About LumaLark Wiki
What LumaLark Wiki covers, where its information comes from, who checks it, which community runs it, and how to reach the editors.
What this wiki is
LumaLark Wiki is a reference on bead and gem materials in English and Chinese, run by the LumaLark community. Each material has one page that brings together, with a source for every point, what the material is called by the organisations and standards on record here, what it is, how it is commonly treated, how to look after it and how laboratories test it.
Who it is for
It is written for shoppers who want to understand a seller's description before buying, for sellers who want listing names and treatment notes that match the standards, and for people in the trade who compare how different organisations name and describe the same material.
What an entry page contains
Every entry page is built from the same parts, although not every entry has every part yet.
- Names: the name each naming organisation has on record on this site, names in other languages, national and regional formal names, and any qualifier the name must carry. Where an organisation has no position on record, the entry's own English name is shown and labelled: that is not on record here, not a statement by that body.
- Definitions from standards: the clause that defines the material, quoted or paraphrased with its clause number.
- Material facts: properties such as hardness, refractive index and cause of colour, each with its source, its place in that source and the date it was checked.
- Treatments: the treatments the standards list for the material and how each must be disclosed, with a separate page for each treatment process.
- Care and testing: care advice and, where the CIBJO laboratory protocol covers the material, which tests a laboratory runs and how its report words the result.
- Questions people ask: chosen from what people ask in the LumaLark community, with public online discussions as a further source, and answered only from facts already registered for that entry (on some entries so far).
- Material research: how the material forms, what causes its colour, how it is identified and how people have used it, with an evidence grade for every finding, and museum objects where they are recorded.
- Animations and diagrams: formation animations on some entries and treatment-process animations on the treatment pages; all of them are schematic and not to scale.
- Cultural records: where a material appears in a documented custom, the record is linked with its community, period and source.
Where the information comes from
From published standards, trade rules, laboratory guidance, regulations, peer-reviewed journals, institutional encyclopedias and museum records. Every source is registered, and an archived copy of each is kept so that every statement can be checked against the text it cites. Anything this site has tested or measured itself is marked as the site's own testing and labelled separately from sourced facts. The methodology page lists the source types and explains the evidence grades and checks.
Who is responsible
The LumaLark Wiki editorial team is responsible for everything published in the wiki. Each material entry has a named facts editor and a reviewer, divided by the first letter of the entry's English name: the editor matches every fact to the source it cites and records where in the source it appears and when it was checked, and the reviewer checks it again against the archived source. Everything published has been checked by hand this way; anything not yet checked is marked as pending.
Maintainers
Ralph
PhD, China University of Geosciences. Runs community operations at LumaLark. Corrections and questions that readers raise on the forum are collected by Ralph, checked against the source documents and worked into the entries concerned.
On this wiki: facts editor for entries A–K; reviewer for entries L–Z.
June
PhD, China University of Mining and Technology. Leads designer recruitment and online events at LumaLark. Material-naming questions that come up in designer collaborations and online events are brought back to this wiki by June, checked against the source documents and added to the entries concerned.
On this wiki: facts editor for entries L–Z; reviewer for entries A–K.
Who runs the wiki
The wiki is run by the LumaLark community and sits on the LumaLark website next to the LumaLark forum, where readers can ask about a material or discuss an entry. The LumaLark website also has a jewellery shop, so the entries are written under the editorial policy, which sets out how they are kept neutral towards the materials sold there.
What it cannot do
- It cannot tell you whether a particular piece is natural, where it came from or whether it has been treated; only a report from a gem testing laboratory can.
- It does not value materials or individual pieces, and does not rank sellers or laboratories.
- It makes no health or healing claims. There is no scientific evidence that gem materials have healing powers, and entries say so where the question comes up.
Contact
Corrections and questions
Please include the page address and, if you can, the standard or source you are relying on. Each report is checked against the source before a page is changed.