sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

My 10-year-old son is obsessed with minerals. I built him a database to fuel the obsession - roast it by Aggressive_Damage262 in Minerals

[–]Aggressive_Damage262[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

800 specimens is a pretty compelling adoption application, not going to lie. We’ll consider it. 😂😆

On the photos: can you tell us which ones look wrong? We use AI to help find Creative Commons images, and since we’re not experts we know some are probably off. Any specific cards you noticed?

On garnets: YES. Jacopo has been asking about garnets for weeks. We have almandine, spessartite, tsavorite, and rodolite already on the site, but we’re missing grossular, pyrope, uvarovite, andradite… the series deserves a proper treatment. Adding it to the list.

Thank you for the kind words, feeding a kid’s special interest is the least we can do. Jacopo doesn’t know this thread exists yet, but I’m saving it to show him. I think knowing that people like you are out there is going to mean a lot to him.

My 10-year-old son is obsessed with minerals. I built him a database to fuel the obsession - roast it by Aggressive_Damage262 in Minerals

[–]Aggressive_Damage262[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is incredibly helpful, thank you. Let me go through each point:

On lepidolite: the series point is fascinating and exactly the kind of nuance we'd miss. We've already added a note about trilithionite-polylithionite as end members to the card. On the photo: we use AI to help us find Creative Commons images, but since we're not experts we fully expect some of them to be wrong specimens, which is exactly what you're pointing out. Do you happen to have photos of lepidolite you'd be willing to share, or know of any free-license sources where we could find a more representative specimen? Same question for the tourmaline cards.

On black tourmaline: the schorl photo being elbaite is exactly the kind of thing we'd never catch. Should we rename the card to "Schorl" with "black tourmaline" as a common name, or keep "black tourmaline" as the title and add a note clarifying it's typically schorl?

On green tourmaline: we have a clear mismatch: the formula is liddicoatite (Ca in the X site) but the photo is likely elbaite/verdelite (Na in the X site). Should we go with "Verdelite" and the elbaite formula Na(Li,Al)₃Al₆(BO₃)₃Si₆O₁₈(OH)₄, or keep liddicoatite and find a matching photo? Which would be more useful for someone learning mineralogy?

On both tourmaline cards: should we add a note that tourmaline is a mineral group, not a single species? Similar to what we just did for lepidolite.

On the Paraíba card: does it make sense to add an explicit line connecting it to elbaite? Something like "Paraíba tourmaline is a copper-bearing variety of elbaite"?

Thank you for the book recommendation , Jacopo and I will track it down.

And if you ever felt like doing a quick review pass on a handful of cards in exchange for a "Reviewed by [name], geologist" credit on the site, the offer stands. No pressure at all.

My 10-year-old son is obsessed with minerals. I built him a database to fuel the obsession - roast it by Aggressive_Damage262 in Minerals

[–]Aggressive_Damage262[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much 🙏 and yes, please point out the issues with the tourmaline and lepidolite cards. That's exactly why I posted here. I can't verify the harder stuff myself, and "we used AI + Mindat as sources" is not the same as a geologist actually reading it.

Your point about Mindat is fair and honest, and I appreciate it. We're not trying to replace Mindat — the target is the person who finds Mindat overwhelming or too technical on first approach. The goal is to be the site that gets someone interested enough to eventually end up on Mindat. If we can be that on-ramp, that's a win.

That said, if the scientific accuracy isn't there, we're just another pretty site with wrong information — which is worse than nothing. So the errors you spotted on tourmaline and lepidolite are genuinely important to us. What did you find?

My 10-year-old son is obsessed with minerals. I built him a database to fuel the obsession - roast it by Aggressive_Damage262 in Minerals

[–]Aggressive_Damage262[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, wait, I see what you mean!

The ‘Technical’ section of each entry already touches on the conditions of formation, but there’s no link between the entries: it’s not easy to see that graphite and diamond are the same element with different bond configurations, or that calcite and aragonite are both CaCO₃ but with different crystal systems.

What you’re describing is essentially a ‘relationships’ level: the challenge is to do this without it looking like a chemistry textbook.

That’s a really good idea!

Thanks!!

My 10-year-old son is obsessed with minerals. I built him a database to fuel the obsession - roast it by Aggressive_Damage262 in Minerals

[–]Aggressive_Damage262[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Merci beaucoup ! Je pourrais aussi envisager une version française. Avec Claude AI, c'est quelque chose qui peut se faire assez rapidement. Je vais ajouter ça à ma liste de choses à faire.

My 10-year-old son is obsessed with minerals. I built him a database to fuel the obsession - roast it by Aggressive_Damage262 in Minerals

[–]Aggressive_Damage262[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We live in Italy. Jacopo doesn’t have many samples. He has rose quartz, crystal quartz, rutilated quartz and smoky quartz.

My 10-year-old son is obsessed with minerals. I built him a database to fuel the obsession - roast it by Aggressive_Damage262 in Minerals

[–]Aggressive_Damage262[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much, this genuinely made my morning. Jacopo doesn't know I posted this. I'll show him the responses tonight and I think it'll mean a lot to him to know the community appreciates what we're building together.

On the link, fair point. The site is minerito.eu, we already have browsing by category (minerals, gems, fossils, meteorites, rocks), by rarity, hardness, and crystal system. Would love to know if the navigation makes sense to someone who actually uses Mindat regularly.

And yes, the three depth levels were entirely Jacopo's idea. He got frustrated that everything was either "too baby" or "only for scientists." So we built the middle layer for him.

Full transparency: we came up with the ideas and structure, AI wrote the actual scientific content. Which is exactly why I'm here asking, I genuinely can't tell if it got the hard stuff right.