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
25 August 2026
- By The Numbers specialties — Added By The Numbers/Eight Week Courses by Specialties (Appendix 6 specialty counts by class) with copyright notice; Class pages list non-zero specialty enrollments.
- By The Numbers — Hub (By The Numbers) with By The Numbers/Student Numbers - All Classes, By The Numbers/Eight Week Classes - Dates & Graduation Numbers, and By The Numbers/Eight Week Class Content (Eddy spreadsheet/tables and curriculum notes, each with source copyright notice). Class 1–31 pages and soldier Camp Ritchie rows show eight-week class date ranges from a shared lookup.
- 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. Built for Wikipedia notable imports (e.g. Chafee, Marxuach) and reusable for others.
- 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.
August 2026 (earlier site build — summary)
These items describe capabilities already on the wiki from the ongoing build; exact day-by-day notes were not kept before this page existed.
- Soldier roster — ~21,000 pages titled
Surname, First (ASN), with infobox, research notes, sources, and categories by class, letter, and teams. - Edit soldier facts — Form on soldier pages to edit structured infobox fields without raw wikitext.
- Draft opening summary — Optional tool to draft a short lead from personal details and the Life biography for review before saving.
- Find a soldier — Main Page search by name or ASN.
- Directory — Contents with classes, teams, A–Z letter index, and site topic pages ().
- Stories and essays — The Stories, Introduction, Secret Heroes essays, Congressional Gold Medal, Camp Ritchie, and related topic pages.
- Contribute / Patrol / data notes — Contribute, Patrol, About the data, and Disclaimer for editors and class-data rules.
- Media and polish — Site CSS/JS for infobox layout, home page, stories galleries, upload helpers, and soldier photo handling.