FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[James Catmur]

Jordi and other FMF members

A while ago Jordi asked me if I was willing to translate all the information on the Spanish forum that had been written to help members get the best from the FMF. Like a fool I said yes before I realized what was involved.

First it was not just a question of translating one long post but of translating a series of inter-linked ones, after I had made sure that I had the latest information and was not translating old versions. These were (or should I say now are):

Asking: "What is this? / Where is it from?"
A general guide for using the Forum with some rules and tips
How to add links between posts within the FMF
How to start a new Topic
How to add multiple photos to a Post
FMF Gallery - User's Guide (which I just checked)

Not only did I need to translate the text, but I also had to edit images and create screen shots where needed.

And finally I wanted to add my own thoughts and ideas as I did it, so I extended some sections and added some new ones.

I did it while traveling for business, so it helped fill boring flights or evenings in hotels (you will never find me on my own in a bar) and it was actually fun.

So I hope you find it useful, and I hope that some of the new parts find their way back to the Spanish FMF. If you have any comments please let us know, so that we can continue to improve them.

James

[Jordi Fabre]

As many of the long term members of FMF are currently in Denver Show (including our Master John White ;-) this new feature published by James over the last days has not yet had the response it deserves. So before they return from their journey I'm publishing this brief explanatory text as an appetizer for them.

From a long, long, time I wanted to have in FMF the same "institutional" messages we created in FMF-Spain from its start. As these messages were created in FMF-Spain through a kind of process with many crossed links the translation of that "corpus" of information exceeded my possibilities as they needs a native English speaker knowing quite well Spanish language as well as HTML language. The only person in the world I know who could do it was James, but I was very reluctant to request it from him knowing the amount of work it signified.

Just about now, an article about FMF will appear, published in the September/October issue of the magazine Rock & Minerals, I imagined that it could attract to FMF new people not so familiar with the Forum as our regular members, for that reason I recently, and really embarrassed (yes, I know that everybody thinks that I'm never embarrassed, but from time to time I am! ;-) I explained to James my desire to have in FMF-English the same rules, guide and tips that we already have on FMF-Spain. Making the biggest mistake of his life James said yes and after A LOT of work we are so lucky to have here something extremely useful for every new member as well as for the administrators.

Just to give an example please read my message today -> https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?p=19546#19546 where I tried to help a starter member sending to him a link to the new features and reproducing for him one of the paragraphs from one of the new feature.

As you can imagine, this will save a lot of time for the administrators and it will also generate a more pleasant atmosphere because will not need to argue with people but can just send they to the right feature or copy some of the paragraphs, as I did in my today's post.

From our side we marked all the new posts created by James in red, bold type and we fixed them forever at the top of the two sections where they are located: the "Forum questions" and "What is it? - Where is it from?" sections. We also created a line of text at the top of every page of the Forum with the text: "A general guide for using the Forum with some rules and tips" and linking to: https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?t=1941 so that way every member will have always see that post, and in case of doubt they can use it easily.

To complete the job we also created a new text that will be sent to every member when they join us for first time. This is the text:

Welcome to FMF - Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

Please keep this email for your records. Your account information is as follows:

----------------------------
Username: annafabre
Password:
----------------------------

Your account is currently inactive. You cannot use it until you visit the following link:

https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/fm_usuari.php?mode=activate&u=2707&act_key=6b4713

Please do not forget your password as it has been encrypted in our database and we cannot retrieve it for you. However, should you forget your password you can request a new one which will be activated in the same way as this account.

Thank you for registering and welcome to FMF, your mineral forum.

We would like to offer you a short description of FMF so that you can get the most from it.

In the center of the screen you will see a magnifying glass that you can use to search for information that has been published on the forum.

Just below that you will see a link to "A general guide for using the Forum with some rules and tips: https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?t=1941. It includes some basic rules which help keep things in order and make the work of the moderators easier.

On the left of the page you will see an 'Index' button that you can use at any time to get back to the main page of the Forum. On it you can see the various categories of subjects relating to minerals, which you can enter and then tell people about your experience or ask any questions you may have about the locality of a specimen, scientific aspects, how to photograph a mineral, etc. Each Section has a brief description that tells you about the types of things it contains which will help you select the right section for a new Topic. That way we can keep them in order and more members are likely to reply. To see more about how to start a new Topic please read this message https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?t=1940

The aim of the forum is non-commercial, so the sending of personal messages ('pm') is blocked for the first 10 days for new members to avoid spamers using 'pm' to send personal mailings to each Forum member. That said, new members can receive a 'pm' and reply to it.

We ask that new members make an effort to present themselves to the other members with a short message. This is not required, but we find that it does help improve the way we all get along with each other on the forum. You can do it on this: https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewforum.php?f=23

We look forward to your participation and help in making FMF a great place.

Yours
FMF Forum
A meeting place for sharing mineralogical experiences

Thanks James and...Thanks James!

[Gail]

Super!

[Debbie Woolf]

A hearty slap on the back for James, I did see this yesterday & thought how much work had been done on this project, job well done.

[chris]

Good Job James !

Christophe

[Tracy]

Excellent product. Thanks James for this terrific undertaking!

- Tracy

[Linda Smith]

Thank you for all of your hard work.