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Improving Mindat.orgDoes Parish come 1st or locality as in name?

13th Apr 2006 02:03 UTCNeil A. Richards Expert

I have been inputting entries in Mindat for some time now, I have noticed recently that many of these entries have been modified, particularly those for New South Wales, I was of the understanding that mine name came 1st, then locality i.e. town, then parish, then county, then State, then Country, my entries have been modified to where the parish is listed before the locality.

Can I please have a ruling on this.

13th Apr 2006 13:17 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

We always go from the local to the more regional up the hierarchial chain. You start out with the locality on the left and then go to larger geographic or political entities ending with the country.

13th Apr 2006 13:33 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

Hi

As Neil knows, I am the one who modified them and my reasons are as follows:

In the case of New South Wales, I believe that the mine is first, then the parish in which it is located as this is where the mine actually is. Most parishes are fairly small - generally much less than 10 sq miles except in far remote areas of the State. Then the locality (town) as this is the general place on any map and in the NSW Geo Surveys they generally list the nearest town or in some cases a mountain or trig station as a marker or reference point.

The locality/town is not always within the same parish (probably rarely) and in many cases the town/locality itself encompases several parishes.

The parish is in turn located within a county (around 100sq miles) and in most cases the town is in the same county, although there are some cases where the town is in a neighbouring county. The same "misses' would occur if the county was listed before the town. There are I think 151 counties in New South Wales and over 7000 parishes.

I believe that the mine and parish should be together in the locality string as these are not "movable". The town is "moveable" in the sense of being the nearest "findable" place on a map and you could in fact pick different towns for many mines and be equally correct but the mine and parish are always together. In some cases the original town no longer exists and the Geo Survey has adopted the nearest existing town in its references. Therefore I believe that the correct string is mine, parish, town, county, state, then Aust.

The mine and parish then needs to be linked to the county in which they both occur. This may then lead to the town being in a different county but this does not matter as the mine, parish and county are correctly linked.

Many towns encompass several parishes so the town is a larger geopolitical subdivision. And as said above, the town is often many miles away from the mine and parish.

You could have mine, parish, county then town and state (ie mine, parish and county are always linked) but I do not believe that this is logical as you would be in a sense indicating that the town is larger than the county and that is never the case.

I have tried to ensure consistency with the existing Mindat format and to ensure that NSW localities all follow the same logic. Many localities I have yet to be able to find as they are so vague and/or definitely incorrect.

Those entries of Neil's that I have changed have been only to try and ensure consistency. I think all of Neils entries have all the correct info, it is just the order I have tried to make consistant.

In many cases for localities I have included I have not shown the parish in the locality string itself but included this info in the reference portion. This is particularly so when the parish and town both have the same name as this may cause soem confusion. Perhaps all the parish references should be in the notes and not in the string. The only reason for them being there is the fact that the NSW Geo Survey includes thae parish data in its mine data sheets.

The locality listed on the NSW Mine Data Sheets is always the nearest "locality" that is a geographic place that is well known in the region and may be a town, mountain, station, trig station etc. "Near" may be many many kms away from both the mine and parish.

If those at Mindat believe that the town reference should appear before the parish then I will change them. Similarly if Mindat considers that parish should not be included in the string I will happily remove them and include them in the description area.

13th Apr 2006 16:10 UTCAlan Plante

It sounds like perhaps large areas of Australia are similar to the American Southwest, in that the use of any specific "Town" is not helpful in pining down a locality because the "Towns" are few and far between. I think Chet and David have been using the "Mining District" designation instead, plus geographic features such as mountains. Have a look - try Arizona, USA - see if the way that region is set up isn't somewhat like your cases Down Under.

In that event, it might simply be best to ignore "Towns" (maybe mention them in the Description box?) and use Parish-County-State-Country for the string? But I don't think it is a good odea to include the name of a Town in one Parish or County in the header for a locality (mine, ledge, deposit...) that is in another. This will royally confuse people - anyone not intimately familiar with the area thinking the towns named are in the Parish and/or County stated. And people who know the areas well will be forever pointing out that "Town X" is not in the stated Parish or County...

If you do relegate "Town" names to the description boxes, it would probably be best to mention cases where the Town named is in a different Parish/County, such as: "The nearest town is Whoville, located in nearby Whatsit Parish in Whynot County."

At any rate, I think the header for a locality needs to be as unambiguous as possible, and including the name of a town that's in a geopolitical area that's different from that of the locality increases the ambiguity.

I wouldn't do it...

Regards

Alan

21st Apr 2006 16:50 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

I don't believe that a town should not be included in the locality string,

although I like the idea of Alan's to mention in the commentary if the nearest town is in a different county.

I think most problems occur when the parish reference is included in the string. The NSW Geo survey includes parish details in its references and texts and this assists in mine location. From a general referencing point of view adopted by most collectors the parish information is probably not material and could be included in the notes. Parish references are more of an historic nature, although said, they are sometimes useful in distinguishing smilar localities.

If this view was adopted and parish references shown only in the notes it would certainly simplify the NSW entries.

This would then mean that NSW references would show mine, town (nearest), county, then state. All other material would be in the notes.

21st Apr 2006 17:19 UTCPeter Haas

I recommend reading the notes on locality hierarchies I wrote in a previous thread: http://www.mindat.org/mesg-7-34227.html

The latter deals predominantly with the situation of german localities, but some of the comments nevertheless apply to hierarchies in general.

22nd Apr 2006 01:03 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

Thank you Peter, your comments on that link are very appropropriate.

It may well be best if NSW localities did not include parish references in the locality heirarchy and just in the notes.

Using an intermediate level to provide a general description is also a good idea.

I will liaise with Neil and see what we can do to improve.

23rd Apr 2006 08:50 UTCNeil A. Richards Expert

I agree with Keith, both with Victoria and New South Wales, the Parish details are now quite irrelevant and in some cases, particularly with Victoria, County details are now irrelevant, there has been a massive change in geo-political naming - due to local government district (i.e. shires, cities etc) restructuring - I would suggest GPS coordinates where possible, must be used, as this is now the standard with Government and Private enterprise, where it be for geological or other land information services.

I would also like to ask if there is any MINDAT member who is familiar with Western Australia in regard to up to date locality data; this state of Australia is quite sizeable in nature (would swallow most of Europe) and has many tens of thousuands of mineral localities that need to be listed.

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