Avlis Wiki:Searching
To search the Avlis Player Wiki:
- There should be a small search box at the side of the screen, marked search, followed by Go and Search. Just type what you're looking for into the search box and press the Enter key. Or, click Go or Search.
The difference between Go (same as enter) and Search is that Go first looks for an article with the given string as its title, and if one is found immediately goes to the indicated article. If Go fails to find an article, it then automatically executes Search which is a full-text search for the given words. Important search tips:
- When Search is disabled for performance reasons, Go can still be used to look up titled pages.
- Don't search for only words in quotes. Try the search without quotes first. If that's not good enough, put as many words as possible outside the quotes or add some more to narrow the search.
- While Go is usually, but not always, case insensitive, Search is always case insensitive. More detail about case sensitivity is provided below.
- Search is treated as a secondary function of the MediaWiki software and is sometimes unreliable and even completely disabled for performance reasons. If you can't find something you're expecting to find, please try an external search engine.
External search engines
Various search engines can provide domain-specific searches, which lets you search Wikipedia specifically. Searches are based on the text as shown by the browser, so wiki markup is irrelevant. Depending on your browser, you may also be able to use tools that allow you to search Wikipedia using bookmarklets.
In general, external search engines are faster than a Wikipedia search. However, because the search engine's cache is based on when the site was indexed, the search may not return newly created pages. Similarly, the search engine's cached version of the page will not be as up-to-date as the link to Wikipedia itself. Also, when returning Wikipedia articles in a regular search, mirrors and forks of Wikipedia content frequently rank higher than the actual Wikipedia articles because of search engine optimization techniques.
These issues may be less of a problem when using certain search engines that process Wikipedia differently:
- Yahoo! includes Wikipedia as part of its content acquisition program and gets a regular datafeed.
- Clusty downloads and processes the database regularly, generating automatic abstracts and image thumbnails and meaningfully parsing redirects, disambiguations, and categories.
By following the links below, you can use the Google search engine to search Wikipedia - either all languages, or English-only. Google indexes all namespaces.
- Search all languages
- Search the English Wikipedia only
- Search the English Wikipedia (excluding articles nominated for deletion)
If you frequently search via Google, consider installing the Google Toolbar. Using the "search this site" button allows you to quickly search the English version of Wikipedia. The official Google Toolbar is for Internet Explorer (Windows only) and for Firefox (works on all operating system platforms for which Firefox is available, such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X).
Yahoo!
By following the links below, you can use the Yahoo! search engine to search Wikipedia - either all languages or English-only.
If you frequently search via Yahoo!, consider installing the Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Using the "Search Only the Current Site" button allows you to quickly search the English version of Wikipedia. The official Yahoo! Companion Toolbar is only for Windows with Internet Explorer and Mozilla.
Clusty
By following the link below, you can use the Clusty search engine to search and cluster Wikipedia in English only.
If you frequently search via Clusty, consider installing the Clusty Toolbar (beta). Selecting the "Encyclopedia" search source allows you to quickly search the English version of Wikipedia. The Clusty Toolbar is available for Windows with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox (beta).
LuMriX
LuMriX is a dynamic query tool which uses lookahead to predict search terms in a list, similar to Google Suggest.
By following the link below, you can use the LuMriX search engine to search different language versions of Wikipedia.
If you frequently search via LuMriX, consider installing the LuMriX Firefox Search Plugin (works on all operating system platforms for which Firefox is available, such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X).
Wikiwax
Wikiwax is a dynamic query like LuMriX. It only searches english Wikipedia, but shows more list entries.
More
Here are more Wikipedia:Tools which make searching more convenient.