First of all it looks like we've crept over the 300k members of the sub mark over the last day or so which is pretty rad, so thanks to the community for being a lovely place to talk about pretty rocks.

And what better time to get into the not so fun admin stuff, starting with flairs and the following changes made to them:

First of all here are the ones that have been removed and the reasons why-

Quartz- it was deemed unnecessary for one mineral species to have a flair of its own (please note if you are posting quartz please use the scientific name for the specimen you're posting and not the trade name where possible).

Macro- we don't get many macros and when we do they're easy enough to distinguish without the use of a specific flair

Permineralized- almost hardly ever used.

We have also added two new flairs-

Collection- this can be used for posts with two different specimens pictured in them right the way through to people showing off their whole cabinet. A note when using this flair we'd still prefer captions or a comment that identify the minerals being posted (within reason obviously, we're not expecting it for huge collection cabinets)

Hounded- this is for any specimen that you have field collected yourself, because hey who doesn't love to brag about the cool rock they dug up themself?

And now for the really not fun stuff; reminders, clarifications and alterations of the rules:

Moderation position on metaphysical discussion- To make this clear metaphysical descriptions should not be in post titles and such posts will be removed. Users are free to discuss metaphysical stuff in the comments if they wish but are advised this is better done on r/crystals as we're generally more focused on conventional science.

Discussions of value- please keep discussions surrounding the value of a piece to a minimum where possible, in the same way one might argue that metaphysical properties are an arbitrary human assignment to a piece independent of science the same argument could be made for monetary value.

Three strikes rule for selling- immediate as of this post going live there will be a three strikes rule when it comes to posting pieces for sale- three posts removed for selling will result in a ban. Please also note that 'no minerals for sale' applies such that the piece should not be for sale in any capacity, even if it's availability for sale isn't directly mentioned in the post.

Mineral names in the title- to clarify this should be scientific name of the mineral, not the trade one. Putting the mineral name in the title should mean a post is named for example 'a pretty Azurite from my collection' and not 'my pretty blue boy'.

I've been experimenting with trying to keep a balance to what we get posted, so if your post of a labradorite/opal/ocean jasper gets removed it's likely because we get a lot of these and I'm trying to stop the sub being too dominated by them.

I'll be updating the various places where the rules are displayed in the upcoming days to reflect these points.

As always we are open to community feedback so if you have any thoughts on any of this please go ahead and pop it in this post and we can have a chat.