Sorry couldn't resist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1yYJBzf1VQ
It’s also awesome for finding abandoned mines, cool industrial sites, and interesting rock features if you like urban/rural exploration.
My friend who specializes in geochemistry and mineralogy does contribute to this site frequently - he uploaded over 1,5k photos of minerals samples
Also: https://www.gemdat.org/
Wow, it's even more comprehensive than the Dwarf Fortress wiki. https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Stone
These collaborative databases curated by people working in the field are usually gems.
I always wonder what kind of data modeling is used in such websites.
Is there a browseable catalogue of it available or is it all behind a search box. If the whole database was a physical book, someone who does not know anything about minerals could get a good overview of minerals, but if all this knowledge is gated behind a search box, then that functionality is lost.
Can the database be exported somehow?
If you like information about minerals, you might find my visualisation of world production of different minerals also interesting:
https://ninhursag.herokuapp.com/
The green line shows world production form year 1900 to about 2020, depending on data availability. Yellowish green line shows available reserves – that is ‘easily’ available or economically feasible resources.
Most of USGS data series 140 minerals are included, and you can try to fit various Scipy distribution functions with the data to see some estimates.
PS. It’s on a free tier so it takes a few seconds to boot, if no one have visited recently.