Site changelog

This page records site-level changes: new features, layout and tooling, directory structure, and major content systems. It is not a log of edits to individual soldier biographies (use Special:RecentChanges for those).

Newest entries first. When we change how the wiki works, add a dated bullet here.

How to update this page

• Add a new dated heading (or bullets under today’s date) at the top of the changelog list below.
• Describe the feature or site change in plain language — not a file-by-file diff.
• Skip one-off soldier page corrections and routine data fixes unless they introduce a new site capability.
• Agents and maintainers: after a site feature ships to the live wiki, append it here in the same edit session when practical.

Changelog

17 September 2026

• Naturalization cohort on profiles — 50 clear matches from The Stories/Camp Ritchie naturalization (July 1943) now include the 20 July 1943 District Court naturalization in Biography/Timeline, with the Washington Post clipping in Sources/Gallery.
• Camp Ritchie naturalization (July 1943) — New Stories page from the Washington Post report of 85 soldiers naturalized (almost all from Camp Ritchie), with 50 clear soldier-page links from the printed list.
• IPW Team 46 Bulge report — Added Team IPW 46 Interrogation Report No. 107 (27 December 1944, Malmedy–Stavelot / 120th Inf Regt) to the team page and Secret Heroes/Battle of the Bulge (no individuals named on the sheet).
• Ardennes battle-credit letter (USFET, 7 Jul 1945) — Uploaded HQ USFET letter-order listing units awarded Ardennes campaign credit, including IPW 19, OB 35, IPW 69, IPW 141, IPW 174, and MII 474-G; featured on Training materials and Secret Heroes/Battle of the Bulge.

16 September 2026

• 1st MRBC Unit History roster — New 1st Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company page with the printed Unit History cover and Consolidated Roster (PDF + linked transcription); featured on Training materials and linked from Camp Ritchie.
• MISLS WAC yearbook photos — Fold3 yearbook pages and crops (Capt. Marian E. Nestor; grads leaving for Camp Ritchie; first MISLS WACs) added to Nisei and Pacific and Ritchie WACs; yearbook confirms 21 November 1945 WAC graduates transferred to Camp Ritchie.
• Settle Early G-2 account — Uploaded Lt. Col. Henry C. Settle’s 27 October 1944 ETOUSA G-2 organization interview (Fold3) to Training materials; Camp Ritchie graduate / European MITU / 29th Infantry Division staffing notes added to Camp Ritchie Background.
• Nisei WAC translators — Enriched Haruko Hurt (née Sugi; merged maiden-name duplicate) and Sue Suzuko Kato from Wikipedia / Discover Nikkei; noted MISLS→PACMIRS “top twenty-one” assignment on Nisei and Pacific and Camp Ritchie.
• MITU / Nisei redeployment training — Nisei and Pacific now summarizes July 1945 G-2 / Camp Ritchie records on Mobile Intelligence Training Units (demonstration teams, 442nd veterans, WRA concerns), with NARA PDFs from a JAVA packet; linked from Camp Ritchie.
• EEIS monograph — Added the Signal Section history A Typical Enemy Equipment Intelligence Service (Detachment No. 9) as a PDF on Training materials (Camp Ritchie training + Ninth Army field work; Fold3 source).
• Passover at Camp Ritchie (1945) — New Stories page with Fold3 / JWB–USO documents for the first-night Seder (telegram, reports, program card).
• Camp Ritchie List of Directives — Personnel Section sheet (Pers. Sec. 214) uploaded to Training materials with a full transcription; linked from Camp Ritchie.
• Camp Ritchie photos — Added wartime German-village training and late-1944 panoramic views on Photos and Camp Ritchie (filename captions; archival source not yet confirmed).
• Zekelman Holocaust Center oral histories — Added embeddable Zekelman interviews on Ritchie Boy Interviews for Fairbrook, Kosse, Lieberman, Michel, Norton, Schwarz, Stern (two parts), and Wachtel, with soldier-page cues and biography enrichments from the Center’s oral-history synopses.
• Internet Archive interview embeds — Ritchie Boy Interviews can play Internet Archive oral histories with click-to-play embeds (first: Robert A. Potash / Yiddish Book Center).
• Books — Olderman memoir — Books now lists Murray Olderman's A Year Apart: Letters from War-Torn Europe.
• Infobox fields trimmed + Other class expanded — Soldier infoboxes no longer show Education, Spouse/marital, Occupation, State, Certificate, Arrived/Departed, or Years of service (NARA/roster snapshots stay in the Technical record). Roster Other class codes expand to readable names (e.g. SC8 → Special Course 8, DC36 → Division Class 36, MITU4 → Mobile Intelligence Training Unit 4).
• Aviary interview embeds — Ritchie Boy Interviews can play Milken Archive / Aviary oral histories with click-to-play embeds (first: Hugo D. Weisgall).
• Site link preview image — Homepage Open Graph / chat previews use the Ritchie Boys Wiki logo (same as the top-left site mark) instead of the MediaWiki “powered by” footer graphic.
• About the data — AI wording — Clarified that AI-assisted biographies are drafted from curated person-specific sources (profile text, newspapers, obituaries, family packets, research notes), not from open-web search, and still do not certify accuracy.
• Multi-person gallery photos — When a photo caption names two or more Ritchie Boys, the same file is added to each matched soldier’s Gallery with roster links in the caption (not only on the packet owner’s page).
• Ellen Kaufmann Boucher interview — Added her 1995 Canandaigua cable testimony to Ritchie Boy Interviews with a biographical blurb and soldier-page cue.
• Interview watchlist bios — New or newly found video/audio testimonies go on Ritchie Boy Interviews with a short biographical blurb before the player (not title-and-embed only).
• SoundCloud interview embeds — Ritchie Boy Interviews can play SoundCloud audio (click-to-play) the same way as YouTube videos; first entry is Alfred Goodwin’s 1986 OJMCHE oral history.
• Class section casing — Soldier infobox section codes use uppercase letters (e.g. 4C, not 4c); existing lowercase values normalized sitewide.
• Film synopsis link — Documentaries/Movies links the Bauer film site’s official synopsis (© TANGRAM 2004).
• FOCUS press report — Documentaries/Movies links Christian Bauer’s May 2004 FOCUS English report (At War Against Their Home Country) and the film-site press reviews page.
• Main Page disclaimer — Replaced the long Classes 1–31 roster block on the homepage with a short pointer to About the data (class-roster attribution stays on that page, Contents, and class pages).
• Documentary press photos — High-resolution portraits and stills from the Bauer film press page (© TANGRAM) uploaded with source credits; set on documentary soldiers’ profiles/galleries and a gallery on Documentaries/Movies.
• Life in Camp Ritchie — The Stories/Life in Camp Ritchie gathers short attributed quotes from Bauer’s film (enemy-alien arrivals, the MITC “Total Confusion” joke, classroom and practice) linked from Camp Ritchie and Documentaries/Movies.
• My Life as a Fish — The Stories/My Life as a Fish posts Camp Ritchie–related excerpts from Alfred G. Meyer’s autobiography (© 2000; shared by Vera Meyer via the Bauer film site), with a Full-story cue on his soldier page and a related link under Documentaries/Movies.
• Documentaries related reading — Documentaries/Movies links Henry Schwab’s 2005 Israel Philatelist Camp Ritchie mail article (PDF on the Bauer film site) under The Ritchie Boys.

15 September 2026

• Place format standard — Soldier infobox birth/death places use `City, Country` abroad (e.g. Berlin, Germany) and `City, State` in the U.S. with no `US`/`USA`/`U.S.` suffix (e.g. Detroit, Michigan). Sitewide normalize pass applied for known cities, state abbreviations, and country-suffix cleanup.
• Documentary boys bios — Profiles for the ten soldiers featured on The Ritchie Boys film site were enriched from those biographies (vitals, wartime narrative, Sources cites).

14 September 2026

• No more “Related media” above the lead — Story and interview cues on soldier pages (“Full story”, etc.) no longer get wrapped in a “Related media” heading near the top of the article. Those cues keep their own labels under the lead.
• Training materials library — New Training materials page for Camp Ritchie / MITC manuals and other camp-wide PDFs (not soldier OCR). Logged-in editors can upload from the page; files appear in the Library list. Linked from Media and Camp Ritchie. Upload limit raised to about 120 MB for large manuals. The Library list is stored on Training materials/Library so hub-page edits do not wipe uploads.
• Short URLs — Article links use `https://ritchieboys.org/wiki/Page_title` (Wikipedia-style) instead of long `index.php?title=` addresses. Old links still work.
• Quiet anti-vandalism (AbuseFilter) — Automatic blocks for emptying established articles, anonymous multi-link spam dumps, and tiny new spam pages. Normal logged-in editing and Sources cites stay easy; no email-confirm gate.
• Mobile polish — Soldier pages show compact Edit / Draft buttons on phones (less help text above the bio). Wide tables scroll sideways; Drive and Contact embeds are shorter; the Main Page find box no longer flashes the “Open search” fallback when JavaScript is available.
• Mobile find box + hamburger — Main Page “Find a soldier” is a normal-height field on phones (no more tall square input). The Minerva hamburger adds Contents, Start here, Stories, Classes, and other site hubs alongside Home / Recent changes.
• Mobile site (Wikipedia-style) — Phones automatically get the Minerva mobile skin via MobileFrontend (same approach as Wikipedia). Desktop stays the classic Vector layout.

13 September 2026

• OCR handwriting cost guard — Checking Handwriting / hard scan still runs free RapidOCR first; paid LLM vision is used only when that preliminary quality score is weak. Clear print that was checked by mistake no longer bills a vision call.
• Site-wide OCR enrichment — Document OCR proposes infobox facts and a short woven biography draft (not raw OCR lines), with Sources on Apply. Printed pages stay on RapidOCR; Handwriting / hard scan uses the site LLM vision model when `RITCHIE_LLM_API_KEY` is set. Contribute documents and Gallery OCR are framed as profile enrichers; multi-person team rosters remain a preset.
• Pre-launch family UX — Contribute leads with a five-step photo path and uses Biography (not Life); Participate sidebar adds Contact Us and drops Random page; empty search / Main Page find point to “name not found” help; About and Patrol add corrections/privacy guidance; Photos and Contact Us lead with open-in-new-window links when embeds fail; mobile CSS for find box and embeds.
• Live Teammates lists — The Teammates box on soldier pages now loads other members live from each `Category:Team …` (same source as the team page roster). Adding `|ipw_ge=` / team fields on one profile updates that soldier’s box immediately and shows them on teammates’ pages on the next view—no roster-module rebuild.
• One Start here hub — Start here now covers both first-time visitors (story path) and families (find name → roster fields → photo/obituary). The short-lived For families page was removed (not kept as a redirect). Main Page uses a single “Start here” strip; Participate sidebar drops the duplicate family entry. Unused Directory alias redirect to Contents was deleted too.
• Class pages merged into categories — Dates, graduation counts, and specialties now sit on Category:Class 1–Category:Class 31 above the roster list. Short Class 1-style stubs redirect there; soldier infobox class links go straight to the category.
• Still needed checklist removed — The automatic thin-profile “Still needed” box on soldier pages is gone.
• Discovery & theme hubs — Start here path for new readers; Main Page premise strip (later merged into Start here); new Themes galleries (Nisei and Pacific, Nuremberg and postwar justice, Military governors, Iwo Jima Marines); Awards faces; By specialty; Books memoir/history/novel filters; Photos identify workflow; Class 1/10 story blurb on class pages.

12 September 2026

• Books page — profile memoirs — Books adds memoirs, letter collections, and related titles found on soldier profiles (Selling, Sigmond, Hargrove, Dolibois, Walters, Lord, Potash, Botsford, Bailey, Edel, Delnore, Cane, Seltzer, Bodlander, Edwards, Rockefeller, Friede, Warfield) plus Jacobs and Lerner novels not previously listed.
• Topic pages within one hop of the sidebar — Navigation rule: every public topic article is on the sidebar or linked from a sidebar hub (not discovery-only via Contents). Legacy The Patricia Crane Story now redirects to The Stories/The Patricia Crane Story; Facebook OCR review is linked from Contribute documents and Patrol.
• Media in the sidebar — New Media section links Books, Documentaries/Movies, Ritchie Boy Interviews, Photos, and Ritchie Boy Programs (previously only under Contents / Site pages).
• Camp Ritchie WAC Association (1954 reunion) — Ritchie WACs notes the July 1954 Hagerstown reunion that organized the Camp Ritchie WAC Association (Frances Massaro and committee), from the Hagerstown Morning Herald via Dan Gross’s misc research files.
• French awards on the ribbon rack — Soldier profiles that document the French Croix de Guerre or French Legion of Honor now show those decorations in the Awards and honors ribbon rack (not only in notes or an incomplete awards line), with matching ribbon images.
• Hide merged-duplicate roster titles in search — Find-a-soldier suggestions, header search suggestions, and Special:Search no longer surface retired pages titled … (merged duplicate) (Cargo-blocked duplicate ASN stubs).
• Camp Ritchie — Wikipedia Camp Ritchie section — Camp Ritchie adds wartime POW compounds, the late-war Hill Project (German POW research), Nisei women / PACMIRS linguists, and activation of the 3rd Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company at Ritchie (29 December 1943), with Sources cites (Wikipedia Camp Ritchie section, Mallett, JAVA).

11 September 2026

• Camp Ritchie Faculty hub — Camp Ritchie Faculty lists the Gross “first 13” staff/faculty with face cards, section legend (I–X), and a roster table; linked from the Reading sidebar, Camp Ritchie, and Introduction.
• Camp Ritchie faculty (Gross “first 13”) — Staff and faculty names from Dan Gross’s private faculty spreadsheet published or enriched on soldier profiles (section roles, ranks, arrival notes; Legion of Merit racks where listed), with descriptive Sources citations; About the data notes the layer.
• Awards labels under ribbons — When ribbon images and award labels match cell-for-cell, names render in the same rack as the ribbons so each label stays centered under its image (fixes uneven two-award rows such as Silver Star + Croix de Guerre).
• Ritchie WACs spreadsheet import — Soldier profiles created or enriched from Dan Gross and Beverley Driver Eddy’s Camp Ritchie WAC roster spreadsheet (card types, ranks, assignments, notes; Sources credit both researchers). Ritchie WACs roster refreshed.
• About the data — WAC roster — About the data now documents the Gross–Eddy WAC spreadsheet as its own research layer (incomplete list, card codes, Sources credit, file not uploaded).
• About the data — layer order — Compilation subsections on About the data are listed roughly in the order those layers were added to the wiki (seed roster → Facebook → OCR/AI → timeline enrichment → WAC spreadsheet).

10 September 2026

• OCR review queue extras — Preview Apply shows planned soldier-page changes before writing. ASN matching tries padded/stripped ASN forms and title hits. Multi-person enrich results are cached on the job. Old applied/discarded jobs are pruned automatically. Facebook OCR candidates (70–79%) can be seeded into Contribute documents for human review without re-running the engine (`python scripts/seed_fb_ocr_review_jobs.py`).
• OCR soft-launch hardening — Document previews load through the wiki (not the loopback OCR port), so reviewers off localhost can see the scan. Dates and ranks are normalized before Apply; long PDFs warn when truncated at 8 pages. The Contribute documents queue shows who uploaded, age, match counts, and “Only mine / Ready / In progress” filters. Apply can optionally write selected notes into Research notes, checkpoints each soldier page so a failed mass roster Apply can resume, and soldier-page uploads can mark “multi-person roster” (or rebuild into roster mode from Advanced).

6 September 2026

• Interview and documentary watchlist — Ritchie Boy Interviews is a watchlist: pick a soldier, play the video on the wiki, then follow Watch next (same person or the next talk). Matching soldier profiles show an Interview and/or On film cue. Documentaries/Movies embeds trailers and lists confirmed Ritchie Boys in Bauer’s film (from the 2004 Variety review) and Karl Goldsmith in About Face. The soldier index and interview cards sort by the name readers see (not the roster title), so changed names use forms such as Karl Goldsmith / Karl Goldschmidt and file under G rather than Smith.
• OCR roster table — On Contribute documents, a multi-person scan is a table: person on the document, matched soldier page, and the change that would be written on that profile. Rank/role/ASN stay labeled as scan identity. A top list names each wiki page Apply would edit (or says nothing will be written).
• Multi-person OCR for any roster — Special orders (SO 103, 125, 135, and similar) no longer need a matching layout preset. OCR finds people from ASNs plus nearby name/rank lines, including fractured column scans, then uses the same person → wiki page → profile-change review.

4 September 2026

• OCR review redesign — Document OCR review is person-first: each person on a roster is a card with three clear blocks (who is on the scan → which wiki page → what changes on their profile). For team documents the default write is only Team membership; ASN/rank/role stay as matching cues unless you open “Also update other fields.” A live What will change on soldier pages list names the page and the update before Apply. Expert controls stay under Advanced.
• Multi-person OCR apply polish — Team-roster and transfer-order uploads on Contribute documents keep gallery attach off by default, cite “team roster mass apply” on each updated Sources section, and the review toolbar uses Select all matched / Deselect unresolved with one match picker per person.

3 September 2026

• Multi-person OCR (team rosters first) — From Contribute documents, OCR can detect many people on one scan across common layouts: numbered IPW Team special orders (e.g. SO 135 / SO 145), MITC role tables without team numbers (SO 103), and surname-first group lists (SO 125). Review is grouped by person, matches by ASN when possible, can infer a missing team number from teammates already on the wiki, and Apply can add team membership to each matched soldier’s infobox (Team pages update via categories). Other document types can plug into the same multi-person review flow later.
• Smarter document OCR review — Upload & OCR now extracts more infobox fields (nativity, religion, unit, awards, enlistment cues), groups proposals (infobox / biography / notes), skips fields already on the page by default, OCRs multi-page PDFs with a page picker, shows progress with cancel, resumes from the Contribute documents queue, suggests a document-type preset and gallery caption, and warns when the name or ASN on the scan may not match the profile.

2 September 2026

• Find a soldier suggestions — The Main Page find box now shows matching soldier titles as you type (name or ASN), like the header search.
• By The Numbers showcase — By The Numbers is now a visual summary (headline class, graduate, and award figures) with deep links into the existing student-numbers, eight-week schedule, curriculum, specialties, and awards tables — not only a link list.
• By birth country — New By birth country directory: browse soldiers by roster nativity (Germany, Austria, United States, and other cleaned country categories), with a live category tree under Category:Nativity. Linked from the Directory sidebar, Contents, Themes, and For families.
• Start here for families — New For families path: find a name, understand roster fields (ASN, class, team, research notes, unconfirmed banner), then add a photo or obituary. Linked from the Main Page find box, How to help, and the Participate sidebar.
• Site CSS on Preferences / login — Wider sidebar and other MediaWiki:Common.css styles now load on restricted special pages (Preferences, User login, create account, etc.), matching article pages.
• Theme face galleries — Browseable galleries listed from a single Themes hub in the sidebar Directory: Refugees who enlisted, Postwar intelligence careers, Inventors and artists, Congressional Gold Medal faces, Ritchie WACs (face cards + roster), and the Bulge faces section. Portrait cards with short sourced blurbs — not new essays; curated and expandable.
• Battle of the Bulge face gallery — Secret Heroes/Battle of the Bulge opens with a browseable portrait gallery of Ritchie Boys with a clear sourced link to the Ardennes offensive (warnings, combat, or contemporaneous intelligence work), above Dan Gross’s essay. Curated and expandable; not a complete roster.
• Story hubs and teammates rails — Person essays on The Stories open with a soldier-profile card; matching profiles show a Full story cue. Soldier pages with a known team assignment show a Teammates list (other soldiers on the same roster, with a link to the full team page).
• Weekly featured portraits — Main Page “Featured Ritchie Boys” rotates automatically from a curated Featured pool (administrator-only edit list). Editors change who can appear by editing that pool page; the Main Page does not need weekly hand-edits.
• Pre-launch hardening — Production mode now challenges anonymous edits with non-obvious CAPTCHA questions, rate-limits anon edits, and turns off anonymous writeapi. The OCR review service binds to localhost only. Soft-launch sitenotice reminds readers that research notes are leads; FAQ and footer disclaimers point to About the data.
• Multiple teams in the soldier infobox — The Military service block now shows a single Team / Teams row that links every known assignment: roster IPW German/Italian fields, optional |teams= (semicolon-separated, e.g. MII 439-G), and team codes already present in Research notes. Example: IPW 69 and MII 439-G both appear as links instead of only the roster IPW line.
• Classes 1–31 roster attribution — About the data, Template:Class data disclaimer, and Contribute now describe the museum’s role as digitizing and making available public-domain National Archives Classes 1–31 roster records (not ownership or a reproduction ban). Cite Camp Ritchie Museum, Inc. / The Ritchie History Museum as the digitization source.

1 September 2026

• Ritchie WACs — New Ritchie WACs reading-list page listing soldiers whose roster certificate field is WAC; more background and names to follow.
• Soldier duplicate merge and redirect cleanup — Confirmed duplicate profiles (e.g. Van Loon, Habe-Bekessy) are merged onto canonical titles with no case-variant redirects; 123 leftover hyphen/apostrophe redirects were removed. Import and title-move scripts now use `noredirect` by default.
• Multi-document timeline merge — The timeline pipeline now merges facts from multiple Dan Gross research files per soldier (including supplemental filename-matched documents), recovers dated events from conversion excerpts, invalidates truncated legacy Word conversions, and inserts a Biography section when a profile lacked one. Major identity conflicts remain gated; republished profiles retain existing Stories and Facebook biographies.

30 August 2026

• Comprehensive timeline enrichment — Private Dan Gross timeline files are now processed with narrative extraction for education, careers, legal/government roles, publications, organizations, and major life events; equivalent claims retain provenance, major identity conflicts are gated, unreadable files are reported, and public profile enrichment preserves existing biographies while citing the selected findings.
• Timeline spacing repair — Timeline disclosures place their first event below the left-aligned expand control instead of letting the text overlap the button.
• Timeline and award presentation — Timeline research sections are collapsible with a left-aligned expand control, research notes are consolidated at the bottom of profiles, and supported awards can display matching ribbon images with their award names.
• Class-data attribution — About the data and the class-data disclaimer now clearly distinguish the Classes 1–31 material supplied by Camp Ritchie Museum, Inc. / The Ritchie History Museum from Dan Gross’s research spreadsheets and notes, and state the museum’s reproduction restriction.
• Additive timeline enrichment — Timeline imports retain existing profile biographies and data while adding clear new events to the appropriate profile sections.

29 August 2026

• Dan Gross timeline research policy — About the data now explains how the private Word-document timelines are reviewed, matched, privacy-screened, and cited descriptively without uploading the original documents.

28 August 2026

• Expanded Facebook OCR review queue — Facebook OCR review now preserves the applied ≥80% report while listing all 233 document candidates from 100% down to the lowest available 27%, grouped into confidence bands with soldier links, exact File links, concise document summaries, and OCR evidence. The queue is review-only; lower-confidence findings are not applied to profiles. Re-run: `python scripts/generate_fb_ocr_review_page.py`.

26 August 2026

• Soldier contribute box (upload + OCR) — Collapsed Add photos or OCR a document control directly under the Gallery heading on every profile (heading added if missing). Upload + OCR stay in the text column beside the infobox — no more full-width clear that left blank gaps on short pages. Site-wide OCR inbox on Contribute documents unchanged.
• Facebook OCR incorporate (≥80%) — High-confidence document OCR findings applied to soldier pages (empty rank fields for enlisted grades only; Research notes for document dates/cues). Review summary: Facebook OCR review. Full checklist: `import/facebook_posts/enrichments/FB_OCR_REVIEW.md`.
• Document OCR + review — Logged-in users can upload a document from a soldier page or from Contribute documents; the site OCRs it and shows proposed facts for human review. Nothing is written to profiles until Apply (requires the ocr-reviewer group or an admin). Staging files are not published automatically. Docker service: ocr-review on port 8090.
• Facebook photo OCR (pilot → full review) — OCR pipeline with confidence % for document-like Facebook gallery images; pilot facts applied to Atchley, Hauboldt, and Hauser. Full-run review checklist (numbered): `import/facebook_posts/enrichments/FB_OCR_REVIEW.md` (+ `.json` / `.csv`). Re-run: `python scripts/fb_photo_ocr_pilot.py --all`. Incorporate by telling the agent item numbers or soldier names.
• Facebook photo OCR (pilot) — Script to OCR document-like Facebook gallery images, extract dates/ranks/ASN/class cues, and write a review report (no auto-edits to soldier pages). Pilot: `python scripts/fb_photo_ocr_pilot.py --pilot`. Reports: `import/facebook_posts/enrichments/FB_OCR_PILOT_REPORT.md`, `FB_OCR_PILOT.json`. Requires `pip install rapidocr-onnxruntime pillow`.
• About the data (disclaimer) — Expanded how site information is compiled: Dan Gross research files, NARA and census merges, Facebook imports, family and contributor submissions, AI-assisted summaries and cleanup, and open wiki editing—with explicit limits on accuracy. Class roster / museum reproduction language kept in Template:Class data disclaimer.
• Facebook biography curation (batch 2) — Hand-curated biographies for the remaining ~26 Facebook-enriched soldier pages that still had roster dumps, birthday-post voice, gallery stubs, or cross-post fragments (IPW Team 34 roster, Lewy/Bergman family posts, etc.). Re-run: `python scripts/apply_remaining_bio_fixes.py`. Report: `import/facebook_posts/enrichments/BIO_REMAINING_FIX_REPORT.md`.
• Facebook gallery captions — Restored truncated photo captions (e.g. identifications cut off at “Lt.”), stripped “Update: Stephen Goodell shared…” / “Thanks to…” Facebook framing, and wiki-linked other Ritchie Boys named in lineup captions. Re-run: `python scripts/fix_facebook_gallery_captions.py`. Report: `import/facebook_posts/enrichments/GALLERY_CAPTION_FIX_REPORT.md`.
• Infobox nativity / religion / branch — Nativity stays as country of birth (Germany, Austria, …), not adjectives. Religion roster codes expand fully (e.g. Qu → Quaker); blank placeholders like “Not stated” are hidden. Roster arm/service values (Field Artillery, Signal Corps, Cavalry, …) no longer appear as Branch — Branch is the service (usually United States Army) and those values show under Arm / service.
• Facebook-ported bios (final cleanup) — One pass across all Facebook-enriched soldier pages: restore biographies that earlier voice-scrubbing had emptied, scrub remaining Facebook voice safely (never wipe a bio when source facts exist), and dedupe identical gallery images. Fixed Biography-section editing so an empty bio can no longer swallow Research notes / Gallery. Re-run: `python scripts/fix_facebook_ported_bios.py`. Report: `import/facebook_posts/enrichments/BIO_FIX_FINAL_REPORT.md`.
• Facebook biography voice scrub — Swept ported Facebook soldier biographies to plain third-person summaries: removed “I’m saddened…”, holiday/family-forward framing, “Thanks to…”, “Attached is…”, “Wiki profile records list…”, and similar page voice. Gallery captions with Facebook update language were neutralized. Review: `import/facebook_posts/enrichments/BIO_VOICE_SWEEP_REPORT.md`.
• Draft opening summary — The editor draft tool now reads the Biography section (not only a heading named Life) and builds a fuller multi-sentence lead from personal details plus bio prose when no AI key is configured.
• Opening summaries (full dates) — Soldier opening blurbs use full birth/death dates when known (e.g. `(21 June 1924 – 15 April 1945)`), falling back to years only when that is all the roster has — same idea as Wikipedia.

25 August 2026

• Facebook profile enrichments — Published Facebook-post writeups onto matching soldier profiles (opening summary, biography, infobox fields when known, soldier portrait when suitable, extra images in Gallery, and dated Facebook sources). Skipped posts that were not primarily about the matched soldier. Other Ritchie Boys named in those bios/photo captions are wiki-linked when a clear roster match exists. Biographies framed as family inquiries, holiday posts, or first-person/opinion Facebook voice (“I believe…”, “have you ever heard…”, “more to follow”, “attached is a photo”, “family passed along…”) were rewritten as factual third-person bios. Where a biography named a birth/death city or full date but the infobox only had a country or year, those Born/Died fields were filled from the prose; document images used as profile photos (e.g. Hauboldt) were moved into Gallery. Certificate value NG (non-graduate marker) is hidden/cleared. Negative research notes (illness, excess absence, failure, etc.) are filtered from display and removed from pages. Review lists: `import/facebook_posts/enrichments/PUBLISHED_REVIEW.md`, `LINKED_MENTIONS_REPORT.md`, `BIO_REWRITE_REPORT.md`, `INFOBOX_FROM_BIO_REPORT.md`, and `BIO_NOTES_SCRUB_REPORT.md`.
• Navigation and discovery — Sidebar Reading is a shorter start-here list with Camp Ritchie added; secondary topic pages stay on Contents / Site pages. About is labeled “About this project” next to About the data. Special:Search reorders hits so title matches and site pages rise above research-notes noise. Main Page Featured Ritchie Boys links three fuller soldier profiles (Guy Stern, Ralph Baer, Eric Waldman) with equal-sized portrait thumbs.
• About (tone) — Rewrote About in a calmer wiki voice (dropped the ALL-CAPS work-in-progress banner); clarified how it differs from About the data.
• Main Page polish — Find-a-soldier moved under the lead (TOC hidden); Secret Heroes tagline links to Introduction; quick links live inside the Find box (no separate Explore/Gold Medal blocks); Reading shortened to a start-here list.
• Camp Ritchie overview — Expanded Camp Ritchie with who trained there (including WACs and language selection), Camp Sharpe, Europe and Pacific/Nisei notes (with a link to Kazuo E. Yamane), Fort Ritchie closure and museum, plus light cross-links from FAQ, Secret Heroes/Battle of the Bulge, and The Stories/Camp Ritchie Background.
• Page consolidation — Merged duplicate Camp Ritchie Background into The Stories/Camp Ritchie Background (both photos kept); folded Disclaimer into About the data; moved FAQ Camp Ritchie / military-records detail onto Camp Ritchie and Contact Us so FAQ points there without dropping wording.
• About — Added About (project background, Dan Gross legacy, ownership note, and copyright / museum disclaimer from theritchieboys.com).
• FAQ — Added FAQ (who the Ritchie Boys were, what Camp Ritchie was, and how to seek military records, with National Archives and Wikipedia links).
• Dan Gross Memorial — Added Dan Gross Memorial (tribute page for Daniel Gross, with portrait and biography from theritchieboys.com).
• Contact Us — Added Contact Us with the military-records note (National Archives link) and the embedded Google contact form from theritchieboys.com.
• Contributors — Added Contributors (Dan Gross’s project team bios and portraits, with soldier links for Guy Stern, Walter Lubran, and Kurt Kugelmann).
• Attribution notes — Removed redundant “adapted from theritchieboys.com” style wording from topic-page leads; kept real source cites (spreadsheets, Google Slides, authors).
• Photos — Added Photos with the National Archives / Signal Corps disclaimer, an embedded Google Drive grid album (Stephen Goodell collection), and the featured four-photo gallery with captions.
• Documentaries/Movies and Books — Added Documentaries/Movies (Bauer and Karras films with free-watch links) and Books (notable titles with Amazon links and covers).

24 August 2026

• Ritchie Boy Programs — Added Ritchie Boy Programs (talks and museum programs, with soldier links where matched).
• Ritchie Boy Interviews/Testimonies — Added Ritchie Boy Interviews (video interview list, with soldier links where matched).
• Symposium Presentation — Added Symposium Presentation from Dan Gross’s 2012 Camp Ritchie Symposium deck (documentary stars, select notables, WAC note, closing slides; 2012 class-count slide kept as historical presentation figures only).
• Reading order — Main Page Reading list and sidebar Reading links follow a consistent reading order (existing wiki pages plus coming-soon / external links for pages not imported yet). Notable Ritchie Boys sits under Directory with the roster.
• By The Numbers — Hub (By The Numbers) with By The Numbers/Student Numbers - All Classes, By The Numbers/Eight Week Classes - Dates & Graduation Numbers, By The Numbers/Eight Week Class Content, By The Numbers/Eight Week Courses by Specialties, and By The Numbers/Awards (Eddy tables/notes with copyright notices). Class 1–31 pages and soldier Camp Ritchie rows show eight-week class date ranges; matched award recipients get ribbon + awards-grid sections.
• Sidebar sections — Split the left nav into Navigation, Reading, Directory, and Participate portals (was one long list). Sidebar slightly widened so Congressional Gold Medal shows its full title.
• Notable Ritchie Boys gallery — Added Notable Ritchie Boys, a single page of portrait+blurb cards from both Notable Ritchie Boys Google Slides decks (linked to soldier pages when matched).
• Site changelog — Added this page so feature work on the wiki has a chronological home (Site changelog); linked from the sidebar and related help pages.
• Awards and honors (Wikipedia-style) — Soldier pages can show a ribbon rack plus a labeled awards grid (multi-line cells, content-sized columns, short rows spanning full width, tiny gaps between ribbons), with extra award notes as bullets.
• Wikipedia notables import — Pipeline to enrich existing soldier profiles from English Wikipedia (infobox fields, biography sections, Commons portraits, ribbon uploads) without inventing new soldier pages.
• Contents directory layout — Classes, Teams, and Site pages lists on Contents use a compact three-column layout (same idea as category pages). Any page that embeds a category tree gets that layout from site CSS.
• Soldier page chrome — Awards block sits in the main column after Biography (not crushed in the infobox); table of contents stays near the top after the lead.

21 August 2026

• The Stories — Hub and essay pages for Camp Ritchie narratives and individual biographies.
• Congressional Gold Medal — Congressional Gold Medal page for the Ritchie Boys Gold Medal Act.
• Secret Heroes / Battle of the Bulge — Secret Heroes/Battle of the Bulge essay and navigation.

20 August 2026

• Introduction — Introduction (Dan Gross).
• Secret Heroes / First Class — Secret Heroes/First Class page with photo and roster links.
• Find a soldier — Main Page search by name or ASN.
• Patrol — Patrol guide for watching Special:RecentChanges.
• Contribute / Patrol links — Sidebar links for editors.
• Draft opening summary — Optional tool to draft a short lead from personal details and the Life biography for review before saving.

19 August 2026

• Edit soldier facts — Form on soldier pages to edit structured infobox fields (including specialty) without raw wikitext.

18 August 2026

• Initial roster import — ~21,000 soldier pages titled Surname, First (ASN), with infobox, research notes, sources, and categories by class, letter, and teams.
• Site shell — Main Page, Contents, Camp Ritchie, Contribute, About the data, soldier template/module, and base CSS/JS/sidebar.
• Directory foundations — Category:Classes, Category:Teams, and Category:Soldiers by letter.