Your current search engine is terrible. As an online writer for the past several years, I have used your photos to illustrate my writings, but it's impossible to find anything with this new search engine. The photos you used to have are all gone, and when you do a search for a specific subject, you get a bunch of manuscripts, not photos. I truly wish you'd return to the "thrilling days of yesteryear," when photos were photos, not manuscripts. Thanks for the opportunity to tell you how I feel. I'll be back when we have photos on Wikimedia again.
Topic on Talk:Search/Old
Can you give me an example of what used to work and doesn't now? I think you mean that searching commons used to find better photos.
For the next few months you can get the old behavior by searching and adding &srbackend=LuceneSearch to the end of the url. The parameter doesn't stick so you'd have to add it back after every search. It'd be super useful if you can provide an example of a search that works well with the parameter and sucks without it.
This post was hidden by Sarah346 (history)
Why!!!