Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-3089265-20160521135952/@comment-24473195-20160521144236

I'm not too sure which search backend wikia uses (probably something based on MySQL search), but it does have hidden and undocumented parameters. For instance, it accepts some boolean parameters such as "AND" or "OR":


 * "AND"


 * linksweeper AND MarkForDeletion

http://dev.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Search?search=linksweeper+AND+MarkForDeletion&fulltext=Search&ns0=1&ns14=1#


 * "OR"
 * linksweeper OR MarkForDeletion

http://dev.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Search?search=linksweeper+OR+MarkForDeletion&fulltext=Search&ns0=1&ns14=1#
 * NOT
 * link NOT sweeper

http://dev.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Search?search=Link+NOT+sweeper&fulltext=Search&ns0=1&ns14=1#

The closest to what you want is the "AND" operator, although it also matches things like "banana" + "apple" === "apple" + "banana"

There is probably a way to get it to do an exact search, although you'd probably have to ask staff about the specifics of the engine they use.

I found this really old article severely criticizing the default mediawiki search:


 * http://web.archive.org/web/20160521155004/http://www.searchtools.com/analysis/mediawiki-search/index-mediawiki-search-stinks.html

It seems that wikia's engine is only a somewhat better than whatever the default was in 2008.