Our Authors & Editorial Standards

Editorial Standards — Extended

The five authors above operate under a shared editorial standard that we publish openly because transparent editorial processes are the highest-trust signal a content site can offer. The four-step review below applies to every operator-facing guide on this site.

1. Source hierarchy

Operator-facing claims are checked against sources in this priority order:

1. Statute and primary regulation. Maine Revised Statutes Title 28-B and Title 22 (medical). Bills via legislature.maine.gov/bills. OCP rule text via maine.gov/dafs/ocp.
2. Municipal primary source. Town clerk records, planning board minutes, voter warrant articles.
3. Local news. Coverage in The County, Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald, Seacoast Online, York County Star.
4. Operator's own site. Operator's current website and social media — NOT directory listings.
5. Test/lab records. Operator-published Certificates of Analysis. Operator-issued certificates of insurance.
6. Directory listings (last resort). Weedmaps, Leafbuyer, Yelp — only when no operator-published source exists, and hedged as such.

2. No fabrication

When a house number is unknown or a statute citation is unverified, we say so explicitly in the article — we do not invent a plausible-looking value. The public corrections log shows how this rule has surfaced real errors that other sites would have published silently.

3. Reviewer pairing

Every high-YMYL guide (statute citations, regulatory compliance procedures, operator financial benchmarks) is authored by one editorial byline and reviewed by a second editorial byline with complementary expertise. As of July 2026, ~50 operator-facing guides carry the explicit double-byline pairing; reviews and additions are ongoing. Every pair's reviewer name, role, and expertise area is published on the guide page and inside the JSON-LD structured data for crawlers.

4. Update cadence

Operator-facing guides are reviewed quarterly for statute, OCP rule, and municipal opt-in changes. Editor's-byline dates are updated whenever a substantive change is made — not as decorative metadata, but as audit trail. The Last Verified badge on each page tells readers when that page's primary citations were re-checked.

5. Editorial bylines vs. named professionals

The five bylined names on this page (Steve Kelly, Calvin Waters, Margaret Finch, Eliot Nash, Thalia Greene) identify content roles, not necessarily individual professionals. The "publisher position" framing is explicit on each byline's bio: a reader should treat content under any of these names as the publisher's editorial position on the underlying primary sources (statutes, OCP rules, operator disclosures, news records), not as an independent third-party attestation. Disputes or corrections are processed via the public corrections log within five business days.

What this means for readers

When you base business decisions on a Maine Dispensary Guide article, you're relying on the publisher's research into the linked primary sources (statutes, OCP rules, municipal records, operator disclosures). The corrections log shows historical errors and fixes. Nothing on this site is anonymous or unaccountable.