Help:Searching: Difference between revisions
Eric Martz (talk | contribs) |
Eric Martz (talk | contribs) |
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On the left toolbar present when viewing any page in Proteopedia are two search boxes. The first is the standard wiki search box, similar to what you find in Wikipedia. The second is a Google search box that uses Google to search Proteopedia. Why have two? Performing good searches is a hard task, and the standard wiki search feature often comes up short, so we wanted to provide another option. | On the left toolbar present when viewing any page in Proteopedia are two search boxes. The first is the standard wiki search box, similar to what you find in Wikipedia. The second is a Google search box that uses Google to search Proteopedia. Why have two? Performing good searches is a hard task, and the standard wiki search feature often comes up short, so we wanted to provide another option. | ||
===Disadvantages of the wiki search box=== | ===Disadvantages of the wiki search box=== | ||
Common failings of the wiki search box are trouble handling plural queries (searching for "dogs" might not return matches for "dog") as well as trouble with captialization queries (searching for "Dog" might not return matches for "dog"). | Common failings of the wiki search box are trouble handling plural queries (searching for "dogs" might not return matches for "dog") as well as trouble with captialization queries (searching for "Dog" might not return matches for "dog"). | ||
===Advantages of the wiki search box=== | |||
You can restrict your search to specified [[namespaces]]. For example, the automatically-generated ''Category:'' pages may flood your search results, but you can exclude those. See the namespace checkboxes at the bottom of the results from any search. Also, when logged in, you can set your default namespaces for wiki searches in your ''preferences'' (see link at the top of every page to ''my preferences''). | |||
You can put double quotes around a phrase to restrict hits to the phrase, rather than getting hits to all pages that include any word in the phrase. | |||
===Disadvantages of the Google search box=== | ===Disadvantages of the Google search box=== | ||
Recently created pages will not appear when searching using the Google search box because Google needs time to find and index new pages. Additionally, it is impossible to restrict your search to particular namespaces like you can with the wiki search. | Recently created pages will not appear when searching using the Google search box because Google needs time to find and index new pages. Additionally, it is impossible to restrict your search to particular namespaces like you can with the wiki search. | ||