Note: Matt wrote the below in response to messages and posted it to two of
our MAP discussion lists, MAPTALK and HAWKTALK. But this is information
that perhaps many of our readers would like to know. I would only add that
sometimes I have the feeling that some folks think we are one of those well
funded groups the Drug Czar talks about - with a well paid staff that
should be able to do a better job. Oh, if only that were true! Instead,
operating on a shoestring budget, we are really a group of volunteers, most
with real day jobs to pay the rent, running just as fast as we can to
provide this service for you.

Please also note that our much appreciated newshawks do not always send
the items they find to editor@mapinc.org on the day published. I am sure
they do the best they can! Better late than never!

- Richard Lake

Someone wrote:

I'm just wondering why the top of the site indicates updates every hour
or so, while the articles displayed on Saturday are from Friday (and
early on Friday at that).

Matt: As of 9:10 PST, I see 4 articles dated Saturday. There is a delay between
the time we get articles and the time they appear on our website. There
are two causes for this delay.

The articles are sent out individually through our mailing list "mapnews"
and accumulated in our digested lists, "mapnews-digest" and
"drugnews-digest". The web site gets updated when enough articles
accumulate for a drugnews-digest.

Each article must be reviewed and cleaned up by a human being. This
introduces a 16 hour delay on average. Sometimes as little as an hour,
sometimes much more if the editor to whom the article has been assigned is
exceptionally busy, they have to track down the original article to verify
it or they need to ask the person who contributed the article, the
"newshawk", to provide more information.

Someone else asked:

Why do you only post a small portion of the articles the newshawks send
in? I see a lot of interesting ones on the latest incoming not
posted.

http://www.mapinc.org/latest.htm

Matt: There are a few explanations for this too. This month we have received 86
articles per day on average. 52 have been posted per day on average.

The editors will pass up an article if it is a duplicate, if it is too
messed up with HTML and such to recover, if they can not verify the source
and publication date, if it has not been published by a third party, like a
press release or if, in their opinion, it is off-topic.

See http://www.mapinc.org/hawk.htm for an explanation of what we like to
get and how we like to get it.

Additionally, we use article headlines for subject but newshawks may not.
Thus, you may see an interesting subject in the "latest" list that never
gets posted though the article behind it has been.

Matt (webmaster@mapinc.org)