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GeneralNew Features!

14th Oct 2016 22:38 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

There are so many new features now that I have started to build an article to explain them.

http://www.mindat.org/a/october_2016_update

This is just part of what has been changed. You might stumble onto a few new things just by exploring, but I'll update the article tomorrow to explain the rest!

for now it's been a LONG day and I need some sleep!

Jolyon

14th Oct 2016 22:45 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

ps.

The petrological database is currently stored in a Google spreadsheet which I am still working on. At the moment you can't (or at least you shouldn't try) to edit or add new rock types directly on mindat. For now, if there are mistakes or things that need to be added let me know.

14th Oct 2016 22:56 UTCEd Clopton 🌟 Expert

Lots of great new features--thanks! This represents a lot of work behind the scenes.

The link in the article to Kent, England, UK illustrating how it is possible to view rock photos separately from mineral photos leads instead to a locality in Utah.

15th Oct 2016 02:55 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

Please do not use the detailed mineral at locality (locentries) edit (locedit.php?min=141). Some fields are not being brought into the edit form.

17th Oct 2016 14:21 UTCHarold Moritz 🌟 Expert

Excellent upgrade, thanks for the work that went into it, very much appreciated!

I found one thing that appears to be a glitch. The box with locality coordinates shown near the top of a locality page appears to have the wrong cardinal direction for latitude, even though the actual numbers and position on the map are correct. For example, for the Connecticut page http://www.mindat.org/loc-15903.html the coordinates show as 41° 36'' South , 72° 13'' West. The latitude word should be "North" but all else is correct, on the locality edit page as well. This glitch appears on the few sublocalities I checked, so I assume it is universal and thus should be an easy fix. Oh, also, shouldn't it be 36' not 36"?

17th Oct 2016 14:32 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

Thanks for the bug report. Actually the seconds are correct, it is just leaving out the minutes.

17th Oct 2016 15:08 UTCAntonio Nazario

I am still not able to review under my photos what are questions relating to questioned photos.

17th Oct 2016 15:55 UTCTony Peterson Expert

OK, so I go to the "analcime phonolite" rock link and I see there is a unused space for a photo. I have previously uploaded pics of the archetype analcime phonolite, from Blairmore, Alberta, under the mineral analcime. One of these could be used for the rock photo. Am I able to insert that myself? Will it default if I edit the mineral page?

I have scads of great rock pics from such localities........

Tony

17th Oct 2016 16:56 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Locality display bug fixed. I also took out the coordinates from that page as they were a little arbitrary.

17th Oct 2016 16:59 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

yes you should be able to edit a photo to a rock name rather than a mineral name.

Once we have a few I will add more tools to help distinguish them

17th Oct 2016 17:07 UTCHarold Moritz 🌟 Expert

OK, but I just added the Connecticut coordinates (not arbitrary but the geographic center) so there would not be a big question mark there and large error estimate. Do we not want coordinates at this level?

17th Oct 2016 17:18 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

I don't think it makes any sense to have coordinates at this level.

18th Oct 2016 14:29 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

"Please do not use the detailed mineral at locality (locentries) edit" - Jolyon has fixed this. Thanks.

18th Oct 2016 16:06 UTCBruce Cairncross Expert

How does one add rock photos? For example, under dolerite http://www.mindat.org/min-48432.html I don't see the "add photo" tab.

18th Oct 2016 16:22 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

It should work just like adding a mineral photo (I hope :-) ) (use the rock name instead of a mineral). Adding a photo from a locality page is easier since you don't have to search for a locality. Using the rock name instead of a mineral in the add minerals from the locality edit works

19th Oct 2016 07:40 UTCBruce Cairncross Expert

Thanks Dave. I've uploaded the photo here http://www.mindat.org/photo-779691.html as dolerite in the Barkly West area. However, there were no options for rocks in the loclaity drop down menus so I used the "Locality Photograph" option. Also, is it ok to upload upload outcrop images of rocks (like this one) or should we stick to hand specimens only?

19th Oct 2016 08:14 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

The outcrop photo should go with a locality photo, but if you want the photo to show up on the dolerite page, I would go with the mineral in situ classification for a mineral photo. We still have a ways to go to set up things for rocks.

We can use all types of photos and locality photos can be especially important since it is fairly easy to get a photo of a mineral, but there are a lot fewer people who actually go to the localities and take pictures.

19th Oct 2016 08:15 UTCBruce Cairncross Expert

OK, thanks will do so in future...

19th Oct 2016 12:10 UTCRonnie Van Dommelen 🌟 Manager

Regarding regions:

I used the site geojson.io to build a GeoJSON file of a region. How that I add that to MinDat?

Thanks.

19th Oct 2016 12:45 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

ie

{"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": ]}

19th Oct 2016 12:54 UTCRonnie Van Dommelen 🌟 Manager

David,

Thanks. Could/should we also do them for counties? I think it would be nice, but maybe that is not the intention.

19th Oct 2016 12:58 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

I have found a website that has about 300K political boundaries. Plan to import those that have mindat entries. The boundaries that we will tend to need are those that are not either current political divisions or those like mineral districts.

I am in the process of writing some mapping tools that will hopefully make this a bit easier to use. This would include things like selecting locations and automatically generating a border around all the points and some tools to check for locations in an area, but not in the same hierarchy.

19th Oct 2016 17:45 UTCBill Dameron 🌟 Expert

MinDat locality pages usually list species with little “camera” icons next to the species which would enable the user to go to that link and see all the photos of a particular species from that locality on one web page. This was one of the most useful aspects of the website, at least for me. Now many of them do not have that feature, only listing the species without these icons. Is this a temporary or rare problem?

For example, the latest for me was Tur'inskii Mine.

All specimen photos from the locality are, of course, available from the upper tab, but for localities with many species the research process is more complicated than before. One can list the species and locality in the search fields at the bottom, but when researching localities this takes longer since one has to re-enter the locality precisely.

Bill

19th Oct 2016 17:53 UTCBill Dameron 🌟 Expert

Also, trying to upload photo to locality Santa Rita Mine, Morococha District, Yauli Province, Junín Department, Peru, but that no listed anywhere when I get to selecting locality so I cannot upload.

Thanks

19th Oct 2016 18:12 UTCThomas Lühr Expert

Bill, you must be logged in ;-)

19th Oct 2016 18:23 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

" Is this a temporary or rare problem? For example, the latest for me was Tur'inskii Mine." - you have to be logged on for the page to get generated anew (probably will ease up on this when we get more localities in the cache. Clearing the page cache also works.

"Also, trying to upload photo to locality Santa Rita Mine, Morococha District, Yauli Province, Junín Department, Peru, but that no listed anywhere when I get to selecting locality so I cannot upload." - Go to the locality page and click on the Add Photo button. This takes you to the photo upload page with the locality already filled in. It is a lot easier than trying to do the search for locality on the photo upload form.

http://www.mindat.org/loc-123627.html

19th Oct 2016 22:07 UTCBill Dameron 🌟 Expert

Thanks. Re: Santa Rita mine I know I can go to the locality page but have put up so many just from my page it seems easier. Thought there might be problem for ya'll to fix.

Did not know I had to be logged on to see the camera icon; sorry to have bothered you about that.

Bill

19th Oct 2016 22:13 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Ronnie, you need to paste it into the box which says Region geoJSON or WKT data above it, or you can use the little 'upload' button underneath it to upload a geojson or WKT file.

Jolyon

20th Oct 2016 08:10 UTCMarek Chorazewicz

Nice set of features, thanks to Jolyon and whoever else was working on them!

I was able to combine the Santa Monica Mts pages spanning two counties in SoCal (http://www.mindat.org/loc-25197.html). It was not easy to remove an incorrect placeholder relationship, but I've figured it out.

One funky thing I see -- the "Localities in this Region" map shows an orange icon with number 15 at a location near Mt Whitney, 400+km away from L.A. Anything I could do to make it move it closer to the actual place?

Also, as side note, a humble request to the managers: please remove a fake locality I've added while trying to figure out how to make the placeholders work: http://www.mindat.org/loc-289461.html. Thank you in advance!

Best Regards,

MarekC

20th Oct 2016 12:31 UTCLarry Maltby Expert

Jolyon,

Now that you have uploaded Tonalite today it is more obvious how rocks will be displayed on Mindat. I see that they are included in the mineral photo drop down menu. Do you plan to add a rock drop down menu to separate rocks from minerals?

Should Shalenblend now be considered a rock?

20th Oct 2016 13:05 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

> Do you plan to add a rock drop down menu to separate rocks from minerals?

Possibly. but Schalenblend brings up a good example where you may not know in advance whether it's a rock or a mineral - so which section would you look in? Maybe it's best to keep them combined.

20th Oct 2016 13:39 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

"Anything I could do to make it move it closer to the actual place?" - Looks like a program bug. Thanks for pointing it out.

20th Oct 2016 14:29 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

http://www.mindat.org/loc-289461.html: fixed.

20th Oct 2016 18:50 UTCMarek Chorazewicz

Uwe, David, thank you!

20th Oct 2016 23:15 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Here's another page you won't have seen before here.

http://www.mindat.org/loc-289456.html

21st Oct 2016 11:14 UTCTimothy Greenland

OK Jolyon,

That'll look better than Loc Unk (locality unknown) on those specimens which predate expeditions to other planets and are clearly not meteoritic!!! You'll have to keep busy updating the mineral list though...

Bonne Courage!

Tim

21st Oct 2016 12:22 UTCRonnie Van Dommelen 🌟 Manager

Jolyon,

That's very cool! An evolving list of all known minerals on the planet. A handy addition. The perfect page to sponsor!

One side note, I noticed a mineral near the bottom of the list, Zlatogorite, what didn't have the TL tag. But it does on the Russia page. Any ideas what is going on there?

30th Dec 2016 10:32 UTCMark Willoughby Expert

Hi Jolyon,

In regard to the geoJSON files, how accurate do you want these to be? I am looking at using this to show the regions of South Australia as we have listed. However, when I checked the file for South Australia (to use as a base guide), I noted it was a fairly simple polygon file, using only a few thousand co-ordinate points.

I am happy to be more detailed with these areas if warranted, or I can use a less detailed file if you would prefer.

Regards Mark

30th Dec 2016 13:06 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

Actually South Australia is ~1500 points. The sub localities should probably be on the order of 500-800 points for the polygons.Probably in the next few weeks, I will be loading boundaries from gadm.org to mindat. They do seem to use a bit different hierarchy than we do on mindat. I sent you a PM on the listing of boundaries for sublocalities that they have in South Australia.

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