Outcropedia launched yesterday, and I think it has the potential to be a cool resource for geologists and amateur geology aficionados. I’m particularly excited about the strong structural flavor of the featured outcrops so far. (The site was initiated by three structural geologists.) However, there are some issues that will need to be resolved. Ron Schott pointed out one — misplacing outcrops. There’s also a functional issue of having to close every outcrop “window” you open, rather than that happening automatically: the screen quickly gets crowded. Finally, the text in the windows themselves could use just a smidge of a right margin — a few pixels of white would be sufficient to prevent eyestrain from crowded letters against a slide bar.
Here though I want to mention that I noticed another issue — what looks to my eyes like a typo.
I sent them a note:
From: Bentley, Callan
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2010 8:00 AM
To: ‘webamster@outcropedia.org’
Cc: ‘webmaster@outcropedia.org’
Subject: Outcropedia bannerHi there,
Outcropedia looks very promising. A quick stylistic edit for your consideration: The banner proclaims the site to be “A Public database of all important and beautiful outcrops in the World.”
“Public” and “World” are capitalized. Shouldn’t that be either:
“A public database of all important and beautiful outcrops in the world”
or:
“A Public Database of All Important and Beautiful Outcrops in the World”?
In other words, the use of capitalization is inconsistent. Just thought I’d point it out! : ) — I hope that’s useful.
Looking forward to using this site. Thanks for putting it together,
Callan
PS – The link on the contact page to the webmaster goes to the address webamster@outcropedia.org – I suspect that is a typo? I wrote to both the webmaster and the webamster, just in case…
And then what happened? My e-mail got bounced back… from both addresses… Sheesh. It appears the ship has sailed without hatches being battened. Maybe if I post my edits here, they will get the message?
UPDATE: I sent my collection of comments (including a link to this blog post) to the other two e-mail addresses listed on Outcropedia’s “contact” page, and guess what… info@outcropedia.org also got bounced back! I’ll be waiting to see if postmaster@outcropedia.org will work, or whether it’s a bum address like the others…
It’s beginning to look like Outcropedia was a good idea once upon a time, that got rushed out the door before it was fully baked (to meet a grant or meeting deadline?) or once the designers lost interest. There are a number of “teh” misspellings in the photo descriptions that really bespeak a rush job.
Well, all we have to do is e-mail the webmaster to fix those misspellings, and they will promptly…
…Oh, wait. That’s right. Never mind.
well I did get the email, as sent to info and postmaster, so I am not quite sure why you got a bounce reply (I got the message 1 hour ago, maybe your site is greylisted?). Anyway I will pass on your email to Cees Passchier who is in charge of the site, and thanks enormously for taking the time to try and help us.
cheers
Mark
Excellent! Thanks Mark!
We clicked on the Meteor Crater, Arizona, button only to realize the photo is not of Meteor Crater, and the location does not seem to be accurate. Other than that, it’s a nice idea.
See the link above to Ron’s tweet on that topic — it’s Ubehebe Crater from Death Valley.