Talk:List of minerals (complete)

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List of minerals (complete) is part of WikiProject Geology, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use geology resource. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.

List

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[edit] Important

This list is now generated automatically by an export process from mindat.org.

You should NOT add new minerals on this list (well, to be fair, you can add them, but you need to be prepared to see them vanish when we next reimport). If a mineral you add is NOT listed on mindat.org please contact me (Jolyon Ralph) to make sure it gets updated on both here and mindat.org.

To update the list yourself you can retrieve the source fragment from:

http://www.mindat.org/wikilist.php

This provides data in the format suitable for this page, and it is free to use in any project you wish.--Jolyonralph 20:15, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

This whole page is a little misleading, as I've stated on the page, there is no 'genuine' complete list of minerals. The IMA list from mindat.org is reasonably up to date, but you will need to update this site from that list regularly. And if you think something is missing, then let me know so I can fix it here and at mindat.org, otherwise it might get wiped on the next update.

I removed Axinite because it's NOT a valid mineral name now, Axinite is a group name consisting of Ferroaxinite and Manganaxinite.

Also, at the moment you must put the date the list was taken from mindat.org

Done Vsmith 15:35, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If someone can come up with a clever way to import this list into wiki automatically, I'm happy to make it work. I can set up an xml export, or an rss feed, or any such thing on mindat.org --Jolyonralph 04:03, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That clever way to import would be neat, I imported the list into Wordperfect in chunks & used a simple macro to wikify last Nov. but it would be great for updates. I haven't checked Mindat to see how much has changed since Nov. probably needs an update? Vsmith 15:35, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ok, here's my suggestion - I write a new page on mindat.org that exports the mineral list as wiki source code with formatting, so it can be just copied and pasted straight into this page whenever we want to update (suggest at least once a month). My only concerns are (a) are the numbers of any benefit at all? I suspect not, and bullet points may be better, and (b) the page is getting rather long, shouldn't we split it into A-Z pages? --Jolyonralph 17:44, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. The numbers are not important, I used # originaly as a simple count - not needed.
Yes, it is quite long so a sub-division might be worth doing. I did this in my preliminary work - still there User:Vsmith/experimental, but combined them all for the page move. Vsmith 04:49, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The page is a bit broken at the moment - seems to have been duplicated half way down. Probably my fault. Don't spend lots of time on it, I'll fix it within the next few hours. --Jolyonralph 17:17, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Since this list is created automagically with a script, would it not be possible to also create the relevant pages for the minerals with a redirect to mindat.org, as long as there are no Wikipages with original content for the minerals? Besides, I do not really see the point of duplicating in Wikipedia what is already available in Mindat.

Moumine 07:44, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The list is a handy ref. here as it not only lists all minerals currently recognized, but shows by the (currently rather rare) blue links the ones w/ wiki articles. Maybe an auto-created external link following each mineral name to the mindat article for that mineral?

This gives wiki based mineralogists or those interested in minerals a reference and starting point for creating mineral articles which should reference not only Mindat, but also webmineral.com and mineral.galleries as well as text references. Vsmith 15:29, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Possible example:

and so on... Vsmith 17:16, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, your suggestion is good. Would it be feasable in an automated way?

Moumine 20:20, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've automated the code at http://www.mindat.org/wikilist.php to produce the output as you suggest - my only concern now is that it will make the page much bigger - which is why I haven't yet pasted the output into the page - if concensus is that it's not a problem then let me know and I'll do it, or feel free to copy and use the content right now. I've only added links for mindat and webmineral.com - I thought adding a third would be overkill. --Jolyonralph 00:14, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Impressive! Now the size will probably be a problem. Current file checks in at 67 kb, which is longer than reccomended but no big deal with sectioning. However the linked version is more than 5 times that (saved as plain ASCII on my HD) - those links take space. So it would seem advisable to break it into sections, maybe 7?