Talk:Excelsior Diamond

Latest comment: 1 year ago by PrimeBOT in topic Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment

Tone / opinions presented as fact edit

I added several tags related to the article's odd tone, with statements like "The Excelsior Diamond was fated to have a tragic unfortunate end." It's not intrinsically tragic for a big rock to be cut into smaller rocks. For this to be encyclopedic content, we would need citations of relevant experts or historical figures who believed it to be a tragedy, as is done in the case of the one quote from Cecil Rhodes. Such opinions do not belong in the narrative of the article, however, and should be limited to such quotes or attributed statements, not phrased as fact or unattributed opinion (e.g., "is considered to be"). W.stanovsky (talk) 00:05, 8 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Please revise "discovery" section edit

The section on "Discovery" should either be deleted, because it simply repeats what is already stated far better in the introduction, or completely revised to eliminate the reference to the finder named "K", which is an offensive term, and not someone's name. I do not have enough of the history of the diamond at my disposal to do the rewriting myself; but the complete reference [1] p. 186 reads as follows:

"The Excelsior was originally a crystal of 971 3-4 carats, and was the largest found up to that time. The finder, a native Kaffir (sic), picked up the crysal while loading a truck in Jagersfontain (sic) mine. He secreted it from the white overseer but later surrender it to the manager himself. The Kaffir (sic) was given a horse for his find. The excitement caused by the discovery was very great, for the stone was supposed to be of fine color and quality. The owner of the stone was unable to find a buyer willing to pay the fabulous sum he asked, so he had it cut into ten pieces. This work was successfully done in Amsterdam in 1904." American Midland Naturalist Vol. 9.4 (1924): p. 186.

I hope someone, knowledgeable on the subject, will find the time to revise the article.Oggmus (talk) 11:58, 22 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

With the help of some articles supplied by an expert on diamonds, I have rewritten the first half of the article to avoid the mistakes in the previous version. I hope that it finds favor with the readers, both expert and the simply interested. I am surprised at the dearth of historical facts about this remarkable gem.18:33, 23 January 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oggmus (talkcontribs)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment edit

  This article is the subject of an educational assignment supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program.

The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}} by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:07, 2 January 2023 (UTC)Reply