Help:Searching Groupprops

There are numerous ways of searching and locating information on Groupprops. This article gives a brief overview of the methods, along with links to articles having more details about each way of searching.

If you plan to use Groupprops, it is strongly recommended that you read all this material, as it could help significantly with both searching and navigation.

The search bar
At the top left hand corner, just below the logo, you will find a search bar, with two options below it: "Go" and "Search". Here is some information:


 * Unless you have disabled this feature (for which you need to create an account, log in, and edit your preferences) search suggestions are automatically shown as you type in queries. These search suggestions only offer completions for page names. This is different from search suggestions offered by search engines, which use the search query information of past users. If you are somewhat familiar with the way pages are named and some of the organizational conventions, this feature can help you navigate and locate pages extremely quickly. (For instance, try typing in "normal " (without quotes) in the search bar. A host of suggestions appear. (More on this feature at Help:MediaWiki search).
 * When you enter a search term in the search bar and press Enter, the default option "Go" is activated. Under the "Go" option, if a page with the exact name you entered exists, you are directed to that page. In particular, if you selected one of the drop-down suggestions offered for completions, you go to that page. If no such page exists, a search is done. If you select the "Search" option, a search is done anyway.
 * The search page shows all search results. MediaWiki's internal search is not extremely smart -- for instance, it does not correct mis-spellings, and does not spot complex relations. The search results are separated into "Title matches" and "Text matches" -- articles where the title matches the search term, and articles where the match occurs only in the text. The text at the top of the search page offers suggestions and links to further options on search.

Operators and options
MediaWiki does not recognize all search operators that search engines use like Google. MediaWiki does recognize quotation marks.

Search from your browser
A search plugin for Firefox (versions 2 and later) is now available at:

http://www.subwiki.org/searchplugins.html

This search plugin uses the default "Go" option, so you can directly go to specific articles using your browser rather than having to load the main page. It should also automatically offer search suggestions as you type -- working exactly the same way as the search bar on the website.

Semantic search
Groupprops uses Semantic MediaWiki to store semantic relationships between different pages. This allows for a powerful kind of search based on these semantic relationships.

External search engines
It is recommended that you do not use external search engines as a tool of first choice for searching Groupprops. However, there may be circumstances where external search engines can offer search results not thrown up by MediaWiki's internal search. Keep in mind, however, that the databases of external search engines are not always up-to-date, and you may not get the most reliable information from these.