Cinchona.org

About Cinchona.org & Frequently Asked Questions

Cinchona is a people-powered website for all things Expedition, Wilderness, and Travel Medicine. Cinchona is named for the Peruvian tree that produces quinine.

Registered users can take advantage of the Cinchona news feed to keep up to date on the latest happenings in the world of remote medicine. It is the goal of Cinchona to promote communication and knowledge-sharing between all the diverse areas in these fields.

Cinchona was developed by ExpedMed, LLC. ExpedMed is an Expedition Medicine consulting company that provides field support, medical consultation, and medical education, including the annual Expedition Medicine National Conference held each fall in Washington, DC.

Why should I register at Cinchona?

Registration at the Cinchona website enables you to read, discuss, submit, and email articles pertaining to Expedition, Wilderness, and Travel Medicine. It makes you an active participant in the Expedition, Wilderness, and Travel Medicine communities.

How does Cinchona work?

At the core of Cinchona is a new social news technology called Pligg. This technology allows registered members to submit articles to Cinchona that they have found on the internet. Once submitted, the articles can be read by the Cinchona community and stamped by the viewers. As an article increases its stamp count it moves towards the front of the news feed. Once it reaches a critical mass of stamps it is moved onto the front page of Cinchona. This technology allows the Cinchona community to self-select the most important articles for the most prominent positions within the site.

Does it cost anything to register at Cinchona?

Registration at Cinchona is free for all users. It is the hope of the Cinchona developers that the website will be self-sustaining through the small fees charged for advertisements and job posts.

Will my email account be flooded with emails if I register?

No. Registration simply means you can participate in the discussion of the various news items. No emails will be sent to your account from Cinchona unless you also subscribe to the RSS email subscriptions.

What is an RSS subscription?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and allows subscribers to take advantage of the news updates on Cinchona and receive in their email accounts a summary of the headlines when they are updated.

Registered users on Cinchona can subscribe to the RSS for the front-page news of Cinchona or for the front page news of any of the Cinchona subcategories such as Tropical Medicine, Tactical Medicine, etc. If a Cinchona user does not subscribe to one of the RSS feeds no emails will be sent to their account. Without the RSS subscription the Cinchona member will simply need to log on to the Cinchona website to view the news.

How do I submit an article to Cinchona?

One of the most powerful features of the Cinchona site is the ability of any Cinchona member to submit an article from anywhere on the internet. If you have found an article you wish to submit to Cinchona you can copy the link of the article then log on to the Cinchona site and click on the Submit Article tab. A box will open and allow you to paste the link into the appropriate field and fill out a quick summary of the article for Cinchona members to read. Once the article is posted you will get credit for the post and be able to track how many stamps the article has received.

A quicker way to post an article to Cinchona is to drag the Cinchona bookmarklet to your browser tool bar. Once installed this Cinchona bookmarklet allows you to submit articles to Cinchona without ever leaving the original article webpage. When you find an article you wish to submit you can simply click on the Cinchona bookmarklet to open a small box. This Cinchona box should already have the article link in place and will only need you to supply a summary in order to finish out the submission.

What is the purpose of stamps?

Stamps are individual votes for an article. The more stamps an article receives the higher in the news feed it will be ranked. The most popular articles will be listed on the Cinchona front page. The stamping feature allows the Cinchona community to self-select the most important news items for broad exposure.

Can I comment on an article in Cinchona?

Yes. There is a button on each article that allows comments to be posted.

What does it mean to bury an article?

If an article is not good or is inappropriate for Cinchona, viewers can choose to bury the article which bumps it down on the news feed. With enough bury votes, an article is taken off the Cinchona news site.

What sorts of articles can I submit to Cinchona?

Any article pertaining to Expedition, Wilderness, or Travel Medicine can be posted. Subcategories are listed to help organize the articles. Examples of appropriate articles include medical journal abstracts and papers, news stories, press releases, and event announcements. Anything that pertains to Expedition, Wilderness, and Travel Medicine can be submitted to Cinchona.

Do I need to receive copyright permission before posting an article?

No. Cinchona does not infringe upon any copyrights as long as the article in question was legally posted on the web. Since the Cinchona website does not attempt to copyright the news stories themselves and only points the user back to the original post, Cinchona actually functions as a medium to promote articles and not acquire them. However, if material is photocopied or otherwise obtained and posted on the web in a fraudulent manner, Cinchona viewers should take notice of this and inform the original content publisher. Cinchona does not endorse the pirating of any copyrighted materials.

Can I use Cinchona to promote my medical conference or event?

Yes. You can submit any event or conference announcement under the Education/Events subcategory of Cinchona by posting a link just as you would post an article. Event postings will be voted up and down just like other submissions. The most popular events will get the most votes and be featured most prominently on the Cinchona website.

What other features are available on Cinchona?

Another popular function of Cinchona is the page of job posts. Cinchona viewers can read the post of various jobs within Expedition, Wilderness, and Travel Medicine. Cinchona users can register to receive emails for updated jobs on the Cinchona job post page.

Who can post a job on Cinchona?

Any entity can post a job on Cinchona. Charitable organizations and NGOs can place the job posts for free. Recruiting agencies and individual companies can post jobs on Cinchona for $200 per month per post. All job posts will be reviewed by the Cinchona webmaster in order to ensure appropriateness. However, Cinchona does not endorse or verify the claims of any of the job posts. Cinchona users will need to verify the specifics of each job post on their own.