Talk:Timeline of the discovery and classification of minerals

Dates of timeline periods

Currently, a part of the timeline has the title "After the periodic table of the elements (1916)". Mendeleev's Periodic Table was published in 1869, so why does the timeline title include 1916? Also, I suggest the part of the timeline currently titled "Recent history" could be changed to "Twenty-first century". GeoWriter (talk) 16:12, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

• The sections are an editing tool, mainly; so I do not get lost in the editing window.
• Well, Mendeleev's table had many hypothetical elements, they had to be confirmed first. In the World War I (1915-1916), we have few new minerals. I'd like to use this gap. The name comes from the most important event.
• The logic of the atomic number was not know; the electron was not discovered; as the s, p and d orbitals. You can't understand the crystal cell structure, without understanding the valence of the element; this is my opinion.
• American Mineralogist (1916), 50 years AM (1966) and 100 years AM (2016) is a time sequence.
• The 'recent history' begins with sorting out the amphiboles and the decision to write a list with all valid minerals. This updated list made it possible to find hundred new minerals every year (doubling: from fifty to hundred/ year). The importance of each event in the twenty-first century is controversial anyway. It is too recent, I think that it is as good as it gets.
• Regards --Chris.urs-o (talk) 16:32, 26 January 2016 (UTC) and Chris.urs-o (talk) 07:31, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarification about Mendeleev etc. It's a very infomative timeline and I've learned from its content. I think the section title renames that you have done in the past few days are a good improvement. Moving on to some other things I've noticed about this timeline article:

(1) Although there is a section after the timeline that is devoted to the details of Dana's classic reference book, I notice that, in the timeline itself, Dana is included only in the "Frondel, Clifford 1962" entry and the only reference to Dana is in the title of the 7th edition of his book. I suggest that publication of the first edition of Dana's book deserves to be added to the timeline as its own "Dana 1837" entry. Similar for Hugo Strunz - I suggest his own timeline entry for 1941. I think both of these mineral classifiers deserve timeline entries to mark when they published their first classification because they were the vital foundations that led to the later revised more accurate editions. In other words, I think they are such major developments that they deserve a start entry and also a "most recent version" entry in the timeline.

(2) I suggest that the contibutions of some major pioneers of optical mineralogy should be included in the timeline. This could include microscopy/technological contributions and also mineralogical contributions. Possible people include, for example, William Nicol (geologist), David Brewster and Henry Clifton Sorby.

GeoWriter (talk) 13:53, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Optical mineralogy is a problematic Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911) article, 105 years from 1911 until 2016. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 07:06, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Two lists

This is really two lists - a timeline and a bibliography. I suggest either moving the bibliography to List of important publications in geology#Mineralogy and petrology or creating Bibliography of mineralogy. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:59, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Actually, on second viewing, it's multiple lists. In addition to the bibliography, it has a list of minerals named after people; it has a list of various scientists, some of whom were mineralogists; and the timeline includes a lot of facts that have very little to do with mineralogy, such as various advances in computing (including Wikipedia!). There is even a link to the 2012 phenomenon, which is just weird. This list is a mess, and badly needs cleaning up. I am going to start hacking away at it. RockMagnetist(talk) 20:30, 29 August 2018 (UTC)