Each webpage within the website is essentially an article. The Manual is therefore a collection of articles, each with its own webpage. Articles usually contain multiple sub-sections. We attempted to keep articles at a reasonable length, dividing a topic into multiple articles when the length for a single article became too long.
Categories is a powerful tool built into the Mediawiki platform that allows content to be organized. Pages that deal with a similar topic can be placed into the same category. For example, all pages that address bioretention can be placed into a single category. Pages can be placed into more than one category. For example, a page addressing bioretention operation and maintenance can be placed into a category containing bioretention pages and also into a category containing pages addressing operation and maintenance.
We are in the process of organizing the wiki. All pages in the wiki will eventually be placed into one or more category. We will be creating three levels of category, with lower levels (2 and 3) potentially being subcategories for higher levels (1 and 2).
An example of the level categorization is shown on the right for best management practices.
The previous section explained how pages will be organized into categories within the wiki. To access categories, click on Index (Categories) in the left toolbar. Expand the number of selections to 500. You will note that there are many categories not prefaced by Level. These will eventually disappear as we create new categories and place pages in the new structure.
Scroll down to the categories prefaced by Level. These are arranged alphabetically, starting with Level 1. Eventually we will redesign the Table of Contents and Main page in the wiki to allow easier search for topics of interest. Until that happens, you can find a particular topic by searching for a keyword on the Category page. This is done in your browser by clicking on the options icon for your browser, usually found near the upper right part of the screen in the browser.
Example: I want to find information on phosphorus. Phosphorus is an environmental pollutant, so we would search within the Level 1 category Level 1 - Pollutants, or we could go directly to the Level 2 category Level 2 - Pollutants/phosphorus. If we go to the Level 1 link you will see phosphorus as a subcategory. Clicking on the Level 2 link takes you to a page containing links to pages that address phosphorus.
A search box and magnifying glass is found in the upper right portion of each page. This may be used to search within the website. Single or multiple word searches can be conducted. Typing a particular word or phrases produces a number of links to the item of interest. These are ordered first by webpages that are related to the search item and then by content within webpages that is related to the item of interest. For example, typing permeable pavement design criteria results in the screen shot shown to the right. The first link takes you directly to a webpage (article) addressing design criteria for permeable pavement. The remaining links take you to places within the website where one or more of the terms used in the search are found.
The Minnesota Stormwater Manual has a search engine built in, which can be used to locate material on Minnesota Stormwater Manual. The search box is located at the top right on every page. It will take you directly to the article that matches your query; otherwise it will display search results. To display the full search results, click on the last item in drop-down list (which says "containing..."), or perform an empty search to display a more advanced special search interface with more search options.
This basic search box does not search categories. You can display a more advanced special search interface by doing a null search (with nothing in the search box, click on the magnifying glass or the "Go" button). Then click on "Advanced" for an even more advanced interface that allows you to search categories, etc.
The internal search engine can search for parts of page titles or page title prefixes, and in specific categories. It can also limit a search to pages with specific words in the title or located in specific categories. It can handle parameters an order of magnitude more sophisticated than most external search engines, including user-specified words with variable endings and similar spellings. When presenting results, the internal search understands and will link to relevant sections of a page (although to a limited degree some other search engines may do this as well).
The source text (as shown in the edit box) is searched for. This distinction is relevant for piped links, special characters (if ê is coded as ê it is found searching for ecirc), etc. Entering an article title will jump to that article; to display a list of matches to the search term instead, prefixing the search term with "-" or "~" (see "Avoiding automatic direction to page" below) will force a full search.
Upper and lower case as well as some diacritical marks such as umlauts and accents are disregarded in search. For example, a search for Citroën will find pages containing the word Citroën (c = C, e = ë). Some ligatures match the separate letters. For example, a search for aeroskobing will find pages containing Ærøskøbing (ae = Æ).
Many non-alphanumerical characters are ignored. It is not possible to search for the string |LT| (letters "LT" between two vertical bars) as used in some convert templates for long tons; all articles with "lt" will be returned. Some characters are treated differently; "Credit (finance)" will return articles with the words "credit" and "finance", ignoring the parentheses, unless an article with exact title "Credit (finance)" exists.
The following features can be used to refine searches. Many of these links are a {{search link}}.
Salvage wreck prefix:USS returns Articles containing the words salvage and wreck whose title starts with the characters "USS".
All search words are automatically subject to stemming. There is a stemming: parameter but it changes no search result. Stemming may be deactivated by using double quotes. Stemming is a convention among search engines. See the following examples:
When using the search to directly get to a page, it doesn't matter whether you enter capitals or lower case letters (unless there are two article titles which differ only in capitalization). Umlauts and accents are also disregarded, but ligatures do not match the separate letters. Specialized uses of the search to directly get to a page include the following:
External link URL search - Special:LinkSearch is a tool for searching for URLs in external links in the Minnesota Stormwater Manual pages. For example, the page Special:LinkSearch/*.yahoo.com lists all Minnesota Stormwater Manual pages linking to Yahoo.com.
If you're looking for a place where wine comes from pronounced "Bordo", you can try searching for a more general article such as "Wine", "Wine regions" (returning "List of wine-producing regions") or other wine types such as "Burgundy" and see if it's mentioned there or follow links (in this case, to "Burgundy wine", which has several mentions of "Bordeaux", and links to "French wine" and "Bordeaux wine"). If you know it's in France, look at "France" or the Category:Cities in France, from where you can easily find Bordeaux. You can try various things depending upon the particular case; for "Bordo" wine, it's quite likely that the first letters are "bord", so search an article you've landed on for these letters
For an overview of how to find and navigate Wikipedia content, see Portal:Contents. If you're looking for a straight definition of a word, try our sister project Wiktionary.
A common mistake is to type a question into the search bar and expect an answer; some Web search tools such as Ask Jeeves support this. The Minnesota Stormwater Manual search is a text search only. A search for how do clocks work? will return articles with the words how, do, clocks, and work, ignoring the question mark (in practice this can lead to articles answering simple questions).
Most of the material in the 2008 Manual was migrated to the wiki. We have developed a Guide for finding old manual content to help you determine where the old material now resides.