Talk:Glory of the Seas (clipper)

Lars Bruzelius as a self-published source
(1) the inadvisability of using Lars Bruzelius's website as a source for Wikipedia articles was discussed on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships. I take particular regard of the remarks by User:Parsecboy and User:Davidships - both of whom are editors of substantial experience. It is from this discussion that I realised my concerns with Bruzelius as a cited source translated into this being a self-published source.

(2) The rules and supplementary explanation are quite clear: to quote from the latter: "Examples of self-published sources: Almost all websites except for those published by traditional publishers....." The fact that Bruzelius cites sources is not material to whether or not it is a self-published source.

(3) Examination of the Bruzelius site makes clear that (a) the site author is simply an enthusiastic amateur, (b) much of the material on the site is simply copied from sources which are reliable sources for Wikipedia. Some of this copying summarises to a large degree, leaving out material that would be well suited for inclusion in a Wikipedia article.

It concerns me that if Wikipedia were to contain a lot of material from enthusiast sites like this, there is a risk of content cycling in and out of Wikipedia until it bears little resemblance to the original source. Whilst Bruzelius does cite sources, there are no in-line citations, so you cannot tell which fact comes from which source, or whether there is any interpretation by the site owner. The subject of clippers already has significant problems with the quality and accuracy of ordinary sources, so adding an amateur enthusiast with without third party checking of the accuracy of his site is an unacceptable risk.

Based on the comments on the Wikiproject ships talk page and the arguments put forward above, I have reinstated my edits.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:24, 26 June 2020 (UTC)


 * The tagging is correct. LB is serious and knowledgable compiler (his occasional lapses are fewer than those of some published authors) and I don't doubt his sourcing (nb: most of his pages are dated late-1990s). They are like those WP pages that were written with just a list of sources but no inline refs - there are hundreds of WP articles which are like that (many tagged accordingly). On Glory of the Seas, LB's bibliography is good, and I suspect that all the LB refs can sourced to the two Mjelde publications, plus another of his that missed LB's timescale. I would be very surprised if the sail plan could not be cited to McKay.
 * When the refs have been sorted, I would favour adding an archived version of the LB page as an External Link, as it meets WP:ELMAYBE #4. Davidships (talk) 12:52, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The Ships Project discussion linked above is now here. Davidships (talk) 12:11, 23 September 2021 (UTC)