If you are a new expert on mindat you may need some help understanding what the job entails in vetting images to insure that the data relating to them is accurate before it is consigned to our general database. This includes how you send out complaint letters to the people who uploaded images with which you think something is wrong.


The work involved:
Here is what is involved in vetting the images. You get an automatic notification from Mindat letting you know that there are images of Indian minerals waiting for approval. You sign on to mindat, then click on the Add/Edit Data menu choice at the top of the homepage. When the Add/Edit Database Information page comes up you would click on the menu choice in the Add/Review column that says Photo Approval and when the Photo Approval page comes up you will see the images that need vetting.

You need to check each image for:
1. Is the mineral pictured what the uploader says it is.
2. Is it is from where he says its from.
3. Does the the caption describe it accurately and does the caption give a size designation for the specimen. We are quite liberal about the size designation. It can be in inches or centimeters, or the image can contain a scale that shows how large the specimen is, or if the specimen is held in a hand we deem this sufficient for a size designation. Sometimes even just the size of the largest crystal on the specimen is enough.

If everything is reasonable and the image is of reasonable quality, you consign it to mindat's general gallery by clicking the little check box next to the default choice of: Approve For Use Throughout Site. This is the case most of the time.

If the image is really bad, you can click the drop down box and delete the image or more commonly, if the image is not really horrible but just not very good, you click on the down arrow next to the little check box and click on the menu selection: Approve For User's Gallery Only. If it is a rare mineral and we don't have any images or only a very few images of that mineral, we are more lenient and will accept almost anything into our site wide gallery. When you have selected the what is going to happen to the image; Approve For Use Throughout Site or Approve For User's Gallery Only, Clicking on the Commit Changes button at the bottom of the page will make it so.

All the above is very quick and easy to do. The problem comes when we think the picture is OK for the general gallery, but there is something wrong with 1. the species name, 2. the locality or 3. the caption or the measurement or something else about the image. This is when we generally send out a complaint letter.

To send out a complaint letter, you click or double click on the thumbnail image and a window with the big image of the specimen will come up. Below the big image, below the caption and the other stuff, is a line of menu choices. One of them will be Complain. When you click on Complain, the complaint letter form will open. At the top it says Contact Photo Poster and just below and to the left is a thumbnail image of the specimen you want to complain about and a list of things to complain about. You can click on one or more little check boxes to the left of each complaint item. Below these is a little box labeled Additional Notes to add to the message. In this box you try and explain to the uploader what the problems are regarding the image. I often suggest to the uploader what I think the proper resolution should be to fix the problem and suggest that they should make alterations in the locality, species, caption etc. I always put my name after the note. Most people when they first get these find it upsetting and I want them to know who I am and why I think they are wrong, rather than have it come from some anonymous person.

At the bottom of this page is a Send Mail button which you click on when you are finished. Then it becomes a waiting game. Sometimes they will email you back right a way. When they do they usually immediately agree to make the changes that are necessary. Occasionally they may argue with you and you will need to explain in detail why you think you are correct and they are wrong. Many times they will never answer you. When they don't answer after a month or two I will go and make the changes myself or consign the image to the users gallery only. More and more we are consigning lower grade images to the user's only gallery because we already have large numbers of similar images in the database. If you are in doubt, you can always check to see what is currently in our gallery for that species or locality.

When a complaint letter is made, it is placed in a file that you can periodically review and eventually you will need to resolve your complaints. Your complaint file is located on the Add/Edit Data page. You will find it in the Photo column of menu choices under the My Open Complaints menu choice. When you click on that menu choice the My Open Complaints window opens up it looks pretty much like the Photo Approval page. You can resolve the complaint by clicking or double clicking on the image and when the full size image page appears, at the bottom the page next to the Complain menu choice with be the Resolve Complaint menu choice. When you click on that, the Contact Photo Poster window will open showing a copy of the complaint letter that was sent to the uploader. At the bottom of the window is a box labeled Resolution of Compaint. You type in how the complaint was resolved, like "Image consigned to the users only gallery." or "User changed the locality to the correct one." or "User changed the Species name to the correct one." Or user added size designation necessary" or "I made the necessary changes to the locality" etc. When this box has been filled in you then click the Resolve Complaint button below the box.

You can also resolve the complaint from the Photo Approval page. When a complaint has been sent to the user, a line of text to the right of the thumbnail image appears that says "A complaint has been raised against this photo. You can click on this text which is a link and it will take you to a page titled Contact Photo Poster which will display the complaint letter that was send and at the bottom is a Resolution of Complaint window which you will fill out like in the paragraph preceding this one.

Formerly only the managers on mindat had the authority to edit the images and their captions and send complaint letters. Mindat currently gets more than 13,000,000 hits a month representing 200,000 unique visitors. Little by little we are improving the quality and accuracy of the images in our gallery and the quality of our locality information. For several years the managers have realized that although many people involved in our hobby/business are not mineralogists, it is people like you who can run rings around most mineralogists when it comes to knowledge of specific localities and what they have produced. That is why we have created our experts list and why it is so important for us to get people like you to help us with this project.

Eventually when you feel comfortable with the image approval process, and you have the time, look at various subsets of our general gallery like, Stilbite, India and you will see all the images of Stilbite we have from India and you will probably be amazed at how many are incorrectly labeled. We invite you to also edit these images and send out complaint letters where you see fit, or to consign them to the user only gallery. But I warn you this is a time intensive job. I have spent hundreds of hours looking at various subsets of the gallery and making the changes that I was certain of and leaving alone substantial numbers of those I was not certain of. Eventually we will make it a lot better, though I am sure that the job will never be completely done, because the "experts" that knew all about old specimens are no longer with us.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

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