TBH we do not have a detailed definition for this decision.

With the defaults we want to serve a moderate setup that works good for most common use cases ... what ever the most common use cases are is the first variable in our definition.

But I think there are simple rules that might help to find a decision:

• The engine should not be enabled by default if many issues expected by this engine
• The engine should not be enabled by default if an API key ore more setup is needed
• Engines in the 'general' category enabled by default should support different languages
• ...

But that does not explain why e.g. hoogle & pypi are enabled by default whereas npm & rubygems are disabled by default.

These are in category IT, there is no need for language support.

For me npm & rubygems do work reliable .. if there a no other bad UX with this both engines we should consider to activate npm & rubygems also by default.

What do other think? .. should I prepare a PR for npm & rubygems .. any other suggestions to improve the defaults?

Tbh for my public instance the default engines do not really work (either to slow, a lot of IP blocking or the returned results are low quality IMO); These are the changes from SearXNG upstream, that I applied to my fork:
https://github.com/paulgoio/searxng/blob/8d6e7f7e9b6449e73ef5b45e219140a6c59911d4/Dockerfile#L43-L61

(Edit: IMO use_mobile_ui: true should be set by default in settings.yml)

I think it would be neat to document the reasons why the engines are disabled, e.g.:

• disabled_because: rate-limit
• disabled_because: lang:de
• disabled_because: duplicates:youtube

These reasons could then be displayed in the engine tables. This would help admins decide whether or not they want to enable a given engine. For example German speakers might want to enable all German engines that are disabled by default ... but currently these aren't easily findable.

think it would be neat to document the reasons why the engines are disabled, e.g.:
.. These reasons could then be displayed in the engine tables.

I think this is a good suggestion for a PR / I just hesitate since I do not know the state of all engines .. but I think we should start a process that "rates/classify" engines in one or the other manner. I don't know if "disabled_because" is the choice for a rating or classification / I have to think about .. in the meantime suggestions and PRs are welcome.

Great, to get this started I opened #629 to classify engines that are only meant for a non-English target audience.