[d0de]

I suspect I've missed the boat on this one, but in any case:

About a year ago, I began an (overly) ambitious project to build a database of the scientific evidence behind the use of herbal supplements to treat a variety of conditions. I sank my nights and weekends into it for a couple of months but only got as far as one test section. It's sat more or less derelict ever since.

Aside from a mostly ignored Reddit submission, no-one has ever really seen it. If you have a minute, take a look and please let me know any thoughts you have about it at all.

http://herbevidence.com/data/Erectile_Dysfunction

(Forgive me, the section on ED happens to be one I wrote up as a test section because I was researching it anyway as a writing gig. Click on the name of each supplement in the first table to go to the full page for it.)

[xanados]

You may be interested in http://examine.com/ which is a project similar to yours but focused mostly on fitness supplements specifically (although it has articles on major other supplements like fish oil). Their editors have actually provided a lot of write-ups even though they are just volunteers originally from reddit's Fitness subreddit.

[d0de]

Yeah, I've been following them for a while. Aside from the obvious difference in focus, my biggest gripe with that site is that the basic taxonomy is per supplement. The typical use case is the user hears about supplement A, hears it's good for purpose X, then searches for "A" or "A fox X", finds the examine.com page, and sees if A is really good for X.

With my project, the basic taxonomy was always per-complaint (or per-illness if you prefer). It doesn't presuppose the user has ever heard of any particular supplement. The idea is the user can browse to the page that documents their condition and quickly see a summary of all the evidence for all the different tested herbal treatments.

Now, I'm not at all sure that this difference in structure justifies starting all the research etc. from scratch. It may be the case that examine.com could trivially switch over to the structure I used. But I do think that my structure is superior.

[aaxe]

http://examine.com/health-goals/

[aaxe]

I'm from Examine - contact me via http://examine.com/contact/ please.

Just want to be in touch :)

[droithomme]

That is extremely nice and useful site. I would love to see the other sections and encourage you to continue work on it.

[d0de]

Thanks, I appreciate your comment. Unfortunately, barring a change in my circumstances or a sudden upsurge in interest from the public, I just don't think it will be possible. It may not look like it but the research involved even in that one modest test section was (by my standards at least, possibly I'm just workshy) a massive undertaking.

[droithomme]

It definitely looks like a thousand hours or more of research to track all that down just for the one category. Very admirable.