Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Larger suggestions/Search in a member's contribution

This proposal is a larger suggestion that is out of scope for the Community Tech team. Participants are welcome to vote on it, but please note that regardless of popularity, there is no guarantee this proposal will be implemented. Supporting the idea helps communicate its urgency to the broader movement.

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

Search in a member's contribution

Problem: There is no possibility to search not in the whole Wikipedia, but in the contribution of a specific editor
Proposed solution: Add this option
Who would benefit:
More comments: One possibility would be to make it easier to test bypassing the blocking using duck-test
Phabricator tickets:
Proposer: Pessimist (talk) 16:23, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

@Pessimist2006: Could clarify what you mean by searching user contributions, i.e. do you mean searching specifically for the words that have been added or removed by the contributor? I think that providing a few examples would be helpful. DCausse (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, searching specifically for the words that have been added by the contributor.

https://prnt.sc/jxm1hjS-fHq4 Pessimist (talk) 08:59, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Pessimist2006 Thanks for the clarification! I'm not an expert in this field, but I suspect doing arbitrary text searches against a user's contributions is not something that will work quickly enough for it to be usable. Some users have millions of edits. We could however build an external tool, with the caveat that it will run rather slowly. There might already be similar tools now. Does that sound like a good solution to you? MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Pessimist2006, we're going to move this to the Larger Suggestions section, as implementing this in MediaWiki would likely require significant effort (namely, indexing contributions for search by user) — it's certainly an interesting proposal though, and by keeping it in the larger suggestions category allows us to gauge interest. I hope that makes sense! — TheresNoTime-WMF (talk • they/them) 14:10, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK, it's good idea. Pessimist (talk) 20:14, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Support. DatGuy (talk) 19:23, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Fallbackintoreality (talk) 20:52, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Klein Muçi (talk) 00:44, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Pmsyyz (talk) 01:14, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support * Pppery * _{it has begun} 04:08, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support NMaia (talk) 06:04, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Arado Ar 196 (talk) 08:32, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Jim Hokins (talk) 09:20, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support //Lollipoplollipoplollipop::talk 10:10, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support CaféBuzz (talk) 11:16, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 14:03, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support JopkeB (talk) 15:05, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Prairie Astronomer (talk) 15:39, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose For me it looks too dangerous in terms of abuse during the existence of censorship in some states. Lvova (talk) 16:44, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ivario (talk) 22:03, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Gohan 04:53, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support In my opinion, it will be useful German Stimban (talk) 04:10, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Izno (talk) 08:06, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support SpacedShark (talk) 06:35, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Labdajiwa (talk) 00:00, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support as I do believe that this can be a useful feature, but as User:Lvova mentioned, it can be abused by authoratarian governments and people searching through your edits to defame you. QuickQuokka ^{[⁠talk • contribs]} 20:29, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Everything is stored in the database. A authoritarian government absolutely wanting to defame someone doesn't need a nice new feature, they would just employ a computer scientist who knows how to swift through the database. —‍(ping on reply)—‍CX Zoom (A/अ/অ) (let's talk|contribs) 08:34, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No need to help them. Lvova (talk) 12:38, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Doktor Züm (talk) 07:41, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 17:33, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support —‍(ping on reply)—‍CX Zoom (A/अ/অ) (let's talk|contribs) 08:34, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as User:Lvova mentioned, this can be abused Christian (talk) 20:41, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Althair (talk) 01:56, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support β₁₆ - (talk) 14:30, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Tutwakhamoe (talk) 20:02, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Qxyz123 (talk) 04:30, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support cyrfaw (talk) 18:31, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support This should be useful -- however there is potential for harassment. Thingofme (talk) 01:58, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]