This page provides a detailed overview of NativeWiki's search feature, and instructions on using external search engines, such as Google, to find information.
[edit] Search made simple
Enter your keywords in the search box.
- Go - (or Enter on keyboard) takes you to the article.
- Search - returns a list of articles and additional search options.
[edit] Tips for effective searches
[edit] Go is case sensitive
If you wanted SUN Microsystems and got the star or wanted COPPA and got a sausage, this is
probably the reason. The "go" function uses an algorithm to decide what page you're likely to be interested in, and this usually masks its case sensitivity - but not always. For more details about this please see Wikipedia:Go button.
[edit] Avoid short and common words
If your search terms include a common "stop word" (such as "the", "your", "more", "right", "while", "when", "who", "which",
"such", "every", "about"), you may see many irrelevant results.
[edit] Wildcards
Be careful about limited wildcards, as they take a toll on the server. See Boolean fulltext search for details on their use.
[edit] Words with special characters
In a search for a word with a diaeresis, such as Sint Odiliënberg, it depends whether this ë is stored as one character or as "ë". In the first case one can simply search for Odilienberg (or Odiliënberg); in the second case it can only be found by searching for Odili, euml and/or nberg. This is actually a bug that should be fixed -- the entities should be folded into their raw character equivalents so all searches on them are equivalent.
[edit] 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 manual of style for more info.
An apostrophe is identical to a single quote, therefore the name Mu'ammar can be found only by searching for exactly that (and not otherwise). A word with 's is an exception in that it can be found also by searching for the word without the apostrophe and the s.
[edit] Phrases in double quotes -- exact match only
A phrase can easily be found by enclosing it in double quotes. For example, "holly dolly" returns six matches; holly dolly (two standalone words) returns 197.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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 interlanguage links (to find links to Chinese articles, search for zh, not for Zhongwen), special characters (if ê is coded as ê it is found searching for ecirc), etc.
[edit] Delay in updating the search index
For reasons of efficiency and priority, very recent changes are not always immediately taken into account in searches.
