How to use Miningpedia

Instructions

by Jason Hommel, Sept 25, 2007

Miningpedia is an encyclopedia of mining stocks.

As of September, 2007, there are 693 company records in miningpedia.

Displaying: You can select the number of company records to display at once. Display fewer records from the menu to speed up page load times.

Display / Default buttons: Select a field, for example "Currency", then click "Display" to add the selected field to the main list of company records. For example, adding "Currency" to the main list enables you to see the primary currencies that each company's stock is traded in, which is usually in Canadian, or US dollars. Miningpedia will save your changes. Alternatively, you may click the "View" button on the far left, next to the company record, to view all the fields for company that are not displayed on the main page. Click "Default" to return to Miningpedia's default settings.

Search: You can search by company name, symbol, or primary, secondary or third most commodity. To search, enter your search term in the box, and then click the search button, don't hit "return" or "enter" on your keypad. In the search results, at the top left, a link is provided so you can link to your search results. To get back to viewing all miningpedia records, delete all text in the search bar, and click the "search" button again.

Sort Feature: The default sort settings show the companies sorted and ranked. To change the sort, click on the sort arrow. Each time you click, the sort rotates through three options; down sort, up sort, off sort. If all sorts are off, then the "Default" sort is used.

To create a secondary sort, hold down the shift key when clicking on the next sort button, which will become the secondary sort.

Editing & Viewing Data:

Anyone can enter data (and check it, or revert it, to keep it accurate) like wikipedia. Just click on the button marked "Signup or Login" button at the top left. First, signup. Then login!

How to enter a new company record: Before entering any data, make sure you understand what each field means and how it is used. Click the field names to read the definition and help for the field. For example, when you click "Warrants", you will read that both options and warrants must be included in the value. Or if you click "Production Leverage", you will read that "Warrants Cash" and "Cost To Feasibility" are important factors in the equation used.

First: Check to see if we already have a record on the company. Enter the Company Name or Yahoo Symbol in the search box and press "Search". If you find the company, simply edit it. If not, then enter a new record by clicking on the "Add Company" button on the top left.

The ticker symbol must work at Yahoo! Finance. Please enter it in all caps like this: CZN.TO. (Remember to include the symbol's extension, such as ".OB". If there is more than one symbol, use the most liquid exchange as the primary symbol.

Make sure you then select the proper currency in the currency field, for example, Canadian for a Canadian exchange, etc. Pink sheet symbols, ending in ".PK" and OTC symbols, ending in ".OB" are traded in U.S. Dollars.

Use the browser Firefox at firefox.com. Firefox will allow you to view the headers at the top of the table, and yet still scroll the data underneath. Internet Explorer 6 does not yet support the new web standard that allows the feature to fix the headers in place.

Documentation and validity of data (citing sources).

There are three levels of data for each company. The first level is on the main page. The second level is if you Edit or View the data record for the company. Third, while editing the data, you can see a history of all prior edits, and you can view the source of the data.

If you are entering data, please cite the source of your data with a web link. Include the page number, too, so others can more quickly verify your work.

If you are investing, please verify the validity of the data, before you invest. To do this, click the "edit" button next to the company record. Then, click the edit buttons on the various fields. You can see a permanant record of all prior edits. You will also see if some fields are just estimates or wild guesses, such as capex, which can affect the leverage ranking more than the market cap!

Lost password? We cannot recover old passwords as we use one-way encryption which is hacker proof! Just make yourself a new password if you lost it. It's free to signup.

Disclaimers:

Please be aware of all the many limitations of miningpedia. There are many other factors that affect whether mining will be a success that are not factored into the "resource leverage" number, such as national risk, permitting, capital fundraising success, management success, ability to attract mining personel, ability to attract engineers, and access to water, power, roads, rails, and whether the project makes economic sense based on long term trailing average metals prices, which are much lower than "current" metals prices that miningpedia uses.

We will address some of these issues with a planned forward P/E number in future. But no company can be truly represented by a single number. Please keep in mind the big picture.

Always do your own due diligence to check the data, and make your own investment decisions. Companies with leverage to certain minerals may experience a drop in price if the price of the minerals go down.

Miningpedia is still in the "beta" testing stage, and will get better over time. Please be patient in this process. Ask any questions at the forum. To access the forum, sign up to "look at my portfolio".

Thank you.