elanthipedia:Searching
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Special Searches
Semantic Wiki Searches
Semantic searches can be performed either by searching by a single property or by more than one.
More information on how to search can be found at Elanthipedia:Semantic Searching.
MediaWiki search
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.
Tips for effective searches
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.
Wildcards
Be careful about limited wildcards, as they take a toll on the server. See Boolean fulltext search for details on their use.
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.
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, 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 searches.
Still can't find what you're looking for?
If you search and search and still can't find the article you are looking for, please consider contributing to Elanthipedia today!
Credits
Searching help adapted from Wikipedia.org.