DPWiki:Searching

This page mainly discusses how to use the DP Wiki keyword search—the "Search" box that you see at the left of each wiki page. However, there are other ways to find things in the wiki besides keyword searching:

This wiki contains a mix of official DP documentation (managed by the DP site administrators and others appointed by them) and other helpful user-created and user-maintained information. You can identify official documentation several ways:

1. by its page name (which begins "DP Official Documenation:"),
2. by the title on the first tab at the top of the page ("dp official documentation"), and
3. by the light yellow page header that reads "DP Official Documentation".

For information on how to search for information on this wiki, please read the How to Search the Wiki article.

For information on how to edit wiki pages, please read the Editing article.

• The Exploration Overviews can be thought of as analogous to Tables of Contents for the Wiki.
  • Explore the Wiki on the basis of who we are and who we know.
  • Explore the Wiki on the basis of the status of projects. (work in progress)
  • Explore the Wiki on the basis of books (and book-like stuff we do). (work in progress)
  • Explore the Wiki on the basis of common questions and needs. (work in progress)
• The Categories form a kind of Directory or Index for the Wiki. Categories allow you to find information grouped into broad subject areas, such as Content Providing, Post-processing, Project Coordination, and Uberprojects.
• Searching for a simple term or topic using the search box may take you to a basic definition page for that term. That definition page will likely have links to more in-depth information.
• The All Articles page allows you to view alphabetical lists of all pages in the Wiki.
• The Recent Changes page is for the Wiki what the View Unread Posts page is for the Forums.

"Go" vs. "Search"

If you're looking for a particular wiki article and you think you know the title, the Go button is probably the better option. The Go button will take you to the wiki article with the title that you've typed into the search box, if the page exists. If no such page exists, then it gives you a list of articles that use that word or words. The Search button is better to use if you want to browse through the articles that contain the search term(s), because that button always gives you the list of results, rather than automatically showing you the article with that title.

Keyword Searching

Multiple Words

The wiki search function will search for all the words that you put into the search box. Thus, searching for "content" will find all pages containing that word, "provider" will find all pages with that word, and "content provider" will find all pages with both words.

Ignored Words

The search engine ignores certain common English words and all words less than 4 letters long. However, using the Go button will still take you to the page with that title, if one exists. In other words, if you search for "P1" using the Go button, you'll arrive at the page defining P1; if you use the Search button, you'll get no results because the search word is too short.

If one of your search keywords doesn't seem show up in the results, consider whether it might be too common or short and thus would be excluded from the search. Try to find a more specific word that won't be ignored.

Case & Partial Words

The search tool is case insensitive, so searching for "pper" will find pages with "pper" or "PPer". It searches for whole words, so that search would not bring up pages that only contained "upper" or "PPers".

However, note that the display on the search results behaves differently in some ways. For instance, if you search for "prod" you'll only find the wiki pages that contain that word (or PROD, pRoD, etc.), but on the results page you'll see words highlighted such as "production". That is, the search engine is narrower because it only checks whole words, while the results page highlights partial words as well.

Punctuation

Most punctuation is ignored when searching on the wiki, including double quotes, periods, and commas. This means that using double quotes around a phrase won't have any effect on the search results.

Hyphens though count as part of a word, so if you search for "small-caps" you will only find pages that contain small-caps, SMALL-CAPS, Small-Caps, etc.; you will not find pages with the phrase "small caps". The hyphen is treated like a letter and not like punctuation.

Search Preferences

If you are logged in to the wiki, you can follow the Preferences link at the top right of any page to change your wiki preferences, including your Search preferences. On that page you can adjust the appearance of the search results, as well as changing which namespaces you want to search by default (see below for more on namespaces).

Namespaces

By default, the wiki search only shows results from certain namespaces (major divisions of the wiki). For instance, your default search might only include regular wiki articles, in which case you won't see any results from members' user pages. When viewing a search results page you can use the checkboxes at the bottom of the page to change which namespaces you are searching in. Changing the namespaces in this way will only affect your current search, not any future searches.

If you want to change your default to include more (or fewer) namespaces, you can do so in your wiki search preferences.

Finding pages that you've edited before

If you are looking for a page that you've edited before or an image that you uploaded in the past, and you don't remember what it was called, there is another way to find it. Go to your user page (by clicking on the link with your name in the upper right of any wiki page), and in the lower left click on the "User contributions" link. You will get a list of all the edits that you've made on the wiki and all files you've uploaded. This will work even if you haven't created your user page yet; just click on your name in the upper right anyway, and on the page asking you to create the page there will be the same "User contributions" link in the lower left.

Another way is to use this url:

http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/Special:Contributions/User_Name

just change the part after the last slash to the appropriate user name (whether yours or someone else's).

If you can't find what you're looking for

If you search for something on the DP Wiki and you aren't able to find it, please ask about it in the forums (the General forum would probably be a good place). If it's here on the wiki, someone will be able to give you a link, and maybe also make changes on the wiki to make it easier for others to find it in the future. If it's not on the wiki, by asking about it you may prompt someone to add it. :)

One last thing

If you want some tips on how to 'Search' effectively, take a look at 'a Simpleton's shortlist' by clicking HERE

(Best practices for 'Search' are different for this wiki than for googleSearch forumSearch and, for WikipediaSearch.)

WikipediaSearch shows the # of hits, and their revelance. wikiSearch, by which I mean search in DP Wiki, does not! and I don't think wikiSearch results are ranked.

Take a break, come back in five minutes, and try refining your search term or terms.

no charge...

--dnorm