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How to ContributeMultiple photos of the same specimens having likewise multiple minID's

24th Jan 2020 22:23 UTCNorman King 🌟 Expert

In the past few days (mostly 23 January, 2020, but some on 24 January, also) groups of mineral photos have been uploaded to Mindat that appear to be of the same specimen. They are not grouped as single primary photos with child photos. As a result they all have unique minID numbers. One specimen has 6 photos listed that way, and two have five each, resulting in 16 minID numbers for three specimens, all with similar labels for various combinations of forsterite, fluorapatite, magnetite, sanidine, and clinopyroxene from the basalt quarry at Pauliberg, Austria. Other similar groups, typically having three views of small segments of the same specimen, are hematite and rutile from Saint Christophe-en Oisans in France; Erythrite from Schmiedestollen dump in Germany; and pyrite and siderite from Creife Mine in Portugal. There are others including just two views of the same specimen.

Of course, this shows what can happen if not everyone is savvy as to how this system should work. Where are the gate-keepers? I know gate-keeping takes person-power with little reward. But don’t we need them? BTW, I have run across some of my own specimens that had the same problem, so I fixed them. (There may be others–no one is perfect, not even me!) Maybe a reminder is in order, and perhaps even contacting the contributors to see if they can fix this problem. Otherwise, eventually, the whole thing can become unwieldy.

This brings up the question of thin sections and ore microscopy using reflected-light showing tiny little portions of the same specimen (some on January 24, 2020!). Each of those also has a unique minID number. I believe I have not seen any discussion of this latter issue at Mindat (yes, no?). I have had several opportunities to make that mistake with thin sections, but have tried to make groups associated with a single minID number assigned to the main photo, followed by child photos. But may have missed some of those, too. If you find any, let me know!

24th Jan 2020 22:44 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

Unfortunately Norman there are hundreds like that, and with a database of over 1million photos it is a never ending issue.

Many uploaders simply are not aware (or don't care) as to how the minID system works.

All we can do is highlight the photos and change them as we are advised.

I saw one the other day of a photograph of a specimen in the Smithsonian that had a new minID yet there were a dozen or so of the same specimen (albeit by different photographers) that had the one minID. It was simply a matter of changing the minID of the recent photo to match the earlier one.

Cheers

19th Jun 2020 20:22 UTCMichel Gadoury

Hello,

Recently, I have been looking for and correcting photos of specimens with the same minID. With the `Report duplicate minID` function it is very easy when there are only two identical images.

But for the following situation, I would need help with a particular case of five photos of a single specimen that corresponds to five different minIDs.

Specimen minID:

AWW-FJ4, RWD-NV7, 178-97R, 1EQ-05G, EJW-M99

Could Keith or another manager merge them?

Thank you

Mike

19th Jun 2020 20:50 UTCDebbie Woolf Manager

Mike, thanks for letting us know about these photos, I've linked them to the parent photo and all now have same minID.

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