PCP:About

Pharmacopedia is being built in public. Pages may be incomplete.About this site

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Pharmacopedia is a free, open medical reference: an evolving catalog of what is known, claimed, and reported about medicines, problems, and health topics, written across multiple perspectives so that readers can see the same subject through more than one lens.

This page describes what Pharmacopedia is, who runs it, how it is written, and what it commits to. For the legal terms governing your use of the site, see the Terms of Use. For data handling, see the Privacy Policy.

What Pharmacopedia is

Pharmacopedia is a reference resource, not a clinical service. Each medicine page describes what the medicine is, how it is thought to work, what it is used for, what its effects and adverse effects are, and what readers from different perspectives have said about it. Each problem page describes a health condition, problem, or experience, and the medicines and approaches that are used to address it.

Pharmacopedia organizes content for multiple reader audiences (Clinician, Patient, Traditional, Researcher) and sources its claims across multiple knowledge traditions (pharma, plant, experiential, traditional). The intent is pluralism with discipline: every non-trivial claim takes an inline citation, and where a citation is not yet available, the page is marked rather than left implicit.

Pharmacopedia does not give medical advice. Nothing here is a substitute for a qualified clinician who knows your individual circumstances. If you have a medical question or emergency, consult a licensed clinician or call emergency services. For overdose or poisoning in the United States, call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222.

Who operates Pharmacopedia

Pharmacopedia is operated by the Pharmacopedia Collective, a California nonprofit public benefit corporation (pending 501(c)(3) determination from the Internal Revenue Service). Until formal recognition is granted, the Collective operates under California law as an unincorporated nonprofit association. The Collective can be reached at (669) 669-0025 (voicemail; email is faster for non-urgent matters).

The named data controller and editorial lead is Mark Elliott, MD (mark@pharmacopedia.wiki). Mark is a licensed physician; his role in Pharmacopedia is editorial and operational, not clinical-toward-readers. Reading Pharmacopedia does not create a doctor-patient relationship with him or with anyone else affiliated with the project.

Pharmacopedia is funded by Mark personally; donations are accepted only if operating costs exceed what he can self-fund. There are no paid tiers, no subscriptions, and no advertising. The full list of commitments about what Pharmacopedia will never do is at Pharmacopedia:Refusals.

How Pharmacopedia is written

Pharmacopedia content is produced by a team of AI assistants, invited human experts, and volunteer contributors, under Mark's editorial oversight.

The editorial workflow is propose-review-approve. All submitted content is proposed first; it is reviewed by a qualified human reviewer before it becomes visible to readers. At launch, Mark is the sole reviewer. As the project grows, additional reviewers will be brought in with their qualifications made public.

Every non-trivial claim takes an inline citation, in this priority order: primary literature, then FDA label or equivalent regulatory source, then meta-analysis or systematic review, then guideline, then established tertiary reference. Where no citation is yet available, the claim is marked ^{[citation needed]} rather than deleted, so the gap is visible and can be filled.

Pharmacopedia does not pretend to be a regulated medical authority. The adverse-experience reporting feature is a reader-experience aggregator, not a regulated pharmacovigilance program. The Refusals page enumerates the things this project commits never to do.

How to use Pharmacopedia

You can read all of Pharmacopedia without an account. Search for a medicine, a problem, or a topic; follow cross-links between related pages; and read the perspectives that interest you. Each page surfaces source citations inline so you can verify claims.

If you create an account, you can:

Submit proposed edits through the propose-review-approve workflow.
Complete assessments and save your responses to your profile.
Use Special:MyLifeStory to build a personal medical timeline (private to your account; never published).
Submit reader-experience reports on medicines you have taken (see Pharmacopedia:Adverse Event Reporting).

Your account at Pharmacopedia.wiki also works at Oyami, Trykl, and PubSci, the other surfaces operated by the Pharmacopedia Collective.

How to contribute

If you would like to contribute as an editor, reviewer, or content author, contact Mark at mark@pharmacopedia.wiki. Pharmacopedia is built by invitation and volunteer effort, not by open self-onboarding, because the propose-review-approve workflow needs human reviewers with verifiable qualifications.

If you would like to flag an error, a missing citation, or a substantive concern about a page, use the talk page for that page, or email mark@pharmacopedia.wiki.

What this is not

Pharmacopedia is not:

A clinical service, diagnostic tool, or prescribing platform.
A pharmacovigilance program registered with any health authority.
A peer-reviewed scientific journal. (For that, see PubSci, the Pharmacopedia Collective's open peer-review journal.)
A platform that takes commercial direction over content. See Pharmacopedia:Refusals.
A platform that sells, licenses, or shares user data with commercial entities. See Privacy Policy.

From the founder

Born in May 2026, Pharmacopedia started primarily as a one-man project of MDElliottMD, who'd been dreaming of some place for the people who recommend and/or use meds of the mind to collaborate and create consensus-driven information, founded in a deep faith in the wisdom of the crowd.

First, I hope this to be a reasonable and reliable reference for prescribers of all sorts to find relevant and accurate information for their practice: available strengths, titration strategies, pill IDs, etc.

But almost moreso, I hope that this place can be a lively, collaborative space for a communal effort in understanding the bizarre world of using medicines to help alleviate suffering. I hope that by pooling our collective anecdotes.. our stories, that we might actually make some data.. of a sort.

The site empowers users (with 2-FA) to share their experience about almost every aspect of the site, in as fine a detail as I thought was tolerable. And now finally a place for our stories, in more exquisite detail than ever before. I hope that by pooling our experiences en masse, we might find something like truth.

For now, I, MDElliottMD, am the only person who can approve/publish page edits, though I hope to have a team of moderators some day. I am also the only person currently able to access private user data. I am frankly obsessed with privacy and will do everything in my power to keep these data private. If any security nerds want to help me achieve that goal, please lmk.

I am not a software developer, nor a designer, but I am a top-tier expert in meds of the mind. I will keep the place as tidy as I can.

This project is not, in any way, driven by money or profit. The links above are as far as I will go to promote myself or my brand here. At the moment, I am happy to fund the project in its entirety (maybe $400/year at time of writing may 2026). If that changes, I may some day ask for donations.

To be explicit up front so I look foolish if I change my mind later:

1) I will never serve any sort of ad for anything other than this website itself or directly related content. no ads ever. 2) I will never make this a pay to play platform in any way. no hidden costs. no subscriptions. ever. 3) I will guard these precious data from any and all others, including any who would wish to buy them. I will never. ever. sell these data to anyone for any reason.

Aggregated data are ripe for analyzin’. Anything attributable to any individual will remain private to the best of my ability in perpetuity.

Pinky swear.

This project was entirely developed and partially populated by Claude (Opus 4.7 at initial build), and is based on the Mediawiki code base, bless their souls. Know that any content not explicitly verified has some risk of AI slop. this will be fixed soon.

Most of the interface here is run through an extension that I made with Claude: Pharmacopedia.ext, which I'm happy to share with whomever wants it. will post to Git once it’s a bit more mature. Probably easiest to get ahold of me through my website above.

Thanks for coming by. Would be honored if you could join the hive mind and share your stories.

-mark

Licensing

Pharmacopedia's written content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0); the Pharmacopedia software extension is separately licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3. Quoted third-party material remains under its original copyright. See Pharmacopedia:Copyrights for full terms.