Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mary Tudor pearl


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep and clean-up. Consensus herein is for article retention, but with the caveat of being copy edited and cleaned-up. As such, the Cleanup AfD template has been added atop the article. Further discussion regarding a potential merge, renaming, ways to restructure the article, etc. can continue on the article's talk page. N ORTH A MERICA 1000 11:07, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Mary Tudor pearl

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

A company called Symbolic & Chase, which is apparently the owner of this alleged pearl, created this article in 2013 for promoting it as an auction item. Look at original authorship and see numerous issues of notability, original research, writing style, citations. Note the laborious attempt to prove that this "pearl of Kuwait" was worn by an infamous English queen and is available to be viewed in London. The article attempts to prove the provenance of a pearl, without proper attestation to authorities and makes a travesty of Wikipedia by supporting this tenuous marketing theory. The very article title stands in contradiction to the name given, and also contradicts the La Peregrina pearl article. A PROD failed but has triggered no serious editing of the article to bring up to even stub-article standards. Article creator is blocked. More details on Talk page. I like to saw logs! (talk) 06:47, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions.  B E C K Y S A Y L E S  11:18, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
 * Keep/merge Mary Tudor certainly had a big pearl - this is well documented. The issue is whether this was the pearl known as La Peregrina or this new rival claimant.  The V&A exhibited the latter recently and this attracted some press coverage, e.g. The Economist, and so the matter is notable.  Insofar as the issue is disputed or sources vary, we should not choose between them but should perhaps present what they say together. Andrew D. (talk) 13:38, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Natg 19 (talk) 20:09, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep - but trim/rewrite the history section. This pearl is notable per multiple RS (e.g. and ) but its provenance is not established. As The Economist puts it: "The pearl is said to have belonged to Mary Tudor (1496-1533). It looks exactly like one she is wearing in portraits, but there are long gaps in its provenance. Whatever its history, the pearl is a masterpiece." .  24.151.10.165 (talk) 17:54, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
 * Nominator Comment - I am somewhat taken aback that none of the comments so far have covered the blatant commercialized language in the article, as written. As I tried to make abundantly clear, the entire article, except its title, is written to promote the pearl that recently toured London. (Sure there are news articles about it, but See WP:WHYN and WP:SPIP.) But the problem is that there are two separate pearls. Are we needing three articles? One for pearl of Kuwait, one for La Peregrina pearl, and one for Mary Tudor pearl? That would be "fair" by splitting off all of the claims and provenance stuff into the specific pearl articles, while the historical object gets its own page I guess? Modifying it is possible, but my opinion is severe curtailment until the sources roll in. The I like to saw logs! (talk) 07:25, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, N ORTH A MERICA 1000 01:16, 27 January 2015 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mr. Guye (talk) 02:15, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep but rewrite needed. WP:UGLY is not a reason to delete. I'm not denying that the article skates close to CSD G11, but I don't think a fundamental rewrite would be needed to get this to encyclopaedic standards. There has been no evidence presented that the pearl itself is not notable. De Guerre (talk) 02:40, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok, ugly. That has hardly been asserted. But what makes it notable? The article was created by the owner of the pearl and should have been deleted on sight without any major press coverage. The only press the pearl got was probably due to a £300 press release sent to London area news agencies. It appears to be not notable except in London. Did this get any international interest? I see it as a minor one-event wonder and the only real information on the web is literally the page that I think needs to be deleted. There is 10 times more alleged information in this article than any press report. Auction houses aren't encyclopedic sources but one is used prominently, in quotes, to describe the pearl for us and guess about its provenance.


 * I have asserted that there are poor and missing sources, creation by a person closely tied to the item, misleading conflation of provenance, promotional brochure, contradiction, no references to the counter-claims of a similar pearl, no wide notoriety or international notability, and most significantly... original research that includes wild speculation which culminates in this, the focal point of the article that demonstrates most of my assertions:


 * These portraits have been mis-catalogued in the past as depicting the famous La Peregrina pearl (which weighs 204 grains), which has been repeatedly mistaken for the pearl that Mary Tudor was given by Philip II as an engagement gift in 1554.


 * And you mentioned that it is WP:UGLY?? Ok. So a Wikipedia article takes sides on a $10 million dispute, and you say it is ugly? Ok.... I like to saw logs! (talk) 07:00, 6 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep(rename or merge) and major rewrite of material needed. As has been pointed out above, this article meets WP:GNG, so some of the material belongs here somewhere.  It is close to WP:G11, but does not meet that deletion criteria.  The article name and overall presentation are, to say the least, misleading regarding the (lack of) certainty of this pearl's history, so renaming or merging with La Peregrina pearl could be appropriate. Shanata (talk) 07:14, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.