WilmottWiki:Searching
From WilmottWiki
This article provides an overview of WilmottWiki's search feature.
WilmottWiki search
The searchbox provides an input field with two buttons:
- Go - the Go button (or Enter on the keyboard), will take you automatically to the best match for the entered keyword.
- Search - the Search button will return a list of matching results.
Effective searching
Here are some hints for using the native WilmottWiki search feature effectively:
Limiting results
- Any words: WilmottWiki's default search mode will turn up results with any of the words in your query. For instance, Paris banks turns up many results containing only "Paris" but not "banks" or only "banks" but not "Paris" in addition to the ones you probably wanted, which contain both words.
- All words: To limit to results that include all words, put a "+" at the beginning of each word: +Paris +banks returns only pages containing both words, like Google's default mode. You can also do a phrase search by enclosing words in quotes: "Paris banks" turns up a smaller set of results, which not only have both words but have them in order.
- Exclude words: To exclude results that include some words, put a "-" at the beginning: Paris -banks
Boolean search is also possible, using words including "AND", "OR", and "NOT".
Avoid short and common words
If your search terms include a common "stop word" (such as "the", "one", "your", "more", "right", "while", "when", "who", "which", "such", "every", "about") it may give a large number of non-relevant results.
Wildcards
You can use some limited wildcards if you really want to. Look up "fulltext search" on http://www.mysql.com/ and look down under 'boolean search' for the details. However, wildcard searches are slower, so go easy on the poor server.
In a search for a word with a diaeresis, such as Schönbucher, it depends whether this ö is stored as one character or as "ö". In the first case one can simply search for Schonbucher (or Schönbucher); in the second case it can only be found by searching for Sch, ouml and/or nbucher. To complicate matters, Schönbucher is often written Schoenbucher with ö represented by "oe".
Words in single quotes
If a word appears in an article with single quotes, you can only find it if you search for the word with quotes. Since this is rarely desirable it is better to use double quotes in articles, for which this problem does not arise. See the WilmottWiki:Manual of style for more info.
An apostrophe is identical to a single quote, therefore Mu'ammar can be found searching for exactly that (and not otherwise). A word with apostrophe s is an exception in that it can be found also searching for the word without the apostrophe and the s.
Namespaces searched by default
The search only applies to the namespaces selected in the user's preferences. To search the other namespaces check or uncheck the tickboxes in "Search in namespaces" box found at the bottom of a search results page. Depending on the browser, a box may still be checked from a previous search, but without being effective any longer! To make sure, uncheck and recheck it.
Searching the image namespace means searching the image descriptions, i.e. the first parts of the image description pages.
Redirects can be excluded
Check or uncheck the tickbox "List redirects" in "Search in namespaces" box found at the bottom of a search results page.
The source text is searched
The source text (what one sees in the edit box, also called wiki text) is searched. This distinction is relevant for piped links, for special characters (if ê is coded as ê it is found searching for ecirc), etc.
Delay in updating the search index
For reasons of efficiency and priority, very recent changes are not always immediately taken into account in searchers. At the moment, the search engine uses an index that isn't updated at all.
External search engines
Various search engines can provide domain-specific searches, which lets you search WilmottWiki specifically. Searches are based on the text as shown by the browser, so wiki markup is irrelevant.
In general, external search engines are faster than an WilmottWiki search. However, because the search engine's cache is based on when the site was indexed, the search may not return newly created pages. Similarly, the search engine's cached version of the page will not be as up-to-date as the link to WilmottWiki itself.
By following the link below, you can use the Google search engine to search WilmottWiki - either all languages, or English-only. Google indexes all namespaces.
If you frequently search via Google, consider installing the Google Toolbar. Using the "search this site" button allows you to quickly search WilmottWiki. The official Google Toolbar is for Internet Explorer (Windows only) and for Mozilla Firefox (works on all operating system platforms for which Firefox is available, such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X).
Yahoo!
By following the link below, you can use the Yahoo! search engine to search WilmottWiki.
If you frequently search via Yahoo!, consider installing the Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Using the "Search Only the Current Site" button allows you to quickly search WilmottWiki. The official Yahoo! Companion Toolbar is only for Windows with Internet Explorer and Mozilla.
If you cannot find an appropriate page on WilmottWiki
If there is no appropriate page on WilmottWiki, consider creating a page, since you can edit WilmottWiki right now.
