[meteorite-list] Social media might destroy meteorite collecting and selling!

From: Peter Davidson <P.Davidson_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2015 11:43:45 +0000
Message-ID: <576F2B74A34E584AA173B40D1A8914C336CE4303_at_NMSMAIL01.nms2k.int>

Shawn

I agree with you to a very large extent. The number of "fakes" and "meteorwrongs" appearing online, and through public enquiries to the museum, does seem to be increasing. In the last couple of weeks I have seen, or dealt with about half a dozen of them. Whether or not this can be blamed on social media I don't know. Yes, it does spread awareness of meteorites and increases their visibility. If the result of that is someone contacting me at the museum with an enquiry, then I am more than happy to deal with that in a courteous, open, honest and professional way. My concern is that, having given a negative answer (and they almost without question are) to an enquiry about a possible meteorite, I (or any curator/collector) become the subject of a vicious trolling campaign and find that our professional (and sometime personal) reputation is brought into question for no other reason than we gave the "wrong" answer.

Social media is a powerful tool. I would say that it is mostly benign, even trivial, in the overwhelming number of cases. But just occasionally things do get out of hand.

Cheers

Peter Davidson
Senior Curator of Mineralogy

Natural Sciences Department
National Museums Collection Centre
242 West Granton Road
Edinburgh
EH5 1JA
TEL: 0131 247 4283
E-mail: p.davidson at nms.ac.uk


-----Original Message-----
From: Meteorite-list [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of Shawn Alan via Meteorite-list
Sent: 05 July 2015 20:42
To: Meteorite Central
Subject: [meteorite-list] Social media might destroy meteorite collecting and selling!

Hello Listers

I have noticed an explosion of people insisting they have found a meteorite popping up everywhere on FB. And now ebay is having an influx of fakes being offered on there. Couple years ago it wasnt that often you would see fakes on there, but now its a common theme. I mean people think that its a common occurrence with finding a meteorite, and now they come infused with gold. What should we do? Today I saw 5 fake meteorites being sold on ebay within a couple minutes when I do my ebay search to see whats been posted recently to ebay, that's kinda scary and some of them have bids. I noticed that the more meteorite groups that keep popping up on FB the more people think they have a meteorite and insist its real. These social media groups are fragmenting the core group of meteorites collectors, sellers, and dealers. Couple years ago MC was buzzing, but now its quite on here. Also on FB people are lazy and just hit like LOL and say nothing cause they have to read the next post and like that. Don't get me wrong I d
ig FB but I think we need to rethink these social media outlets and start chatting more on MC. :)

Shawn Alan
IMCA 1633
ebay store http://www.ebay.com/sch/imca1633ny/m.html
Website http://meteoritefalls.com

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Received on Mon 06 Jul 2015 07:43:45 AM PDT