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GeneralReorganization of german localities?

6th Oct 2011 18:17 UTCRoger Lang Manager

Hi all,

while browsing through some of my favourite locations in Rhineland-Palatinate i was (again) reminded that the organization of the localities is very ... hmm let´s say inconsistent. There is a mix between political boundaries (county), physical regions etc. For instance, Imsbach is listed as a sub of Kirchheimbolanden - this is nonsense as it doesn´t belong to KiBo, it belongs to Winnweiler. The correct entry should be Imsbach, Winnweiler, Donnersbergkreis, Rhineland-Palatinate. Kirchheimbolanden should be listed as Kirchheimbolanden, Donnersbergkreis, Rhineland-Palatinate accordingly etc.

I think i read a thread dealing with that before and i am aware that constraining to political boundaries may lead to problems with generic locality descriptors like Siegerland (in part Rhineland-Palatinate and Northrine-Westphalia and Hesse), Hunsrück Mts. etc. But we should find an exact rule to organize those.

I would volunteer to start with the reorganization of the Donnersbergkreis (as a start) if this approach would be the mindat common position .. so i´ll ask for your input and discussion,

cheers

Roger

6th Oct 2011 21:50 UTCRock Currier Expert

Roger,

You certainly have the thanks of the managers for helping to clean up our locality strings. Little by little is the only way that it will get better.

Rock

6th Oct 2011 22:24 UTCRoger Lang Manager

Rock,

thanks for encouraging .. but there obviously have been some people who have entered the stuff .. i would like to wait for their input. I am willing to do this from Cty to Cty (Landkreise) ... so folks give me your feedback!

Cheers

Roger

7th Oct 2011 09:15 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

The main issue is whether political or nonpolitical boundaries are more important. In the UK political boundaries (eg Cornwall) have always been significant, but we do lose the ability to cope with important regions such as the northern pennines ore field as a single locality.

The system needs a redesign to cope properly with this. It's something I have been thinking about for a long time.

Jolyon

7th Oct 2011 11:48 UTCAmir C. Akhavan Expert

The organization of localities should be done in a way that helps the uploaders and avoids errors on their side.

Nonpolitical boundaries are inherenty problematic because uploaders need to know about them and very often they don't.

Political boundaries are easy to figure out.

7th Oct 2011 12:15 UTCRoger Lang Manager

I totally agree Amir,

and it would be consistent with the majority of the entries in the database.

7th Oct 2011 12:25 UTCGerhard Niklasch Expert

When I embarked on a tiny county-oriented reordering of a corner of Hesse last year, I was quickly stopped and educated by Peter Haas :) For which I am grateful. The outcome, ultimately, were a few new loc pages (grouped by old mining districts), one place moved under Vogelsberg for geological reasons, and coordinates added to some existing locs.

The political subdivisions are a necessary evil. They tend to cut across geographic and geological units and sometimes subdivide classic mining districts. They tend to change on rather shorter than geological timescales, even at the country level (e.g. Zinnwald district). They often result in two sides of the same mountain or valley grouped far apart in the present hierarchies. But they're useful for rough orientation, needed for disambiguation when place names reoccur elsewhere (e.g. there are two Oelsnitz), and often helpful for historical reasons when specimen labels or the existing literature only mention a general area or administrative unit.

A future feature supporting both kinds of hierarchies in parallel, if Jolyon can come up with something, sounds attractive - and difficult... For now we'll have to make the best of what can be done in the current system.

Where current hierarchy attributions are outright wrong, they should of course be rectified.

The Salzburg (state) page neatly explains the rationale used for this Austrian subhierarchy. Something similar might be nice to have for Germany for starters. I.e., a set of guiding principles that has been agreed upon, and then these principles should be documented so that contributors can learn about them and won't have to guess them.

Cheers, Gerhard

7th Oct 2011 12:44 UTCHartmut Hensel Expert

Hi Roger,

I was thinking about starting a more or less similar thread recently. I fully support your plan to reorganize Rhineland-Palatinate. There are several strange or even wrong entries withe respect to Palatinate and surrounding areas (my favourite collecting region). I already wrote down some observations and ideas which I add to this note, maybe this can help as further input for you or being a base for discussion:

Missing higher level hierarchy:

There already is in parts a subdivision of Rhineland-Palatinate into the main geographical areas like Eifel, Hunsrück and others. But many places mostly in Palatinate are spread across the hierarchy. To improve that I would propose to create the following higher level entries which are also used by collectors (not only local ones) and well defined from a geographical point of view:

- Palatinate (which roughly covers the area between the border to France (Alsace) in the south to the Donnersberg region in the north and from border to Saarland to the Rhine river). An exact definition of Palatinate is given for instance in the german book "Geographie der Pfalz"

- Rheinhessen (Rhine-Hesse in english?) which covers the area north east to Palatinate up to Mainz

Medium level hierarchy:

I'm not sure how the hierarchy is generally applied in Germany, but I would expect that the german "Landkreise" play an important role. But these are not reflected in (Rhineland-)Palatinate. So what is the reason for having such a small village like Katzweiler (Landkreis Kaiserslautern) being on the same level as a town like Alzey (Landkreis Alzey)? And why are Erlenbach, Nothweiler and Bobenthal attributed to Bad Bergzabern? Bad Bergzabern belongs to the Landkreis "Südliche Weinstrasse" while Erlenbach, Nothweiler and Bobenthal belong to Landkreis "Südwestpfalz". This doesn't seem to be a stringent subdivision.

Similar: Wolfstein belongs to Landkreis Kusel while Kreimbach belongs to Landkreis Kaiserslautern, but Kreimbach is assigned to Wolfstein as a lower hierarchy entry.

Low level hierarchy:

Very strange is the assignment of Hirschhorn and Olsbrücken to Katzweiler. All three villages are independent and belong to Landkreis Kaiserslautern, I think. But there is no reason to have Hirschhorn or Olsbrücken below Katzweiler, right?

Regards

Hartmut

7th Oct 2011 12:49 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

Landkreise (such as Donnersbergkreis) should not be entered as separate localities. They change too quickly and are almost never found on collector's labels. That's why we use them for neither Germany nor Austria.

Peter Haas will probably provide additional reasoning.

7th Oct 2011 13:58 UTCRoger Lang Manager

Folks, thanks for the contributions .. i see the problem with political borders.

Uwe,

that is a good argument of course. So if it is agreed that Landkreise should not be entered we still have to restructure the higher level hierarchy as Hartmut wrote - BTW Hartmut, i agree about Pfalz and Rheinhessen (and i suggest that we do NOT translate those region names, we also do not write Wester-Forest and Sieger-country ;-) ). I will open a new thread for Rhineland-Palatinate restructuring where we can share specific ideas and make a concept. Everyone is invited. I´ll leave this thread for the general german restructuring and ideas.

Cheers

Roger

7th Oct 2011 14:13 UTCAmir C. Akhavan Expert

Gemeinden and Städte (municipalities) change just as much as Landkreise, but that doesn't really happen so often.

Just countries and municipalities will give a nice flat hierarchy for 11334 municipality entries :D

Rheinland-Pfalz is by far the worst, with 2306 entries, covering only 8.6 square kilometers on average.

Landkreise are not that bad as an intermediate layer:

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Landkreise,_Kreise_und_kreisfreie_St%C3%A4dte_in_Deutschland_2011-09-04.svg&filetimestamp=20110301124915

7th Oct 2011 14:45 UTCRoger Lang Manager

see here: http://www.mindat.org/mesg-6-237426.html

i started playing a bit with the regions ;-)

Amir, of course Landkreise would make a good intermediate hierarchy layer - but i see the problems Gerhard and Uwe referred to. Until there is an improved system we could try to refine the existing one a bit. One thing i would strongly suggest is that we do not translate region names - nobody in the world knows Rheno-Hassia ;-)

7th Oct 2011 15:05 UTCAmir C. Akhavan Expert

People should be able to look up localities as written on old labels.

That's what the braces with alternative names are for.

I don't mind superimposing another system of hierarchy on the political one.

But the basis should be political.

As outlined in the response on the other thread:

The only way to set geographical entities as the primary hierarchy is to show a map that contains both geographical entities (like Taunus) and the municipalities.

Some kind of look-up table.

Otherwise people will make mistakes.

The database would be full of Mendig-isms, and uploaders would be happy about the extra work.

7th Oct 2011 15:53 UTCVolker Betz 🌟 Expert

Hello,

to give my two cents to that subject:

I dont like very much the preference of the political orientation over geographical . I live in Hessen and to describe the frequent changes in poltical borders over the last 200 years would be very lenghty. Geographical terms like Taunus, Hunsrück, Pfalz, Eifel, Westerwald, Harz, etc.etc. are more stable over time that Landkreise and communities and even federal states.

I live in Taunusstein a very recent named "City" (40 years) for an accumulation 12 or so former indepentend communities.

Administration boundries are much less stable than geographical terms.

For my point of view geographical units should have higher priority than administrative borders. To divide the Taunus and Westerwald into parts in Rheinland-Pfalz and Hessen is not a good idea. The same happens with Odenwald.

I know this is a delicate discussion, but for me it is not important that a mineral location is in Hessen or in Rhineland Palatinate. Taunus or Westerwald only would be fine. Depite thefacttha both states have different regulations.

I understand that is easier to follow the administration borders in a data base. But we work on minerals from gelogical units. Unfortunately this have fading borders, but are well defined und used in gelogical literature.

The Rhenish massiv is a well known gelogical unit in europe, but not found in mindat.

So my preference would be to use geographical units prior to political units and avoid the latter if redundant.

Regards

Volker

7th Oct 2011 16:40 UTCAmir C. Akhavan Expert

People (and that includes non-experts in- and outside Germany) need to be able to add and look up localities by using references that are accessible to them.

Today I just added photos and moved one of Alfredo's locality additions in Japan (I fixed Alfredo's mistake, think of it, he's the expert on Japanese localities B)- ).

Because it is based on a political hierarchy, I can look up everything easily in the Internet. I don't have to worry about subtleties in obscure geology books written in a language that I don't understand.

As I said, I would be delighted to see a map explaining the important geological and geographical features of each country in a special map. So people would learn about how the Harz is related to the Taunus etc.

Moldanubikum and all that stuff, laid out in a nice map.

And a second hierarchy superimposed on the political one.

Will it be Nordhelle Mountain (Nordhelle), Ebbe Mountains (Ebbegebirge), Sour Country (Sauerland), Right-Rhine Rhenish Massif (Rechtsrheinisches Rheinisches Schiefergebirge), Rhenish Massif (Rheinisches Schiefergebirge), Rhenohercynian Zone (Rhenoherzynikum, Rheno-Herzynikum, Rheno-Hercynikum), Variscan Orogeny?

That would be fun. :D

Is the Rochusberg part of the Hunsrück? You can find Taunusquarzit in it, that's for sure.

Simple answer: the locality Rochusberg is in the municipality of Bingen, Rheinland-Pfalz.

7th Oct 2011 16:45 UTCAmir C. Akhavan Expert

... and just to mention it: parts of the Rheinisches Schiefergebirge are in Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France.

7th Oct 2011 17:12 UTCGeorg Graf

Hi Roger, hi All,

because of reasons of practical use I would prefer a political hierarchy, despite that´s not an absolute good solution.

Greetings from Goslar

Georg

7th Oct 2011 18:31 UTCRoger Lang Manager

now, the thread gains some traction now ;-) ty folks! .. one very good argument for political hierarchy is - as Amir pointed out - that everyone can look it up in the internet and that it is very easy to manage the database in that way. Volker, if we left out the Bundesländer for instance we would end up in a VERY flat hierarchy which is almost not searchable - and to organize the db by geological features all uploaders need enhanced knowledge about that. To enter a locality based on political boundaries is surely easier. So i think the golden way would be an enhanced system - maybe another metafield with the geographical "regions" and ore districts as they are known from the literature.

To improve the db short termed at least for Rhineland-Palatinate (and ok, no problem to translate this to english (but i refuse to do so for Rheinhessen ;-) ) is to add Pfalz and Rheinhessen as higher hierarchy levels. This will bring some structure into Alzey & Co.

BTW the US locs are mainly based on political hierarchy, and most other countries too. So what is the general rule on mindat?

It wouldn´t be a problem i think for the database if there was a hierarchy sublevel "Siegerland" under Rhineland-Palatinate AND Northrine-Westphalia. Searching for Siegerland would retrieve both. Or is it not allowed for hierarchy entries in different sublevels to have the same name .. Jolyon or one of the db managers could answer this.

Keep the comments coming, we may add a table with ideas, pros and cons later

cheers

Roger

7th Oct 2011 19:09 UTCVandall Thomas King Manager

I was looking for Steinmauen in Baden,today, to see if auricupride was listed. Ramdohr (1969) in The Ore Minerals and their Intergrowths (page 340) shows a picture of an identified specimen. Should the locality be added?

7th Oct 2011 19:18 UTCRoger Lang Manager

Van,

you mean Steinmauern? i cannot find a village named Steinmauen but there is Steinmauern in the Landkreis Rastatt (Rastatt Cty) near Karlsruhe. If you have a reference why not add it.

I will check if i find sth in my literature (which is very restricted here as i am at home and all the books are at office or my Mainz appartment ;-) )

cheers

Roger

7th Oct 2011 19:21 UTCAmir C. Akhavan Expert

Steinmauern, Rastatt, Baden, is located on alluvial sediments in the Oberrheingraben, just 3km from the Rhine.

That sounds like a very odd locality for such a specimen, more like a one-time find, if picked up from the gravel.

Couldn't find any "Steinmauen".

Sebastian Möller might know, he's a Black Forest-expert.

7th Oct 2011 19:23 UTCRoger Lang Manager

wrt the translation of names: Nonnenmatt Pond is a good example of that nonsense .. the locality is called Nonnenmattweiher - never ever you´ll find a specimen labeled Nonnenmatt pond. Even in the english literature there is no translation:

- Wernicke, R.S., and Lippolt, H.J. (1997): Evidence of Mesozoic multiple hydrothermal activity in the basement at Nonnenmattweiher (southern Schwarzwald), Germany. Mineralium Deposita 32, 197-200.

Note that even Black Forest isn´t translated ....

just for the records X(

cheers

Roger

7th Oct 2011 19:27 UTCRoger Lang Manager

same goes for the "Mt." stuff .. if there is a locality - a mountain or hill - named Steinberg there is no need to morph that into Steinberg Mt. - you wouldn´t say rockmountain mountain or would you (:P)

and better ;-) .. you wouldn´t translate the Käfersteige Mine to "bug ladder mine" - so IMHO NO translations, just transcriptions if necessary (as with chinese or arab)

7th Oct 2011 19:29 UTCFrank Ruehlicke 🌟

Perhaps the ultimate solution for this issue is to have separate parallel structures - one based on political subdivisions and the other(s) based on other factors such as geographic/geological structures, mining districts, etc. If warrented, there could be multiple additional structures in parallel to the polictial subdivisions.

I am adding a simple parallel structure in my cataloging system to deal with some of these issues. I am happy with this approach so far although I am keeping it at a pretty high level so it may not work well in other stituations. I try to capture the political subdivisions of localities as best I can (roughly along the traditional hierarchy of mine, town, county, state, country). Perhaps it is just personal preference but I tend to think of localities primarily in these terms and agree with the approach advocated by Roger and Amir. Now I have a separate field that I've called "Short Form Locality" that provides an alternate way to group localities. Examples of Short Form Localities are the Copper Country in Michigan (which includes Keweenaw Co, Houghton Co. and parts of Ontonagon Co), Tyrol (which includes parts of Austria and Italy), Eifel, etc. I could also use this field to separate minerals from slag minerals for Lavrion without impacting the political subdivisions. This would allow me to group all occurances in the Lavrion geographic region together and then separately allow me to group minerals from Lavrion mineral localities together and minerals from Lavrion slag localities together.

My current needs in this regard are somewhat simple so a single field is working for me. As a general solution, I see no reason why multiple fields could not be created under a parallel hierachy or for that matter why multiple parallel hierachies could not exist. The key here is that the information be meaningful/useful and that users are willing to document and build these parallel structures. I suspect in some regions, parallel hierarchies would be important and folks would do the work and in other regions there would be less interest.

Also, for my needs I have not specifically defined the exact boundaries of the Locality Short Forms that I am using. As has been suggested, creating a map to indicate what is in one of these areas would be useful. I think a map with a separate overlay for each applicable hiearchy (1 political, 1 geological/geographical, 1 mining districts, etc) would be useful.

For many items in my collections, the Locality Short Form is defaulted to be the State or Country. So for Michigan minerals that are not from the Copper Country the Locality Short Form I use is just Michigan while minerals from Germany not in Eifel are marked either as Germany or by state.

I'm certainly no expert on German localities but thought I'd offer my personal approach in organizing the localities in my collection.

Good luck on this project - I applaud you for sharing your knowledge and expertise and appreciate your passion.

7th Oct 2011 19:30 UTCRoger Lang Manager

could be a drillhole .. i just had realgar from a drillhole at Bad Dürkheim, extremely rare in Rhineland-Palatinate ... and never exposed at the surface ....

Amir C. Akhavan Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Steinmauern, Rastatt, Baden, is located on

> alluvial sediments in the Oberrheingraben, just

> 3km from the Rhine.

> That sounds like a very odd locality for such a

> specimen, more like a one-time find, if picked up

> from the gravel.

> Couldn't find any "Steinmauen".

>

> Sebastian Möller might know, he's a Black

> Forest-expert.

7th Oct 2011 19:45 UTCRoger Lang Manager

Frank,

thanks a lot for this post .. i agree that we obviously need kinda 2 parallel hierarchy strings .. one strictly political as this is an official and easy way to find localities (and is well established for most of the countries represented at mindat). The second string could hold a kind of Meta-info which would assign a locality to what you call short form (but should be a bit different), ie to things like Siegerland-Wied ore district, Schwarzwald, Odenwald etc). It would require more field entries when uploading in the DB .. but it would also mean that there is a lot of work in the future. As i intend to live for some more 50 years ;-) i would be willing to contribute to such a reorganization.

We should keep in mind that the system should be easy for uploaders as well as for searching. This is a database topic which should be dealt with by Jolyon and the db managers.

7th Oct 2011 20:19 UTCVolker Betz 🌟 Expert

Hello Roger,

I am aware that for example France and USA are working well with political oriented structures.

May be they do not suffer from a disease called "Gebietsreform" .

Landkreise and communities will further change in Germany. Latter if they drop below a certain number of inhabitants they are forced tu build lager units. The same will happen to "landkreis" (county).

I observed the same with some locations at sardinia- moving a village from Nuoro to Calgari. It is still at the same place near the same river in the same mountain but different in administration.

Cities do not change there name so often, well we had the case of Chemnitz>Karl Marx Stadt> Chemnitz, but the changes in the Federal state and Kreis Level ??? (not to mention the complication with Bezirk in former DDR).

I deeply do not like to use administration boundries for mineral locations, there will be soon or later a "Gebietsreform"..

and just some kind of obstinacy...

Regards

Volker

7th Oct 2011 20:45 UTCFrank Ruehlicke 🌟

Roger,

I agree with your assessment that additional support in the db is key here.

Once ( if? ) support for parallel hierachies is put in place, then I believe the future additional work will be carried out by the community for those areas where a) it is viewed as being valuable and b) where user(s) rise to the challenge. Based on the recent discussions about reorganizing the German and Lavrion localities, I think there are areas where such a critical mass of interest, expertise and desire exist and separate hierachies could be built up. And doing so would benefit all of us by improving the overall information available in Mindat. For other areas the default hierachy will suffice and we're no worse off than today.

Also, where a parallel hierachy has been built, it may actually make it easier to upload information (even though there is more information), because it could be built in such a way that users would have the choice of which hierachy to start with. If a user is more comfortable making a new entry or adding a photo based on say the geological structure then they could do so and then either enter the political structure (which could be presented in a context sensitive list) or let someone else do that step. In short I think the idea of parallel hierarchies adds additional information and provides greater flexibility to accessing the information.

For now, I'll continue with my approach. you mentioned a couple of Regions in Germany - another one of my Short Locality Name localities is the Schwarzwald which lets me group the localities from that area which are spread across several counties. I agree with you that "Locality Short Name" is not a particularly great name for this field but it is easily changeable.

7th Oct 2011 20:57 UTCAmir C. Akhavan Expert

To me anything you can look up on a recent street map is fine.

I'm only opposed to using an obscure or ambiguous hierarchy.

If someone goes through all the cities and villages and puts them into their landscape or whatever units and the visitor/contributor is presented with a mature hierarchy that allows him to find the spot in the forest that he just visited today easily, then it's fine.

If the categorization is overdone in terms of too many levels of hierarchy, nobody else will add new localities. I won't for sure. Why shoud I mess with the boss?

BTW, using hierarchies based on some abstract mining adminitration bureaucracy ("Bergbaubezirke") would be plain terrible. The same goes for Saxothuringium or similar terms that only an expert understands.

But I'm sure nobody would propose that.

7th Oct 2011 21:01 UTCRoger Lang Manager

Hi Volker,

thanks a lot for your input. I agree that the german Gebietsreformitis may pose a (IMO surveyable) problem. But most structures on the Landkreis (Cty) level will be constrained mostly to renaming or simply merging - as we had recently with former Kreis Daun which now is called Kreis Vulkaneifel .. but this is absolutely no prob in a database .. just a search and replace. Merging can be handled similarly. As long as we avoid the "Verbandsgemeinde" hierarchy level this should be no big issue at all .. and renaming of villages is rare. My proposal would be

Bundesland (Bayern, Rheinland-Pfalz etc), then Cty ie Landkreis, Village/town, Locality name

And i still have no clue what is translated and what is not:

For instance Baden-Württemberg is not translated, Saxony-Anhalt is half (and IMO stupidly - Saxony-Onhold would be the stringent thing hehe 8-) ) translated, Bavaria totally translated. That is - at least - inconsistent and i would like to list the original names with translation in brackets not otherwise round.

Our GIS at the geological survey is completely based on political hierarchy .. if this changes the shapes are changed, the database queries are spatial so always retrieve the correct underlying hierarchy based on coordinates.

I am still in favour of a primary political hierarchy - with metafields associated

cheers

Roger

7th Oct 2011 21:42 UTCArturo Shaw

Hi,

I know nothing about German localities but... Mindat is about the world. If you think Germany is the worst place for this kind of problems I think you should travel a bit more... :-)

Seriously. I think that the basis has to be a "modern" system, searchable and dividing the space (country) in separate entities. Then if you have a problem like a split locality or an old name it is always possible to create a "fictional locality" that will redirect the user to the correct (or new) one, or it would be possible to create a "region" locality that links or includes the real (political?) administrative localities. There are many options.

And I don't think it could be possible to implement a software solution for places like Morocco, for instance, where even locals wouldn't agree on the name of the administrative division they live in.

Good luck! :-)

Arturo

7th Oct 2011 22:08 UTCRoger Lang Manager

Hi Arturo,

great you chime in .. to give some responses to points you raise:

Arturo Shaw Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Hi,

>

> I know nothing about German localities but...

> Mindat is about the world. If you think Germany is

> the worst place for this kind of problems I think

> you should travel a bit more... :-)

you´re certainly right but i know german locs quite well, especially Saarland, Rheinland-Pfalz and Nordrhein-Westfalen, and as the system is NOW it is more than suboptimal, that is why i focus on that now and first

> Seriously. I think that the basis has to be a

> "modern" system, searchable and dividing the space

> (country) in separate entities. Then if you have a

> problem like a split locality or an old name it is

> always possible to create a "fictional locality"

> that will redirect the user to the correct (or

> new) one, or it would be possible to create a

> "region" locality that links or includes the real

> (political?) administrative localities.

this could be the metatag i mentioned before ... shouldn´t have to redirect but should be included in search results

> And I don't think it could be possible to

> implement a software solution for places like

> Morocco, for instance, where even locals wouldn't

> agree on the name of the administrative division

> they live in.

if they do not know their government surely does as there are official authorities providing the regional divisions for the state .. so this is a straw man argument ;-) ...

>

> Good luck! :-)

Thank you .. this turns out to be Pandora´s Box .. but i think it is worth to tackle (and necessary).

I just thought that it must be possible to find any localities (at least the nearby villages) on google maps or google earth or google straight search. One wouldn´t find Nonnenmatt pond of course (other than in mindat - i mentioned before / in the other thread earlier), but definitely Nonnenmattweiher .. in that case it is found in google search.

I still see no killer arguments against a political hierarchy for Germany ...

still thinking about that of course .. keepo the comments coming!

TY

cheers

Roger

8th Oct 2011 18:43 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

Nonnenmatt pond changed to Nonnenmattweiher (for the time being).

It's actually a lake:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonnenmattweiher

Optionally, we could use "Nonnenmattweiher (Nonnenmatt lake)".

"For instance Baden-Württemberg is not translated, Saxony-Anhalt is half (and IMO stupidly - Saxony-Onhold would be the stringent thing hehe eye rolling smiley ) translated, Bavaria totally translated. That is - at least - inconsistent and i would like to list the original names with translation in brackets not otherwise round."

It's simply because in some cases there are specific and well-established English names for these German regions - just compare wikipedia (english). We don't need to list the original names a second time (they are in the local/German locality designation anyway).

8th Oct 2011 19:05 UTCAmir C. Akhavan Expert

Just in case more complaints are raised about a politically based hierarchy.

There's one really nice thing about a politically based hierarchy:

It is given, all set up.

There's nothing to argue about on Mindat, the system is there.

It can be established instantly without checking any other source.

It is not dependent on the interpretation of the individual responsible for it.

Yes, we will be at the will of the authorities and the system can change, but it is not that we have to fix 10 entries a day.

Rheinland-Pfalz will probably "suffer" a bit in the future, but the system has some inertia.

8th Oct 2011 20:15 UTCRoger Lang Manager

Uwe,

glad you´re back ... ty for changing Nonnenmatt pond B) .. i could have done i though but i am quite busy preparing house and garden for winter.

Uwe Kolitsch Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> It's simply because in some cases there are

> specific and well-established English names for

> these German regions - just compare wikipedia

> (english). We don't need to list the original

> names a second time (they are in the local/German

> locality designation anyway).

I see that .. but i don´t have to be happy with it. Ok, lets take this practice as given (and although i have my reservations i will of course stay in line until other decisions are made, i am just proposing stuff).

Would you support that i add Palatinate and Rhenish Hesse to the Rhineland-Palatinate (argh!) hierarchy? I could sort all the locs within those boundaries tonite to clean up a first bit of the mess. BTW Rhenish Hesse as a region is translated on Wikipedia, Rheinhessen wine region is not. What a chaos!

And Amir, i am totally with you - i hope that we will get the metas in the future to simultaneously add political hierarchy whilst assigning also to geographic regions.

Pls get back to me Uwe, i have some time to start reorganizing RP tonite - and there are not sooo much entries to change.

Cheers

Roger

8th Oct 2011 20:18 UTCRoger Lang Manager

.. and i forgot .. could we abandon that Eifel Mts thing? ... it is only Eifel, Taunus, Hunsrück ...

also with locs with the name "-berg" ..

8th Oct 2011 20:51 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

No hurry, please. Peter Haas will certainly also comment. He mainly established the current hierarchy.

8th Oct 2011 21:05 UTCRoger Lang Manager

I really appreciate Peters contribution but adding Rhenish Hesse and Palatinate doesn´t hurt at all and is correct... BTW i missed him .. would have expected him to chime in of course.

8th Oct 2011 21:20 UTCAmir C. Akhavan Expert

Giving people a hint about the nature of the localities is not a bad idea.

So "Eifel Mts. (Eifel)" might help the collector a bit.

"Rhenish Hesse"

Oh my goodness. This is too much.

Sounds like original from "Blauer Bock".

"Unser schens Rhenish Hesse, tralala..." :D

8th Oct 2011 21:23 UTCRoger Lang Manager

.. and just to prevent that someone gets me wrong: i do not say that any uploader or manager did sth wrong here. It is just that - if we see the structure of RP as it is now - that some regions are missing and a bunch of localities is flat in the hierarchy under RP main entry. This could be fixed very short termed. As you may know i work at the Geological Survey of Rhineland-Palatinate, this is my all days work and i know quite a lot of the localities from own visits, more than that we have the most comprehensive and complete info on all mining in RP and last i am quite active in the Palatina region wrt Mineralogy, Mining History etc .. so you may be assured that i am not going to change things i don´t have a clue of.

I know Peter is an excellent connoisseur of the region too and we might be able to improve the db evry quickly and thoroughly working closely together.

cheers

Roger

8th Oct 2011 21:25 UTCRoger Lang Manager

Amir,

just look up wikipedia ....

Eifel, Hunsrück, Taunus

There is a possibility to describe what the Eifel actually is in the db entry

.. and yes, Rhenish Hesse is horror, but so be it as is agreed here,

cheers

Roger

Amir C. Akhavan Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Giving people a hint about the nature of the

> localities is not a bad idea.

> So "Eifel Mts. (Eifel)" might help the collector a

> bit.

>

> "Rhenish Hesse"

> Oh my goodness. This is too much.

> Sounds like original from "Blauer Bock".

> "Unser schens Rhenish Hesse, tralala..." :D

10th Oct 2011 19:48 UTCRoger Lang Manager

anyone alive out there? ...

10th Oct 2011 21:10 UTCRock Currier Expert

Roger, I think they probably agree with you.

10th Oct 2011 23:30 UTCRoger Lang Manager

Rock,

this would be great :) .. but i doubt it a bit ....

will wait for another 2 days until i start reorganizing Rhineland-Palatinate with adding more higher hierarchy level entries .. i will of course stay in line with the now accepted rules B)-

thanks of course

Cheers

Roger

11th Oct 2011 23:40 UTCHarjo Neutkens Manager

Might as well post it in this topic too ;-)

Having the Mts. after the name doesn't necessarily imply that it is a literal translation. It is supposed to designate the name to a mountain range.

In some cases this structure can be very useful, for instance: The Ardennes Mts. are spread over different provinces in Belgium, whereas in France the Ardennes is a designation for a departement as well as the name of the mountain range, so, a specimen from the French departement Ardennes doesn't necessarily have to come from the Ardennes Mts. because the southernmost part of the Ardennes departement is not within the name-giving mountain range.

Another thing, people not acquainted with the area might think it's a topographical rather than a geological designation. Having the Mts. makes things clear.

So, don't be too picky about the Mt. thingy :-)

Cheers,

Harjo

12th Oct 2011 06:53 UTCPeter Haas

Discussion continues here: http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,237426,237918#msg-237918

I will close this thread now that most people appear to have moved to the other thread.

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