Have you added categories to profiles for your ancestors who served in the military?

Question

Today is Armed Forces Day in the United States – an opportunity to honor those who answered the call to serve in the military.  I knowt hat many other countries also have holidays to honor those who served in the military.  Did you know that there are many ways on WikiTree to honor your veteran ancestors?

You may want to look at the high-level Military History category to find some of the many categories you can add to your veteran's profile.  Add a veteran recognitian template to the profile.  Was your veteran killed or missing in action or a POW?  Did he recieve the highest military decoration from his country?  Add him to the WikiTree Roll of Honor.  You can also participate in one of the many projects honoring veterans, such as the Anzacs Project, The Great War 1914-1918 project, the US Civil War: War Between the States project, the 1776 project, to name a few.

Let's honor our veteran ancestors by improving their profiles!

Comments

Thanks to Star for the reminder and Jacky for the links! It is always a good day to honor our veterans.

Answer 1

Just sharing a few of the profiles on Military

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hanson-1898

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Acheson-113

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Addis-90

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Aurand-24

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bainbridge-317

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Clark-15870

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ellis-4957

Comments

I looked at all these profiles. They are amazing. Can you teach a class on creating these beautiful profiles? I need a Wikitree for dummies class first.

---

Amy,

Thank you ever so much. I have a amazing mentor and friend Terry [Wright-7062]. She taught me a lot. I can help you on whichever you like. You can learn a lot looking at the edit tab on open profiles you like and copying the codes used. One thing I did do is to make a freespace page I can experiment on.  Drop me an email and I will assist you.

---

Thank you. I have learned al lot in the last 2 months, and I have so much more to learn.

Answer 2

This answer deserves all of the downvotes it get's but it is the truth.  I can honestly say I don't as a rule add any catagory to any profile.  I have been spending most of my time finding and adding sources to profiles so any catagory use is very low on my list of things to do. Sorry.

Comments

Dale,

I don't understand why your answer should deserve downvotes, although I'm not inclined to give it an upvote either.  It is a simple - and very good - description of how you choose to do your work here.  Some people may write long flowing descriptions of a person's life, with not too much empasis on the essential timeline facts, while others may emphasize pretty formatting with all kinds of graphics (flowery borders, wallpaper, lots of pictures, etc.)  Some people may find it convenient to add 1 person and work on every part of the profile to complete it before adding the next person, while others may add a person, get 1 (or more) sources entered, then move on to the next, plannig to make a second pass at all of them to flesh out the narrative.

I have (fairly recently) learned the importance of categories.  They effectively provide another way to search.  If you want to know who lived in a particular place, you can go to the category page for the place and easily find all the proflles ... provided, of course, that the categories for where someone lived have been entered on profiles of people who lived in that place.  This is why it is very good to have categories - as many as appropriate - on profiles.  Is it the most important thing to put on profiles? ... certainly not, but at some step in the profile building process, it should be done.  This is not "fluff" - it is a very useful research tool.

---

Gaile, I never said that they were not important, just that they are at the botom of my list of things to worry about.  I have just never bothered to learn about them or the DNA stuff either and that is important also.  Possibly when we have no more unsourced profiles on here I will start on those items.  Putting someone into a catagory without sources is like writing a fiction novel, It may read good but the facts are just speculation.

---

Hi Dale,

I certainly didn't mean to imply that adding categories should take precedence over a well-documented, well-sourced profile. I agree with you that adding sources is a higher priority, and hope your response didn't get any down votes.

---

I certainly don't see any reason to downvote your answer, Dale.  We all have different interests & priorities. I'm glad yours is sources!

Answer 3

I need help adding category for World II US Navy Veteran to my father's profile, please.

See Kenneth Dellinger

I have tried to follow the pattern shown us, but it comes up red every time. I want to honor my father's service.

Help Please! I'm making his profile Open so you can edit it.

Comments

Hi April, My dad also served in World War II US Navy as a radioman on a destroyer, so it was easy to do a copy and paste! ;-) You will need to add the years that he served to the template since it wasn't in his bio.

---

Thank you very much Alison!

Answer 4

I have added several in the Civil War, and in Korea, and WW II. I have been unable to find a Viet Nam Veterans Category.

Comments

Hi Amy,

If you go to: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Vietnam_War (my links never seem to work, so you might have to do a copy and paste! ;-p)

You will find several categories there to choose from depending on what branch of the military he served with.

---

Thank you

Answer 5

I was excited to find categories for people who served in the military even though I can only use the very general ones such as killed in action in world war 2. Unfortunately there are no categories for South African forces specifically and it is extremely difficult to find out military information on South African servicemen. I also have ancestors that fought on both sides of the Anglo Boer war and one who very sadly died in a British concentration camp. It'd be great if there were categories  for them too as understanding their hardships helps us as family to understand why they moved to different towns or why as in the case of my grandfathers cousin; the grief of his death caused the family to never speak about him. Events can shape and change a family drastically and categories help us to get the picture clear.

Comments

Hi Brenda,

You have apparently just discovered an area in which the category structure needs to be expanded.  The best thing to do is to let a member of the cetegorization project know this.  Right now is a great time to do that because they have undertaken an all-encompassing review of all the categories to correct any structural problems.  If you want to offer assistance in figuring out the correct way to set up the structure for South African forces - or any other, for that matter - I'm sure they'll be thrilled to work with your input.  They have been absolutely wonderful in helping me plan the Holocaust category's structure.