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Improving Mindat.org"IMA status - approved"

4th Oct 2005 12:31 UTCErnst A.J. Burke

Dear Marco,

Thank you for correcting huttonite and cheralite, but this is a general problem in MinDat!

I just looked up the first four names not officially approved by the IMA in the alphabet (abernathyite, acanthite, adamite, adelite), and they all have "IMA approved", except acanthite which a somewhat less wrong attribuation. All four minerals are of course grandfathered.

I do not know what to do about this, but you may check the status of all names in the Materials Data list.

Sorry for making a big problem to you!

Ernst.

4th Oct 2005 12:42 UTCalfredo

Dear Dr. Burke,

I think many collectors, and some of our contributors at Mindat, even now still misunderstand what "grandfathered" means; they think it means the IMA automatically "approved" all pre-1959 minerals. When I complained to some contributors about this misunderstanding before, I got stupid responses like, "Do you think quartz and gold are not real mineral species?". This will be a long education process; thanks for the reminder.

Alfredo

4th Oct 2005 12:56 UTCMarco E. Ciriotti

Dear Ernst,

you are right. I know the problem, but I have never find the time to start with this big work!

My personal database and MINERAL are identical about G and A status (just some "small" differences on formulas and cell data) except for tetraauricupride and xinghongite that Chinese authors said was approved by CNMMN and instead they are N in MINERAL.

.

As soon as possible I compare the Mindat status with the above mentioned database and I'll correct all and add the references (at today scarce).

Thanks a lot.

Marco

4th Oct 2005 13:00 UTCErnst A.J. Burke

It is not only a question of education, the qualifications in MinDat are simply wrong. Minerals not approved by the IMA should not have the word 'approved' next to IMA status. If the term 'grandfathered' is too difficult for collectors, then one could use the terms 'Mineral existing before 1959', or 'old-established mineral' if one wants to avoid the enigmatic 1959.

The problem is even worse: a mineral indicated by Materials Data as 'questionable', e.g., beryllite, is mentioned as IMA approved in MinDat. This is not good information for collectors!

If MinDat uses a line for information on 'IMA status', then the information in that line should be correct, and it is not for many, many mineral names.

Ernst.

4th Oct 2005 13:14 UTCMarco E. Ciriotti

Daer Ernst,

as you can note I have not mentioned the Q (questionable) minerals in my previous message (they are almost all "ante 1959" minerals). In a very important number of cases my point of view is identical to that of MINERAL, but in some other limited cases it differs.

I think that for a public database as it is Mindat.org the better solution is to aline all data to that of CNMMN (= MINERAL database), but this is - at the moment - just my personal opinion.

Marco.

4th Oct 2005 13:22 UTCErnst A.J. Burke

Marco,

Tetra-auricupride (with hyphen) was approved by the CNMMN as 82-005, although the name was published before the approval; status = A.

Xingzhongite (not xinghongite) was approved after publication by the CNMMN, see Am. Mineral. 65 (1980), p. 408. But the mineral is most probably identical with cuproiridsite (84-016). But this was never officially announced. For the moment, status = A.

Ernst.

4th Oct 2005 13:25 UTCMarco E. Ciriotti

Please read:

"In a very important number of cases my point of view is identical to that of MINERAL, but in some other limited cases it differs and in the database they are Q (with a special note)."

4th Oct 2005 13:32 UTCMarco E. Ciriotti

Thanks a lot.

OK xingzhongite and tetra-auricupride: just two refuses in the message). Sorry.

Marco

5th Oct 2005 11:33 UTCPeter Haas

Marco,

The problem is that there is a standard message displayed, saying "Approved - published prior to 1959 (pre-IMA) - Grandfathered", upon ticking the "grandfathered" box on the mineral entry form.

You can't correct that !!

Jolyon will have to change the wording of the message (i.e. omit "approved").

Peter

5th Oct 2005 12:54 UTCMarco E. Ciriotti

Yes Peter, this is just one of the problem. The second is the fact that, at today, don't exists the "Questionable" status in the box of IMA status.

I suggest to add a "Questionable" status in the "IMA status" (instead of "IMA approval status") box. All species with "Questionable" "automatically" can correspond to "Questionable" status (instead of "Probably valid" and/or "Probably non valid" status) in "Mineral Status on mindat.org" box.

Only after the two Yolion interventions, if my suggestion is accepted, it will be possible to start with controls and corrections.

10th Oct 2005 18:41 UTCJolyon

The problem with Granfathered minerals being listed as approved is wrong, and is because when I started this project there did not seem to be a freely available list of approved/grandfathered minerals I could work from.

The only list I had was "Fleischers", which had 'valid minerals' listed in bold. This was the core of this, and obviously no distinction was made between approved and grandfathered.

We have been changing individual items in the database as they have come up for other editing, but it is a long job.

If anyone has a list in a plain text format, spreadsheet or some other processable format (the PDF file that is available on the net is NOT usable for this) of minerals that are approved and grandfathered then we can do an automated repair of this.

Jolyon

11th Oct 2005 15:01 UTCMarco E. Ciriotti

Jolyon,

I have a complete list shorted by approved, grandfathered, redefined, etc.

I pass to you privately. It is in excell format.

Ciao. Marco

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