Before you subscribe, some detail you might be interested in:

Privacy

If you are concerned about Internet-privacy and/or staying anonymous, please don't subscribe! The principal idea of an open Network is to interchange information and to be public. It is therefore considered part of networking, that your email address and your personal profile as an expert in mercury related issues will be published at this Web Site in order to enable other people interested in your work or in your findings to contact you.

The only data which will be held private is your password, which will later on enable you to update your published personal information and to upload articles if you wish to do so.

Any data except username, password and email-address may be modified and updated online, whenever required. All your information will be deleted if you decide that you wish to leave the Mercury Network. You may do so at any moment by online-unsubscribing on the "Edit Directory Entry"-Page.

The Mailing List Server for tecnical reasons is outside hosted on Topica.com. About Topica's privacy policy see Topica Privacy

How subscribing works

If you decide to subscribe, you will be presented a form asking for relevant information. Input data for ALL fields is required (except the Homepage URL as only some members may have a Webpage of their own).

When you press "Signup" on the next page, the following will happen:

1. Your data will be included in the Hg-net Database.
2. A personal directory called http://www.hruschka.com/hg-net/members/username (enter to see an example) with a WebPage-file named "index.htm", containing your personal profile will be created in this directory.
3.You will be sent an email, confirming your subscription
4. An email will be sent to www.topica.com in order to register you with the Hg-net Mailing List Server - which is the main communication instrument between the Network-Members. I have chosen Topica, because they promised to send no comercial advertising messages. (You will be inicially included in their News-List, but you can easily unsubscribe this list)
5. The Topica Mailing List Server will send you an email asking for confirmation of your subscription (See example). You HAVE TO reply in order to be signed up with the Mailing List Server, to receive messages and to be able to send messages using the Mailing List Server !

As soon as your data are stored in the Hg-net database, they will show up at the public members listing. (Depending on your browser settings and proxy servers used by your Internet Service Provider you may eventually have to press the "Reload" button of your browser)

Advantages of being a Network Member

As a Mercury Network member you identify yourself as a resource person for mercury -, small-scale-mining -, environment -, and development - related issues. You may be contacted by anybody who requires your expertise or the services you provide.

As a Mercury Network Member you participate in the Mercury Network Mailing List. You will receive the messages from other members, you may send messages to other members and you may read the hg-net-list messages-archive at Topica (which is accesible for members of "hg-net-list" only; See www.topica.com for details).

As a Mercury Network Member you may (using your username and password) update your personal profile online.

As a Mercury Network Member you own a directory, and you may (using your username and password) easily publish, modify and delete articles, reports, images and data you consider of public interest (please be on topic!). Well, getting "free Webspace" is not a great deal today, you can get many free Megabytes at Yahoo, Geocities, Tripod and dozens of other Websites.
But there is one big DIFFERENCE: All these free sites require you to learn some HTML to generate a Website. This is not the case with documents published at the "hg-net/members" site. Every time you upload, modify or delete a file, the index-page is automatically updated, showing all available files. So, you may upload files in "html" creating your own Website, but also files in Word, WordPerfect, Excel, Zip ... (whatever you want, except executable programs) and all files will be automatically linked to the index page. The only disadvantage (for advanced Internet authors) is, that you can't modify the Index-page.
For the moment, the available space for each member is limited by default with 1 MB. If you require more space, please contact the Hg-net Administrator felix@hruschka.com.

More features might be implemented in the future.

Subscribe

If you have additional questions please don't hesitate to contact the Hg-net Administrator (see email above). If you are interested in participating actively in the Mercury Network, then please continue.

PS: (This does not apply to the normal, well intentioned Visitor of this page) - Please do not abuse the Hg-net for inappropriate internet practices or offending content! If you plan to do so, think it twice - the administrator-privileges on this server might enable me to track you by your IP address! I hope this will never be necessary.