Quote Originally Posted by vbp
Hey Emmie,

Thanks for the feedback. I know a lot of growers who use notebooks to track their info and wouldn't give them up for anything. But, yeah, as you noted, people are beginning to see the benefits of digital tracking. Not only is something like this good for collaboration, such as breeding projects, collectives, or general assistance, but as a community I think medical growers have an opportunity to be one of the first horticultural groups to use new technology to effect available genetics and organized information about those genetics. Notebooks are helpful to the individual grower, but compile a bunch of those notebooks together, and, as a group, you'll be able to get statistically significant data about methods and results. Basically, we're trying to add a structured element to what people already do in their grow logs on forums.

vbp
Definitely a commendable goal, but this is pretty much what we are already doing here in this forum. This is an amazing place with a lot of growers providing input who have been doing this for most of their adult lives. Its staggering to think about the years of experience represented by the growers in this forum. One person will think they see a trend and will discuss it. Others will say, hey... that sounds feasible and then they experiment with it. Some of the larger operations can take an idea and try it on a large scale against a control group, others do it over and over again in their own grow rooms, experimenting until things are adjusted again or dis-proven. Many of those doing this pioneering work have 40, 50 and more years experience growing this medicine and these experiments happen all the time here.

You also have to consider how secretive most of us are about the details of our operations. That along with the inherent distrust of computers most of the "experienced" crowd has, is going to make it very difficult for you do get a good sampling of data on your site for quite a long time, especially since you are talking about sharing data.

Don't get me wrong, I think its a commendable idea and one that with a team of statisticians helping to compile data, over the years it could turn into a valuable research tool. The problem is numbers. As an economist and a statistician I understand that the population base here on the forum with its years of experience and world wide diversity can probably answer any question brought before it. The sample pool of raw data as represented by almost 2 million threads is incredibly rich and many of the growers on here are true experts in this field, without question. It would be years of data gathering before any database developed regarding our grow experience came even close to being able to provide the knowledge and ability to adapt that we have here.

So it seems to me, that as useful a tool as your site could be to someone needing that sort of resource, training the experts to all to work together within the confines of your web space is going to be hard. At least here at Cann.com we have managed to get a few of them house trained and have good luck getting them to respond to our questions. I do wish you luck trying to teach them how to use the structured environment you have provided there. It's worth a try! Maybe they will seek you out if you answer the WIIFM question for them.

Emmie