As part of the ongoing addition of new features to the site the 'Major Mining Region' system proposed a few weeks back has been completed.

This allows site users to locate mines by (as the name suggests) major mining regions of the UK. Clicking a region will list all the mines in that region.

It is hoped this will prove useful to site users who want to locate a mine but might not know the OS sheet it is on, or even the mineral/product extracted.

The Major Minng Regions page is here: http://www.aditnow.co.uk/uk-mining-regions/ 

It is in the early stages at the moment and will build up over time - but in order for it to build up to a really useful nationwide resource I need some help.

Would people with the specialist knowledge in specific parts of the UK be prepared to take on the role of Regional Editor?

So far, and with grateful thanks to them both, Nimrod has taken on the North West and sparty_lea the North East. I am happy to look after North Wales (the North Wales regions will be added over the coming weeks).

For the system to work, it would be fantastic to have editors from the following regions, or with in depth knowledge of the following regions:

1) South West England
2) South East England
3) South Wales
4) Midlands
5) Northern Ireland
6) Scotland

Answers to a few questions

What will it involve?

In a nutshell, adding new Major Mining Regions - which is basically the name, brief description, selecting all the minerals/products extracted and the rough geographic zone. And then assigning mines to that region. No more than that.

Why are you asking for help?

The whole site is dependant on the good will of members to add mines and photographs. The Regional Editor role is no different in this respect. All member submissions are greatly appreciated.

I'm happy to continue adding features to the site all the coding that entails (pretty much all new features are lead by user demand) but I lack the knowledge to create and maintain UK wide Major Mining Regions.

Is there any long term commitment?

Absolutely not, I'm just asking for some help compiling regions and adding mines to those regions. There's no long term commitment and you can do as little or much as you wish.

Will I be credited for my contribution?

Absolutely. Everything on the AditNow site has the userid of the person who added and who last modified modified it. Every mine and photograph is credited to the member who created it, and your user profile page lists all the mines you have added and all the albums you have contributed to. Regional Editors will be credited on an additional page as well at some point in the near future.

Can more than one person edit the same area?

Yes, if this is acceptable to both editors. It would share the workload.

One again, thanks to Nimrod and sparty_lea for taking on the first two regions. With a few more editors from around the UK the Major Mining Region page could grow into a really useful facility.

Thanks,
simonrl

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Grateful thanks to Barney for volunteeting to edit the Midlands region. Much appreciated.

Any members with good knowledge of the following regions and who would like to help build up a good UK-wide mines by mining region database are still sought 🙂 :

1) South West England
2) South East England
3) South Wales
4) Northern Ireland
5) Scotland

I will start sorting out the North Wales region in about 10 days or so...

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If you want any info on the gold mining area send me a PM

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I have spent quite a bit of time digging through everything i can get my hands on about mining in the midlands. This has caused many problems....

1 There are well over 2,000 of them.

2 Grid refs are sometimes difficult to find, although most are achievable.

3 Only a very small amount have traces of workings these days, having been built on.

4 Even less are explorable.

So then....
Should i just include the major mines, i.e. ones that employed more than x amount of men and /or the ones that currently have, or may have, access or surface remains?

I don't really know to be honest, 2,000 is an awful lot. Although, I can very easily write an import script to import them. That would probably be best whether you decide you want to list them all or not. It would save you a massive amount of work.

All we need is an excel spreadhseet with the name, mineral and region, gridref if available, no worries if not.

I can do the spreadsheet, no problem there, and will then write a script to import all the mines, tag them to the correct region, mineral type and forum and create the two albums.

Way less work for you than entering all those mines manually!

Thanks again for taking the Midland region on. :)

Toodlepip!

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well if you dont mind the fact I’m not always available due to uni work i would happily take on the south west!

Hi Ferret,

Thank you for your offer: Simonrl is away until the middle of next week, so don't take his lack of response as a bad sign! No doubt he'll be in touch...

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Do you think Editors for parts of other countries would be needed at some point?
I'd be inclined to take on some, trouble is that I don't know enough as of yet; The 'La Unión' region nr 'Murcia' in Spain might need editors eventially, if there's suficiant interest, and if we can get more info, so far I've only been able to add a couple of mines from the region.

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I'm getting around to entering a few mines in Wisconsin. It's an interesting area because many miners from Britain emmigrated there. I also have one or two contacts. So if I can help..............but if we start talking Alabama :surrender:

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Checked the page , one question: There are far fewer photos for each mine in the database than can be found in a general photo search for a given mine.

Sorry if this question has come up before, but does a photo have to be uploaded to the specific mine's album even if it is stored on this site with the mine's name in the title?

Would anyone be interested in seeing modern day photos taken from exactly same position as the old B&W ones? I am planning on doing this in the camborne - redruth region
and can upload them if it is worthwhile and will not overload the albums. (maybe 20 - 30 photos max).

Thanks

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Checked the page , one question: There are far fewer photos for each mine in the database than can be found in a general photo search for a given mine.

Sorry if this question has come up before, but does a photo have to be uploaded to the specific mine's album even if it is stored on this site with the mine's name in the title?

Strange. There shouldn't be. When a mine gets added to the database the 'user' and 'archive' albums are automatically created. This was to try to logically split the photos between current day and obviously archive material (i.e. taken a good while back or photos of places no longer extant).

The only reason I can think of for more photos appearing in the photo search than appear in the albums is because the photo search will search in both the archive and user album, and will also search keywords in image names and descriptions - which can mean images from other mines will show up. For example "view from wrysgan with cwmorthin in the distance" will mean an image in the wrysgan album will show up if you search 'cwmorthin'.

Would anyone be interested in seeing modern day photos taken from exactly same position as the old B&W ones? I am planning on doing this in the camborne - redruth region
and can upload them if it is worthwhile and will not overload the albums. (maybe 20 - 30 photos max).

If you've got a specific example though I'll happily look into it to see if there's any error being thrown up.

Thanks

Certainly, I think everybody would agree this is interesting from the point of view of historical archiving and seeing how locations alter over the years.

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Is it possible to split "South Wales" into "Central Wales" and "South Wales"?
If this is possible, I will Provisionally take on the central. I do have some knowledge of the area, and if I am lacking somewhere, then I know a man who does.

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re Photos
I have south crofty photos in my album in my user area, photos set to public and south crofty in the title, but they do not appear in the South crofty album in the new mine database.
Probably I have got something wrong, but thought public photos in personal user area would be picked up by title and linked to individual mine.
Thanks!

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Is it possible to split "South Wales" into "Central Wales" and "South Wales"?
If this is possible, I will Provisionally take on the central. I do have some knowledge of the area, and if I am lacking somewhere, then I know a man who does.

Thanks Roy, there's already a Mid Wales category, so if you're happy to take on editing that region that would be great. I'll dig out the standard email sent to regional editors. It's not very onerous, and there's no obligation or commitment :flowers:

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re Photos
I have south crofty photos in my album in my user area, photos set to public and south crofty in the title, but they do not appear in the South crofty album in the new mine database.
Probably I have got something wrong, but thought public photos in personal user area would be picked up by title and linked to individual mine.
Thanks!

Ah understood. Sorry if any confusion caused there.

Each album is a separate entry in the database, and there's no link between any member's personal album and the user and/or archive albums in any mine. Horrid confusion would ensue if it picked up keywords or whatever to link images between albums!

The wording at the top of the personal album pages "This is your own personal album, for example for photographs not specific to any named mine or for photographs for inclusion in forum postings." hopefully indicates the intended usage of personal albums... "I was out at the weekend and saw this, anybody know what is is"... "here's a snapshot of a home made lamp / miners token / set of pointwork" etc.

Hope that helps.

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Is it possible to split "South Wales" into "Central Wales" and "South Wales"?
If this is possible, I will Provisionally take on the central. I do have some knowledge of the area, and if I am lacking somewhere, then I know a man who does.

Thanks Roy, there's already a Mid Wales category, so if you're happy to take on editing that region that would be great. I'll dig out the standard email sent to regional editors. It's not very onerous, and there's no obligation or commitment :flowers:

Sorry, I was looking at your list.
I can therfore confirm willingness, and look forward to your email.

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The SW has 4 regional editors at present; 3 in Cornwall, which as you can imagine is almost deserving of it's own regional status given the number of mines and quarries splattered all over the place.
The SW is generally accepted as anywhere between Bristol and Lands End, a big region, and although Cornwall is well represented editorialy, Devon to Bristol seems surprisingly under-represented. I can see a good argument for County Editors within each region where that region is particularly 'well furnished' with mining sites. What thoughts from other 'large region' editors?

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I could do South West Scotland, or South West Ireland if there's a need. Do we need one for Northern Ireland? Never actually been there, but it is the only bit of the UK so far not covered by any editors.

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Ah, sorry, I've not replied to this yet (and Roy, sorry I've still not sent those instructions).

Yes, there are areas of the country where there are a few regional editors now, that's always (I hope!) been done in consultation with any existing editors (as in, do you mind if x, y or z joins you). I guess that reflects the fact that some areas are massive undertakings to add and edit to the database.

The idea of county editors would work, but it would all need to be on a gentlemans agreement basis between editors. As editors will have seen, any editor can edit any mine, regardless of region. It has to be that way otherwise you wouldn't be able to move a mine that wasn't assigned to a major mining region into the region you were working on.

So if there's more than one regional editor for an area then provided everybody works together it would work fine. There's a regional editor only forum area as well for specifics of enquiries relating to editing and moving mines between major mining regions.

The issue of international regional editors would need to be looked at separately. The international side of things seems to be growing (and it would be great to hear from more international mine explorers) but I can't see a major mining region system being added for international mines just yet; it would be a massive job and would need doing by people with detailed knowledge of mining regions within the chosen country. That said, building up a database of foreign mines is part of the job, and they can be refined and sorted later if the demand is there.

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At the risk of adding to Simon's distractions I'd like to raise the issue of the Forest of Dean. It was (I think) the subject of my first post to this forum. Anyway,it seems to me that the dear FoD is in a difficult geographical location. It's arguably in the S. West (but note the comment earlier in this thread that the SW runs from Cornwall to Bristol) a fairly common view. It's rather too detached to be 'Midlands' (though Hereford, where I live just down the road from the Forest would be Midlands - if it had mines that is) and it's not Wales though it shares a long border.
So, ( to the point at last ::) ) if anyone feels that the FoD needs a editor I would be keen to volunteer.

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