User talk:Jim MacDougald

Hi Jim MacDougald! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from experienced editors like MrClog (talk). Visit the Teahouse We hope to see you there! Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts 16:04, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry you've had such a bad experience; as you've learned, Wikipedia is not the place for publishing material outside the mainstream of scholarship. But if you want to get this information out into the world as widely as possible, you could take new photographs of those old maps and upload them to Commons (note that they'd need to be new photographs, not published/uploaded anywhere else, and taken by you yourself).

Your account here on Wikipedia will work at Commons; you'd just need to click the following link and follow the directions: Upload Wizard. Then those maps could be freely used in articles here on Wikipedia and by many other people around the world. The scans at the University of Florida are copyrighted by the university. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 20:34, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1. My information is not "outside the mainstream of scholarship", any more than is the work of Henry Harrisse and countless others. The name of the publisher does not automatically bestow a mark of authenticity to the research, as you certainly must know. 2. The maps are dated 1527 and 1529, and are 2 feet by 3 feet. I had very high-resolution scans of both maps made, and I welcome the opportunity to get them made available to researchers and scholars. I have already provided these scans to the University of Florida (who did not treat me as a self-promoting idiot who was trying to sell books. They welcomed this significant and expensive contribution, becoming the only place in the world that currently has hi res scans of these extremely rare maps.) They are at the University of Florida'S George A. Smathers Digital Collection. The UF may not copyright these maps as I own them and have placed them in the public domain. It is also not possible to copyright maps that are 1860 copies of 1527 and 1529 maps. Just for your own info, I am not "trying to sell books." I am a multi-millionaire (you can check me out online) who has devoted time and treasure to this effort. I have been advised every step of the way by noted professors of history who guided my efforts, reviewed manuscripts, and offered extensive source material. Wikipedia and its readers are not the beneficiaries of your pedantic and slavish adherence to the doctrine that if a person pays to get a book published, it can't be any good, but if Joe's Brewery and Books publishes it, it's good enough for Wikipedia. Jim MacDougald (talk) 21:34, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The maps themselves are certainly in the public domain, but scanning or photographing them can create a new copyright associated with the new image. In the US "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain", but if you look at the pages on the UF website, you'll see their copyright notice on the bottom left, and their various permissions pages are quite clear that they make no guarantees about whether an item is public domain or not, and that reuse is not completely freely authorized.

That's why I asked if you could take new photos and upload them to Commons - Commons does say that its images are freely reusable under any circumstances, so we can use them anywhere, and link to them directly. On Diogo Ribeiro, for instance, there are several images of his maps drawn from various public institutions and uploaded as in the public domain, but they're not nearly as pretty as the image on the UF site.

I've never accused you of trying to sell books, or of anything else, as far as I know, except unwittingly violating Wikipedia's rule about copying/attribution. I just like old maps and wanted to see about getting some pictures of some really nice ones for us to use. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 22:13, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, I'm no expert on copyright, I could be totally wrong about everything I said and am open to correction (maybe you know more about this stuff than me, it's quite possible! ). 199.208.172.35 (talk) 22:55, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Here's my problem: I found some very old and rare maps. They are very significant historically because I don't think many of the books that these two foot by three foot maps (folded and included with the folio-sized book) came from (if any) are in private hands. I am an amateur historian. I have observed that the Wikipedia listings for Ponce de Leon and for the Ayllon expedition admit that they need help, primarily because no one knows the LOCATION of these settlements. The maps have latitude scales on them. They show the locations of the Bay of Juan Ponce, and the location of the Ayllon site. Historians have wondered where those two places were, for centuries. Only because of modern technology could I do his res scans and enlarge the select areas of the maps, and only via modern technology could I compare the map latitudes with the GPS latitudes. I did so with numerous locations on the maps and found that the Spanish were remarkably accurate...most being on target or within 1 or 2 degrees (7 to 14 miles) of the GPS locations. I made the horrible mistake of writing a book about all this, and self-publishing (with the help of three esteemed history professors). I did that for speed. The 500th anniversary of the Ponce de Leon expedition was March-July 2021. I finished the book in February 2021. I didn't want to spend a year longer to get a University Press to publish it because I wanted it out when interest in the subject would be the greatest. "Commercial" publishers have no interest in books that are intended for scholars, with very small circulation. So, the maps are very valuable to historians, but they must be viewed in the context of other reliable historical sources. I did all that and the findings are important. But because the book is "self published" the findings in it are hidden from researchers and others who use Wikipedia as a source of information. I would be honored to be challenged by anyone with knowledge of the subject. I can prove that many quoted sources on the same subject (published by some unknown and unrecognizable publisher) are accepted by Wikipedia as "reliable", are patently and provably wrong. Isn't it silly for Wikipedia to allow someone with NO knowldge of the subject to erase information written by someone who IS expert on the subject? Wikipedia needs an appeal process that allows curation of the writer which is not just based on "who published it?". Jim MacDougald (talk) 21:19, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]