Mindat Mineralogy Messageboard - New Features

Locality Determination based on Known Mineral Associations (4 replies)

Leor Goldberg — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:10:04 +0000

I don't know if this feature is on the site or not, but if it is I couldn't find it. I had the idea the other day that a feature could be added to the site where one could input all the minerals identified on the piece they want to locate, and have mindat come up with a few places that match those criteria. After that I looked to see if the feature existed, but I could not find it. This would be pretty easy I think given that mindat already has all identified minerals from localities, this would simply be in reverse. I know that for me it would be a great help, and likely for others as well.

Of course there would be some occasions for which there would not be a very helpful answer (ie. where is this Quartz from), but naturally the rarer the mineral, the more likely it is to find where it came from. Along with this could possibly be some user-submitted (reviewed of course) pictures of different habits from the locale. I apologize if this in fact exists, but if it doesn't, I'm sure that this could be a very useful tool. :-)

Please let me know what you think!

Hashtags in Image captions (no replies)

Jeff Weissman — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:08:03 +0000

#Don't #Like #Them

Why are #Hashtags now active in image captions.

I have been coding my images with a system to make keyword searching in my gallery easier, I have been delineating search terms in image captions with #1234# type of system. Since some change in the software now recognizes the use of the # as a hashtag qualifier, it totally destroys my coding. Any chance this could be deactivated on an individual home page basis?

Mindat Upgrade Features (8 replies)

John Oostenryk — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 02:49:29 +0000

Hello Jolyon and Moderators,
First a hearty Thank You to all of you for a lot of unsung time spent keeping Mindat.org a useful resource. The amount of information that is recorded here is awesome! I certainly look forward to learning ever so much more through the collective efforts of ALL contributors!
WELL DONE!

Moving on to my wish list of feature CHANGES I hope the rest of the community has pondered too:) Pretty simple concepts, but how they mesh in code? I guess I will know by if they occur when the new rollout commences .

1) When searching photo galleries: Clicking on a picture takes you to page. Clicking back returns you to top of gallery page... Can we retun to same point/ place holder to avoid all the extra scrolling? My Number 1 wish!

2) Possible to choose number of results viewed on image page instead of 10 (or less.) (50 or 200 like ebay etc please?)

3) Ability to search(call up) all conversations by date/dates would be excellent additition
So if it is a busy day or I am out for a while, I can catch up on all the content/conversation that has occurred.
(I used to be able to click the RSS tab and get this for just the current day, but at some point that changed. (Maybe it is my machine that is altering or blocking that feature? Now all I get is a column of 'coding') I loved/miss the single day function, but the total search feature would be the best way to get it.

4) Figure out how to convert and retain the crystallography/3d lattice portion from mineral type pages. Those are so useful when you need them- hope you can save that in the move away from java utilization.(I agree java is hacktoast!)

That is it off the top of my head. There is still a lot of this site I have not utilized yet. Uploads to my personal page of photos/articles is actively pending. I am looking forward to contributing a little data from the IL/IA border region!

Thanks again!
John O:)

Members lapidary services? (1 reply)

Paul Hewitt — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 16:42:18 +0000

As an example, I have a nice chunk of amethyst that I would like to have faceted. I am sure there are people here on site that are capable of doing it and would be willing to do it. If you had a forum dedicated to that members could take advantage of it and get some lapidary services taken care of.

Additional filter option in My Photos on personal homepage (2 replies)

Branko Rieck — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 12:45:44 +0000

The “My Photos“-section of my Mindat Home Page allows me to filter and sort the photos I have uploaded over time after certain criteria:

What Photos to Show
Which Locality
Which Mineral
Keyword(s)
Which Order

There is one feature that I miss:

If I select “Lavrion District Mines” in “Which Locality” it will show me just one photo, namely the one where I do not have more information on the locality and hence have it under the topmost hierarchy level for this district. It will not show me however the other photos from sublocalities of the “Lavrion District Mines”. From this I deduce that the search algorithm looks for an exact match.

A very nice feature to come in handy here would be a checkbox “Include sublocalities” which, if checked, would allow me to filter my photos after the selected locality and all sublocalities under the selected one.

Branko

VIDEO in articles (no replies)

Jolyon & Katya Ralph — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 19:54:43 +0000

For a little while we've had problems with video playback in articles.

This is now fixed.

Changes:

1. Google Video support removed

2. The tag name has been changed from to in order for it to not clash with HTML5 VIDEO tags.

"Wanted" topical area? (no replies)

Henry Barwood — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 14:26:59 +0000

Would it be possible to have a Wanted heading? Would be useful for someone like me looking for oddball stuff to analyze.

When a thread was first posted. (1 reply)

AJMI — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 15:58:08 +0000

Suggestion:

In the Mindat sub-forums (General, Scrapbook, Rockhounds, etc.), it would be nice to know, without clicking into it, when a thread was first created and by whom.

That way I can tell if it's an old thread that's simply been revived with a new post or if it's a new thread that's just recently been created.

So perhaps a "First Created", "First Post" or "Started By" column that includes the date of the first thread post and who created it could be put next to the "Last Post" column in each Mindat sub-forum.

Many other forums include this kind of information which makes it easier for users to figure out how "fresh" a thread is without having to click on each thread to find out.

Mineral Without Valid Locality (no replies)

Barry Flannery — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 20:42:47 +0000

I suggest that the photo upload tab "mineral without valid locality" be merged into the main mineral tab. The current system does not allow you to input names for a mineral species and all the other data of the specimen.

Consider the case I find myself in. I have several hundred photos from my local museum where I know the species but locality information is vague at best.

Can there be a simple drop down selection in the main mineral upload tab for (incomplete locality data)?

Thanks,

Barry

Mineral counter (no replies)

Pavel Kartashov — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 23:38:57 +0000

It would be very useful to make mineral counter on personal pages of users.

What means 2457 photos? May be they contains photos only 25 minerals (800 quartz, 750 calcite, 400 fluorite, 200 beryll, 100 anatase, 90 topaz, 80 "thourmaline", 75 selenite and 52 chalcopyrite).
Or for example, this gallery contains 20 photois of 20 minerals - [www.mindat.org]

For me more interesting to know, how much minerals user had upload, rather then how much photos he made.

And it is interesting for me, how much minerals in my own gallery.

Counter can to be shown as fraction x/y where x - IMA species, and y - varieties, synonims etc.

Show Tool Bar Button (no replies)

Wayne Corwin — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 02:24:22 +0000

Thank you Jolyon for adding the "Show Tool Bar Button"

Nice feature !

KOR
Wayne Corwin

Minerology: (18 replies)

J Goodman — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 21:34:34 +0000

So many university geology courses now fail to teach minerology. Is it possible for mindat to provide a crash course for its uses ?

New Localities Possible Change (9 replies)

William W Besse — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:49:55 +0000

The 'New Localities' area on the front page is nice, but I am interested in changes that are made to localities that are already there as well. It is possibly more of interest to see changes locality information for general information and species additions.

Possibly it could be changed to 'New & Updates Localities'?

Bill

Mindat News is NOT news (5 replies)

William W Besse — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 03:32:50 +0000

...it is Mindat History

The newest Mindat News item is approaching 4 months old and the older "news" is approaching one year. This is the slowest moving section of the front page. I believe it is time to downgrade it.

I have thought of a few options to start the ball (thoughts) rolling:

1) Shove Dealer News under Mindat News (cutting the size of News in half) and give the extra space in the right column to New Discussions that turns over on a fairly fast pace.

2) Switch locations of News and Discussions, amounting to the same size changes.

3) Combine News, Articles, and recently removed Blogs. You could still probably cut the space in half. If you thought this might be confusing you could add a tag in front to differentiate them (Example "Article: My New Article").

Bill

Suggest new search function (2 replies)

Richard Muster — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:28:26 +0000

Hi

I think that an additional reverse search function by coordinates would helpful:

- Enter the coordinates in a new field on the search page

- The software searches then for any localities within a certain radius (1 mile or 10 miles)

This would help in cases like : I found an old mine, I know the coordinates from my GPS-device, but I have no idea about the name of the locality.

The information is already in the database, it only needs some programming to extend the existing search functions.

Regards

Richard

Remove the Edit (3 replies)

Jerry Petryha — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:29:38 +0000

Why is the amount of times one edits one's posting shown on the post? Not necessary, and may have other consequences.

It should be removed.

New store item? (2 replies)

James Christopher — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 20:06:55 +0000

What would be nice to see for sale is a mineral calendar. They are seriously lacking on the internet.

POTD discussion (28 replies)

Jeff Weissman — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 05:53:53 +0000

Would be nice to have a talk page for each POTD, with a quick note from the person who selected a particular image for POTD, as to what feature of the image was attractive to them. For example, "interesting morphology". "seldom seen in this habit", "great example of this rare mineral", "great view of a collecting site", etc... I think this would enhance our appreciation of the POTD and of the selection process.

Photos options on locality pages (no replies)

Jeff Weissman — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:14:53 +0000

I noticed the recent addition of a drop-down menu, when mouse-over "photos" on locality pages. A great feature and thanks!

Some comments - I am not sure if the distinction between "photomicrograph" and "stacked photomicrograph" is really relevant, perhaps these should be combined.

After accessing a page from one of the drop-down menu items, would be nice to have the same drop-down menu on the page, so you don't have to go back to the main locality page.

Also, on a users home page, on the "my photos" tab, would be nice to be able to also select "photomicrograph" and other flavors in the "what photos to show option"

thanks!

Photo status tracking (3 replies)

Hartmut Hensel — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:40:54 +0000

From time to time people complained that the photos they uploaded were not added to the locality galleries. I only have few photos uploaded so far and never had that problem. Latest two days after I uploaded them they were visible in those galleries.

But the latest photos I uploaded two weeks ago are still only visible in my personal gallery. They are not great pictures but I think also not so bad not to approve them. So I do not see a reason why they should not be accepted. What I miss is to know in what status in the approval process they are. Maybe the reviewer didn't get time yet to check them. Maybe they were forgotten, overlooked, whatever.

It would be nice to see for each photo the current status in that process. For instance something like
- reviewer notified (so a mindat contributor would know that he has to be a little bit patient until the approval process is started)
- clarfication required (in case I forgot some information in the descriptive text, the approver doubts the identification etc. -> you should check your PM to get further info)
- approved (everything is fine)
- rejected or approval denied or so (this photo is not accepted for the galleries except the user's gallery)

Would that fit with the current approval process and could that be provided? I think it would make it much more transparent to understand what is going on with your photos.

Regards
Hartmut

Location Maps Pages Could Use A Change (6 replies)

William W Besse — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 07:40:48 +0000

The Location Maps pages format could use a change to make them more user friendly. I sometimes like to do map research outside of Mindat, so I copy the Latitude & Longitude out and paste it in other map browsers, usually Google Maps or Google Earth, but I have tried this on MSN Maps and Yahoo! Maps as well.

None of these sites would use the WGS84 format so I will talk no further on that one for this purpose. I did reach Manila, Philippines a couple of times when I put in the WGS84 for "Red Cloud Mine, Silver District, Trigo Mts, La Paz Co., Arizona, USA", but that was about it.

Google Maps, Google Earth, MSN Maps and Yahoo! Maps do not like the other formats either..."AS IS". The problem is the central colon (:). If this is replaced by a comma (,) then they work and you get where you want to go.

Well they don't all work alike. Yahoo! renders the Decimal Degrees but not the Degrees plus Decimal Minutes and the Decimal Degrees was off in location by a kilometer or more (Again using the Red Cloud). I would just ignore Yahoo! Maps.

My suggestion would be to format the Location Maps pages Latitude & Longitude with a comma.

Bill

National Grid OS ref for UK locations (9 replies)

Ian Jones — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:37:32 +0000

A lot of UK locations that have been added have been located by latitude/longitude, but not also by the OS NGR.

Adding just the OS NGR to a location appears to convert to and add the latitude/longitude to the entry automatically, but just adding the latitude/longitude does not convert to and add the OS NGR. Unfortunately, without having the OS NGR, the location does not then get included in any search done for nearest locations.

I have searched the last 400 UK locations added and converted latitude/longitude to OS NGRs and added them where missing, but there is no obvious way to find others without going through every single UK entry. So, is it possible to code this to convert latitude/longitude to OS NGR automatically?

Questioned And Unapproved Photo admin, Link (1 reply)

Lloyd Van Duzen — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:12:23 +0000

Just wondering if it has been considered, that a contact link be attatched to any unapproved or questioned photos some how, enabling the person (registered member), who uploaded the photo be able to reply to or talk to administrators about the photo's in question and or the reasons a photo has been unnaproved.

It may be a quicker way to resolve problems and questions quickly, and maybe more efficiently between registered members and mindat management administrators can resolve mineral photo issues.

This may give the registered member the opportunity to explain and expand on what is being questioned or a unapproved. Also it may give a administrator the oppportunity to review in light of any new information pertaining to a mineral that is in question or being unnapproved.

Maybe a link already exists, but I have been recieving this information via my email address that is outside Mindat's domain.

Just wondered what management, administrators and members think of this.

Thanks Mindat.

abundance of a mineral and crystals size range (15 replies)

el cascaillou — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 01:58:11 +0000

I don't know if that could be done practically, but it would be interesting to know what is roughly the size range that can be expected for the crystals of a given specy.
I mean like 'mostly sub-millimetric', 'usually millimetric', 'unfrequently centimetric, or 'often centimetric' (based on previously reported finds).
To answer this question I usually check the photo gallery, but for some lesser-known minerals the photographic content is too thin to judge of what would have been found around the world.

Another interesting feature would be mentionning the relative abundance of the mineral.
I mean like 'very abundant', 'abundant', 'locally abundant', 'frequent', 'rather rare', 'rare', 'very rare'
Abundance is not only a matter of worldwide occurences, but also a matter how concentrated the mineral is in these regions.

I'm mainly suggesting these two features because when you search mindat, there are just too many minerals, and I often find myself wondering how 'significant' is a given mineral that I had never heard about before, and I guess I'm not the only one feeling a bit lost.

Google MAP API not free anymore (2 replies)

Maurice de Graaf — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:31:24 +0000

Hi all,

I read that the usage of the Google Earth API is not free anymore from january 1st 2012 for websites with a lot of traffic. Does this affect the maps presented on Mindat.org?

link to google

Cheers,
Maurice

PS could not find a suitable subforum to post this in, so I put it in the new development section.

Most common localities where minerals occur (9 replies)

Adam Berluti — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:36:18 +0000

When one gets to a minerals page, it shows the hardness, streak ect. It would be helpful if the most common sites are also listed where this mineral occures.
Just another idea.
-Adam

Batch photo upload (6 replies)

Michael J. Bainbridge — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 16:07:02 +0000

Is there an easy way to upload multiple photos, rather than having to go back to the add photo screen on your homepage every time? Even if there were an "Add Another" option available when you finish with one it would be very helpful.

And (related), is there a way to upload photos directly to an article, or do you have to upload every photo to the db first?

Thanks,
Michael

iOS App (offline) (1 reply)

Dominique Ectors — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:42:58 +0000

I recently found a nice free HTML 5 SDK for Smartphones named Phonegap. While playing around with it in Xcode I thought that it would be so amazingly productive to have the Pocket Mindat Version as an offline App for my iPod. And with this SDK it would really be just 10 minutes copy and paste HTML-Directory into Xcode -> Build (tu)
The only downside is 100$/year for the iOS Developer Program 8-)

Greetings

PhoneGap
Tutorial

Nearest Localities function (no replies)

Aleš Tomek — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:25:51 +0000

Hello all,

I noticed there is a function "Nearest Localities" in map pages of US localities, it looks like a useful function when one is planning a trip. Coul such a function be added to pages of other regions localities - it is definitely missing in czech or german sites.

Thanks,

Aleš.

Results Per Page (1 reply)

Adam Berluti — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:15:09 +0000

Can more results be made per page. Instead of 10 can there the option of making 10, 50, 100, or 200 results per page. It would also be easier to view mineral pages such as quartz where you have to turn the page every 10 photos, for a total of 1164 times. If there were more results per page say 200, one would only have to turn the page 58 times.

Just an Idea

Adam