[Anonymous]

Titration is a scientific lab term, meaning to slowly add a little bit more of something until you reach a desired effect.

In chem lab 101, your titration was the process by which you slowly added drops (one at a time) of acid to a base until the indicator chemical (I forget the name of it) changed color, at which point, knowing the pH of the acid, you could calculate what the pH of the original base had been.

So titration is the process they use in the sleep lab, slowly increasing the pressure (one drop at a time) until you stop having apneic events (or at least, until they lower to a reasonable threshold), at which point they add two more drops and call that your pressure.

[derek]

Sounds awfully like something I read somewhere else on this forum very recently. Plagiarism is a very serious thing in the scientific community - especially in chemistry...

Hi Liam - forgot to log in, huh?

derek

[Liam1965]

No, I didn't. I was just noticing this myself. Anonymous just started three different threads, each with a snippet of something I've seen posted before.

This one was mine, I don't recall if the others were or not.

I'm guessing this is some new experiment, perhaps trying to gather FAQ entries...

Liam, quoted without attribution. Now I really feel like Dave Barry.

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[Guest]

Ah. I see. If you look under "View User Encyclopedia Entries", you'll see this topic listed there. This was a way to start the encyclopedia with the definition, instead of linking to a thread a newbie would have to read down through a bit to get to the answer.

Pretty good, although it would be nice if the original author of each of the definitions was credited.

But if it helps out the newbies, I'm all for it.

Liam, all for helping to "break in" the newbies.

[Liam1965]

And of course THIS time, cpaptalk decided to log me out, and so I *DID* get guested.

Liam, who wonders if cpaptalk is trying to distance itself from him.

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[johnnygoodman]

Howdy,

I'm loading up the cpapopedia with content. The system is still touch and go. For example, it logs the submitter as the author. So if Liam writes up a useful description of Titration but posts it instead of submitting it to the cpapopedia and I submit it to the cpapopedia - it should as either johnnygoodman or anon depending on my login status.

Plagiarism is a serious thing but so is letting the best content and descriptions of common CPAP terms float to the top so that everyone can reference the best definition.

With that said, I'm hoping that when wader, liam, derek, rested, sws, etc, etc (the vets) answer a question that or define a term that is commonly asked they will think "hey, this would be useful as an auto link" and submit it. Until that time, I am trying to jump start the cpapopedia and bug test it by taking user content and throwing it in there.

I understand that this is a gray area, especially for those MIT'ers among us. If you would prefer I not use your content in this way, please let me know via PM or post and I will respect your wishes.

Johnny

[Liam1965]

Not a problem, I agree, it's good to have these things. Personally, I'd rather YOU choose which of my writings (if any) are useful for the encyclopedia, because that gives it a second set of eyes looking it over and saying "Ah, yes, this is appropriate, well written, and correct" instead of relying on my own ego to decide what that I write is good enough.

For example, three or four times recently, I've written up a list of 5 or 6 points that I think every truly brand-new person to the board should know. I think that'd be very useful information to have available easily, but I feel egotistical in the extreme submitting it as "The first thing a newbie should read".

It just confused me to see something I'd posted moments before show up again, from someone else. I think, as the owner of this board, some of the plagiarism issues may not even apply. I'm not POSITIVE, but I think that a case could be made that you have at least publishing rights to anything we write here, in so far as by writing it here, we're ASKING you to publish it.

Whether that would hold true for publishing a book or something I don't know, but I don't have a problem with this use of my text. If a way could be set up so that proper attribution was given, that would be cool, but as you say, I think it's more important that we get these things available for anyone who needs them than to worry about stroking my ego.

Liam, happy to be part of the encyclopedia.

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[derek]

Johhny,
I was KIDDING when I mentionned plagiarism
derek

[johnnygoodman]

Howdy,

Concerning Ego. Lets leave it at the door and get some content up. You have a lot to offer someone who is coming in totally confused, underinformed and frightened. If you are willing to help, I am definately willing to support your efforts through software.

The system will be such that if someone more experienced comes along and writes up a better entry for the keyword, it will be posted in a higher position. Theo's actually coding that aspect of the software as I post.

So if you write something up now that is pretty good and later someone writes up something very good. Well, pretty good now is much better than nothing and later very good will replace pretty good and be replaced itself in time.

The net result is that everyone has the best information available at any given time. To top it off, they have this information at minimum effort, because you would have written it in a post anyway. All this is doing is making intelligent posts globally viewable - cranking up it's volume, if you will.

Johnny

PS Derek, sorry if the plagiarism stuff seemed a bit defensive. I studied Philosphy at Texas A&M so I'm pretty aware of those profs view of taking others work. I just wanted to be very clear in saying that I'll respect the wishes of anyone posting original content.

[G00fy217]

Johnny... Thank you for educating all us newbies.... Now I don't have to refer to "thingys" anymore!! Thank you!!

[-SWS]

Johnny, I just had a thought about keywords for encyclopedia entries. Is there a way to allow the auto-link submission process and resulting encyclopedia table to allow for multiple keywords?

Some CPAP and medical terms are so esoteric that brand new CPAP users looking through the encyclopedia entry list may not know the precise word they are looking for. The term "aerophagia", for instance, is so esoteric that it might also be listed under the more common keywords "bloating" and "gas".

[mommaw]

Great idea SWS, I read the word in a post yesterday and had to go to a medical encyclopedia to see what it meant! So, YES, for newbies like me, the words bloating and gas I would definitely understand. There also needs to be a way to link the words together ie: the medical word with a word we can all identify with.

Gilda

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[-SWS]

There also needs to be a way to link the words together ie: the medical word with a word we can all identify with.

If the encyclopedia table has multiple key words listed in the same field, then the common and medical/esoteric terms are already grouped. Otherwise, the medical or esoteric term would ideally be included in the article or thread. We really need to let Johhny and Theo make the call as to whether this idea is even feasible relative to the amount of programming they have in mind. For instance, are there even enough esoteric/colloquial paired terms to make this amount of programming effort worth while???

My idea might just be "hot air"... That's why I used the "aerophagia" example!

[johnnygoodman]

Howdy,

It's a very good idea that will be included in the next version of this thing (hopefully out sometime next week).

I think though, instead of listing all the words in the post - we'll allow multiple keywords to be associated with one thread. So if I type bloating OR if I typed gas OR if I typed aerophagia in a post, all would link back to the one cpapoedia entry for aerophagia - just like a read dictionary/'opedia has "See: X".

Johnny

[G00fy217]

That sounds wonderful!!! I am not a computer geek nor an experienced cpap user (yet).... but if you can get that all to link together somehow and work, you would definitely have alot more knowledgeable users out there.... hey, maybe we can get smarter than the docs and be able to talk to them in medical terms too (just for fun! My doc always talks in medical terms, I need to remind him all the time that I don't have any medical education... ....so this would be fun, I love to learn new words!! )

Looking forward to learning more!!

Thanks!