Mr. James, a self proclaimed gemology guru, threw a fit and made various claims. Mostly to discredit the members and owner of mindat, even though he knew he was in the wrong.
After a while things settled down a bit and Mr. James saw the errors of his ways.
Shortly after Mr. James found it neccessary to put a very hateful post on his own forum and the whole thing started again. He took the page down and all was well again.
Little surprise that Mr. James then started threathening the owner of mindat. If the mindat posts were not taken down, he would destroy mindat with another post. Of course extortion doesn't work well in our industry.
Mr. James took his 2nd post down again, however the posts were saved and are published here.
Please be sure to read them in context.
Here are the posts:
1. May 1, 2007
"I have been advised by several students about a thread (now closed) on the reference website Mindat.org regarding a page on YourGemologist.com in which someone from Mindat.org believed they found an error. The page in question had actually been removed from the active YG link listing due to updating of information, and it was simply hanging out there as an orphan page that needed deleting.
Not caring to do the honorable thing and contact us directly to let us know they found an error that someone thought needed to be reviewed, the people on the forums boards at Mindat.org saw fit to instead crucify the ISG and our students with an entire thread of some of the most nasty and vicious rhetoric that I have read on the internet.
It is unfortunate that Mindat.org, and Jolyon who runs it, are so lacking in professional courtesy and respect that they actually enjoy a group crucifixion of anyone who they deem beneath them in knowledge. To the point of one of the posters actually telling me that "no gemologist knows what they are talking about anyw And here is where this story really goes South:
The people on Mindat.org are so quick to crucify any other website they find with the least bit of a possible error, yet their own website has its own errors. And here is a quick one to prove it: Under their heading for Turquoise we find this listing and photograph link direct from their page:
Physical Properties of Turquoise
Diapheny (Transparency):Translucent,Opaqueay."
And yet every ISG student knows that turquoise is not just translucent or opaque......it is also TRANSPARENT! And rather than using images from books, the ISG actually owns our specimen of transparent turquoise as shown below: [ed. images not shown]
And I post this up only to prove the point that nobody has a perfect website, and nobody should be pointing fingers at other websites unless you can prove a legal violation of ethics or laws. Something not done here.
I honestly don't know why some forums boards have small cliques of people who dictate what is correct and what is not as far as knowledge to be posted on their boards. But I do know that Mindat.org should not be the first to throw stones at others who are not perfect. Because it took me only 2 minutes to find this glaring error in their website.
The point is, professionals should act like professionals...to other professionals, and to anyone who they feel has made a mistake.
Based on an entry in their thread, Mindat.org cost us a new student due to someone reading and believing their hateful and vicious rhetoric about our efforts here. And the interesting part....... not one single person on Mindat.org has ever actually read any part of the ISG course program. Jeolousy? Perhaps. Hurtful and unprofessional? Absolutely!
ISG Students! This is not the way to conduct yourselves in this industry if you want to succeed. You cannot sling mud without losing ground.
There is a time to go after the bad guys. We do that here when we find sellers ripping off consumers and students. But you will never gain any ground, you will never raise yourselves up, by kicking others who are making no worse mistakes than we all make.
If you find what you believe to be a mistake on anyone else's forum or website, you should follow these simple steps:
- Contact the person privately and respectfully through private email.
- Let them know where you believe an error exists.
- Provide evidence to support your position on the error.
- Provide a solution that would correct the error.
- Provide evidence to support your correction.
- Under no circumstance make a public posting of the issue. Nobody likes to have their errors aired out in public.
This whole affair reminds me of a sign I read on a fellow employee's desk when I worked at USAA. It read:
I may not be right, but don't make me be wrong.
Think about that one before making a public issue of someone else's honest error.
Robert"
2. May 2, 20007
"In spite of the forums being joined, sometimes I have to take off my ISG hat and put on my YourGemologist.com hat. Today, I am wearing my YourGemologist.com hat in order to deal with a YourGemologist.com issue. Here is that issue:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As some have noticed, I took down yesterday’s thread on Mindat.org in an effort to end this foolishness that Joylon and his hoard started. But it seems that they take too much glee in fighting with other websites, as has been demonstrated to me by others who have suffered the ire of this group. So Joylon refused my offer at a peaceful end to this.
Based on what I have gleaned from this, Mindat.org is full of a bunch of old farts who have not been out on a date in far too long, and a bunch of wannabees who can do nothing more than stand behind the old farts and say: “Yeah, what he said. Yeah, what he said”.
The tough part of this is that this group is known for their lynching of other websites for even the most miniscule of an error in their content, and all the while Mindat.org is sitting on a plethora of glaring errors that they don’t want to talk about. Apparently in some effort to keep the light shining on other’s errors so no one will see their own.
The interesting thing about all of this is that the ISG and YourGemologist.com get along well with just about every other forums board on the internet.
The Jewelers Circular/Keystone professional jeweler’s forum (JCKMarketplace) actually provides the ISG with a free banner ad in trade for my visiting their forums and posting up information from the ISG and YourGemologist.
Polygon, the jewelry industry’s largest trading forums, considers the ISG to be one of the top schools in the US, and comes to us for professional assistance with gemological issues and consultation for their 3,000+ retail and wholesale jeweler members.
DiamondTalk and the ISG have been friends for years. We have maintained good relations with Gilbert and the group for a long time, and maintain a mutual relationship that has benefited both.
The list goes on and on.
And then there is Mindat.org. A group with a reputation for flaming other websites in a group crucifixion, while being guilty themselves of what they go out and accuse others of doing.
I have tried to take the high road with these people, as have some other ISG students. And at every step our efforts were responded with cheap shots, back stabbing, and nastiness. And I am tired of it.
This group at Mindat.org is simply full of wannabees and has-beens. And the only way they have to keep each other’s egos built up is to tear down other people. All I can say about this bunch is that half of them need to do something other than mop floors at the local convenience store before trying to post up as if they are experts. And the other half need to go out and get themselves laid.
The former has been doing it far too long. The latter has obviously not done so in many, many years.
Enough said on this one.
Robert"
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