| Help Contents |
| ~ Getting Started ~ |
| About EQ2i |
| Welcome New Users |
| Where to Begin |
| When All Else Fails |
| ~ FAQs ~ |
| EQ2i Overview FAQ |
| Reader's FAQ |
| Editor's FAQ |
| Template FAQ |
| ~ Browsing & Editing ~ |
| Searching EQ2i |
| Gathering Intel |
| Help for New Editors |
| ~ Policies & Guidelines ~ |
| General Policies |
| Manual of Style |
This article provides a detailed overview of Mediawiki's search feature to find information.
Mediawiki search[]
Put your keyword in the searchbox.
- Go - (or Enter on keyboard) will take you automatically to the article.
- Search - will return a list of articles.
Effective searching[]
Here are some really helpful tips and hints for using the Wikipedia search feature effectively:
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") it may give a large number of non-relevant results.
Wildcards[]
You can use limited wildcards if you really want to. See Boolean fulltext search for details on their use. However, wildcard searches are slower, so go easy on the poor server.
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.
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.
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.
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 linkss, 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.
If you cannot find an appropriate page on EQ2i[]
If there is no appropriate page on EQ2i, consider creating a page, since you can edit EQ2i right now.
Credits[]
This page was lifted from Wikipedia and edited for EQ2i relevancy.