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Move WolframAlpha away from Science category #813

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merged 1 commit into from
Jan 26, 2022

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MarcAbonce
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@MarcAbonce MarcAbonce commented Jan 24, 2022

What does this PR do?

I just noticed #634 and I loved it.
I've always thought that WolframAlpha was a little bit out of place in the Science category, which is otherwise exclusively used for scientific articles, so if you wanted to use the !science bang for papers you had to remember to disable Wolfram first.

For now I just left the category blank, but technically it could be part of a Calculator or Mathematics category if there were more engines of that type.

Related-ish issue: searx/searx#2472

How to test this PR locally?

  1. Go to Preferences and then to Engines.
  2. WolframAlpha should be in Other/Other section instead of Science.
  3. Run a query with !science bang.
  4. WolframAlpha shouldn't be called.

@return42
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I've always thought that WolframAlpha was a little bit out of place in the Science category, which is otherwise exclusively used for scientific articles, so if you wanted to use the !science bang for papers you had to remember to disable Wolfram first.

I don't know, but is category science really the wrong category?

These are my thoughts about ...

When I search for an equation (e.g. E=m*c^2) I would do it in the general category or in the science category. Equations are most often related to science I think, or with other words; who has said that there are only white papers in the science category.

An alternative to science for WolframAlpha might be general, but as you wrote:

My only concern is that Wolfram has a way longer timeout compared to other engines, so if WolframAlpha is on by default, the general category would feel slower than before. So I think it should be disabled by default if moved to the general category.

I don’t have a final opinion yet, what do you think?

@dalf
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dalf commented Jan 24, 2022

I'm in favor of this PR (no category), because WolframAlpha

  • can answer generic question like length of Broklyn bridge
  • can be slow

I feel it is more a tool that has to be called on purpose rather receiving any queries (from the general or science categories).

@return42 return42 merged commit ccffab3 into searxng:master Jan 26, 2022
@MarcAbonce MarcAbonce deleted the change-wolfram-category branch January 27, 2022 02:51
@geckolinux
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geckolinux commented Apr 13, 2022

Hi there, I really think that the original SearX properly placed Wolfram Alpha under the Science category, because some users might want to enable it by default (without using bangs). Please see my reasoning for this here:
#966

@xieve
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xieve commented Jun 3, 2023

As I have mentioned in the issue above, I would suggest that WolframAlpha be placed in the general category, while being disabled by default. This would mean every user could opt to use it for instant answers on any public instance while the default config would still be fast. Bangs would also still work. I have just set up an instance with that configuration because I really wanted to have WolframAlpha instant answers on every query.

An even cooler solution would be if instant answers could be lazy-loaded, such that the search results appear as soon as available, while WolframAlpha can take its time and drop the instant answer in later.

geckolinux added a commit to geckolinux/searxng that referenced this pull request Jul 27, 2023
return42 pushed a commit to return42/searxng that referenced this pull request Aug 10, 2023
…efault

As suggested in comment [1] as a good compromise between [2] and [3].

This will help users that want Wolfram Alpha instant answers by default with
every query and don't mind the slowness.  It will be disabled by default so it's
fast for all users, and those that need it can enable it as a user-configurable
option without requiring setting up their own instance to change the Wolfram
Alpha categorization.

[1] searxng#813 (comment)
[2] searxng#813 (comment)
[3] searxng#966 (comment)
return42 pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 10, 2023
…efault

As suggested in comment [1] as a good compromise between [2] and [3].

This will help users that want Wolfram Alpha instant answers by default with
every query and don't mind the slowness.  It will be disabled by default so it's
fast for all users, and those that need it can enable it as a user-configurable
option without requiring setting up their own instance to change the Wolfram
Alpha categorization.

[1] #813 (comment)
[2] #813 (comment)
[3] #966 (comment)
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5 participants