly I searched for "Jaquith" and then for "Mark". I did this in both the WordPress Dashboard "Install Plugin" screen, and in the plugin director on wordpress.org - neither helped me find plugins by Mark, and the search for Mark returned zero results in the author search in the Dashboard. More detail in each below.

In both cases it looks like this is ONLY searching for the full username "markjaquith". In my opinion a search should also match first and/or last name - maybe not so much on the wordpress.org directory, but DEFINITELY on the WordPress dashboard author-specific search.

More deatil:

WordPress Dashboard

What I did:

In the Install Plugins screen, select "Author" from the search drop down, enter "Jaquith" and then "Mark"

Expected behaviour:

I see plugins from authors who have "Mark" or "Jaquith" in their name

Actual behaviour:

No plugins listed.

Demo: https://cl.ly/0J002g322s2X

Fix:

Make the WordPress Dashboard plugin search match author names as well as usernames. Consider making partial matches work too.

WordPress.org

Note: Just for a moment, let's pretend we're not developers. We don't know about search algorithms and meta data and indexes. We know about Mark's plugin and we want to find it.

What I did:

Entered "Jaquith" in the plugin search box

Expected behaviour:

"Jaquith" is a pretty un-common name. So I should see plugins for which Mark is the author listed

Actual behaviour:

I see a load of random plugins that don't have Mark as the author.

Explanation of actual behaviour:

OK - we can be developers again now

The listed plugins all mention Mark in the plugin description.

Suggested fix:

This is a HARD problem to solve in a way that pleases everyone - and maybe my solution is specific to Mark and my particular search. But should matches on author name be higher in results that matches on description?

Change History (4)

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #meta by tellyworth. View the logs.


6 years ago

#2 @netweb
6 years ago

  • Milestone set to Improved Search

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #meta by afercia. View the logs.


5 years ago

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