Transformation Stories List: Power Search Help

The Power Search page has many options. It will let you search for lots of things. If you're not used to the things it's covering, it can also confuse the heck out of you. Reading this can help. Please let me know if you have questions that aren't covered by this page.

Before I get to the specific parts of the search page, a few general notes:

• The search page will allow you to search on a number of different things. If you don't care about a particular section, leave it blank. For example, if you don't care what the cause of the transformation is, leave the Cause section blank.
• In general, the search engine will only find things that match everything you've told it to search for. So, for example, let's say that you set "Title" to fox, "Result" to LY, and "Significance" to +. You'll only find entries that have "fox" in the title, and involve lycanthropy, and have a Significance rating of "+".
  One of the most common search mistakes that people make is going overboard; they fill something in for every option, and as a result they wind up not finding anything. Don't let this happen to you. Start by only filling in the options that interest you most; then, if that winds up finding too many things, you can always go back and add more details to your search.
• Many of the sections allow you to specify things that must not be there, as well as things that must be there. So, for example, let's say that you're interested in stories involving magic, but you don't like lycanthropy stories at all. (Weirdo...) No problem; just set "Cause must include:" to magic, and "Result must not include" to lycanthropy.
• If you only enter things in the "must not..." sections, and don't actually enter anything to search for, then the search engine will find everything except the things that you told it not to find. For example, if the only thing you specify is "Result is not lycanthropy", then you'll find all the non-lycanthropy stories in the list.
• Pay attention to the beginning of the search results you get. The search engine will recap what you told it to search for, which may or may not be what you meant to tell it to search for. In addition, it may warn you if it looks like you've made a common searching mistake, and tell you how to correct the problem.

General Details

This section controls where to search, how much to find, and how much to tell you about it.

• "Which area(s) of the list do you want to search?"
  • Pretty straightforward; by setting the checkboxes here, you control which areas of the List get searched. For example, if you're not interested in movies, just clear the Movies checkbox. You must leave at least one box checked; otherwise, you won't search anything, and that's no fun.
• "How many matches should I find?"
  • Again, pretty straightforward; this controls the maximum number of items that your search will find. For example, if you set this to "50", then the search will stop when it finds 50 things that match your requests.
    The higher you raise this option, the longer your search can take. But even huge searches usually finish within 30 seconds or so, so don't be shy.
• "How much detail do you want in the search results?"
  • This option controls the way in which your search results are displayed.
    If you choose "List the whole entries," then the search results page will show the entire contents of all the entries that are found. This is very handy; but if your search finds lots of things, the result list can take a while to download to your browser.
    If you choose "List the entry titles only", then the search results page will show a table, listing the title and author of each entry that was found. (You can click on a listing in this table to go to the appropriate section of the List.) This can be a useful thing to print out and take to the bookstore with you.

Searching on the entire entry

This section allows you to search for things when you don't care where they appear in the entry. For example, if you search for fox in this section, you'll find things stories with "Fox" in the title, stories written by George Fox, stories whose description mentions the word "fox", and so on.

Before you do a text-based search at all, check the rest of the Search page, to see if there are other ways of searching that might accomplish the same thing. For example, if you're searching for lycanthropy stories, searching for the word lycanthropy or werewolves will miss a lot of stories, because there are so many different words that can be used to talk about lycanthropy. You would be much better off going to the "Result is..." section of the search page, and choosing the "lycanthropy" option there; that will find all the lycanthropy stories in the list, regardless of what words are used to describe the lycanthropy.

You can expand the flexibility of your search a bit by using "wildcards". If you include a question mark in your search text, it will match any single letter or number. For example, if you search for ?ream, you'll find entries containing 'dream' or 'cream'.  If you include an asterisk (*) in your search text, it will match any number of letters or numbers, including zero; for example, if you search for were*s, you'll find entries containing 'werewolves' or 'werefoxes' or 'weres'. (But you won't find "were-wolves", because the "-" isn't a letter or a number.)

• "Entry must include:"
  • Type in the words or phrases that you want to search for.
  • The most important note I can make here: The engine will search for exactly what you type in. It doesn't try to figure out what you "mean" by what you type in; it searches for exactly what you type in, whatever that happens to be.
  • Put only a single word or phrase in each blank. If I type fox or coyote in one blank, I may be trying to find entries that include the word "fox" or the word "coyote" in them. But that's not what I'm going to find; I'll find only entries that actually include the phrase "fox or coyote". Likewise, if I type magic, female in one blank, I may be trying to find entries that include both the word "magic" and the word "female"; but I'll only find entries that include the phrase "magic, female". If you want to search for multiple words or phrases (like fox and coyote), then put each word or phrase in a separate blank.
  • If you use a long phrase, like male to female change, bear in mind that you'll only find entries that contain those exact words, in that order. So try to keep the phrases you search for as short as possible, to increase the chance of finding things.
  • Don't use quotation marks unless you really mean it. For example, if I type in "wolf" (including the quotation marks), then I'll only find entries that actually have the word "wolf" in quotation marks; that's almost certainly not what I want to do. Just type in the word wolf, without quotation marks.
• "Do you want to find entries with at least one of those words/phrases, or with all of them?"
  • This option is ignored unless you've entered at least two words/phrases to search for.
  • If you choose "All of them (AND)", then the engine will only find entries that contain all of the words/phrases you've chosen. For example, if you've chosen fox and coyote as the words to search for, the engine will only find entries that contain both words.
  • If you choose "Any one of them (OR)", then the engine will find entries that contain any or all of the words/phrases you've chosen. If you've chosen recommend and favoriteas the words to search for, the engine will find entries that contain at least one of those words.
• "Entry must not include:"
  • If you type in words or phrases here, then the engine will only find entries that don't contain any of these words/phrases.
• "Should I look for partial words?"
  • If you choose "Whole or partial words", then the engine will find all the entries where the text you're searching for appears, even if that text is in the middle of a word. For example, searching for wolf will find "wolf", "werewolf", "wolfman", etc.
  • If you choose "Whole words only", then the engine will only find entries where the text you're searching for appears on its own; searching for wolf will only find "wolf", not "werewolf" or "wolfman".
• "Should I ignore case in these words/phrases?"
  • If you choose "Ignore case", then the engine will ignore the difference between uppercase and lowercase letters.  Searching for coyote will find "Coyote".
  • If you choose "Consider case", then the engine will only find entries where the words/phrases appear in the same case that you typed them in; searching for coyote will only find "coyote", not "Coyote".
• "Find entries last modified on or after..."
  • These menus let you choose a date. Only entries that were last modified on or after this date will be found. (Note that this date is not the publication date of the book; it's just the date when the list entry was last changed, so that you can make your own private "What's New?" list.)
  • If you don't care about this option, leave the "Month" menu on "Don't care."
• "Find entries last modified on or before..."
  • These menus work just like the "On or after..." menus above; only entries that were last modified on or before this date will be found.

Searching on particular parts of the entry

As the name implies, this section lets you search based on particular pieces of information in each entry--for example, the title of the book or story, or the type of transformation involved.

If you specify things here as well as in the "Searching on the entire entry" section, the searches combine; for example, if you search for fox, and also choose "Result must contain LY", you'll only find lycanthropy stories that mention foxes (or that are written by people named Fox, or whatever).

• "Title"
  • If you're searching for stories with a particular title, enter that title (or part of the title) here.
• "Author"
  • If you're looking for stories by a particular author, enter the author's name here.
  • If you want to search for the author's entire name, please enter it last-name-first, as it would appear in the list; for example, Chalker, Jack. Alternatively, you can search for a part of the name; for example, Chalker.
• "Rating"
  • The Rating field shows how good people think the story is; 5 is "fantastic", 1 is "utter crap."
  • You can search for a range of ratings. For example, if you select both the "5" and the "4" in the Rating list, you'll find stories with a rating of 4 or 5.
  • If you select something in the "Rating must not include" box, you won't find anything whose rating falls into any of those categories. So, for example, if you select "1" and "2" in the "Rating must not include" list, you won't find any stories with a rating of 1 or 2.
  • Note that several people may well have reviewed the same story, and given it different ratings. So a search of "Rating must include 5" is very different from a search for "Rating must include 5; Rating must not include 1." A search for "Rating must include 5" will find any story that anyone gave a rating of 5 to, regardless of what anyone else thought of it. A search for "Rating must include 5; Rating must not include 1" will find only stories that somebody gave a 5 to, and that nobody else gave a 1 to.
• "Cause"
  • The Cause field shows what causes the transformation in the story--magic, science, etc.
  • The search options are the same as for the Rating field. If you select things in the "Cause must include" list, you'll find stories that fall into at least one of the categories you've selected.  If you select things in the "Cause must not include" list, you won't find stories that fall into any of the categories you've selected.
• "Result"
  • The Result field shows what sort of transformation happens in the story--gender change, lycanthropy, etc.
  • The search options are the same as for the Rating field. If you select things in the "Result must include" list, you'll find stories that fall into at least one of the categories you've selected.  If you select things in the "Result must not include" list, you won't find stories that fall into any of the categories you've selected.
• "Significance"
  • The Significance field shows how important the transformations are to the story.
  • The search options are the same as for the Rating field. If you select things in the "Significance must include" list, you'll find stories that fall into at least one of the categories you've selected.  If you select things in the "Significance must not include" list, you won't find stories that fall into any of the categories you've selected.
  • Notice that a Significance search will turn up entries that don't have a Significance rating at all. This is not a bug. The Significance search doesn't actually look for Significance tags in the entry; instead, it looks at the code on the top line of the entry. For example, if you see "{24,Ph/36/}" next to a book's title, that means that two people (#24 and myself) thought that the book had a Significance of +, one person (#36) thought it had a Significance of 0, and nobody thought that it had a Significance of -.
• "Description"
  • The Description field shows how detailed the descriptions of the transformations are in the story.
  • The search options are the same as for the Rating field. If you select things in the "Description must include" list, you'll find stories that fall into at least one of the categories you've selected.  If you select things in the "Description must not include" list, you won't find stories that fall into any of the categories you've selected.
• "Saturation"
  • The Saturation field shows how often transformation occurs in the story.
  • The search options are the same as for the Rating field. If you select things in the "Saturation must include" list, you'll find stories that fall into at least one of the categories you've selected.  If you select things in the "Saturation must not include" list, you won't find stories that fall into any of the categories you've selected.