User talk:72.152.99.117

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[edit] Your recent edits

Hi there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. If you can't type the tilde character, you should click on the signature button Image:Signature_icon.png located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot (talk) 15:23, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re: your question

First of all, sorry about the "warning" I gave you. I was using an automated vandalism reversion tool and I didn't realize you were asking a legitimate question. Regarding your question, do you click on "Go" or "Search" when you look for something on Wikipedia? I usually have no trouble finding what I need by clicking "Search" but sometimes if you click "Go", you won't get the right results. "Go" look for a page with the exact title you typed and "Search" works like a regular search engine and looks for close matches. However, the search looks at the underlying "Wikimarkup" code that is used to edit and display the page and not the actual displayed content like a search engine such as Google or Yahoo will do, so this can sometimes give bad results. (especially when your search contains numerals.) If you can't find what you are looking for with the built-in search feature, you could try going to http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en and use the "search domain" feature near the bottom to search http://en.wikipedia.org for whatever you are looking for. As to writing a better search feature for Wikipedia, I don't have access to the necessary databases and administrative tools and although I don't know a lot about PHP programming, I do know that writing a new search feature would take a lot of work and, at least in my experience, the present search feature works fine most of the time. I'm sorry I can't help you more than that, but I really appreciate that you use this encyclopedia and you were willing to make suggestions on how to make it better. Regards. Thingg⊕⊗ 15:34, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Search

Unfortunately, Wikipedia's search is pretty crappy. What you'll probably want to do is type in "site:en.wikipedia.org" in the search box, followed by what you want to search for. This prefix will let you search in Wikipedia alone. For example, here's an example search with "site:en.wikipedia.org komodo dragon": [1]. I hope this answers your question satisfactorily. bibliomaniac15 Hey you! Stop lazing around and help fix this article instead! 17:16, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia's search engine is quite bad. However, the user above did give really good suggestions. Unfortunately, I don't believe Google will reveal a broader range of information than Wikipedia's search engine. It does help though, if you are trying to locate Wikipedia rule/requests/project etc. pages. --haha169 (talk) 23:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)