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Medicine 2.0: Social Media, Open, Participatory, Collaborative Medicine (1228)
Published on 3.12.2014 in Vol 16 , No 12 (2014) :December
Motivations for Contributing to Health-Related Articles on Wikipedia: An Interview Study
Nuša Farič 1 ; Henry WW Potts 1
Nuša Farič*, BSc(Psych)(Hons), MSc ;
Henry WW Potts*, BA (Hons), MSc, PhD, Pg Cert
UCL, Centre for Health Informatics & Multiprofessional Education (CHIME), University College London, London, United Kingdom
Nuša Farič, BSc(Psych)(Hons), MSc
Centre for Health Informatics & Multiprofessional Education (CHIME)
The Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research
222 Euston Road
London, NW1 2DA
Phone: 44 (0)20 3549
Fax:44 7679 8002
Email: nfaric@gmail.com
Background: Wikipedia is one of the most accessed sources of health information online. The current English-language Wikipedia contains more than 28,000 articles pertaining to health.
Objective: The aim was to characterize individuals' motivations for contributing to health content on the English-language Wikipedia.
Methods: A set of health-related articles were randomly selected and recent contributors invited to complete an online questionnaire and follow-up interview (by Skype, by email, or face-to-face). Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis and a realist grounded theory approach.
Results: A total of 32 Wikipedians (31 men) completed the questionnaire and 17 were interviewed. Those completing the questionnaire had a mean age of 39 (range 12-59) years; 16 had a postgraduate qualification, 10 had or were currently studying for an undergraduate qualification, 3 had no more than secondary education, and 3 were still in secondary education. In all, 15 were currently working in a health-related field (primarily clinicians). The median period for which they have been an active editing Wikipedia was 3-5 years. Of this group, 12 were in the United States, 6 were in the United Kingdom, 4 were in Canada, and the remainder from another 8 countries. Two-thirds spoke more than 1 language and 90% (29/32) were also active contributors in domains other than health. Wikipedians in this study were identified as health professionals, professionals with specific health interests, students, and individuals with health problems. Based on the interviews, their motivations for editing health-related content were summarized in 5 strongly interrelated categories: education (learning about subjects by editing articles), help (wanting to improve and maintain Wikipedia), responsibility (responsibility, often a professional responsibility, to provide good quality health information to readers), fulfillment (editing Wikipedia as a fun, relaxing, engaging, and rewarding activity), and positive attitude to Wikipedia (belief in the value of Wikipedia). An additional factor, hostility (from other contributors), was identified that negatively affected Wikipedians' motivations.
Conclusions: Contributions to Wikipedia's health-related content in this study were made by both health specialists and laypeople of varying editorial skills. Their motivations for contributing stem from an inherent drive based on values, standards, and beliefs. It became apparent that the community who most actively monitor and edit health-related articles is very small. Although some contributors correspond to a model of "knowledge philanthropists," others were focused on maintaining articles (improving spelling and grammar, organization, and handling vandalism). There is a need for more people to be involved in Wikipedia's health-related content.
J Med Internet Res 2014;16(12):e260
motivation; writing; social media; wikis; Wikipedia; consumer health information
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia created through the collaborative efforts of volunteers. As an open wiki, anyone can freely add to, modify, or delete its contents. It has become a major source of health-related information for health care professionals, students, patients, and the general public.
Wikipedia is the largest online encyclopedia with more than 26 million articles in 287 different languages and more than 4 million in the English-language Wikipedia [1]. It currently ranks as the sixth most-visited site on the Internet [2], attracting over 365 million unique visitors monthly or 29.5% of global Internet consumers [3,4]. Seeking health information online is now commonplace and widespread globally [5-11]. As of March 2013, the English-language Wikipedia contained more than 28,216 medical articles [12] and is a prominent repository of online health information. When health terms are searched in popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo, Wikipedia appears in the top 10 results 71%-85% of the time [13]. Wikipedia's global popularity as an online health resource has also been observed among physicians, with 70% reporting using it in 1 study [14].
Wikipedia has attracted controversy around the reliability of its entries [15]. A comparison of science-related topics with Encyclopaedia Britannica indicated a comparable error rate [16]. Czarnecka-Kujawa and colleagues [17] found Wikipedia's medical specialty entries were comprehensive (compared with ICD-9/10) and had moderate reliability. The risks associated with misinformation have raised the standards of control on Wikipedia where there are numerous policies, guidelines, and collaborative systems in place to ensure the quality of information [18]. The focus of these has been on biographical articles where there is a threat of libel litigation rather than on health-related articles, but there are many specific guidelines on medical topics. Although the reliability of Wikipedia is of great importance, it is not the primary field of enquiry for this study. We suggest that the debate around the reliability of information is too simple. Equally accurate articles can have different focuses, different styles of writing, and so on, all which may affect how useful articles are for different audiences and how different audiences use articles. The content of Wikipedia articles ultimately depends on those who contribute to Wikipedia (Wikipedians) and their reasons for doing so, and this is our focus.
There are 18 million registered accounts on Wikipedia. Several studies have examined the characteristics of Wikipedians: they are more familiar with the topics they edit than average Internet users [19] and more often male [20-22]. A 2011 Wikimedia survey of more than 5000 Wikipedians found an average age of 28 years, with 61% having a university degree, 18% a Master's, and 8% a Doctoral degree. Previous studies examined culturally bound differences in Wikipedia contribution [23] and found Wikipedians score significantly lower on agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness in the Big Five personality traits compared to non-Wikipedians [24]. However, characteristics of those specifically editing health-related pages have not been described.
A number of studies have examined knowledge-sharing intention and behavior [25-27]. Knowledge-sharing behavior has traditionally been studied in an organizational context; recently its principles have been applied to electronic networks [28]. This study assumed that contribution to Wikipedia can be classified as knowledge-sharing behavior because individuals largely engage by contributing what they know to specific pages.
Research on knowledge-sharing behavior has revealed 2 classes of motivations. These are intrinsic motivations, such as internal feeling of enjoyment and satisfaction [29], and extrinsic or goal-directed motivations, such as obtaining a reward and reputation [30]. The expectation of either obtaining the internal gratification or extrinsic returns may motivate individuals. However, Wikipedia poses a departure from conventional modes of knowledge-sharing behavior. Wikipedia is the prime example of a "commons-based peer production" model [31,32]. Wikipedians do not receive monetary or formal awards for their voluntary contributions and their unconventional modes of engagement have received scholarly attention [33,34]. Therefore, conventional motivational theory may be circumscribed in the context of Wikipedia and it is individual personality differences that affect how the information is produced and used. For example, Kuznetsov [35] found that Wikipedians are motivated by a process of interrelated value systems, such as altruism, reciprocity, community, autonomy, and reputation. It would be reasonable to surmise that in Wikipedia the exchange of knowledge is not based on interpersonal relationships (ie, intrinsic, extrinsic gains), but on the relative merit and importance one assigns to the context in which knowledge is shared [20,30,35].
Recognizing the limitations of conventional motivational theory, Leonard et al [36] proposed a model of self-concept motivations: the individuals are motivated to perform a behavior based on their inherent standards (internal self-concept) or standards that are in accordance with a reference group (external self-concept). The individual's motivations stems either from meeting a set of perceptions of the self (ie, of their own values and competencies) or the perceptions of the ideal-self (ie, of values, competencies, and success of the reference group). Applying this to Wikipedia, Yang and Lai [20,30] observed that internal self-concept-based motivation is the chief motivation predictor in knowledge-sharing intention and behavior. Individuals were most likely to share knowledge in Wikipedia due to the confidence in their capabilities, affirmed by the concept of self-efficacy. Studies on organizational knowledge sharing have shown that self-efficacy is the crucial predictor of knowledge-sharing intention and behavior [25,37]. Yang and Lai [30] also revealed that the quality of the information and the quality of the information system yielded a positive attitude toward Wikipedia. Prior research of individual behavior has demonstrated that individual attitudes are good predictors of behavior and have been found to be crucial in knowledge-sharing intention and behavior [21,26,27,35,38].
These prior studies suggest the motivations behind Wikipedia contributions, highlighting that motivated behavior rarely pertains to a single motivation [39]. Considering the lack of data on motivations of Wikipedia contributors, a growing number of health-related queries online and Wikipedia's status as a prominent resource for health information, it is important to answer the question of who contributes to the health-related Wikipedia pages and why.
We employed a cross-sectional design. The study was conducted between May to September 2012. The recruited sample were Wikipedia users with an editing history in health-related entries in the English-language Wikipedia. The first part of the study used a questionnaire, whereas the second part used semi-structured interviews.
The study was approved by the University College London (UCL) Ethics Committee and the Wikimedia Foundation Research Committee.
Article Sampling
To sample contributors of health-related articles, we first generated a sample of health-related articles on Wikipedia. It is difficult to sample from all health-related articles on Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles are sorted into categories, but this task is done in the same way as all Wikipedia editing and is incomplete. Articles vary in size, importance, and how often they are accessed. Defining what constitutes being health-related is also difficult, with many marginal cases.
An earlier study on Wikipedia extracted health-related keywords from 3 indexes of the online health service websites, namely MedlinePlus, National Health Service (NHS) Direct Online, and the National Organization of Rare Disorders (NORD), the last to oversample rarer conditions [12]. Their lists of keyword phrases consisted of 1726 items for MedlinePlus, 966 items for NHS Direct Online, and 1173 items for NORD. We randomly selected 11 keyword phrases from each of these lists. These were entered into the search box on Wikipedia and the best matching article chosen. In addition, the study used articles listed under the category of Selected Articles on the Wikipedia Portal Medicine [40], constituting a set of articles the Wikipedia community have chosen to highlight as being of high quality and interesting. The 11 most recently edited articles were chosen from the selected article list from between July 11-25, 2012. The final sampled articles list is shown in Table 1.
Having produced a sample of articles, a sample of contributors was produced by selecting the most recent 5 contributors for each article listed under the "history" tab.
Table 1. The sampled articles list for each of the medical databases and Wikipedia Portal Medicine. For the first 3 columns, the first term is the keyword phrase selection, whereas the bracketed term refers to the Wikipedia article name if it was not the same.
MedlinePlus NHS Direct NORD Wikipedia Portal Medicine
Barrett's esophagus Contact dermatitis Very long chain acyl CoA dehydrogenase deficiency (very long-chain acyl-coenzyme A dehydrogenase deficiency) Asthma
Menopausal hormone therapy (hormone replacement therapy (menopause)) Oral thrush (oral candidiasis) Fiber type disproportion (congenital fiber type disproportion) Insulin
Living wills (advance health-care directive) Epidermolysis bullosa Congenital fibrodysplasia ossificans progressive (fibrodsysplasia ossificans progressiva) Helicobacter pylori
AMD (muscular degeneration) Indigestion Pancreatic islet cell tumor (pancreatic cancer) Forensic facial reconstruction
Methamphetamine Artificial insemination Dubin Johnson Syndrome Metabolism
Osteonecrosis (avascular necrosis) Rectal examination L1 syndrome (MASA syndrome) Influenza
ERT (hormone replacement therapy) Rheumatic fever Leukodystrophy, metachromatic (metachromatic leukodystrophy) Sexually transmitted disease
Staphylococcal infections (Staphylococcus) Vitiligo Cerebral palsy Female hysteria
Arthrography Nasal polyps (nasal polyp) Irritable bowel syndrome Vacutainer
Arm injuries and disorders (median nerve palsy) Bulimia Mesothelioma Nutrition
Implantable defibrillators (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) Psychotherapy Cataracts (cataract) 2007 Bernard Mathews H5N1 outbreak
Figure 1. The motivational model.
Wikipedia users may register and create an account or they may edit articles without registering (or without logging into their registered account), in which case their edits are shown as coming from an Internet Protocol (IP) address. We included both registered (account) and nonregistered (IP address) contributors. Bots (automated or semiautomated software tools) were excluded. Every account and every editing IP address has or can have a Talk page, where a standardized invitation message was placed. NF set up a Wikipedia account for the purposes of recruitment [41].
A total of 44 articles were selected, which could have yielded up to 220 contributors to contact. In practice, many individuals came up more than once in the sampling frame, in which case, accounts not previously contacted were chosen until 220 different accounts were contacted.
The invitation message included brief information about the purpose of the study and the selected members were asked to follow a link that took them to NF's Wikimedia Commons page [41] containing instructions for participation and information about the study. The instructions asked participants to complete a Web-based questionnaire by clicking on the provided hyperlink. This was run through UCL's Opinio system [42].
A 16-item questionnaire included questions referring to participants' characteristics, such as age, country of residence, employment, education, and Wikipedia editing history (including types of edits, editing in other languages, and number of health-related pages edited). The survey also included the question "What are your main motivations for editing health-related pages on Wikipedia?" with a free-text response. The penultimate item asked participants whether they would be willing to be interviewed and the final item asked for contact details (Wikipedia username or email address). A total of 32 complete survey responses were received (response rate 14.5%). Of these, 91% (29/32) agreed to be interviewed.
All participants were registered Wikipedians who had previously edited at least 1 health-related page on the English-language Wikipedia. A total of 32 Wikipedians (31 male and 1 female) volunteered to participate and completed the questionnaire. Due to time constraints, only 17 participants were interviewed through Skype, via email, or in person at UCL (in London). The reason for a much smaller proportion of participants interviewed than indicated is that they did not respond when contacted to be interviewed. All interviewees returned a signed and dated copy of the informed consent form. The age of the questionnaire respondents ranged from 12 to 59 years with a mean of 37 (SD 13) years. The mean age of the interview sample was 40 years.
Two different semi-structured interview formats were used, but using the same interview schedule, developed around topics exploring participants' personal characteristics and individual motivations around editing Wikipedia. The questions were open-ended and were presented in the same order in both interview settings. The interview guides were developed by eliciting information around the topic of interest (ie, experience and motivations for editing) [43]. The interviews followed a general-to-specific approach and interviews were piloted before full use and slight amendments made following a reflexivity exercise [44].
The first interview schedule consisted of 25 questions that participants were asked to answer in a written format and return the completed answers to the researcher via email. The second schedule allowed participants to respond to the questions directly either face-to-face or via Skype. Responses were recorded with a digital voice recorder. Both schedules incorporated questions (described subsequently). In most cases, the interview answers prompted issues requiring further exploration, which was done in an unstructured manner. If a participant responded by email, additional questions were sent via email. Face-to-face and Skype interviews lasted 30-120 minutes. Written responses contained from 969 to 3475 words. The list of questions used in the interview were:
What do you do and what are your specific interests?
What propelled you to start editing Wikipedia health-related pages?
Why did you edit the specific health-related page(s)?
Are your interests related to your Wikipedia edits?
Why do you edit with an account vs nonaccount?
What type of vandalism do you revert and why?
Do you have a particular group of readers in mind when you are editing health-related Wikipedia pages?
What are your main motivations for editing health-related content on Wikipedia?
Please talk about your reasons for editing health-related Wikipedia pages and comment on whether the reasons are entirely personal or driven by any external factors (such as a group of people, organization, or a particular individual)?
Are there any factors you can think of that would impact your motivations for editing health-related content on Wikipedia?
Some people say that one of their main motivations is to promote collaboration between patients, carers, and medical professionals. Is this the case for you?
What are your views on the quality of the health-related content on Wikipedia?
A free-text section of the questionnaire was included and analyzed with the interview content. All interviews were transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were analyzed according to grounded theory realist analysis [44,45]. Grounded theory is a well-documented method to explore a concept within a specific context.
Transcripts were systematically coded line-by-line by NF until initial descriptive labels of motivations emerged. These labels were clustered to form a set of concepts that informed the coding paradigm. The new emerging codes were constantly checked retrospectively and prospectively against the higher order categories through constant comparative method [45,46]. NF's reflections were noted as memos, which also included instances of negative cases [44]. A sample (6/32) of interviews were independently coded by HP and 2 other health psychology researchers and no disagreements were noted.
Almost half of the participants (47%, 15/32) reported currently working in a health-related field, generally as physicians. Of these, 6% (2/32) indicated that their edits were exclusively health-related. The rest of the health-related employment fields covered lung cancer research, health education, health psychology research, regulatory affairs, medical literature, chemistry research, pharmaceutical industry, and health-related advertising. Participants who indicated they were not currently employed in a health-related field (53%, 17/32) did not usually list their professions, but those who were interviewed worked in fields such as engineering, theology, literature, and a couple of participants were students (Table 2).
The reported edits for health-related pages ranged from 1 to more than 50,000. Edit counts do not necessarily reflect the types of edits performed. Of the sample, editorial activities were reported as 16% (5/32) performing primarily major edits, such as adding content and providing quality references, whereas 28% (9/32) reported performing primarily minor edits described as "maintenance issues" that included reverting vandalism, correcting errors, paragraphing, grammar and style, linking articles, checking sources, and simplifying prose. In all, 56% (18/32) reported performing both types of edits. The edit category was self-selected on a demographics questionnaire by respondents and further details provided in the free-comment section.
Country of residence included the United States (n=12), United Kingdom (n=6), Canada (n=4), Australia (n=2), and 1 each in Sweden, The Netherlands, France, Austria, Malaysia, South Africa, and Columbia.
A substantial proportion reported speaking more than 1 language (66%, 21/32), which included French (n=11), Spanish (n=6), German (n=4), Dutch (n=2), Swedish (n=2), and 1 participant each for Chinese, Italian, Afrikaans, Malay, and Bengali. Of the multilingual sample, 25% (8/32) also reported editing Wikipedia pages in these languages.
Approximately 90% (29/32) of Wikipedians were also active contributors in domains other than health, which included both very specific and general descriptors related to topics such as religion, languages, literature, history, sport, politics, architecture, engineering, pop culture, geology and mythology.
Emergent Categories
People contribute to Wikipedia in different capacities and for various different reasons. The method of realist grounded theory allowed for the emergence of an explanatory theoretical framework. Three interlinked themes that arose from the data were identified and labeled as "help," "education," and "responsibility." Each of these comprised a set of subcategories, shown in Figure 1. In addition, 2 further categories namely "personal fulfillment" and "attitude toward Wikipedia" had a significant motivating quality and were included in the resulting model.
The 3 core motivational systems result in a motivated behavior: contribution to Wikipedia. Contribution, which results in knowledge building or knowledge growth, is also Wikipedia's core mission and concept as "sum of all knowledge."
Table 2. Participant characteristics (N=32).
Variable n (%)
Male 31 (97)
Female 1 (3)
Age (band)
10-20 4 (12)
31-40 11 (34)
Secondary school 3 (9)
Still at school 3 (9)
College/university degree (eg, BSc, BA) 8 (25)
Studying as an undergraduate student 2 (6)
Master's university degree (eg, MA, MSc) 6 (19)
Doctorate/professional degree (eg, PhD, MD) 10 (31)
Yes-full time 20 (62)
Yes-part time 5 (16)
No 6 (19)
Retired 1 (3)
Currently working in a health-related field
No 17 (53)
Yes 15 (47)
Wikipedia editing history
<6 months 1 (3)
<1 year 3 (9)
1-2 years 5 (16)
5-8 years 10 (31)
≥8 years 5 (16)
Health-related pages edited
<10 5 (16)
Approximately 10-20 5 (16)
Approximately 20-30 1 (3)
Approximately 50-100 5 (16)
>100 14 (44)
Types of edits
Mainly minor 9 (28)
Mainly major 5 (16)
Both 18 (56)
Motivation Help
All Wikipedians in the study shared a goal of using their skills in order to improve Wikipedia. This was expressed with phrases such as maintaining, ensuring, providing, building, removing, taking care of, adding, clearing, weeding, simplifying, verifying, sharing, expanding, fixing, and helping. These activities can be understood as encompassing both major and minor edits.
There was an almost unanimous answer to the question about what propelled the participants to begin editing Wikipedia, shown in this example:
I found a mistake and I discovered that I could fix it. That has propelled most of my work on the site since then.
It was observed that the motivation help generally stemmed from a sense of importance and care that is also a characteristic of responsibility. In some cases, caring in turn implied being mindful, not just of the self in relation to Wikipedia, but also the relationships others may have with Wikipedia:
I've always liked the idea of being able to fix something and have many people be able to benefit from my efforts. I noticed that the...article needed attention, and since I knew about it, I thought I'd tackle the job of fixing it up. No one else seemed like they cared, but the article was read 500-600 times per day, and this bothered me.
I will frequently work on 1 page and make hundreds of edits to it until it is brought up to the professional standard. That is where my prime activity is making major edits to significant disease-related articles. So, this last month I made about 500 edits on the article on...updating it to the most recent literature and I am working in collaboration with a group called translators without borders, to translate these key articles to as many other languages possible.
Not all reported having health-related interests. Their editing behavior was expressed accordingly:
I edit mainly to remove vandalism...therefore, I edit whatever comes up in the queue, which may or may not be health related.
Health-related pages in particular are frequently written from a perspective of a physician rather than a layman. They also require more reliable sources. I try to help solve both of these issues.
Help was a pervasive motivation shown through a number of different editing behaviors. For a very small proportion of Wikipedians, motivation help was not implicit, but was expressed instead as activity reflective of their inherent traits of character:
I am a proofreader by vocation. I cannot leave bad grammar go uncorrected.
Motivation Education
The motivation education was the most frequently emerging motivation. The initial decision to come to Wikipedia was reported as "intellectual curiosity," such as a need for information and a need for learning:
I just want to educate myself because I am interested and then share it with people around me.
My edits were sustained by simple interest in topics; I had read a book or article on something and ended up on the Wikipedia page so I'd add a summary or comment about said topic.
In the process of editing a Wikipedia article, the contributors are expected to follow and adhere to Wikipedia's guidelines, such as verifiability [47], neutral point of view (NPOV) [48], and the guidelines on provision of the evidence-based claims [49]. The process of actively looking for reliable sources has been described as educational:
...very quickly when I began editing Wikipedia I learned that I needed to adjust how I write because there is no argument from authority. It's all about the citations and sources that you can cite. So the verifiability of the Wikipedia was actually educational for me because I realized that sometimes I said things for which it was hard to find a reference.
The egalitarian nature of Wikipedia, coupled with the guidelines on provision of the evidence-based claims, makes it expected for everyone to support their contributions with a reliable source, which is inherently an educational activity. The process of acquiring new knowledge leads to a better understanding of a specific topic which can be perceived as a form of personal gain (ie, personal fulfillment, which can also be applied across backgrounds):
I usually start by finding the most recent review articles in the medical literature that discuss this topic. Almost invariably, I learn things about conditions that I had previously been unaware of; I can think of a number of examples where my management of patients with a particular condition has been better because I had worked on the relevant Wikipedia article.
As an online knowledge repository, Wikipedia is also a place for groups of people to exchange information. A number of Wikipedians reported that Wikipedia's international community added to their educational awareness:
Occasionally when I need to look up a rare disease, I'm almost afraid to look at the talk pages because one finds actual patients and their families pleading for help that isn't there yet...however, it's important, in fact, essential reading for the researchers working to find treatments for these conditions.
The motivation education was ubiquitous for Wikipedians in the study and encompassed both teaching and learning, either in the process of reading Wikipedia, updating Wikipedia, or through intellectually challenging debates. The motivation education is cyclical and an inevitable state of the editing process on Wikipedia. In sum:
...the short answer to your question [of main motivation] is hedonistic intellectual enjoyment coupled with a sense of responsibility.
Motivation Responsibility
The motivation responsibility was very closely tied to all other motivations, but the strength of responsibility depended on the attitude toward Wikipedia (ie, beliefs about Wikipedia and beliefs about health care). The goal of many of the contributors in this study was to communicate clearly presented and verifiable information to the world and that applied to the task for both major and minor contributors:
...as a physician, we take the Hippocratic Oath. We try to do the best we can for patients and I consider my patients to be all people globally. And to help all people globally, one way to do that is to provide them access to high quality health care information. So if I can't see them personally in my emergency department, I know that hundreds of millions of them are looking at Wikipedia to help answer their questions.
I wanted to help the potential future readers who will consult those articles before or instead of a doctor. Their health care decisions may depend on the information they find. I'm no doctor, but at least I can make the articles easier to read.
Several contributors recognized Wikipedia's scale of influence as the largest repository of online health information, accessible to the whole world, the successful delivery of health care is of vital importance:
Wikipedia is necessarily a distillation of many facts to the things that are most important and valuable. So participating in that is something I felt almost an obligation...I often have felt that everybody in the world should have access to the information and Wikipedia was one place that everyone could access and I couldn't think of another reference work that would be so useful.
Thus, many Wikipedians reported taking on the responsibility of educating the public. Similarly, they felt responsible to educate their peers, family, friends, students, or colleagues, but were often met with resistance, perhaps something that further strengthened their sense of responsibility:
I want the material to be as accurate as possible so more people will use it. When colleagues denigrate my participation, my response is "If you find something inaccurate on Wikipedia, then you have an obligation to correct it!" I can't imagine how this could be more important than on a health-related page.
Participants also felt responsible ensuring that the information was reliable and that people adhered to Wikipedia's editing guidelines. A number of people expressed concern about whether edits maintained an NPOV when concerning controversial topics. Exposed were also instances of when Wikipedia was used as a platform to promote an idea far beyond acceptance in the scientific community:
For vandalism and tendentious editing, my motivation is to maintain the integrity of Wikipedia. Vandalism irks and annoys me, but tendentious editing tends to infuriate me.
...it makes me worried that instead of verifiability and notability being the driving things, it will be other agendas being pushed and that's disturbing. But I don't think Wikipedia is going away so I edit it. I continue to edit it because I think it must exist, it is important. And I just wish more people would edit it.
Attitude Toward Wikipedia
Participant believed in the importance of building health-related content on Wikipedia:
Wikipedia is a beautiful, noble concept.
The interviewed sample attributed strong positive beliefs to Wikipedia, which was identified as a strong motivating factor:
I use it. I support it. It's a thing worth doing. Wikipedia is a creation of lasting value.
Thus, Wikipedian participants' beliefs and attitudes about Wikipedia were recognized as influencing their motivations and essential for the process of building Wikipedia. Despite the varying degrees of editorial skills and training of the participants, it became apparent that the interrelated motivations, which can be viewed as value systems, resulted in a motivated behavior model (see Figure 1).
Personal Fulfillment
Participants derived varying personal benefits in the process of editing health-related pages. Most proclaimed Wikipedia editing as being a hobby; others described it as fun, relaxing, engaging, and rewarding
I find it therapeutic. Yesterday I ended [up] writing an article rather than doing other things which are at the top of my to-do list.
I felt slightly congratulated...so I think such things could be a positive motivator, seeing your work recognized in some form or description.
Negative Experiences
Dedicated contributors reported engaging in debates or discussions either within their collaborative Wikipedia group (known as Wiki Projects) or over the article's discussion Talk pages, where both the contributors and readers frequently share experiences.
Their experiences varied but a proportion of the sample expressed being met with hostility and that was particularly relevant to controversial topics:
...it actually happened 1 or 2 times that it was quite aggressive and I lost my motivation for dealing with Wikipedia altogether.
A number of interviewees expressed that they were not welcomed to the Wikipedia community despite their genuine intentions to contribute:
I had a bad experience with Wikipedia...but there is a culture associated with it in that the information has to be added in a certain way. So in good faith I added the content, it wasn't appropriate and there's a bit of rudeness on Wikipedia. People were rude to me about what I was trying to do because I did it incompetently. Looking back, I know what I did wrong and I did something inappropriate that was against the community rules but I was discouraged from contributing regularly at that time.
This was also expressed in relation to how Wikipedia accounts are used. There was a divide in opinions about using accounts anonymously. Some emphasized openness because it made it easier for them to trust one another:
When people are hiding behind anonymity, they become a lot less nice. And on Wikipedia we already have a significant issue with civility problems.
However, others expressed that anonymity is necessary to maintain the integrity of Wikipedia:
If I use my authority, then if my edits were wrong they might be accepted because I am in a position of authority, and that would be the opposite of a meritocracy. I think truth is the thing that should trump everything else, which means that authority has no place.
Value System and Intrinsic Motivation
Results were largely congruent with previous studies on Wikipedia in general, with some notable deviations. As in other studies [20-22,50] the vast majority of our participants were male, in full-time employment, and had obtained a university degree. However, we found a higher mean age and a substantially higher proportion of professionals (PhD, MD) compared to general studies of Wikipedians. We found broadly equal proportions of health specialists and laypeople in our sample.
To explain the underlying motivational drives, we found a process of interlinked value systems, compatible with the results of Kuznetsov [35]. There were 3 overarching primary motivation categories common to all contributors. These were expressed as education, which merged with the responsibility for maintaining accuracy (help), which merged with a sense of obligation (responsibility). These 3 overarching categories of motivations can be understood as self-efficacy as in Social Cognitive Theory [51] and support Kankanhalli and colleagues' [25] findings in which self-efficacy was found to be the most important predictor of knowledge-sharing behavior in online repositories. Furthermore, the primary overarching motivations were reported as inherent drives of the self, akin to the internal self-concept motivations proposed by Leonard et al [36]. This implies that Wikipedians are motivated to share knowledge because the process resonates with their internal values and beliefs.
It became apparent that motivated behavior arose not only from one's perception of the self, but also from the underlying beliefs about Wikipedia. Previous studies confirm that the degree of knowledge-sharing behavior significantly relates to individuals' perceptions of the context in which knowledge is shared [21,37]. Models such as the theory of reasoned action, the theory of planned behavior, or the technology acceptance model that are used to explain individual behavior equally recognize that attitude is crucial in knowledge-sharing intention and behavior [26,38,52].
A recent survey of Wikipedians indicated that 69% contribute to Wikipedia because of the ideology and 60% because they think it is fun [22] supporting the notion that positive outcomes are significant predictors of knowledge-sharing behavior [27] and supporting personal fulfillment as last of the emergent categories.
This study recognized that Wikipedians' differing editorial roles that can be understood as different levels in terms of "figure/ground" organization [52]. In other words, the ubiquitous motivation help was recognized as the processes of building and maintaining content expressed through various editorial activities of equal importance. This poses a challenge to the current view of Wikipedia in terms of knowledge sharing because not all Wikipedians engaged in knowledge sharing but instead in maintenance activity.
The aim of this study was to describe the characteristics of Wikipedians who edited health-related pages on Wikipedia and to gain an understanding of what drives them to contribute to Wikipedia's health-related pages. This study was the first qualitative exploration of Wikipedia contributors' motivations, not just in the health context but overall. With the exception of Yang and Lai [21,30], no integrated motivational model has been proposed to explain volunteer contributions in context of Wikipedia. Through the inductive process of grounded theory, no prior theoretical frameworks were "forced" on the data, allowing for the emergence of a realistic depiction of a concept directly from the data. The grounded theory analysis mapped a social process (depicted by Figure 1) of contributing knowledge on Wikipedia driven by individual's interrelated value systems.
The method of grounded theory also revealed an additional finding, hostility, with a possible connection to Wikipedia accounts' anonymity (a divide between the editors whose contributions are anonymous and those who, in part or in full, disclose their identity). Although these findings are suggestive rather than definite, they raise a challenge of whether Wikipedia's philosophy of equality is directly linked to anonymity. Wikipedia is egalitarian, a place where everybody are peers and a place where everyone has an equal right to edit contents. According to our results, a portion of Wikipedians believe that nonanonymous accounts would aid in civility, but also that nonanonymous accounts may create a hierarchy, a structure contradictory to Wikipedia's egalitarian philosophy.
This study also provided new evidence regarding the contributory behavior of Wikipedians: participants engage in contribution by utilizing their skill and not necessarily through knowledge sharing. Recently, a term was coined which describes Wikipedia contributors as "knowledge philanthropists" [53]. Although this term applied to a proportion of participants in this study, it is not applicable to all, particularly those who do not contribute to but instead "maintain" Wikipedia's content. Our broader view serves to recognize that everyone can contribute to Wikipedia without necessarily requiring expert knowledge.
The sample of 44 articles used in the study may not be a representative sample of all health-related articles available on Wikipedia. The articles were randomly sampled from a total of approximately 3000 keywords complied from 3 medical databases and Portal Medicine's Featured Articles. An alternative approach would be to manually compile a list from Wikipedia's Category:Health, but the list would still not include all biomedical and drug-related articles.
Sampling bias may also apply to the recruitment of contributors. Selecting the most recent 5 contributors posed issues because some users appeared in the most recent 5 in more than 1 sampled article. In these instances, the researcher skipped accounts already contacted and contacted the next account down the list. This suggests that the editorial population of health content on Wikipedia is small. Another approach would be to select contributors according to the number of edits performed, although this may prove difficult because the numbers of edits are not necessarily indicative of editor's activity or the type of editorial involvement.
The response rate for the questionnaire was relatively low, for which the reasons may have been the mode and duration of the advertisement of the study. Only 32 participants completed the survey and 17 were interviewed. This is only a sample and does not represent all Wikipedians active on health-related articles. (We note the list of participants in WikiProject Medicine is much larger with 424 members as of August 2014 [54].) We suspect that this is a reflection of recruiting people via their Wikipedia user pages, which means participants had to be active on Wikipedia during the limited study period to see the recruitment message. It is fair to assume that the identified motivations might be sufficiently pervasive to be represented in a small sample of Wikipedians; however, varying levels of editorial skill and knowledge are not likely to be sampled deeply enough to be representative. The sample were recruited in a specific time frame and results may not be applicable over time. There are currently still challenges with increasing participation in contributing to Wikipedia health-related content. Some initiatives are already in place, such as the Translation Task Force and Wiki Project Med Foundation, a Wikipedia education program designed to educate medical students about the process and value of contribution to Wikipedia health pages, as well as also collaborating with a number of organizations including the Cochrane Collaboration, Cancer Research UK, and the National Institute of Health [55].
The success will largely depend on user's satisfaction and recognition of the potential benefit that can be gained from such editorial activities. By understanding Wikipedians' motivations for editing health-related content, we can better recruit more people to the task. Equally important is recognizing the factors that may discourage people and more specifically professionals, from contributing to Wikipedia. Characterizing editing behavior and editors also allows us to understand the processes underlying Wikipedia's health-related content.
The authors would like to thank all the Wikipedians who volunteered to participate in this study, Jenna Spink and Emma Green for double coding, and Benjamin Garner Sood for comments.
None declared. NF is on Wikipedia as Hydra Rain and HP is on as Bondegezou.
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Archambault PM, van de Belt TH, Grajales Iii FJ, Eysenbach G, Aubin K, Gold I, et al. Wikis and collaborative writing applications in health care: a scoping review protocol. JMIR Res Protoc 2012;1(1):e1 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
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IP: Internet Protocol
NHS: National Health Service
NORD: National Organization of Rare Disorders
NPOV: neutral point of view
Edited by G Eysenbach; submitted 18.06.14; peer-reviewed by M Laurent, J Heilman, T van de Belt; comments to author 17.07.14; revised version received 04.08.14; accepted 20.08.14; published 03.12.14
©Nuša Farič, Henry WW Potts. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 03.12.2014.
Farič N, Potts HW


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river quarry and crusher feasibility Mining Technology | Mining News and Views Updated Daily is using cookies. We use them to give you the best experience. If you continue using our website, we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on this website.
river quarry and crusher feasibility Geopractica provides geotechnical consulting services throughout the engineering industry for Mine infrastructure development, Oil and Gas related developments, Commercial developments, Rail, Roads and Earthworks, Dams, Bridges and Harbour developments.
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Irtaza has amassed an experience of over 6 years as an IT expert working on projects boasting varying degrees of technicalities.
In this course, students will learn to develop ASP.NET MVC applications using .NET Framework tools and technologies. The focus will be on coding activities that enhance the performance and scalability of a web application. ASP.NET MVC will be introduced and compared with Web Forms so that students know when each should/could be used.
This course is intended for web developers who are willing to learn Web Development and have work in Microsoft Visual Studio in an individual-based or team-based, small-sized to large development environment. Candidates for this course are interested in developing advanced web applications and want to manage the rendered HTML comprehensively. They want to create websites that separate the user interface, data access, and application logic.
Implement a complete DBMS system in an MVC web application.
Additionally this will help you by building your FINAL YEAR PROJECT over the ASP.NET Framework.


I know this may well appear like an odd subject but apparently, there are people today who want to know. It takes forever to load, most the facts is missing, and to filter your search beyond the price, quantity of beds/baths and type, you have gotta go to their mobile site. Navigational directions: The way you as a backer navigate will modify depending on the sort of search dog you happen to be working with. Rightmove's no cost iPhone and Android apps use GPS technology to pinpoint pads for sale close to exactly where you're standing. A Google Sophisticated Search bookmark will now be on the Bookmark Bar along major of page.
This network of web-sites now attracts a new ad every handful of seconds, producing it a wonderful location to find possibilities to buy and sell locally. He then asks me to understand how he had reasonable suspicion to search my vehicle and verify for stolen items or something illegal. A lot of folks would like to purchase a house inside a neighborhood that contains a major performing college.
You can copy and paste this URL into your internet browser and it will carry out this second search process for you. Here are hyperlinks to view houses that are for sale within specific school boundaries. For 30 tools to critique a dwelling, like web sites to assess crime or flood dangers, see the No cost Residence Price Valuations guide. I am Colleen Leon, Founding President of Southern Arizona Mounted Search and Rescue, Inc. Begin your Eckington house search with a price range of £130,000 for the least expensive three bedroom houses.
The Google advertisements are highly personalised – the ones that appear on your screen will be distinct to what someone else sees for the similar search query. I refused saying that was bs, but than he said he was going to search my vehicle anyways and something he discovered would just be thrown out in court. That is mainly because that's in all probability the most relevant result for your search on Oprah.
Cuz the state trooper pull more than the family member and stated particular person was following to close to the vehicle(which is bull) and state trooper ask for permission to search and family member stated yes…but family members member is not the owner and wonder if I can sue the state trooper for looking the auto without the need of asking me for permission.


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The park was named after the Mormon Pioneer Ebenezer Bryce - Bryce Canyon became a national park in 1924.
The National Park Service Rangers encourage visitors to start their auto tour of Bryce Canyon National Park by driving directly to the very southern end first. From here at Rainbow Point the entirety of the park stretches out before you back to the north.
Visitor Information Visitor Center, Info, Official Park Website, etc.


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text:
Norwich Evening News > News > Education
Another blow for The Hewett as government rejects funding bid for 'crumbling' buildings
Martin George
Hewett School sign and entrance on Hall Road. Picture: Denise Bradley - Credit: copyright: Archant 2014
A struggling Norwich high school has been dealt a fresh blow after the government rejected its bid for money to repair crumbling 50-year-old buildings.
The news comes as the Hewett School deals with a deficit running into hundreds of thousands of pounds, hundreds of unfilled pupil places, and a damning Ofsted report which plunged it into special measures.
The school had sought money from the government's Priority School Building Programme for an improvement scheme for two of its main blocks, to remove the need for continued maintenance.
The work would have addressed the current metal windows, which cannot be painted or double glazed, and are energy inefficient.
Announcing successful bids worth £2 billion of funding yesterday, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said: 'Children can't learn and teachers can't teach in schools that are cold and have leaking roofs.'
Sue Whitaker, a Hewett governor and county councillor for Lakenham, said: 'One of the main things about the whole site is metal windows that you can't paint, and they let out heat like it's going out of fashion.
'I think it's crucial that schools like the Hewett get it, and I get brassed off that the city schools always seem to miss out in Norfolk.
'It does seem the emphasis focuses on the rural places.'
Five Norfolk schools saw their funding bid improved: Attleborough Academy, and four schools in the west of the county.
Old Buckenham High School, another community school which bid for funds, also saw its bid rejected.
The government also released details of another £4 billion which will be distributed between 2015 and 2018 for building upgrades.
A spokesman for the Department for Education said: 'Alongside announcing the schools to be included in Priority School Building Programme Two, we are also announcing school condition allocations for the next three years.
'These allocations reflect the condition of school buildings, meaning those schools in who missed out on PSBP2 can be confident their needs will be reflected in the funding we make available to their local authority, trust or voluntary aided partnership.'
Norwich South MP Simon Wright said: 'It's disappointing the Hewett is among those that were not successful, but within the £4 billion maintenance funding, I hope there might be opportunities for schools to look at when they have urgent priority, to get the funds they need to sort that out.'
The Hewett's future is currently up in the air, after the government last week rejected new interim governors proposed by Norfolk County Council, and instead named its own interim executive board.
The council wants the site to become a 'learning village' rather than an academy, as favoured by the Department for Education.
Do you have an education story? Email martin.george@archant.co.uk

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
New Valorant glitch helps players predict Operator bullets
Valorant has always surprised its player base with new features and, of course, glitches. With a newly discovered glitch, players can predict the trajectory of an agent's next bullet and execute scopes without accurate ranges.
The Operator is Valorant's high-performance sniper rifle that can take out enemy agents in one clean hit. Lack of rangefinding allows players to fire dry shots without using a zoom scope, thus increasing accuracy. It's a tricky trick to pull off because the agent's bullets are fired in random directions without a range.
Listed below are all the details about the new Valorant glitch.
Cypher's brave bug can predict the trajectory of an agent's bullet
Valorant is a first-person shooter (FPS) that has become dominant in esports. The publisher has constantly tried to provide a balanced gameplay to the community. While the game is polished, it's not unusual to encounter a glitch now and then.
Cypher bullet prediction factor
This brave glitch can only be implemented with Cypher. It uses Valorant's unique mechanism to fire the "Phantom Bullet" first, which then provides a scopeless mirror of the trajectory of the next bullet.
Players can follow the steps below to try out this glitch for themselves.
Choose Cypher and buy an agent.
Move to the desired position and place Cypher's Spycam where needed.
Switch to the Spycam feed and shoot an arrow.
Quickly switch from the spy camera and fire a shot. The weapon will appear tracked and scored on the map structure in the foreground without reducing the number of ammo. This is the dummy bullet.
The position where the bullet hit will show the trajectory of the next mirror from the exact but mirrored position.
For example, if your shot lands on the top left of the crosshair, place the crosshair on the lower right side of the original crosshair position. The resulting second shot will land directly on the target or where the dummy bullet's original crosshair was located.
A video tutorial of the method is also available, which shows its success rate and verifies that it is an effective technique that can predict the trajectory of an agent's bullet. This is not a feature implemented by design and only appeared after players tested the limits of the game.
More about dummy lead
As the name suggests, there are no dummy bullets and it does not affect the total magazine ammo count in any way. However, they do leave behind bullet tracks and impact marks on map structures that have the Valorant community excited.
This method of predicting the path of a scaleless agent is unlikely to remain in the game because it was never meant to be there in the first place. However, it appears to malfunction as he fires the dummy shot and does not consider it the first shot.
Instead, it shows the position where the first bullet is supposed to land, which players can use to compensate for the orthogonal position and drop the exact first shot without rangefinding.
With this, players can address that glitch showing the trajectory of client shots without scope. Stay tuned with Sportskeeda for more in-game updates, tips and tricks.
Edited by Dinesh Rentley
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text:
Pisonia grandis ist eine Pflanzenart in der Familie der Wunderblumengewächse vom mittleren Ostafrika, Madagaskar, bis nach Indien, Malaysia, Indonesien, zu den Philippinen, Taiwan, dem östlichen Australien, Neuguinea bis nach Polynesien.

Beschreibung
Pisonia grandis wächst als meist immergrüner, recht schnellwüchsiger Baum bis über 20 Meter hoch. Der Stammdurchmesser erreicht über 50 Zentimeter. Die Borke ist gräulich.

Die meist gegenständigen, einfachen Laubblätter sind kurz gestielt. Der Blattstiel ist bis 6 Zentimeter lang. Sie sind eiförmig bis verkehrt-eiförmig oder elliptisch, seltener leicht herzförmig, spitz bis zugespitzt, leicht ledrig, ganzrandig und werden bis zu 30 Zentimeter lang. Die Blätter sind schwach behaart bis kahl. Die Nebenblätter fehlen.

Pisonia grandis ist polygam-monözisch oder -diözisch mit zwittrigen Blüten. Es werden kleine, end- oder achselständige und schirmrispige Blütenstände gebildet. Die funktionell eingeschlechtlichen oder zwittrigen, duftenden, kleinen, kurz gestielten Blüten mit einfacher Blütenhülle sind weiß- oder gelb-grün bis grünlich. Es sind bis zu 4 Deckblätter vorhanden. Das rippige, 3,5–5 Millimeter lange und außen fein behaarte, leicht fleischige Perianth ist trichterförmig mit 5 kurzen Lappen, außen sind 5 Reihen mit schwarzen Drüsen. Die bis 6–10 etwas vorstehenden, an der Basis verwachsenen Staubblätter sind leicht ungleich lang. Der kurz gestielte, kahle Fruchtknoten mit kurzem Griffel ist oberständig. Die kopfige Narbe ist leicht fransig. Die männlichen Blüten besitzen einen gut entwickelten Pistillode, die etwas kleineren weiblichen, kleine Staminodien mit Antheroden. Es sind Nektarien vorhanden.

Die rippigen, etwa 1–1,4 Zentimeter langen, ledrigen und schmal verkehrt-eiförmigen, leicht behaarten, einsamigen Früchte, Achänen, im Perianth (Anthocarp, Scheinfrucht) sind klebrig-drüsig, mit kurzen, reihigen, klebrigen Stacheln. Sie ähneln einer Stachelkeule und der Klebstoff ist nicht wasserlöslich.

Die klebrigen Früchte bleiben oft an Vögeln kleben. Dies kann zum Tod der Tiere führen, wenn sie dadurch flugunfähig werden. Allerdings dient das Anhaften der Samen auch deren Ausbreitung.

Literatur
 Flora Malesiana. Ser. I, Vol. 6, Part 3, 1964, S. 457–460, 464–467, online auf biodiversitylibrary.org.
 James Cullen, Sabina G. Knees, H. Suzanne Cubey: The European Garden Flora. Second Edition, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-521-76151-2, S. 136.
 Jacques Florence: Flore de la Polynésie Française. Volume 2, IRD, 2004, ISBN 2-7099-1543-X, S. 256, 313–317.
 Debasmita Dutta Pramanick: et al.: Taxonomic study of the genus Pisonia L.(Nyctaginaceae) in India. 2015, online auf researchgate.net.

Weblinks

 Pisonia grandis bei Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants.

Einzelnachweise

Wunderblumengewächse
Nyctaginaceae
Baum

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Federal injunction prompts Texas abortion provider to resume care
"We have some physicians who are comfortable doing abortions today with this injunction," said Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and CEO of Whole Woman's Health.
Provider details how some women got abortions same day temporary injunction was issued for Texas abortion law
Oct. 7, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC
By Dartunorro Clark and Chloe Atkins
One of the largest women's health providers in Texas said it resumed abortions after a federal judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the enforcement of state's ban on most abortions.
"We were able to provide abortions today," Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and CEO of Whole Woman's Health, said Thursday afternoon on MSNBC.
Texas law still requires a mandatory counseling session and ultrasound, plus a 24-hour waiting period. Anticipating a possible injunction, Miller's organization had worked with some clients to complete those requirements, she said, allowing them to have the procedure immediately. "Today we're also consenting people who hope to be able to come in tomorrow and subsequent days," she said.
A federal judge granted the Justice Department a temporary injunction Wednesday evening blocking the enforcement of the law, prompting the clinic to resume performing abortions — particularly for those who have been on a waiting list.
"While we breathe a deep sigh of relief today that a federal judge has blocked this enforcement of the horrific law, we're carefully considering how we can resume abortion care, up to the form of a limit of 18 weeks that we went to prior to [the law passing]," Miller said. "We should be able to again provide abortions."
The director of clinical services prepares the operating room at the Whole Woman's Health clinic in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sept. 4, 2019.Tony Gutierrez / AP file
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman issued the temporary injunction order, saying the Texas law, known as Senate Bill 8, "contrived an unprecedented and transparent statutory scheme" to enact a near-total ban on abortions in the state. The state swiftly filed notice that it would appeal the ruling.
The law prohibits women from obtaining abortions if fetal cardiac activity can be detected. In most cases, that is around six weeks, when many women are not yet aware that they are pregnant. Unlike other states' anti-abortion laws, Texas' ban allows private citizens to enforce the law by suing violators — entitling them to at least $10,000 in damages per defendant if they are successful.
Miller said her clinic has "turned away hundreds of people" since the Supreme Court declined to blockthe enforcement of the law last month.
"We provide abortions for the few that we can under this new scheme, the folks who get us early enough, who get to us, who are lucky enough to make it," she said. "As for those who were denied, they've been stunned, often leaving our clinics unable to plan for other options because of their shock."
Miller also said the physicians at the clinic are performing abortions, but some have been hesitant, fearing they could be retroactively sued if the injunction fails. Last month, for instance, an Arkansas man sued a Texas abortion provider who publicly admitted to performing an abortion that was illegal under the new law.
"We have some physicians who are comfortable doing abortions today with this injunction," she said.
But, she added, "many of our physicians have opted out of providing care while S.B. 8 is in effect, it being just too risky for them to do so."
Dartunorro Clark
Dartunorro Clark covered national politics, including the Covid-19 recovery, for NBC News.
Chloe Atkins
Chloe Atkins reports for the NBC News Investigative Unit, based in New York. She frequently covers crime and courts, as well as the intersection of reproductive health, politics, and policy.


Airing is the breathing machine that is small comfortable and mind blowing-ly simple.
For those who struggle with breathing, or have sleep apnea, using a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) device could be really uncomfortable and difficult to sleep in. The tubes or heavy device necessary are difficult to get comfortable to and most who experience sleep apnea decide not to wear the device to sleep and as a result are risking their lives.
Stephen Marsh's invention is a breath of fresh air; quite literally. Marsh is an inventor with more than 75 patents to his name. While working on micro pumps in MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) Marsh discovered a lot of inefficiencies in the technology that led him to accidentally discovering Airing. In an attempt to apply the science he was studying to his personal life, Marsh used Micro pumps to help his brother with sleep apnea and incidentally Airing was born.
The device can fit in the palm of your hand and fits firmly in your nose so you don't have to worry about it falling out or dealing with the heavy devices and masks like with a traditional CPAP. Air enters the grill of the Airing and then gets pumped by micro blowers and allows airflow to enter the nostrils.
The companies project is still in funding and is expecting a launch on indiegogo in June. Keep posted!


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Bulgarian Coins
Bulgarian Coins 0 items
3 All Bulgarian Coins
關於Bulgarian Coins
At the tim e of the Second Empire Medieval the first Bulgarian Coins were minted by the Bulgarian Emperors during the Middle Ages. No evidence proves that coins were minted during the First Bulgarian Empire, and minting ceased after the fall of the Second Empire with Ottoman control in 1396 or 1422.
The Second Empire was a state and existed between 1185 and 1396. The First Empire reached its peak of power with the control of Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II then gradually the Empire fell from grace and was later conquered by Ottomans in the 14th early and 15th centuary. It was succeeded by the Principality and later Kingdom of Bulgaria in 1878.
Culturally the Bulgarian Empire was among the most advanced states in contemporary Europe .
The first Bulgarian coins made were golden (perperi ), silver (aspri ), billon (coinage of silver and copper) and copper coins, all flat and hollow. The details on the Bulgarian coins were usually in Bulgarian language and barely in Greek. Due to the limited space the inscriptions were abbreviated and special signs were used. Artistically, the Bulgarians continued the Byzantine tradition but the Bulgarian coin designs were often more illustrated. The main means of expression were lines and dots. The first Bulgarian coins had images different from the Byzantine and Slav coinage, also the coins are an important source for the history of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Despite the strong Byzantine influence, the Bulgarian artists and architects managed to create their own distinct style on their Bulgarian coins. Literature flourished in the 14th century and around 80% of the Bulgarian population was literate.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


After a decade of decline, Sri Lanka's suicide rate – once among the highest in the world – is reported to be on the rise once again. It's too early to tell whether this is a temporary blip or the beginnings of something more serious. But what is known is that the fall in the suicide rate was the result of "means restriction" – chiefly banning the most toxic pesticides – not falling levels of suicide attempts overall. Although Sri Lanka has gained a reputation for progressive agrochemical regulation as a result, the evidence suggests that the number of suicide attempts has actually increased, with suicidal behaviour remaining a leading cause of serious injury and death in the country.
To return, then, to the question with which I began this post, 'What kinds of cognitive and emotional capacities are required to develop in children before they fully appreciate the social and moral implications and consequences of suicide?,' one must surely be that by one's own separation from others the sociality between persons – which for most of the time we take for granted – is called into question. Accompanying this realisation must also be the realisation that death is the ultimate, by which I mean truly irreversible, form of separation. Because we know that death anxieties develop from separation anxieties, the development of cognitive and emotional capacities around suicide as a kind of separation probably takes place in at least two phases. First, children learn that they can enact their own separation from others, and that this is undesirable for others. Second, children learn that they can enact their own death, and that as a sub-set of separation this is also (but also much more) undesirable for others.
Durkheim's sociological study of suicide as a 'social fact' was premised, in part, on the idea that only human beings were known to commit suicide. But ethologists tell us that the ability to commit self-injury or to deliberately self-destruct has been found across separate species including other primates and land mammals, dolphins, insects, and even some bacteria. While the evidence is far from definitive and the use of terms like 'deliberate self-injury' or 'suicide' across vastly different species is hugely problematic (just as it is across different human cultures and epochs), the possibility that we might not be the only animal to display suicide-like behaviours raises fascinating questions about how and why the ability to commit suicide evolved at all, and how and why modern humans learn to use suicide as a response to particular kinds of problems in their lives.


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The spotbanded scat,(Selenotoca multifasciata), also known as the  striped scat, banded scat, barred scat, butterfish, John Dory, Johnny Dory, old maid, Southern butter-fish or striped butterfish, is a species of ray-finned fish, belonging to the family Scatophagidae, the scats. They are found in the eastern Indian Ocean and southwestern Pacific Ocean.

Taxonomy
The spotbanded scat was first formally described in 1846 as Scatophagus multifasciatus by the  Scottish naval surgeon, naturalist and arctic explorer Sir John Richardson with the type locality given as King George Sound in Western Australia, although this is several hundred kilometres from its known range and is probably an error on the type specimen's label and the type locality should be farther north, and the description was published in the Ichthyology of the voyage of H.M.S. Erebus & Terror. In 1936 the American ichthyologist George S. Myers reclassified Scatophagus multifasciatus in to a new monotypic genus Selenotoca. In 1938, the British ichthyologist Alec Fraser-Brunner described a second species for the genus Selenotoca papuensis from New Guinea but Catalog of Fishes states that this taxon is a synonym of S. multiasciatus, although FishBase lists it as a valid species.

The genus name Selenotoca is a compound of selene meaning "moon" and tokos which means "offspring", the compound word meaning "born of the moon", Myers did not explain the allusion nor is it clear. The specific name means multifasciatus "many banded", a reference to the dark vertical bars on the back and upper flanks of this species.

Description
The spotbanded scat has a deep, compressed body covered in vert small ctenoid scales. They have a steep dorsal profile to the head, a moderately large eye which has a diameter which is markedly shorter than the length of the rounded snout length. The small, horizontal mouth is not protractile  and there are several rows of bristle like teeth on the jaws. The dorsal fin has 7-12 spines and 16 soft rays while the anal fin has 4 spines and 15-16 soft rays. The first spine in the dorsal fin lies flat and there is a deep incision between spiny and soft rayed parts of the dorsal fin. The caudal fin is rounded in juveniles and truncate in adults. The rear margins of  the soft rayed parts of the dorsal and anal fins is diagonal. This species attains a maximum total length of . The background colour of this species is greenish or silvery with many dark, vertical bars on the upper flanks and spots, typically smaller than eye, arranged in roughly vertical rows on the lower flanks. The lips are black. The rear margins of the caudal fin and of the soft rayed parts of the anal and dorsal fins have a thin black margin which fades completely in individuals with a standard length longer than .

Distribution and habitat
The spotbanded scat is found from Sulawesi and Papua in eastern Indonesia  Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia and northern and eastern Australia. In Australia this species' range extends from Shark Bay in Western Australia along the northern coasts to Sydney in New South Wales. They inhabit brackish mangrove estuaries and coastal freshwater .

Biology
The spotbanded scat form schools over sandy areas in estuaries and in river mouths. It is an omnivore which feeds on small benthic invertebrates and detritus. There is a venom gland at the base of each spine and a painful wound can be caused if the spines puncture the skin when handling this fish.

Utilisation
The spotbanded scat is targeted by recreation anglers. Juveniles are collected for the aquarium trade.

References

Scatophagidae
Fish described in 1846
:Category:Taxa named by John Richardson (naturalist)


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What is McDonald's drive-by attack?
A 15-year-old boy receives treatment for serious injuries after being shot in front of a McDonald's.
Police believe 2310 CET was fired on Saturday from a motorcycle that transported "several people" to Cross Cheaping in central Coventry.
Detectives are simultaneously investigating calls for two more incidents after a knife was recovered from a bar at the cozy neighboring club.
West Midlands police treat the shooting as attempted murder.
The group said a second person, probably in their 20s, who was near the shot teenager, was also injured, but not seriously.
McDVOICE Customer Satisfaction Survey has been in the market for a good time now. It has been ruling the business since the very beginning of its launch. McDonald's has been working excellently on the comments received in the McDVOICE Survey. The regular customers of the McDonald's participate in the McDVOICE Survey and make sure that they place their honest feedback there. Each and every lover of the McDonald's should definitely take this survey at the official portal of the McDonald's.
"This is a terrible and relentless attack in a part of the city center where many people are leaving," said Detective Inspector Harjit Ubhi. A third incident involved assaulting an 18-year-old man for five minutes while walking outside The Litten Tree pub on Warwick Road.
Three people were arrested on suspicion of a knife-related weapon that had been removed from a bag about 20 minutes after filming at the Cozy Club in Cathedral Lanes.
Police said there would be a greater presence in the city center to calm people down.
Detectives are investigating the video surveillance and have asked witnesses or people with camera images to contact them.
Categories Analysis Post navigation
The nurse sacked due to McDonald's date
McDonald's expanding the liberty stadium


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Spill drill
By Clark Pierce
The NAS Jax Boathouse in building 121 on the St. Johns River seawall was the site of a fuel spill exercise, June 18, where a 500-gallon diesel fuel storage tank was accidentally punctured (simulated) by a delivery truck - spilling about 100 imaginary gallons into the river that exposed Sailors to potential fire and hazardous fumes.
"The exercise scenario created the opportunity for the boathouse crew and the NAS Jax Environmental Team to respond to a simulated fuel spill, both on the seawall and in the St. Johns River. These teams receive regular practical training and proved once again that teamwork and communications are the primary factors in a successful response," said NAS Jax Tank/Spill Manager Jim Taylor.
When the accident occurred, boathouse crew notified the base fire department, which in turn contacted the base environmental response team.
"The boathouse crew deployed two spill response boats to set up containment booms on the river to encircle the fuel and minimize impact on environmentally sensitive areas," said Taylor.
"Jax Pollution Control, which is our Oil Spill Removal Organization (OSRO), provides access to the latest OSRO equipment, depending on the size of the spill and its chemical composition. Again, the best way for first responders to attack a spill is through integrated environmental services, as well as effective communications and teamwork," he added.
After a dockside safety brief, all the role players assumed their positions and kicked off the training event.
"A 'safety time out' is called over the radio to stop the scenario for any hazardous situation to personnel. The scenario will be started only when the team leader receives word that the installation is safe to train," said NAS Jax Training Officer Jim Butters.


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CAPSULE: APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX (1979/2001)
February 28, 2017 Scott Sentinella	5 Comments
(original 1979 cut)
(Redux cut)
DIRECTED BY: Francis Ford Coppola
FEATURING: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Fredric Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Larry Fishburne, Harrison Ford, Bill Graham, Colleen Camp, Christian Marquand (Redux only), Aurore Clement (Redux only)
PLOT: Loosely based on the Joseph Conrad novella "Hearts of Darkness," the film centers on Willard (Sheen), who is sent up the rivers of Cambodia to terminate the mad Colonel Kurtz (Brando) and destroy his cult-like compound.
WHY IT WON'T MAKE THE LIST: Apocalypse truly is the Vietnam war on acid. At times it's surreal, hallucinatory and mind-blowing, but that's not always the same as weird. However, if this were a list of the 366 greatest films ever made, it would definitely make it. Heck, Apocalypse would probably make a list if this of the 66 greatest films ever made—although the longer 2001 Redux version is definitely inferior to the original 1979 film.
COMMENTS: Francis Ford Coppola's original 153-minute version of Apocalypse Now opened in 1979 after a chaotic production and almost two years in the editing room. All that time, money and effort paid off, because, despite a draggy third act, Apocalypse Now is one of the maddest, greatest war movies ever made. Willard's trip down the river (or the rabbit hole) is punctuated by one mind-boggling set-piece after another, including a helicopter assault on a Vietnamese village scored by Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", a USO show featuring Playboy bunnies that slowly devolves into a chaotic free-for-all, and an opening sequence where a drunken Willard trashes his hotel room while Jim Morrison's eerie "The End" pours out in surround sound. It's the Vietnam War filtered through madness, LSD, and loads of unforgettable music.
The Redux version of the immortal film adds 49 minutes of frankly unnecessary footage, resulting in a wildly overlong 202 minute film. The "new" sequences mostly consist of two never-before seen set-pieces. In the first, Willard encounters a French family living on a plantation. They're in Cambodia, but it's as if they were still back in France circa 1950. Willard even finds romance with one of the women, Roxanne (Clement). This sequence, while interesting in an academic sort of way, is less than compelling. In the second new subplot, Chef (Forrest) and the other men on Willard's boat spend the night with several of the Playboy bunnies last seen during the memorably disastrous "Suzy Q" sequence. These added scenes do little but show us that Willard and his crew found female companionship on their trip up the river, and it's easy to see why Coppola cut the footage in the first place. It's just not that involving.
Luckily, the rest of Apocalypse is still there: every other brilliant sequence that has earned the film a reputation as a flawed masterpiece. Yes, once Brando turns up, the movie sort of slides downhill, but the last 30 minutes improve upon repeated viewings. Furthermore, the 2010 Blu-Ray restores the film to its original widescreen dimensions. All the previous DVD versions had cropped the picture to fit high-definition television screens (according to cinematographer Vittorio Storaro's wishes), but no more. This Blu-Ray also includes the jaw-dropping 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness, which examines the film's nearly disastrous 1976-7 production, which was beset by typhoons, a heart attack, and a budget that swelled to a then-staggering $31.5 million. Directed by Eleanor Coppola (wife of Francis), the doc is itself must-see viewing.
"Alternately a brilliant and bizarre film…An exhilarating action-adventure exercise for two-thirds of its 139 minutes, 'Apocalypse' abruptly shifts to surrealistic symbolism for its denouement… Experience is almost a psychedelic one–unfortunately, it's someone else's psyche, and without a copy of crib notes for the Conrad novel, today's mass audience may be hard put to understand just what is going on, or intended… Dennis Hopper is effectively 'weird' as Brando's official photographer."–Dale Pollock, Variety ( 139-min. 'work in progress' version shown at the 1979 Cannes festival)
19792001Christian MarquandColleen CampDennis HopperFrancis Ford CoppolaHollywoodMarlon BrandoMartin SheenMust seeWar
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5 thoughts on "CAPSULE: APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX (1979/2001)"
Robert K says:
I'm never really sure what my own personal parameters for weird are, but I agree, Apocalypse Now is at times nightmarish, is psychological and abstractly reflective, but it isn't really in any way weird. And it certainly belongs in any decent best films list, just not so much in a weird movie list. Just reading about it makes me want to view it again.
I first saw it in a theatre, in the 80s, i was only a teen, and pretty green about the world. When I left the theatre, i couldn't speak. It was so harrowing and so incredible that i had been overwhelmed by the experience. We sat for a long time in her car, just lost in our own thoughts before we started talking. We in effect had to come down from the movie, decompress.
G. Smalley (366weirdmovies) says:
I agree that Apocalypse Now doesn't quite belong in the List, but it's more in the ballpark than people assume. I made sure the early "Variety" report was included so readers could grasp just how strange this movie appeared when it first came out. Since it was eagerly accepted into the mainstream canon, I think many people assume it can't be "weird"; but if it was the exact same movie yet had flopped at the box office, I imagine more readers would be championing it as a "weird" movie.
Jacob Armstrong says:
There are basically two ways to look at Apocalypse Now. The first is that Brando showed up fat and crazy, the director had thrown the script away a while ago, and so you end up with a disappointment. One could point out that Brando's character has been leading a paramilitary cult in an inhospitable wilderness for a while now, so where's he getting all the food? But I say, why shouldn't Kurtz be fat? It actually adds to the weirdness. And the reason so many fans hated the ending is because the weirdness doesn't seem to fit in with what to this point was a somewhat more conventional flick, i.e. an insightful satire and a thrilling adventure story. Like the Saragossa Manuscript, it only gets full blown weird at the very end.
Apocalypse Now is at least superficially weirder than a few movies that are included here, such as the Swimmer. Nothing at all wrong with this; the reviewer of the Swimmer rightfully points out that the weirdness is contextual. Between the direction and Burt Lancaster's performance there is something that makes it more than just a satire of the upper middle class and their "swimming pool culture." I feel the same way about Apocalypse Now, which obviously began life as some kind of satirical comment on the Vietnam War, and then evolved into something else. Harrison Ford stuttering through his euphemisms at the mission briefing, Robert Duval and his randomly marauding helicopter troops, the disoriented soldiers at the last outpost on the Nung River – all of this is satire or commentary on the Vietnam War. But Kurtz doesn't represent or ridicule any obvious aspect of Vietnam, and is more of a mythological figure or a character from a dream.
Another flick that is included, Vertigo, isn't very weird ostensibly, but it becomes more weird and disturbing with every viewing, almost like Blue Velvet, which is also a conventionally plotted thriller on the surface. Both achieve their unnerving effect through a similar method – while the plot clicks along, the directors move us through these carefully designed set pieces that produce a weird feeling, and then the intense and strange acting seals the deal (Stewart in Vertigo, Hopper and Rossellini in Blue Velvet). Apocalypse Now also involves elaborate and visually impressive set pieces, and at least one actor that was almost a little too committed to the role (Martin Sheen, punching out mirrors and playing with his own blood, having heart attacks, etc.).
Another certified movie, Jacob's Ladder, has a little something to say about Vietnam, and like the movies already mentioned, it is only partially weird. It is only included on the basis of two hallucinatory sequences, but they are superlative and justify it's inclusion, However, it must be admitted that Adrian Lyne blows it in the ending. Coppola on the other hand saves all of the prime hallucinatory madness for the very end. A film with a bad ending must ultimately be considered a failure, even if other parts make it interesting enough to be included on your list.
On a personal note, I think of Apocalypse Now as one of my introductions to weird cinema. I didn't like the ending at first, just like I didn't like Lynch. Back then, I felt that Lynch was wasting his obvious talent because his movies didn't "make sense". I had to get a little older and wiser to appreciate what Lynch was doing. In the same way, I also began to appreciate the ending of Apocalypse Now.
I'd also like to point out that Ghosts Can't Do It is a much weirder movie than Pan's Labyrinth, but why are even talking about that anyway, because we need to make America great, not weird!
Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies) says:
Nice commentary, Jacob, with which I basically agree. But what prompted me to respond is your last paragraph, which made me literally lol! (It's a 366 in-joke, for those who are confused).
Just a thought experiment. A borderline case. If the movie was already on the list it would pass unnoticed in my opinion. But I wouldn't argue too strongly for inclusion at this point, when you're already up to 277. We're not talking about the Hourglass Sanatorium here, or Possession.
I had to look pretty hard to find other borderline weird movies in order to support my argument. I think I caught most of them. Most of other movies on your list are hardcore weird. Good list.
Leave a Reply to Jacob Armstrong Cancel reply