User talk:Michael Jay Mjelde

Thanks for your work on Glory of the Seas (clipper)
Our rules against "spamming" your own books are in my opinion overly rigid. You are clearly an expert and your contributions to the article are all worthwhile. We need those rules because others have caused some messy disruption in the past. I will not revert your changes to this article. However, I still recommend that you cite some of those changes to your books. That's because of the peculiar way Wikipedia works. We have no way to know that you are who you say your are and we do not wish to know: that's also true of all of the 100,000 or so active editors we have each month. Therefore, we need everything to be cited to a reliable source. -Arch dude (talk) 15:06, 2 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your comments. I appreciate your  specifying  what is needed to improve the current writeup for GLORY OF THE SEAS.  Up  to yesterday, I have held off making any comments  about the large number  of errors  in  the previous listing written by  well-meaning  researchers but decided  to address the major ones in  this manner for the present, the reason  being because otherwise, I  would have to rewrite the entire writeup regarding  this ship  and include a  large number of endnotes.
 * Please note that I  have made a  study of  Donald McKay  and his post-Civil War ships for over 60 years. Up to this point, three of my published books are centered around GLORY OF THE SEAS, and I have two more in the "works,"  one of which  centers  around the ship's final voyage in  1910.   At a later date, I will address the note  section of  the  current writeup as well as  the current charts providing specifics  around  all  of the Cape Horn voyage between the years 1870 and  1885 and provide  more definitive  references to not only  published  works but the primary  source  utilized. In that  manner, the other  'referenced'  works mentioned  at the very end of the writeup can be moved into the primary  account.
 * I foresee my eventually adding to the current Wikipedia writeup for Donald McKay because of the  amount of primary  source materials I have regarding McKay, and will  eventually  provide writeups for McKay-built vessels currently  not mentioned in Wikipedia. Michael Jay Mjelde (talk) 16:17, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Again, thanks. Because we are crowdsourced and we have chosen to have no infrastructure for identifying our editors, we depend on policies that seem awkward for experts such as yourself. Since you intend to put a fair amount of work into this, I strongly urge you to familiarize yourself with our philosophy, policies, and guidelines. Start with WP:N, which tries to describe what we think an encyclopedia should be. It provides context that makes it easier to understand some of our policies. You will probably be particularly annoyed by policies on primary sources (WP:PRIMARY). You cannot use them directly at all here unless they are publicly accessible, and even then there are some restrictions. Fortunately, as an expert you know of reliable published secondary sources (books, newspapers, etc.) that themselves discuss those primary sources. Also fortunately, you are a published author. You can write books about McKay, and then use them here as sources. This may come close to violating our guidelines about referencing your own work, so please be careful. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me on my talk page. -Arch dude (talk) 17:47, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your comments. I can  also  see  the value of  not always referencing my own works  on this  subject  so  that in the future, when possiIble, I will  refer to the 'initial'  primary source (such as a newspaper citation) if possible.   Unfortunately, many of my  primary  sources are items I  have personally acquired regarding "Glory of the Seas" over a period of nearly 70 years (such  as a letter written by Donald McKay in 1870 in which  he  hired a sailing  master, and appointed himself  as being  captain of Glory of the Seas), unpublished correspondence or records from public  agencies (various branches  of the National Archives nationwide),  or items currently archived in historical museums  and not  accessible by the general public unless you  are willing to pay a researcher for access to the record. Michael Jay Mjelde (talk) 19:43, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Sadly, this means you will need to only use the secondary sources (i.e., your books) instead of the primary sources. To understand this better, think about what rules you would want Wikipedia to use in an article you did not write and in which you are not an expert, remembering that we do not have the resources to vett our editors. -Arch dude (talk) 21:36, 2 April 2024 (UTC)