Quote Originally Posted by lampost
I just posted this in the original thread, but moved it over here:

>>>Why don't you make a website that connects independent caregivers with patients!? That's what we desperately need and if that took off it could generate ad revenue for sure. Or you could have a nominal fee for caregivers to advertise... or a private board (Vbulletin) that has a small membership fee? Bulletin boards like this seem to be popular. If you could reproduce the CO regional section of cannabis.com but allow free talk of patient-patient, caregiver-patient sales and offers then you'd have a great site!

Maybe you could combine this website with the review site somehow? Or rely on revenue from the less dispensary-focused site which would allow you to make KR ad-free.

A good caregiver-patient website is definitely needed. The only one that I'm aware of now is Craigslist which is lacking in features and full of law enforcement and scammers... there's no feedback on these people.

I agree that you have to introduce anonymity into your bud procurement and pay for samples. This is the only way, as has been pointed out with the restaurant industry.<<<

I'm biased myself because I'd rather see dispensary reviews than "strain" reviews. One of my pet peeves is when someone tries to get too specific with a strains medical effects!! It seems misleading to me...
I love the patient-caregiver directory/matching service idea, but the legal wrangling and issues that could be presented with something like that are too great (for me at least). Maybe someone with more resources and a good lawyer can take up the call though, as I agree that it would be a great addition to the MMJ community.

And yeah, I know that people want dispensary reviews. I was going all-out at first (see the Botanico review), but it's simply too difficult to give a very detailed review or a meaningful score unless you've been to a place over and over (which again introduces credibility/bias questions). I don't want to give the impression that a place is shoddy because I was there one day when the new guy was working, it's not fair to them or to the readers.

Anyway, that was my issue with dispensary reviews, so I shrunk them down quite a bit and will hopefully get more of those happening soon. Again though, the issue becomes the ability to be fair without trying multiple samples of meds, edibles, and getting familiar with the staff's level of knowledge, all of which can introduce bias of their own and come with a lot of expense on the reviewer's part. I don't want to just be a quasi-directory service saying "uh this place has 15 strains and they looked pretty good".. quality reviews are my aim.

As far as the anonymity in the bud procurement, I don't think that really matters unless the site also does dispensary reviews, specifically reviewing the staff. The free samples thing is obviously an issue for readers, but the actual going in and getting the meds isn't at issue in my mind. If a place knows I'm a reviewer, they might butter me up a bit.. but I haven't actually received anything that was free except a Cheesecake Lady edible in exhange for a review after the fact (Native's Choice does that for people who post review on too).

The reviewer not knowing where the bud is from is a more important measure to take I think, as well as not knowing what strain it is when they try it. I say that both because of personal preference about the dispensary and its staff but also in regards to the bud itself -- if you're told something is Sour Diesel, you look for certain things that you might not otherwise, etc. I am not able to do the blind testing thing since I'm essentially a one-man operation at the moment (I have a friend acting as webmaster but that's it), not to speak for them, but maybe KR can implement some sort of process along those lines since they have several reviewers. I'd be interested to see how the results turn out if they go that route.

Myself, I'm just gonna keep chugging along and trying to get as many reviews done as possible while still paying my bills. I'm still noodling on the pay idea, but some sort of income stream seems like an inevitability at this point if I'm to keep the quality up and the content frequent, much less expand the site and improve the quality.

I look forward to chatting with the KR guys to see what we can do to make ourselves as useful as possible to the community while not running ourselves ragged for little return. Thanks for the input lampost, I'm surprised anyone read my screed haha.