1.1.1. Draft v4 User Guide

Draft: for review during beta testing

This is a draft of the user guide for WHG v4.0, planned for early 2027. It describes features that are still in beta, and it will change. It does not replace Guides & Tutorials, which document the WHG site as it is today.

Beta testers: please check it against what you see, and report anything wrong, unclear or missing through the beta snag list (see the Beta Testing Plan).

This guide covers WHG v4 from a user’s point of view: exploring places, matching your own data, building collections with colleagues, improving published records, and getting data in and out.

• 1.1.1.1. Getting Started
  • 1.1.1.1.1. Do I need an account?
  • 1.1.1.1.2. One place, many sources
  • 1.1.1.1.3. Where next
• 1.1.1.2. Atlas: Exploring Places
  • 1.1.1.2.1. The problem Atlas solves
  • 1.1.1.2.2. What Atlas does
  • 1.1.1.2.3. How Atlas decides two records are the same place
  • 1.1.1.2.4. You are in control: the grouping dial
  • 1.1.1.2.5. It all happens in your browser
  • 1.1.1.2.6. Confirmed links and your corrections
  • 1.1.1.2.7. Why not just fix the groups once and for all?
  • 1.1.1.2.8. Searching
  • 1.1.1.2.9. When something goes wrong
  • 1.1.1.2.10. Source and licence, on every result
  • 1.1.1.2.11. Selecting an area
  • 1.1.1.2.12. Controls marked “planned”
  • 1.1.1.2.13. Reporting a problem
  • 1.1.1.2.14. On a phone or tablet
  • 1.1.1.2.15. What’s coming
• 1.1.1.3. Map your Data
  • 1.1.1.3.1. What it is
  • 1.1.1.3.2. Why a new tool
  • 1.1.1.3.3. Getting started
  • 1.1.1.3.4. 1 · Import a dataset
  • 1.1.1.3.5. 2 · Confirm column roles
  • 1.1.1.3.6. 3 · Reconcile against WHG
  • 1.1.1.3.7. 4 · Review & confirm matches
  • 1.1.1.3.8. 5 · Map
  • 1.1.1.3.9. 6 · That’s a gazetteer — enrich & export
  • 1.1.1.3.10. 7 · Collaborate & share
  • 1.1.1.3.11. Caveats
• 1.1.1.4. Collaborative Collections
  • 1.1.1.4.1. What it is
  • 1.1.1.4.2. Starting a new document
  • 1.1.1.4.3. Finding your material — “Edit published…”
  • 1.1.1.4.4. The editor at a glance
  • 1.1.1.4.5. Building a Place Collection
  • 1.1.1.4.6. Building an Itinerary
  • 1.1.1.4.7. Building a Gazetteer Group
  • 1.1.1.4.8. Editing something already published
  • 1.1.1.4.9. Collaborating
  • 1.1.1.4.10. A note on names
  • 1.1.1.4.11. How this relates to the older builders
• 1.1.1.5. Suggesting Corrections
  • 1.1.1.5.1. Who can suggest, and who decides
  • 1.1.1.5.2. Making a suggestion
  • 1.1.1.5.3. What happens next
• 1.1.1.6. Sounds-alike Search
  • 1.1.1.6.1. What it does
  • 1.1.1.6.2. How it works, in brief
  • 1.1.1.6.3. Its limits
  • 1.1.1.6.4. Help improve it
• 1.1.1.7. Record Pages and the Concordance
  • 1.1.1.7.1. What a record page is
  • 1.1.1.7.2. How the page is laid out
  • 1.1.1.7.3. The Concordance
  • 1.1.1.7.4. Linking records: same place, or not
  • 1.1.1.7.5. About this group
  • 1.1.1.7.6. Wikipedia links
  • 1.1.1.7.7. Environmental context
  • 1.1.1.7.8. Machine-readable record
  • 1.1.1.7.9. Who can see a record page
• 1.1.1.8. Loci: Citing a Group of Records
  • 1.1.1.8.1. What a locus is
  • 1.1.1.8.2. The locus page
  • 1.1.1.8.3. Shareable, then citable
  • 1.1.1.8.4. Withdrawn loci
  • 1.1.1.8.5. Each member links to its record
  • 1.1.1.8.6. Linking from a locus page
  • 1.1.1.8.7. Old WHG place addresses
  • 1.1.1.8.8. Machine-readable locus
  • 1.1.1.8.9. About this cluster, Wikipedia and environment
• 1.1.1.9. Linking Your Records
  • 1.1.1.9.1. What a Link is
  • 1.1.1.9.2. Suggestions are not Links
  • 1.1.1.9.3. Getting started
  • 1.1.1.9.4. Working through the suggestions
  • 1.1.1.9.5. Private until your dataset is published
  • 1.1.1.9.6. Review before publication
  • 1.1.1.9.7. Publishing and withdrawing
  • 1.1.1.9.8. Your name on your Links
  • 1.1.1.9.9. Links carried over from WHG v3
  • 1.1.1.9.10. Known limits in beta
• 1.1.1.10. Glossary: Linking Records
  • 1.1.1.10.1. Link
  • 1.1.1.10.2. Same place
  • 1.1.1.10.3. Same place, exactly
  • 1.1.1.10.4. Not the same place
  • 1.1.1.10.5. None of these fits
  • 1.1.1.10.6. Not sure yet
  • 1.1.1.10.7. Not yet checked
  • 1.1.1.10.8. Suggestion
  • 1.1.1.10.9. Finding suggestions
  • 1.1.1.10.10. Links (section of a Record page)
  • 1.1.1.10.11. Record
  • 1.1.1.10.12. Locus
  • 1.1.1.10.13. Private until your dataset is published
  • 1.1.1.10.14. Review by the WHG team
  • 1.1.1.10.15. Older WHG words
• 1.1.1.11. Identifiers and Citation
  • 1.1.1.11.1. Every place record has a persistent identifier
  • 1.1.1.11.2. One address, two answers
  • 1.1.1.11.3. Citing WHG
• 1.1.1.12. Data Formats In and Out
  • 1.1.1.12.1. Spreadsheets and lists
  • 1.1.1.12.2. Linked Places Format (LPF)
  • 1.1.1.12.3. PLATO
  • 1.1.1.12.4. Linked Data
  • 1.1.1.12.5. Which should I use?
• 1.1.1.13. Routes, Itineraries and Networks
  • 1.1.1.13.1. What you will build
  • 1.1.1.13.2. Step 1: Decide what you are entering
  • 1.1.1.13.3. Step 2: The sources sheet
  • 1.1.1.13.4. Step 3: The places sheet
  • 1.1.1.13.5. Step 4: The types sheet
  • 1.1.1.13.6. Step 5: Names and locations
  • 1.1.1.13.7. Step 6: The relations sheet: stations in order
  • 1.1.1.13.8. Step 7: Figures: the properties sheet and the connections sheet
  • 1.1.1.13.9. Step 8: Check and load your tables
  • 1.1.1.13.10. What WHG shows
  • 1.1.1.13.11. Variation: an itinerary
  • 1.1.1.13.12. Variation: a network
  • 1.1.1.13.13. Places in other histories
  • 1.1.1.13.14. Common mistakes
  • 1.1.1.13.15. Next steps