FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Carles Millan]

Hi B&A !

Please, could you supply more accurate localities? ( https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?p=22281#22281 )
Writing Austria, India, Italy and so on is not enough in the mineral collectors world as you can see in the other similar threads. It is highly recommended to add the mine or quarry, town and county as well.

Thanks,

[B&A]

[Carles Millan]

[B&A]

[Joseph DOliveira]

A&B,
I for one am not a stickler about detailed locality information and would hope that previous comments would not deter you from additional posts of your mineral specimens in the near future. While it is preferable to have detailed information for individual specimens, the reality is, that many times when old collections are purchased, that information is not available.

I would rather have no information on a specimen, than an inaccurately created provenance by viewing "similar" specimens from an area locality and accrediting them there. Please continue to post your photos and remember that it is "your" collection page and as such, you should manage it as you see fit.

I look forward to seeing your additional posts.

[B&A]

Thank you for the kind words!!
I think you have a very good point, by saying:
"I would rather have no information on a specimen, than an inaccurately created provenance by viewing "similar" specimens from an area locality and accrediting them there. "

Believe me, I would really like to know exactly where they came from.
And maybe for some pieces it is possible. I asked in an other part of the forum for help, and they came with an exact location..
But i have ca 150 minerals here, some just small pieces, i think it's very difficult to find a 100% correct exact location, for each of them.
And it really is not that I doubt the knowledge of the people here!

[Gail]

Oh, I expect to get a bit of a berating for this, but this site is not a scientific one, it is a social forum .That's what this forum is all about, the chance to show off your minerals and enjoy some friendly banter.
Who the heck can guarantee all information we have on our minerals is 100 percent correct? I love the fact that you are taking the time to show your pieces to us, with pride .

Don't you DARE stop posting them! If this were a museum forum, or some center of higher education, then perhaps there might be more of a claim to post more accurately. But, it is NOT, it is a place to post photos of your Collection photos on the Collector's page!!!!

You have my support.

[Carles Millan]

[Jordi Fabre]

Ok, first at all I separate the posts generated by the proposal of Carles in order to keep clean the thread Collection of A&B

About the discussion let me say that the answer, in my opinion, is in between ;-)

Is true what Gail says about the social part of FMF and it is true what Carles says about the importance to follow the rules, etcetera...
Let me explain something that maybe could help to clarify the different visions. As many of you already know we have also a "mirror Forum" in Spanish language, there, as it is explained in the recent article published in Rocks&Minerals magazine, we practice new features and we experience different topics before to submit them here. FMF -Spain is extremely active with a lot of people discussing everything always (Latino character ;-) and the moderators suffer frequently due the too "social" character of these discussions. There we learned that a kind of order is extremely necessary, as well as fix rules and have serious moderators imposing order when the discussions grows too much.

In FMF- English is not necessary to be so strict, and by the character (and probably also by the knowledge) of the members, we don't need to do the same effort. Carles is doing his job very well and Gail is publishing FABULOUS reportages giving us hours and hours (if not days) of her time. What happened here I believe is just the typical "landing" of someone new who should be instructed about the Forum details, function that Carles do extremely well, but in this case A&B CAN'T follow the rules because he has not the details of the specimens. So, everybody did well, A&B publishing their minerals, Carles working hard trying to protect FMF of the disorder and Gail and Joseph defending A&B.

A&B please continue publish your posts as Carles Millán already said to you by a PM, and if you don't know something submit it to the What is it? - Where is it from? section as Carles suggest. If you can wait a little bit to publish specimens which you have just the country, maybe better, but if finally you should publish it just by the country, is fine, no one will complain for it. Is just BETTER to publish all details you have, but if you haven't, is not your fault.

In fact all of this was said to A&B by a private message and myself I already added and modified several localities he published.

Conclusion: the job that Carles is doing protecting FMF to fall down to a kind of informal mess is fine, and is fine too try to help newer member and promote they to publish their loved "rocks", and both positions are not contradictory, so please Carles continue with your task, please Gail continue making the life nicer for all us with your lovely posts, and A&B please continue publishing your great posts, if possible with all details you could have.

Not worries for no one, I'm always changing and modifying wrong things quietly and Carles is always watching for better texts/details, but it don't means that he and me we are strict fundamentalists, just two hard workers trying to make FMF a little bit better! ;-)

[Gail]

Jordi, and why is it that you are not employed as a mediator by governments???? You are good. I meant no disrespect to Carles, I happen to think very highly of him and I do hope he is very aware of that. Just didn't want to see someone leave due to rules that were impossible for him to follow.
Cheers everyone!

[Carles Millan]

[John S. White]

I think that subject has been extremely well-covered, can we now move on? a&b please continue to post your photos and with some, at least, many of us can probably provide reasonable localities, always understanding that such guesses will be only guesses, for without actually seeing the specimens it is difficult to be absolutely certain what the locality truly is.

[Riccardo Modanesi]

Hi to everybody!!!
About localities I also have specimens in my collections with no more detailed indication than "Brazil" "USA" etc. I fully agree with all of who say the more we know about a specimen the better we know the specimen itself. Nevertheless it's not a fault of our if we don't know anymore than the Nation locality (or even not this character too!).
And then: many of you in this forum as wel as in Mindat or among gemologists already know my opinion about localities: if it is well and rightfully disclosed it's ok, but I see too many Colombian emeralds, Burmese rubies or South African diamonds! Then my question is: how many Colombian emeralds are truly from Columbia? How many Burmese corumdums are truly Burmese? According to those questions I got an idea of another one: is a diamond coming from Barcelona more surprising or less surprising than a South African one? I think the former, no matter how beautiful, is much much more amazing, it would be one of the first diamonds discovered in Europe, I think the second in history after the Finnish occurrence discovered in 1994!
And here you are my final answer: a locality does not add anything to a specimen because THE SPECIMEN is beautiful, not its locality; and moreover a first-time-discovered locality is something new and amazing than an already known one!
I apologize for the length of my message, but this is my opinion.
Greetings from Italy by Riccardo.
PS: B&A, please go further sending us your photos, don't stop doing it! Your collection is very nice!