Forum:Getting to Special pages
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.
Have you tried to search for a Special: page lately? Like Special:Preferences or Special:WantedCategories? If so, you may have found that these pages no longer appear in the search results, even if you type in the page absolutely correctly.
According to feedback from Wikia received today, it's not a temporary glitch while they continue to work on the search module. This is intended behaviour. Oddly — and confusingly — Special pages are found by autosuggest. So if you're linking to them within an article, they'll pop up as possibilities if start with a capital S, and keep typing, either in an editing widow or a search bar.
In other words, if you type: Special:Pref into a search bar, Special:Preferences will appear as an alternative you can select with your mouse and you'll go straight to the right page. But if you press Enter after typing Special:Preferences into the search box, Special:Preferences will be nowhere to be found in the search results.
Confused? Yeah, me too. But that doesn't mean that you're seriously hampered in getting to the pages.
If you want access to Special:SpecialPages, you can put it onto your personal toolbar — that horizontal strip of links at the bottom of every page. Just hit Customise then enter Template:T in the Find a tool dialogue box.
If there are particular special pages you use a lot, you can also enable a lot of them through Customise which show up under My tools. Or you could just bookmark the special pages you frequent, and use the power of your browser to get to them quickly.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 20:45: Mon 20 Aug 2012
