FAQ and help
Contents
What do I do if...
Someone was in more than one unit
If the personal narrative references both units then just add their link to both pages.
A link is broken? For example, some of the lists of personal narratives might not work anymore.
You could try googling to see if the site has been moved, or was saved on the [Internet Archive. Failing that, add a note with the name of the author and the site with the broken link to the Research in progress section in case someone else is later able to find it, and so we can notify the site with the broken link.
Understanding military terminology, records and research
- Official British Army codes for Theatres of War used from 1916 onwards
- Researching World War One records
- About private letters, diaries and memoirs
- British Army Hierarchies explains British organisation and terminology
- Category:Type definitions and Category:Specific type definitions contain lists of pages (not yet complete) explaining what certain types of unit were and what they did
Citing military records and historians
Specific reference templates have been added for some common sources. More will be added later. These can be used in footnotes with <ref> tags or in the body of the page.
- To cite part of a unit's official war diaries to support a fact, use {{Cite war diary}}
- To cite non-war diary documents from the UK National Archives use {{Cite TNA}}
- To cite E.A. James, British Regiments 1914-1918, use {{Cite James}}
- To cite Chris Baker's website, The Long, Long Trail, use {{Cite TLLT}}
- To cite A.F. Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, use {{Cite Becke}}
- To cite British Army Orders, use {{Cite AO}}
- To cite the Lives of the First World War project, use {{RefLives}} [this one might be split up into different templates in future]
Referring to a unit's war diaries
These templates are used under the war diary heading of a unit's page to give information about whether a unit has war diaries, and if so, where they can be found:
- For official war diaries at the UK National Archives use {{War diary TNA}}
- For official war diaries at the Australian War Memorial, use {{War diary AWM}}. These are mostly Australian and New Zealand, but also include some British and Indian units.
- If a unit or formation doesn't have a war diary because it never served in a theatre of war, use {{War diary none}}
- For administrative organisations that didn't have an operational role, use {{War diary none admin}}
Editing existing pages
To edit a page, whether to fix some text or add a link, you'll need to request an account. Once your account is approved, just click 'Edit'.
Creating a new page
These tips are taken from MediaWiki's Help:Starting a new page.
This site assumes you're creating a new page about a battalion and pre-populates the pages with some headers and description.
Each unit page should have a category for the relevant army and role (i.e. infantry) so supporting pages explaining the structures for each army can be created. More information about categories is below.
Starting a new page from a search
A quick way to start a new page is to type its title in the search box, and start the search. If there are no matches, it will say (for example) 'There were no results matching the query.
Create the page "Royal Dublin Fusiliers" on this wiki!'
Starting a new page from a link
Some pages contain links to other pages that don't exist yet. These are called "new page links". To start one of these new pages, you can click on its link.
Links to non-existing pages are common. They are typically created in preparation for creating a new page, and/or to encourage other people to do so. Some people may see the presence of new page links on a page as a sign that the page is broken. However most wikis are intended to be constantly added to, so in this sense a new page link is only an indication that a particular page is needed.
Links to non-existent pages are created the same way as links to already existing pages. For example, adding New page name in the wiki editor will create a new page link to the page "New page name".
If there isn't already a new page link to the page you want to create, you can always add such a link yourself. You would add the new page link typically in a related page, an index page or your own user page.
Adding references and citations
The MakeRef site is useful for formatting references for use on these pages.
Category:Citation templates lists templates that you can use to cite widely used sources more easily.
Categories used on this site
See Special:Categories for the full list of all categories used on the site.
Category:Countries arranges pages by country, then by service, then by type.
Category:Units arranges unit pages by type then by country.
Category:Units and sources includes sub-categories that group pages by linked resources that they have or need.
Templates used on this site
Some templates have been set up to help consistently format references and link out to other projects; they're listed above in Citing military records and historians.
See also Category:Citation templates.
Others help create shortcuts for specific tasks or do various things on the backend of the site. Each template has a documentation page, which is automatically included in the template page. As templates use wiki markup, you might not be able to see the detail of the template itself except in Edit view.
Templates to help editors
- Template:About/doc - add extra information about a page if its name is ambiguous.
- Template:Pageref/doc - formats page numbers in source references. Is used by other templates but can also be used for sources without a specific template
- Template:WarDiaryNoneAdmin/doc - add this to pages about purely administrative military units that did not keep diaries so they're automatically added to Category:Units with no official war diaries
- Template:WarDiaryNone/doc - add this to pages about units that did not operate outside their home country and therefore did not need an official diary. It automatically adds the page to Category:Units with no official war diaries
- Template:WarDiaryNeeded/doc - automatically adds the page to Category:Units needing official war diaries
Infoboxes
Some discussion of these infoboxes is also on their talk pages Template talk:Infobox command structure and Template talk:Infobox military unit.
- Template:Infobox military unit/doc summarises information about an individual military unit or formation, such as a regiment or division
- Template:Infobox command structure/doc
- Template:Infobox theatre of war/doc is designed to record information about a specific units' deployment to a specific theatre of war. The infobox can be repeated as necessary to allow for multiple engagements.
Other templates
- Template:DisambPage - used to automatically add a page to the list of Category:Disambiguation pages that exist to help distinguish similar names from each other.
- Template:Microformat message - microformats help add structure to text so computer programs can do more with them.
- Template:Battalion - contains the basic structure of a battalion page that's preloaded into new pages
- Template:BritishBrigade/doc - used in Template:Infobox command structure/doc
- Template:Tl - template [inherited from Wikipedia] that shows how the template name would be used in code
- Template:Tlx - another template [inherited from Wikipedia] that shows how the template name would be used in code
- Template:Navbox - see MediaWiki documentation
- Template:WPMILHIST Infobox style
- Template:Wo95import/doc and Template:DiscoveryData/doc are added automatically to imported pages.
