Profpjm

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Hello, Profpjm, and welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate encyclopedic contributions, but some of your recent contributions, such as your edit to the page Sebastian Cabot (explorer), seem to be advertising or for promotional purposes. Wikipedia does not allow advertising. For more information on this, please see:

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I hope you enjoy editing Wikipedia! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Feel free to write a note on the bottom of my talk page if you want to get in touch with me. Again, welcome! Chris Troutman (talk) 21:16, 12 April 2014 (UTC) Chris Troutman (talk) 21:16, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Chris Troutman, I did not mean to promote. I am, speaking modestly, a world authority on Cabot, having published with Yale U. Press an authoritative account of his specific actions in question. My book happens to be the best reference for the contributions I made, and I of course know my book very well. I don't care if anyone buys it. I care that people do proper research on these topics. Don't let your incorrect perceptions of promotion get in the way of proper referencing. You can research Cabot all you like, you will not find more details published in the last 200 years than what are in Ch. 3 of my mutiny book.Profpjm (talk) 21:30, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

You may want to take a look at WP:SELFCITE. I have to note that the first time you cited your book in the Cabot article you didn't change any content, and the content already cited multiple sources. So why add yet another one? Huon (talk) 21:56, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Huon (talk) because it was a historic reference that can support multiple sources. The question is why NOT add another one, especially an authoritative one that is more current. Look, this isn't that important to me, I wanted to contribute to the Wiki site. I would think you guys would be happy that someone who's published an authoritative work wants to weigh in. If you REALLY want me to improve that Cabot page, i could do so. It strains credulity that my motives are questioned so quickly on this thing. Go ahead and delete my edits. Those pages will be worse for it, and I probably won't be back to improve them, all based on your responses here. I could get my research assistants (not me) to make the edits. Would that make it better? If you answer yes, which I think you must given your issues here, then you're doing all this for the wrong reasons. Cheers. Profpjm (talk) 22:10, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

@Profpjm: First, anyone can claim to be anyone on the internet and for all I know you're some crank from the publishing company out to sell books. For all you know, I might be Anne of Cleves and we do not care to be spoken to in that manner.

Second, Patrick Murphy teaches management at DePaul, not history. Mutiny and Its Bounty is too new of a book to find a review on JSTOR and you ought not claim to be an expert on Sebastian Cabot without some scholarly reviews of your work. It wouldn't matter if you really were an expert because per WP:EXPERT, it doesn't give you any privileges. "In practice, there is no advantage (and considerable disadvantage) in divulging one's expertise in this way." And as Huon points out, you have a conflict of interest as you're citing your own work. What you should have done (as you did at Talk:Ferdinand Magellan) was post on the talk page that you'd like to see that source added. Had you been more patient you'd've gotten a lot farther.

Finally, if you really wanted to contribute to Wikipedia, why didn't you include a page number for any of those citations? You spammed that book because you think it's relevant, not that it's helpful. The only reason I didn't revert your edits is because you improved some of the text and added the book in-line, rather than just adding it to the "See Also" section.

Wikipedia is a community and our rules may seem confusing to outsiders. You really have to begin contributing and learn as you go. If you approach Wikipedia with a motive you'll inevitably run afoul of editors like me. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:55, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

You don't seem aware that I am former chair of the management history division in the Academy of Management. And I do teach history in our business school. I'm teaching a history course (based on the book with Yale) right now. I also research history; I have a long CV of articles in history oriented journals, including two major award-winning ones. The book with Yale has been reviewed in several major newspapers and other outlets in the US and around the world. My first history paper was published in 2006. As for beginning to contribute to Wikipedia, I did "begin" to contribute. And look what has happened - First thing I received was an accusation of self-promotion. The growth of knowledge involves referring to one's own works because that's what one knows best. You ignored my question about having my research assistants put one's book into Wikipedia. Is that what you prefer? I'm not going to do that. I was being quite honest and open here in that I wasn't trying to hide anything. I openly cited my own book. The real error here is that authors probably hire others to place their own interests on Wiki to easily get around your rule. That's what you ought to combat, but that's not what I'm doing. Anyway - your second point refutes your first, as you know who I am. When you're ready to share your views about my question - one's assistants placing their supervisor's book throughout Wikipedia - rather than ignoring my question, I'd love to read it. If you guys have such a hard policy about someone introducing their own work into the mix, I'd revisit that. People tend to contribute based on their own scholarship. I'm also an editor of the world's oldest management journal, so I have some experience with assembling and publishing intellectual contributions. Let people promote and defend their work on the merits. Don't deny them just because it's their own work. The growth of knowledge and academia, which is my profession (it may be yours, I do not know, but I doubt it) does not disallow that. As I said, this is all not that important to me. I was cooling down after a long run on the lakefront by editing these pages. This is making me no money; it's not a popular press book. However I do want people to read it. Who are you guys anyway? Students? Academics? I'm curious. Please delete my stuff if you wish; I don't really wish to deal with a community like this one. I don't think you're qualified to pontificate like you are doing. Profpjm (talk) 23:19, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

First of all, making your research assistants edit on your behalf would not help at all. And when your contributions mainly consist of prominently adding your own book to articles multiple times, whether it's needed or not, that will raise all kinds of red flags. While you may be here to improve the encyclopedia, unfortunately enough others are here to spam their own works. As an expert on the age of exploration you surely know the literature well enough to cite others' works instead of your own? For example, I can't really believe you want to claim a book on leadership as the authoritative source on where exactly Columbus landed in the Americas. Surely other works discuss the geographical details of Columbus' voyages in much greater detail. Also, Chris Troutman is correct in noting that page numbers would help - then our readers won't have to check your entire book for confirmation of a certain fact. Huon (talk) 23:51, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

per your earlier point, the idea was to begin contributing. I.e. adding page numbers later. Think: many incremental contributions. Page numbers, etc. could all be added along those lines. I really do see your point, but today's sweep was just a foundation. No, I am not going to have my RAs do anything on Wikipedia. But if you're as passionate about this as you seem to be, that's what I'd go after if I were you. I'd encourage people to contribute based on their own scholarship. I think you're missing the boat there. Finally, mine is not just a book on leadership. It is a proper and very rigorous historic study (which took 5 years) based on primary sources that generates insights that are then applied to leadership and entrepreneurship settings. So yes, it is an authoritative source on the historical points it makes especially in Part I; it is at least as authoritative as any other one that mined the original documents. Please humor me - but do try to have your work appear with my publisher and see if anything less than authoritative passes their criteria. You must understand that of the sources cited on Wiki (and just so you know it sure looks like Bergreen/Magellan did a number on you guys) are not authoritative but popular press. But that's not for me to judge publicly; I did not seek to critique those works or remove them. Anyway - I really am a professional academic, and I admire your passion, but I still don't like all academic debates, including this one. Bottom line is I'd like to contribute to Wiki and if you can advise on how I can best get the material in my book onto the appropriate Wiki pages, I'd love to have it happen, if it is even possible. There are many, many potential contributions that one cannot find anywhere else except the primary sources in old Spanish and Portuguese that we accessed via various obscure sources, some of which required traveling to Spain and Portugal. As it stands now, I'd have been better off not to log in! Profpjm (talk) 00:08, 13 April 2014 (UTC)