At what unit level should categorisation be done for the British Army in World War I?

Question

On https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:MilitaryHelp-Military#Wartime/assigned_to_combat_theater the guidance for the unit level when creating military categories says "Category: ... in most cases not going lower than a regimental (or equivalent) size unit." However currently under https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:British_Army_in_World_War_I there is a mixture of both regiment-level categories and battalion-level categories (or brigade-level for the artillery regiments). Is this particular case supposed to be one of the "most cases" or is it supposed to be one of the exceptions?

Most regiments now seem to have categories and that seems to be where most of the profiles have been categorised so far. But there also seem to be a growing number of lower battalion-level categories being created, each containing a few profiles.

Up until now I have only used the regiment-level categories, even when I know the actual battalion. However I don't want to accidentally be creating extra work for the future, so should I actually be using (and creating more) battalion-level categories? Or would it be using the battalion-level categories that would actually be creating extra work for the future as they would eventually need to be changed back to regiment-level?

Answer 1

A lot of that is simply evolution of M&W categories over the years. As leader of M&W, I can tell  you that in order to use stickers for the profiles, the categories need to be in a Unit, Branch, War naming scheme. So, part of the reason that the evolution of the names occurred is that PMs entered the information into a sticker, the category was a red-link, so we created the category.  Battalion levels have been established in some regiments, so it's ok to create other ones. Just remember naming schemes and don't use something like 1/4 Battalion. (the / is not to be used in category names). That would be 1st 4th Battalion.

Comments

Also, this is what I've begun to do with North Staffordshire Regiment....https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:North_Staffordshire_Regiment%2C_British_Army%2C_World_War_I  the subcategories of battalions

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Thanks Natalie. Since battalion-level is the approved structure, I will go through all the profiles I manage and the others I have added the Great War template to and move them all to battalion level where I have that information. I just wanted to be certain before potentially creating dozens (or hundreds) of new categories that it was the right thing to do.