FAQ and help

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

Citing military records and historians

Specific reference templates have been added for common sources.

• For official war diaries at the UK National Archives use Template:WarDiaryTNA/doc
• To cite E.A. James, British Regiments 1914-1918, use Template:RefJames/doc.
• To cite Chris Baker's website, The Long, Long Trail, use Template:RefTLLT/doc
• To cite A.F. Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, use Template:RefOB/doc

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'.

• How to create links on a wiki

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.

Categories used on this site

See Special:Categories for the full list of all categories used on the site. Some widely-used categories will be documented below once the list has been finalised.

National armies

[[Category:British_Army]]

[[Category:Canadian_Army]]

[[Category:Australian_Army]]

[[Category:Indian_Army]]

[[Category:New_Zealand_Army]]

[[Category:Italian_Army]]

National army units

[[Category:British_Infantry_Battalions]]

[[Category:Canadian_Infantry_Battalions]]

[[Category:Canadian_Mounted_Battalions]] (includes cavalry)

[[Category:British_Machine_Gun_Battalions]]

Categories about linked resources

[[Category:Units_with_no_official_war_diaries]] (used where no unit diaries exist)

[[Category:Units_with_official_war_diaries]]

[[Category:Units_with_personal_narratives]]

[[Category:Units_needing_personal_narratives]]

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.

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

Other templates

• Template:DisambPage - used to automatically add a page to the list of 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
• Template:WarDiaryNeeded - see Talk:How you can help for question about whether this might be better as a category