FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Gail]

As an administrator on a few Facebook pages, you would be sad to know that the "what is this rubble" questions are overtaking the serious ones.

[alfredo]

"rubble" ;)) ...Forgive me, Gail, I will plagiarize that.

[Pete Modreski]

I thought of MSA, Jordi, and there is lots of good info and tutorials there about mineral & rock identification, but I checked, "Ask a Mineralogist" has been discontinued; that is what's posted there, as of 12/31/2013. So it's a good source of info, but not a place to have questions answered.

[Jordi Fabre]

OK, to summarize I propose that EVERYBODY, administrators and users, save Gail's message (with some addition) :

" I understand your desire to know what your samples are, but I think it is too difficult to determine from photos, and frankly...it is not a "for sure" way to find out, many of us might make an educated guess, but a guess it is. If you have a rock shop nearby, or a lapidary club, I would suggest you go there to ask.
Many of us are fine mineral collectors, not all, but a good deal are. Your rocks are not our expertise. I commend you, however, on your interest in learning. Join a local rock and mineral club, it will be a good start to answering your questions.
In case for some reason you can't join a club then you can also try this other web page: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsthisrock "

and we publish this message every time as a first answer.

If everybody does this, we will keep consistent and maybe we will diminish the number of obsolete requests.

In case of jewels, polished or cut stones please no answers, just let the administrators use a regular answer and lock the thread. FMF is a Forum of minerals.

[alfredo]

The phrase "fine mineral collectors" might need some elaboration, as this message is addressed to beginners who have no idea at all what "fine mineral" means. They might even think their "rubble" is "fine minerals". ;))

[Pete Richards]

[Jordi Fabre]

Ok I already saved :

We understand your desire to know what your samples are, but it is too difficult to determine this from photos, and frankly...it is not a "for sure" way to find out: many of us might make an educated guess, but a guess it is. If you have a rock shop nearby, or a lapidary club, we would suggest you go there to ask.
Many of us are collectors of minerals - not all, but a good deal are. Your rocks are not our expertise. We commend you, however, on your interest in learning. Join a local rock and mineral club; it will be a good start to answering your questions.
In case for some reason you can't join a club then you can also try this other web page: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsthisrock

and I will publish it if I'm the first to see a request message with non-minerals or with too bad quality of the images / texts. I suggest to everybody do the same to try to avoid a too large number of improper requests.

About other kind of answers if the petitioner requests for real minerals or seems to be really interested for the topic, of course everyone can answer by his own (and by his risk ;-)
The regular answer above is just a kind of motto to try to clarify that we will not waste our lives answering again and again questions which we are not interested and that don't match the purposes of this Forum.

[prcantos]