On 5 April 2008, this forum reached its first 1000 posts.

I think this is a good time to publish a short note explaining my feelings about it and why I do it.

I created this Forum with the idea of creating a place to share questions and answers with other mineral enthusiasts and, most importantly, to try to provide a serious space where mineralogy questions can be discussed free of bothersome errors, free due the high standards of my partners John and Pete. We owe much of the success of this Forum to their fine texts; with them helping us, our Forum looks "clean", at least in terms of its scientific content. This Forum is still young so it needs all available help to grow, that's why we encourage posts from everybody. All of them will be more than welcome here.

During my mineralogical journeys I frequently receive mail asking many different questions. When I answered just the person who sent the message, I always had the feeling of something being lost. By publishing all these questions and answers on the Forum, others can share our thoughts about minerals and mineralogy. That's why I created this Forum.

Jordi Fabre

It has been more than a year now since Jordi persuaded me to agree to become the moderator of the English language version of  the Forum, presented as part of his outstanding web site.  It has been interesting for me, with a really high number of people reading some topics (over 15,000 visitors to Very little mineralogy in mineral collecting today, for example).
 
In an effort to make this Forum even better, I am very pleased to be able to report that I have also a partner in this endeavor.  Dr. Peter "Pete" J. Modreski.
Pete is a geochemist with the U.S. Geological Survey, Lakewood, Colorado.  He has a B.A. (chemistry) from Rutgers College and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Penn State (geochemistry).  His research interests include mineralogy, gemstones, Colorado geology, ore deposits, and alkaline igneous rocks, and he is the USGS geological resource specialist for abrasives, gemstones, quartz, beryllium, cesium, and rubidium. He is presently responsible for public communications and educational outreach for the USGS. Pete is a co-author of Minerals of Colorado (published in 1997) and he is an Executive Editor of Rocks and Minerals magazine and a Research Associate with the Earth Sciences Department, Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Given these awesome credentials, I am sure that visitors will encounter very informative responses to any issues they may care to raise on the Forum, so let us hear from you.
 
Also, Joan Rosell, whom Jordi recently employed, will periodically publish new articles with a lot of images on the Forum like, for example, this one about Pyrite from Ambasaguas (La Rioja, Spain). Joan he has a master's degree in Chemistry from the UAB (University Autónoma of Barcelona) and he is one of those responsible for the very nice magazine Mineral Up.

John S. White
www.jwkustos.com