Help:Contents

From TobaccoTactics
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This page explains the two main ways to explore the content available on TobaccoTactics.org:

1. TobaccoTactics Categories
2. Search Engine

TobaccoTactics Categories

The categories laid out on the Homepage provide a road map to the wiki. Each of the following headings offers another way to approach the main issues.

  • Organisations & People investigates the activities of the main tobacco industry players and the links between the organisations involved.

Clicking on any of these categories leads you to a page explaining how we understand that specific category; sometimes there are links to pages with further details.

For instance the Plain Packaging page has a section Useful TobaccoTactics Resources with more information, linking to pages such as

Each explanatory page also includes a link to a list of all the pages in that particular category, here for instance is the list of all pages in Plain Packaging.

Each and every page on the TobaccoTactics website is categorised, so that it can be found. This means that each page is labelled with categories that relate to the content of that page. You can see the category labels at the very bottom of each page, including this page. Every page has more than one relevant category attached to it.

For instance, Colin Wragg is senior UK corporate and legal affairs manager at Imperial Tobacco, which earns him the category Tobacco Industry People, while his job to focus on the Point of Sale Display Ban puts him in that category as well. Accordingly, his name will feature in the lists of pages of both categories, as you can see here, the list of Category:Tobacco Industry People and the list of pages on Category:Display Ban, organised in alphabetical order.


There is also a full list of categories available with the number of pages belonging to that category indicated in brackets next to the category title.

TobaccoTactics Search Engine

The second way to approach TobaccoTactics is through the search engine. You'll find the search box in the left hand menu.

To search, just type your query into the box, and press either Go or Search. It is best to try hitting both Go and Search for something that you are trying to locate.

You can use any query, any string of words you like, however this page offers some detailed instructions to improve the results.

Tips for Using 'Go'

Go is the same as 'enter'. Go first looks for an article with the given string as its title, and if one is found immediately goes to the indicated article. The string of letters needs to be exactly the same, including capitals and lower-case.

Tips For Using 'Search'

Search will return a list of pages with your search terms in the title followed by a list of pages where your search terms are not included in the title but are included in the page itself.

  • Search is not case-sensitive
The searches for "imperial", "Imperial" and "IMPERIAL" all return the same results.
  • All search terms present (watch for plurals)
Only pages that contain all the words exactly as you typed them in will be returned. So if you do not get any results, leave out one or more terms, or make sure that all search terms were spelled correctly. Watch for plurals: if you search for "cigarette", articles that contain the word "cigarettes" will not be shown (unless the singular word is also in the article).
  • Boolean searches are possible
You can use the words "and", "or" and "not" and parentheses in order to formulate more complicated requests. If none of those words is specified, "and" is used by default. For instance, "indian not american" will return all pages with the word "indian" which do not contain the word "american".
  • No "regular expressions" or "wild card" symbols are permitted
You cannot use "wild cards" such as "?" or "*."
  • Avoid short and common words
This is the most likely cause of an unexpected failed search. If your search terms include a common "stop word" (such as "the", "one", "your", "more", "right", "when", "who", "which", "such"), then your search is unlikely to produce any results. Short numbers, and words that appear in half of all articles, will also not be found. In this case, drop those words and rerun the search.


Acknowledgement: the content of many of the help pages in TobaccoTactics have been adapted from Wikipedia.