Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Apollo of Gaza

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. ✗plicit 13:21, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Apollo of Gaza

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There has been no peer review for this yet. WP:SENSATION. The story could be mentioned when competent independent experts publish peer reviewed research papers about the supposed artifact to properly contextualize it. Until then, the page should be deleted. No reliable source.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Patrick.N.L (talk • contribs)

Delete : No reliable source about the artifact. Newspaper article is not a reliable source for an archeological find. A reliable source would be a peer-reviewed article from archeologists who have actually analyzed the statue. Patrick.N.L (talk) 02:31, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Archaeology-related deletion discussions. XOR'easter (talk) 18:05, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, well sourced. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:40, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. News articles are valid sources. Obviously better ones are desirable—as are pictures—but there's no good reason to delete the article until they appear. P Aculeius (talk) 13:05, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
’’’Comment’’’ this might be a response to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mount Ebal curse tablet created by the nominator. Doug Weller talk 14:04, 31 March 2022 (UTC*
Delete No scholars have been allowed near it and the only source is the guy trying to get rich selling it. It doesn't meet notability guidelines just because of dramatic but self-interested claims which no objective source has been allowed to test. There are a lot of sensational archaeological claims that make it into normally reliable publications and in the vast majority of cases it later becomes clear they have no business on Wikipedia. GordonGlottal (talk) 17:15, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There is at least evidence of sustained interest in this statue, e.g., a documentary that received some high-profile reviews [1][2] and fairly in-depth coverage in an academic journal article [3]. The tone of these writings is that the statue's origin remains unknown, and the hopes people have for it may tell us more about them than the statue (the academic paper compares the documentary to Citizen Kane and Rashomon in that respect). I hesitate to say what all this means for whether we should have an article and what we should say in it if we do, but I do think it indicates the situation is not quite analogous to that of the Mount Ebal curse tablet. XOR'easter (talk) 18:19, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A film does not confirm that the statue is not a hoax but an actual archeological piece; only an archeologist can confirms it is. The academic paper you are talking about, the title is 'Film and cinema study in review'; how is a film study pertinent to consider that the statue is actually an archeological piece; and the author is not archeologist but "an experimental documentary filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Film Theory at George Mason University". She has no qualification to confirm if the statue is of any value or a hoax. Patrick.N.L (talk) 04:49, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hoaxes can be notable too. The question is whether the statue is notable, not whether it's been proved authentic. Even if it's exposed as a hoax, it's had a lot of publicity in archaeological and general circles—and people might be expected to search for information about it. Readers who look on Wikipedia will find out whether it's confirmed as authentic, proven to be a fake, or if the jury's still out (which, apparently, it still is at this juncture). P Aculeius (talk) 11:48, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. See the list of hoaxes for examples. XOR'easter (talk) 18:54, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hoaxes certainly can be notable but this one isn't. For one thing, there's no scholarly import whatsoever. If it's real -- this guy gets rich. If it's fake -- he doesn't. That's all that rests on the issue, so far as we know, because we know nothing about it. He also didn't convince anybody. The claim that there's sustained interest is not true. It was a viral story (of, again, no academic interest) in 2014, then the subject of a Arabic-language 2018 documentary, which was itself mentioned in one journal article. Normal people who only see these occasionally don't understand this, but equivalent listings/claims/stories happen EVERY WEEK. An object doesn't deserve a page just because someone listed it on Ebay with a sensational description that no one ever in any way substantiated and no one except the lister ever claimed was accurate. Lots of genuinely famous hoaxes don't have pages (Moabitica for example) which is good. Few of them should and definitely no non-famous ones. GordonGlottal (talk) 04:03, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

At the least moabitica should be a redirect to Moses Wilhelm Shapira#Moabite forgeries. See also de:Moabitica. There's a fascinating article The Moabitica and their Aftermath. How to Handle a Forgery Affair with an International Impact here]. Doug Weller talk 16:29, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Clearly passes GNG.★Trekker (talk) 13:51, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The statue is covered in a decent number of reliable sources relating to its failed sale and dubious provenance. That's enough. Saying that there must be scholarly sources written by archaeologists is a completely arbitrary standard; archaeologists are not the only people interested in ancient things. – Joe (talk) 13:49, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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.