[Rockhounds] "list where the knowledge of many is shared freely"

[Mr EMan]

Earn it? Maybe, but the unrestricted Internet is a too broad and too
uncontrolled medium to share such hard earned knowledge upon.  The life
expectancy of a collecting site is under a month when published on the
Internet owing to predation by unscrupulous, Obsessive-Compulsive
collectors with no moral reservations about entry into closed areas,
and those who think getting permission is only for others.  The result
is the site is closed to all.  So it is a bit futile in the first place
to share the info.

I can think of 3 sites that were closed for a long time owing that
someone "snuck" in and used dynamite to loosen up the overburden--Yah
Right!  Hummm...Wasn't there a report of one such person who trespassed
into a quarry over a weekend to be found by the owners Monday morning.
Seems he tried to drop a wall and succeeded in dropping the whole ledge
the road was on.  He might have made it out but Mr Brilliant parked on
the far side of his blasting experiment. I wonder if they gave him his
truck back or if it is still there on the ledge as a testament to
stupidity.

As to the question at hand, I think it is more prudent to share person
to person when one has had a chance to assess if the "sharee" is the
type of person you would hunt with or give the keys to your car to.  If
not, then be vague or inform them that it is by invitation only and
invites are impossible to come by.

ON THE OTHER HAND--I believe there should be a depository for site
descriptions as much of mineral and fossil sites are the foundation for
shopping malls and subdivisions. Three of the prolific fossil sites I
was working last year are now gone.

Eman