User talk:Tangotango/Mayflower

This is the Feedback page for Mayflower, a Wikimedia Commons media search engine. Please post your comments and suggestions here. Thanks!

For past comments and fulfilled suggestions, please see the archive.

Mayflower is a Giant Fail

== Nothing like leaving your own offshoots to die in the sun. The word "media" usually entails some kind of tangible reward for one's efforts. Here I was...expecting the Library of Alexandria. And all I got was this stupid t-shirt.

2007

Javascript popup

Great stuff. One way to implement advanced info is to use JavaScript pop-ups that load the info on demand; see Lupin's script as an example implementation.--Eloquence 17:03, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the great idea :) I'll see what I can do re:Javascript popups. - Tangotango 01:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Strengthening gallery-image link

Hello,

I don't know if it would be possible, but making the connection between gallery (main namespace article)--image the same strength as category--image would be useful, because for most purposes they perform the same function. For example I searched for 'pug', and there were many pictures of cars (because of the image titles), but dogs, not so many.

Another problem might be English/Latin normalising for species names, eg birds/aves, cat/Felis silvestris catus. (Incidentally I just searched for 'aves' and it failed. that sucks...) It might be possible to exploit redirects in Commons, because most of these terms should be redirected (the English to the Latin). Just some ideas. --pfctdayelise 02:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey, Pfctdayelise sorry for the late reply :( Yes, that indeed sounds like a good idea. Although a query involving mainspace articles would involve using an extra table (imagelinks), thus slowing the search down somewhat (although it's almost the same as using categories), it is an interesting idea, and something I'll keep in mind for a future version. Cheers, Tangotango 04:19, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Great

Well for me anyway - I've found plenty of images that were not categorised which hopefully will help. I see in advanced search -> Display details that it is possible to have "license icons & cats", "license icons" or nothing - any chance of just "cats". It would help to organise categorisation a bit more maybe?

Whatever happens thanks for a great tool --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:23, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey Herby, thanks for your comments. :) I'm not sure what value an option allowing the user to remove license icons would have. It might help reduce visual clutter a little bit, but on the other hand it would be adding extra clutter to the code... :/ Can you please be more specific as to why you would not want to see the icons? (I was actually thinking of adding more details, like the image dimensions and file size to the "details" view, so your ideas and input on this issue would be much appreciated.) Cheers, Tangotango 04:12, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

P.S. If we end up with a lot of "details" in the end, I can make an "advanced details view", with perhaps an interface to turn on/off each detail as the user wishes. - Tangotango 04:14, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess visual clutter was an issue for me (and with thought not that important). So long as you don't tell anyone (<g>) I'm no expert on licensing but I'm learning. When I first uploaded an image to Commons I did just that (there was a license tho!). I gave no thought to the fact that it might be useful if others could find it. Now I strayed to Commons I realise what a great resource it is and that a lot of other folk are like me. So I am looking for pics (at the moment in my local - geographical area) by town, area etc that are not categorised and getting them in at least one category for now. Afterwards I'm going to look at the organisation of the cats but .... We can argue for ever about cats v. galleries, in the end if people can't find the images it matters not (well my 0.02 at least). Your tool has been great for finding such images so again thanks and if I can give you any other feedback I happily will, regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:03, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

More useful search for people maintaining galleries

Hi,

I am trying to keep all of the spider pictures together in one place, which is quite a job since the old way of looking for images was not very efficient. Mayflower is much better, but it would be a great help if the filename could be seen and copied without clicking over to the actual file. If you see, e.g., "Salticus_wi...palps.jpg" it is just enough to be tempting.

Thanks for your good work.

152.17.122.151 20:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion. To solve this, I'll probably have to introduce a new, alternative results design--I've been thinking about adding more details to the results as standard (probably the image dimensions, if applicable, the file size, and license if the user so requests), so your suggestion will probably tie in quite well with this. Of course, if the image title is really, really, long, then some truncation will have to occur. Cheers, Tangotango 00:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

create OpenSearch plugin?

Hey Tangotango,

if you have some spare time (:)) you might be interested in creating an OpenSearch plugin for Firefox users to search using Mayflower from directly within their browser. see http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Creating_OpenSearch_plugins_for_Firefox

cheers :) --pfctdayelise 02:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

2: position in results; layout flexibility

• I suggest you to show in each results page something like "721 results - showing results 234 to 245", or something like that.
• Besides, you could use another number of results by default, like 12, so they would always get organized in the page to make a rectangle (in this case, 1x12, 2x6, 3x4, 4x3, 6x2 or 12x1, according to the screen resolution. 5 rows/collumns wouldn't be allowed, they'd jump from 4 to 6, whis is not too bad, i guess). Any number with many divisors would be ok for this purpose. 12 has 6, like 18 and 20. 15 has only 4, so if the non-divisors rows/columns number is allowed, it's much more likely to get non-rectangular results layouts.

PS - 24 and 30 have 8 divisors ;) -- Waldir 20:07, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

MediaSearch polish translation

Where is file to transalete this good tool? Is planed to translate? And why when i click in Opera CTRL+Shift and click mouse button then Opera open 2 page with the same picture. Why? The same is in Firefox. Adam Dziura 16:38, 23. Apr. 2007 (CEST)

Hi Adam, yes, I've just posted a new version of Mayflower which can be translated into any language :-) Please see User:Tangotango/Mayflower/Translation for details. As for the problem you're experiencing, I'm guessing it's got something to do with the fact that each of the images has in fact two links--one Javascript link, and one normal link. This is so that Mayflower can remain compatible with some older browsers that are still out there, and for people who don't have or want Javascript. If I revise the gallery code I'll try to make a workaround, but it might be quite tricky to implement a solution that works for everybody. Cheers, Tangotango 11:53, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Including museum research

Hi,

I have a specific request to extend the advanced search in Mayflower. Here is it: I created on Commons a meta-template that provides a full museum description. This meta-template is currently used (not directly but through templates by museums) in hundreds of photographs. There is a field which is strongly relevant in this meta-template: the accession number field (see for exemple Image:Egypte louvre 120 asiatique.jpg: value "E 7691 A"). This fied is an unique ID for a work exhibited in a museum (though it is not an universal ID, each museum do it its way). The accession number is commonly used in all historical or artistical researches (examples: "Louvre Ma 72", "British Museum 28.1-17.73", "Glyptothek 87").

But currently (that's the frustrating point), it is not possible to reach an object by giving its accession number, neither with the Mediawiki search engine (results for the string "E 7691 A") nor with Mayflower (the same). So: would it be possible to create a "new mode" in Mayflower's advanced search? That "museum research mode" would be very simple, just displaying an <option> list of all museums using the meta-template, plus a text field to type in the accession number, then boom!—directly the wished object.

Are you interested and do you think it's possible? fr:Bibi Saint-Pol (answer) 12:33, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Bibi Saint-Pol, that certainly sounds like an interesting proposal. While directly implementing it in Mayflower sounds like a not-so-good idea (it would require another table for a tiny fraction of the entire Commons media collection, especially as the codes are not standardized and some contain spaces and other special characters), I would very much like to see this as a separate tool with a separate interface. The indexing could take place alongside Mayflower, which would save some time and ensure frequent updates to the database. I'll work on it when I can. Cheers, Tangotango 12:32, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Keep me in touch. fr:Bibi Saint-Pol (answer) 09:54, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

File type

Hello Tangotango !

Thank you very much for this very usefull tool !

Is it possible to limit the research to certain file types (I often want to see only SVG files, for example) ?

Thanks in advance.

Peter17 16:23, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

This will be possible in the next version of Mayflower, Mayflower 2.00. You can see a test copy (it may be unstable at times) at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/beta/. Specific file types (SVG image, for example) have been added to the list of file types. You can also search for specific file types by using the existing "type:xxx" syntax; for example, to look for all SVG images, append "type:svg" to your query. Cheers, Tangotango 14:56, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much and congratulations (even Google doesn't support SVG search !!!) ! Peter17 22:26, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Davidshay1 Indeed great tool. Searching by type seems not to work properly, however. Search for video returns images. any idea how to work around this? thanks!

Integration into PicFindr.com

Hello Tangotango, Thanks for providing this great tool! I am the founder/creator of PicFindr.com, a free stock photo search site. I am using Mayflower to provide Wikimedia results within PicFindr. I feel a little uncomfortable doing this without your explicit consent now that PicFindr is starting to get a little traffic, so please contact me and let me know how you feel about this. If you feel my use is inappropriate, I will remove it, but I hope you won't feel that way, since Wikimedia and Mayflower are prominently identified as the source of the images. You can contact me via the feedback links on PicFindr, or email me at [my first name] at PicFindr.com.

Thanks! Rick PicFindrFounder

Bad experience in IE6

The column of "Hover over a thumbnail to show details" is a wonderful design but also a bad experience in IE6, because the column is not in the right position in IE6. I know it results from IE6's bugs not your fault, but please kindly fix this problem for IE6's stupid bug to bring good experience to IE6's users. Thank you for your attention.--百楽兎 01:22, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi 百楽兎, thanks for your message. Yes, I'm aware the new Javascript panel doesn't work very well in Internet Explorer--not even in IE7--and this is something that I will fix when I get the opportunity. I'm actually hoping to change the interface quite radically soon, so I don't know how soon it will be fixed. Cheers, Tangotango 05:22, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Search by license

Self-explanatory.

I was going to suggest this. You can already kludge it by searching within licensing categories? But it would be best if it were built in. Then you could contact CC and try to get it listed on http://search.creativecommons.org/ — Omegatron 16:12, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Russian

how can I use russian version? --Flrn 14:22, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Image per page

Hi Tangotango. Mayflower is great. Could it show more image in one single page?? --Simon Shek 05:45, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Mayflower searches out of date

Could you have a look at the query I have posted on the Commons Village Pump? MichaelMaggs 10:49, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

type: doesn't work.

I searched for "featured picture type:png" and heaps of JPGs come back. : --pfctdayelise 11:04, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Same thing for me, if I search for "house type:svg" I get almost only jpg pictures --lalejand 24 july 2008

search for "candle" finds "canyon" pictures

The first search result had candle images, the second one only canyions without a single candle in the image, description or categories. 221.252.13.93 23:27, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

API results

The Mayflower seems to be a really great way to search for images. Is there anyway to return a set of raw results or the results in XML format? I'm wikiHow's engineer and we're interested in importing images from common into wikiHow. If you have any suggestions, that'd be great.

Thanks. --Tderouin 18:26, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

2008

Database

Eeek, database down. =[

February 05 2008 - Database down since almost one week

Help ! What's happening ? We NEED MayFlower ! I hope it will come back soon !

And now it is 14 February and it's still down. 152.17.122.118 06:59, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Now it's been three weeks :( 71.59.185.49 13:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Update?

Is an update to the database planned soon? Currently still on update of 24 October 2007. Thanks! Man vyi 07:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Complaints/suggestions

• Searching seem to be an issue and it seems to be ORing each keyword I give it.
• "I have a dream" does not produce expected results (admittedly Image:Martin Luther King - March on Washington.jpg isn't tagged correctly, but it shouldn't be showing the results it does)
• Instead of a drop down for file type, change into checkbox for each type, with a drop down for a particular image, audio format, or video size
• Image sizes: Wallpaper, large, medium, and small. Possibly throw in aspect ratio or at least landscape and portrait.
• Face option like what Google has now for image searches
• An option to select images with a certain amount to detail (separate graphs and stylized art from photographs)
• Perhaps, there could be a bot that OCRs images and transcribes audio recording.

On the up side the interface is really slick. —Dispenser 05:35, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Database update long overdue

The database is now over 7 months old ("Index last updated October 24 2007"). When will an update be run? --MichaelMaggs 20:07, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

And becoming more out of date by the month. Man vyi 07:42, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Less than a month to go now until the database celebrates a whole year since the last update. What shall we do for its birthday? Man vyi 06:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

That's about 16 months since the last update. Is Mayflower still being developed? Tomasz W. Kozłowski 09:59, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

2009

Image Tabbing

I frequently open multiple images in new tabs via ctrl-click, such that I review search results first then inspect potential image matches one-by-one. When I try this with Mayflower, the search page redirects to the image (bad) in addition to the image being opened in a new tab (as expected). Can this be changed?

Thanks for the great work! GChriss 15:42, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Categories too Specific

Some thought should be given to the categories. I often find that my exclusion terms are not covering things they should. Today's search was a prime example. My criteria got to "19,181 results found for "shield -Category:Connecticut_Route_shields -Category:Interstate_40_in_North_Carolina -Category:Florida_county_road_shields -Category:Florida_State_Road_shields -Category:Maps_of_Tenerife -Category:Teide -Category:Kansas_highway_shields -Category:Elongated_circular_route_shields -Category:New_Mexico_State_Road_shields" Related categories: Tennessee State Route shields (+/-)" and as you can see, still included route shields from Tennessee. It would seem saner (and more useful for searches) if road shields were all categorized "Road Shields" or "Route Shileds" and also categorized with their road type and/or location in another category. Then, people could search for "+Category:Road Shileds +Category:Tennessee" if they wanted that, but people looking for shields of the heraldic sort could exclude one category "-Category:Road Shields" and be done with them all. Again, this is not the first time I have run into this problem, so more care should be given when categorizing images (or in the categorization hints/guidelines).

repeatedly failing

I got no return for my search a few days ago, and I got what I think was the same error just a few minutes ago, something about "commons wiki p page does not exist."

Database error

The databases must have been rearranged or moved to another server; mayflower crashes with a connection problem.

I would be happy to try to fix this if you could send me the source code. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:32, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Is this synchronicity or do I just have bad luck. I tried to use Mayflower a few days ago, and now I just tried again and got the same result: "Mayflower experienced a terrible error. The error reported was: Table 'commonswiki_p.page' doesn't exist. This is most likely temporary and will be fixed in due course." As Jerry Pournelle frequently used to say, I think that means "any day now." ;-) 4.152.24.21 05:31, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

---

Another day another dolor: 374 results found for "lao" Database error

Mayflower experienced a terrible error. The error reported was: Table 'commonswiki_p.page' doesn't exist. This is most likely temporary and will be fixed in due course. 4.152.24.73 15:11, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

---

I have been trying for several months to access Mayflower, and keep receiving the same error message as above. 22:03, 28 October 2009

Will be fixed in due course.... since October! This is silly. Time to admit that the tool is dead? /Pieter Kuiper 19:12, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Come on!!! Fix the database or shut down this stupid broken page! And don't write the error ist temporary. It#s f***in' permanent f***ed up!!!

Still temporary? 81.241.110.72 21:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I used to rely on this tool. Will it ever come back? 217.158.236.14