Forum
From Mindat
There are a number of different topics into which the Message Board is divided. Photographs of mineralogical topics may be uploaded in the following Boards - Identity Help, Mineral Photography, Rockhounds, Scrapbook.
Boards include:
- General - For posts that don't fit into any of the other categories.
- Mindat Articles - This forum has general discussions about wtiting blogs and articles.
- Rockhounds - This forum is for general interest "Rockhound" topics.
- Collecting - This forum is for asking about specific collecting localities or arranging field trips.
- Identity Help - Help on the identification of mineral specimens. It is helpful if you have a photograph of the material that you can upload. Also include any locality information that you have and any tests that you have done - Acid test, cleavage or fracture, hardness, magnetism, habits, etc.
- IMA Status - This forum is used for the posting of the official status of new minerals, any information on the properties of new minerals, and any official discreditations of minerals. Please make sure to read our rules on the announcement of new mineral species and unpublished minerals.
- Manual - This forum is for activating memberships and any specific questions about how to use mindat.org.
- Mineral Cleaning and Preparation - Questions and answers on how to safely clean and prepare mineral specimens for display.
- Mineral Photography - How to take mineral photographs and recommendations on equipment and setup.
- Micromounting - Board to discuss micromounting.
- Mineralogical Classification - This forum is for discussions about how the various minerals should be split among various groupings.
- Mistakes & Errors - This is the area to post questions if it appears that there are mistakes in the database or if you find some errors with the programming of the site.
- New Features - Post your requests here for features you would like to see added to the site or if you would like some things to be handled differently.
- Scrapbook - Board for posting comments that can be cleaned out regularly. For some time sensitive material or things you don't want hanging around this site forever. This is the only place where 'off-topic' conversations are tolerated.
- Money Grubbers - Board to discuss specimen valuation.
- Fakes, Frauds and Marketing Ploys - Board to discuss scams.
- Mindat Auctions - Board to discuss auction related items.
- Art - Board to discuss mineral art.
- Literature - Board to request assistance in obtaining published articles.
- Meteorite - Board to discuss meteorites.
- Swap Shop - Board to set up trades of minerals. NO sales for money are allowed here, this is strictly swapping of minerals for minerals.
- Foreign Language boards - There are a number of foreign language boards for people who feel more comfortable in their native tongues. These are for asking questions about how to use mindat.org pages as well as general mineralogical topics. Currently these include chinese, german, italian, french, dutch, spanish and portugese forums.
- Talk boards - These are pages for discussions/errors for the Mindat mineral, locality and photograph pages. They can be only started from the respective mindat pages. On the mindat pages there is either a link to start a messageboard page or a link to that talk page. On the messageboard the title of the thread is a link to the mindat page in question.
- Best Minerals boards - A project organized by Rock Currier to bring together information on mineral occurrences.
The most commonly asked question about a mineral specimen is “What is this thing?” The application of mineralogy will usually provide the answer to this question. The next thing they/we want to know is “Is this thing any good?” The question can take many forms. “What is this specimen worth?” How good is it compared to others of its kind?” Can I get one like it or better? Those are the questions that we want to answer in this forum. No science, including mineralogy can provide us with answers because the answers are subjective. Many of us spend our lives trying to find the answers to these questions. The information is scattered though out the literature on minerals but is mostly in the heads of those of us who are interested in such things. Many of the people active on Mindat spend their lives handling, studying, digging and collecting minerals. In the process we handle large quantities of specimens, sometimes as a business, and in the process we naturally form ideas about the value and rarity of mineral specimens. There is no one place where one can go to find this information, but now there is the growing resource we know as Mindat.
Now, if we want to find out about how good a mineral specimen of dioptase is, we can go to Mindat and look at large numbers of dioptase specimens. Currently that is as about as good as you can get unless you want to spend a lifetime running around the world learning about such things. The purpose of this forum is to provide a means to capture the wisdom and knowledge of Mindat users about how good mineral specimens are and to put it in a convenient format that will be accessible and malleable to the needs of future generations. It is an endeavor very much like that of Wikipedia where everyone who wished to can contribute. This is not a one man show, all who contribute will be required to spend a lot of their time listening to the suggestions of other knowledgeable people and where it makes sense, change what they are writing here.
Rules:
- Good taste and decorum are expected of posts.
- Unsuitable posts will be deleted (this is a board devoted to mineralogical and geological topics).
- Posting of items for sale will be deleted.
- Young persons should not post any identifiable information (address, phone, etc.) on this board since it is open to the web.
- HTML code is not allowed in the messages - it won't work (see BBCode section for formatting instructions).
- Please post your message on only one board. Multiple posts may all be deleted from the site.
Chat (chatroom - next section), and the Scrapbook and Rockhounds forums are more informal in nature.
