Revision as of 04:06, 2 September 2006

Searching bocwiki

• A basic search is performed by entering the relevant term(s) in the search box.
  • This is at the left of the screen when using the default skin.
  • Clicking Go (or Enter on the keyboard) will automatically take you to the article, if it exists.
  • Clicking Search will return a list of articles that match the terms you enter.

Effective searching

Some hints that will help you use the bocwiki search feature effectively:

Limiting results

bocwiki's default search will return articles with any of the words in your query.

• For example, mike cs80 returns results containing mike but not cs80, and also cs80 but not mike - in addition to the results that you probably wanted; those which contained both words.
• To only return results including both words, add a + to the start of each word: +mike +cs80 returns only pages containing both terms.
• To be even more specific, you can enclose the terms within quotes: "mike cs80" turns up a smaller set of results, which not only have both words but have them in order (mike has probably used a yamaha cs80).
• To exclude terms, add a - before them; -cs80 mike returns results containing mike, but not cs80.
• Performing a boolean search, google-style, is also possible; "AND", "OR", and "NOT" are the permitted Boolean terms.

Avoid short or common words

• Obviously, searching solely for the or and is going to return a lot of results.
• Avoiding connectives is a good rule of thumb; mike and the cs80 is far more confusing to the search engine than mike cs80.