Hey kaka good to hear from you again. I think your timeline is right, 1998 was a lot of planning. Shabang was running the Weedbase site, and building OG. Flick recruited me from the USENET group alt.drugs.pot.cultivation (adpc for us elder grow-geeks) after I posted a few strain reports I was collecting in response to others’ questions. OG really came together from the communities of Weedbase and adpc, with a sprinkling of folks from cannabis.com (always the unruly stepchild of the online mj community) and the 77, an invite-only forum.
Flick brought the political bent to the OG vision that attracted me. Remember, this was just a couple of years after California passed Prop 215 for medical MJ, Dennis Peron was still going to jail trying to serve AIDs patients in SF, and the Internet seemed like a frigging Jedi light saber ready to cut through all the bullshit and put grow tech knowledge directly in the hands of patients and their caregivers. Throw Dennis in jail for growing 500 plants for 1000 patients? Fine. How about throwing 1000 patients in jail for each growing 5 plants?
We were out to overthrow the old regime by outgrowing them…Overgrow.
I miss Flick, who was always bit too paranoid (depending on your involvement, with less than 10 years after Operation Green Merchant, it was hard to be too paranoid back then) and left right after OG.com launched. He is an overlooked founder in OG’s history and contributed a lot to its original vision. I still remember his railing against job-related drug testing, and calling for a “Boston Pee Party” where we’d all meet to pour our urine in Boston harbor. 
Hope he’s doing well.
By second half of 99 things were moving fast - below is the original StrainBase launch announcement I made at ADPC in Nov 99:
From: “Baudelaire” b420@nowhere.com
Subject: StrainBase Online at Overgrow.com
Date: 1999/11/09
Message-ID: zlKV3.6252$L5.123456@c01read02-admin.service.talkway.com#1/1
Followup-To: alt.drugs.pot.cultivation
X-Client-NNTP-Posting-Host: dialup-12345678.SanFrancisco1.Level3.net/123454678
X-Trace: c01read02-admin.service.talkway.com 942109151 12345678 (Mon, 08 Nov 1999 16:59:11 PST)
Organization: Talkway, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 16:59:11 PST
Newsgroups: alt.drugs.pot.cultivation
Just a short message to let everyone know that StrainBase v.1.1, a
compendium of Cannabis varieties, is now online at
http://www.overgrow.com. Click on the strainbase link at the top of
the page. Search for your favorite strain characteristics using the
search engines, or just rummage around a while. More than 800 pages of
information on 200 cannabis strains.
While you’re there, join us at Overgrow for high quality discussions on
cannabis cultivation and breeding, online security, and MJ politics.
Come on, pH, pull up a stool at my favorite local. I still owe you a
beer…
b420