Discussions

💬 Home 🔎 Search 📅 Latest

╳Discussions

💬 Home 🔎 Search 📅 Latest

Groups

Recent Images in Discussions

Improving Mindat.orgAntarctica - duplicate + "self-recurring" entry

6th Sep 2005 17:03 UTCPeter Haas

I just deleted the Larseman Hills entry of today, because it was a duplicate (Pierre: did you ever perform a search before adding new entries during the last couple of months ??).

While doing so, i stumbled upon the following "self-recurring" entry:

Stornes Peninsula, Larsemann Hills, Prydz Bay, Stornes Peninsula, Antarctica

Could someone more familiar with the area than me correct it, please (a penguin, perhaps ??)

9th Sep 2005 15:00 UTCPierre PELISSON

Of course, with fellow penguin friends !

Do you want me beginning to track down all the stupidities about localities or mineral synonyms that pollute Mindat ?

REALLY ???

:-)

9th Sep 2005 18:41 UTCPeter Haas

What's the point ?

Why should the existence of more or less obvious "stupidities" in the database justify to generate more of them ? If you don't track them, it's up to others to do it. If you keep on spreading inaccurate information, there will be even less time for us to spend on other tasks. How can you expect others to take more care when you're not willing to be more careful yourself ? It's your complaint that is stupid.

Many of your latest entries came with inaccurate or even wrong locality information. This is of a particular significance also because there is an on-going discussion brought up by other contributors as to whether entries related solely to rock-forming minerals should be admitted to the database at all. I don't have any objections in this respect, but I believe that such entries have to be particularly accurate to be of any value. For instance, to know that there are eclogite outcrops somewhere in an area of several thousand square kilometers (www.mindat.org/loc-71999.html) is about as informative as to say that there is sodium chloride dissolved in the red sea.

There has been a decision a long time ago, that we order localities by means of geographic and not geological points of view. That's certainly not satisfying for professionals, but it is just what mineral collectors do, so you'll have to compromise in respect of specific geological information that you'd like to see displayed. One may combine localities with similar geology in a sub-level entry, but it is geography to be considered in the first place when there are any logical conflicts. Your introduction of the "Sesia-Lanzo zone" has created a considerable confusion with the localities in the Piedmont region (see: www.mindat.org/lsearch.php?loc=lanzo). If you feel for some reason, that a geological unit deserves to appear as a locality descriptor, you also have to provide a solution for listing the nearby localities in an understandable manner - you should not leave it to others to clean up the mess you left. A geological unit can be very interesting to mineral collectors when it includes particular mineral deposits. That's certainly not true for the "Dabie Shan - Sulu UHP metamorphic belt" (stretching over a distance of several thousand kilometers from the Dabie Mts in central Hubei Province to the Jiaodong peninsula in Shandong Province), for which there exist only reports on particular rocks. Dumping many of your entries in the Dabie Mts, when they were actually situated in Jiangsu Province that did not even border Hubei Province, or in the "Sulu region", that does not even exist, is only one of the reasons why I'm really pissed off now: most of these localities were accurately specified in the references or could be properly located with the help of a map server. Providing us with the information would have taken a few minutes - locating and correcting your entries took me several hours.

I'm also concerned about the generation of obvious duplicates, and sloppy editing behaviour. Experience tells that more than two third of the duplicates can be avoided by performing a proper locality search - which takes only a few seconds. Correcting and removing them is much more time consuming, especially when they fail to be deleted by the rem dupes routine because of peculiar oddities - extra or missing spaces behind commas or preceding the locality string, etc. - it's a short breath for you when you add a new entry, but a big sigh for others when they have to correct it.

Mindat.org is an outreach project of the Hudson Institute of Mineralogy, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
Copyright © mindat.org and the Hudson Institute of Mineralogy 1993-2024, except where stated. Most political location boundaries are © OpenStreetMap contributors. Mindat.org relies on the contributions of thousands of members and supporters. Founded in 2000 by Jolyon Ralph.
Privacy Policy - Terms & Conditions - Contact Us / DMCA issues - Report a bug/vulnerability Current server date and time: May 9, 2024 20:46:29

Go to top of page