Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Reading/Using portal for Random Search in all wikis

Random proposal ►◄ Reading The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Using portal for Random Search in all wikis

Problem: Special:Random on any wiki brings a page from the vast database, and Special:RandomInCategory cannot be limited to specific namespaces, and is not completely random either (phab:T200703)
Proposed solution: A namespace filter should be added to Special:RandomInCategory, and the probability bug should be fixed.
Who would benefit: Readers and random page patrollers
More comments:
Phabricator tickets: phab:T202204, phab:T200703
Proposer: Anupamdutta73 (talk) 13:36, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

@Anupamdutta73: Are you aware of Special:RandomInCategory? So to get a random living person on English Wikipedia, for instance, you could use w:Special:RandomInCategory/Living people. For more fine-grained topics, on English Wikipedia you could go by a WikiProject. The only issue there is the categories go on the talk page, so you'll have to click through to read the actual article. Nonetheless it usually works quite well, for instance w:Special:RandomInCategory/WikiProject Geography articles for Geography. I say "usually" because there are bugs such as phab:T202204 and more importantly, phab:T200703. So maybe your proposal could be about improving Special:RandomInCategory. How does that sound? Or is there a different solution you were looking for? MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 18:10, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Dear @MusikAnimal (WMF), what you have explained is for seasoned Wikimedians... and a bit troublesome. :) What I propose is anybody on wanting to click the Random Page can have a choice to have a Random Page in his/her choice of Category..... Have an additional button with filter options... Anupamdutta73 (talk) 05:52, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Anupamdutta73 Got it! Then I think what you need is what I was proposing. Basically a Special:RandomInCategory (your local wiki can put the link on the sidebar next to "Random page" if they want to) that allows you to enter a category, and even restrict it to a namespace (probably just articles in your case). With your permission I'd be happy to reword your proposal to be about this, adding the few technical details some people will need in order to decide on whether or not to support. Let me know! Thanks, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 06:02, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Dear @MusikAnimal (WMF), you nailed it.... Please go ahead and reword it for maximum effect... so that a first timer can use it effectively.... Anupamdutta73 (talk) 06:10, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Support for more precise searching. on Wikisource i often got page: instead of main namespace. JAn Dudík (talk) 13:15, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Thingofme (talk) 13:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support: more interesting to the average reader who currently presses "Random article" every so often, and a much improved experience for any editor working through a backlog of some kind. — Bilorv (talk) 19:40, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support I like the idea that this could be automatically linked on a given Category page. paul2520 (talk) 20:06, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Ciao • Bestoernesto • ✉ 03:27, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ayumu Ozaki (talk) 00:08, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]