Powerbase:Searching

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This page provides an overview of the search feature which can be used to find information (or an article) in the Powerbase site.

How to do a search

The search box is found on the left hand side of a page. Put the keyword for your search in the box. You now have two options:

1. Go - (or Enter on keyboard) will take you automatically to the article if it exists under the same title as the one you have entered. If the title does not yet exist, it will ask if you want to create this page (make sure to familiarise yourself with How to start a page and Powerbase naming conventions before creating a new page).

You will also see a list of matches from your keyword.

2. Search - will return a list of articles.

Effective searching

Here are few good tips and hints for using the Powerbase search feature effectively:

Avoid short and common words

If your search terms include a common "stop word" (such as "the", "one", "your", "more", "right", "while", "when", "who", "which",

"such", "every", "about") it may give a large number of non-relevant results. The system cannot search for numbers.

Words with special characters

In a search for a word with a diaeresis, such as Sint Odiliënberg, it depends whether this ë is stored as one character or as "ë". In the first case one can simply search for Odilienberg (or Odiliënberg); in the second case it can only be found by searching for Odili, euml and/or nberg.

Words in single quotes

If a word appears in an article with single quotes, you can only find it if you search for the word with quotes. Since this is rarely desirable, it is better to use double quotes in articles for which this problem does not arise.

An apostrophe is identical to a single quote, therefore the name Mu'ammar can be found only by searching for exactly that (and not otherwise). A word with 's is an exception in that it can be found also by searching for the word without the apostrophe and the s.

If you cannot find an appropriate page on Powerbase

If there is no appropriate page on Powerbase, consider creating a page. Or consider adding what you were looking for to the Requested articles page.