Why was USC topic closed?

[neogitus]

Why was the underground seeds thread closed? Kind of annoying how most of our sponsors are absolute trash yet any time someone new comes along if they don’t pay some kinda monthly fee to advertise they get shut down? This forum needs all the interesting content it can get and shutting down good threads because someone doesn’t pay is dumb.

A lot of us have and do grow out these seeds. I’ll still buy them whether overgrow gets paid or not. Just sucks now no one has anywhere to show pics of what they grew out from them all in one place. If it was my thread that got shutdown for something so petty that would be reason alone for me to never come back here.

Feels like good members here get pushed away from this site a lot faster than the people who just bring bullshit. Is there a list of people who are “paid sponsors”?

I’d much rather see people advertising interesting stuff even for free than the seedbanks barely anyone uses, mars hydro, e cigarettes/mods and others.

“rules are rules” but the rules kinda suck in this respect. The site is growing like crazy and still wants to keep growing but still having problems with server fees being too high. A lot of members still pay a monthly fee just to help out plus the sponsors and it’s still not good enough. Why is this expansion so important when clearly there wouldn’t even be enough money to double in size? If that means twice the sponsors then this site won’t look any different from all the other forums. Not that it has lately anyways.

Let’s just say for argument that 5 of the people active in the underground seeds thread are also members that are paying a small monthly fee. Do they not get a say in what kind of content they want to see? Or not see for that matter? I get the bills have to be paid but taking off good threads and then having shitty sponsors spammed constantly is just gonna make more and more good members leave for elsewhere.

I’m not gonna go through 20+ shitty sponsor threads and manually mute them just so I can see them when I browse not signed in which is basically all the time.

Personally aside from the few great people I actually interact with/ content that I like that keep me around, this forum has become nowhere near as interesting as it once was for someone like me who likes to talk about everything related to weed.

Quality over quantity any day for me. I also have a feeling there’s more people than just me who have been a bit frustrated with how shit has been going for awhile now. Bigger doesn’t always mean better, probably just more problems.

[Esrgood4u]

Amen to that. + 20 characters

[Northern_Loki]

It’s a simple rule, though. If the intent is to sell and/or advertise product, they can become site sponsors. They’ve been given plenty of space to promote themselves.

[Pedro_Bann]

I feel it’s pretty straight forward that if you want to advertise and sell a product that you pay to play.

[Heritagefarms]

The thread was closed the member wasent banned. I’m assuming people are welcome to share grows of his strains and he has been welcome here and uploading pictures, advertising seed drops and we’re to get them is a different story , rules are rules maybe he wasn’t aware. If people trying to sell products were allowed to do so with out being a sponsor the threads would quickly be bombarded. Im working on some things myself but you won’t see or here of it untill my broke ass can afford to play by the rules as above mentioned.

[neogitus]

So who are all the paid sponsors? Just the people that have threads in the sponsored section? or other people too? I’ve seen plenty of stuff advertised not in that section in my time here. Just to play devils advocate is BOG a sponsor or is does he get a free pass because of the old OG? I’ve seen his seeds pushed more than anyone’s here and never in the sponsored section. What about people doing free giveaways to promote their company and gain customers?

[toastyjakes]

BOG is a sponsor as are those that are marketing themselves such as the Vault, gorilla seeds, Mars hydro, baudelaire and his solstrips, and a few others

Free giveaways happen consistently, though not with all sponsors, but @George_The_Vault always has giveaways going and I believe @GorillaSeeds has one up currently too . It’s up to the sponsor to give their product out in giveaways and some are more generous than others, true. But that’s their decision as the pay to promote, so how they do it is kinda their thing.

I know I kinda just said the same thing three times lol but if selling things as a sponsor they should be in sponsored category, however there are few exceptions as cleared by @LemonadeJoe like seed auctions or unopened or rare breeder pack sales when someone has many to offer as a member but not a sponsor… Can they do it every day, no. But sometimes it’s allowed…

Now that being said, can someone link me to whereever someone is trying to sell beans without being a sponsor or having admin permission?

Edit: Technically anyone that donates to OG patreon are sponsors but not paying vendors… I guess the line is there… Are you just supporting the site or are you paying the site to help support your social media output for your company

[Zion]

This is interesting. I would venture to say that to some degree we are all promoting “our own brands”. I guess like you said there is a line. I think if I’m a hell of a grower and I make a few great crosses in my time here where I gain a following and build connection to make sales off line. Idk it’s a interesting topic. I don’t have any beef or anything like that @toastyjakes I’m just thinking out loud. I feel like the same could be said of any platform.

[toastyjakes]

And you could do that but my thought on sale of seeds is thusly: you bought seeds and bred a couple plants and made a few hundred seeds and you like their offspring, why is there a need to sell them to anyone? Just spread the love lol

Not saying it directed at anyone here just a thought… if your money was made on seed sales I would say sure why not, but if I’m having fun and cross some shit to make an amazing set of plants, I’m not gonna charge people to grow them… I’ve just been a part of too many giveaways and good times here to think I could sell anything I’ve made as I’ve never paid for seeds… always been trades, giveaways and generous folks so I’m not gonna charge these good people for my good karma output lol

Again just me rambling… Can anyone tell I just took the days first hit lol

[LemonadeJoe]

Hi @neogitus,

I understand your point. I’d also like to allow wide range of discussions, new topics, inspirations, etc. USC topic unfortunately crossed the line with last post:

@Cristalin

New Black Afghani seeds batches are incoming !

@Cristalin had the opportunity to start more topics and present his room, give breeding advise, etc. to establish himself as regular member here. (good example would be @Subcool or @SeriousPaul which participate(d) as regular members not as sellers) Unfortunately he only started this one topic and only two “casual” posts in other topics. Wording of the post has pretty commercial character into it. He was aware that there are some rules on OG regarding promotion so he can’t be surprised.

I’m sure we can work something out with him and agree on some cooperation. It would be great to have them on board. But at this point it would be unfair to other Sponsors to let it continue.

Yes, we have official list of Sponsors: https://overgrow.com/groups/sponsors (includes also not active historical sponsors)

I hope you can understand that…
Kind regards,
Joe

P.S. Please be so kind and tag me in your post if you want my reaction - I can miss your post otherwise …

@neogitus

I’m not gonna go through 20+ shitty sponsor threads and manually mute them just so I can see them when I browse not signed in which is basically all the time.

Not sure if this helps, but you can also mute whole #sponsored category.

[OleReynard]

That’s because Bog promotes himself.
And most of the paid sponsors here has contributed in one form another be it for a server fund or whatever.

[4lv1nn]

Hi all !

As a member of USC working with Cristalin, I will try to give you more details about the situation.
I explained to Cristalin that is last post was considered as an ad for our seeds. I can totaly understand this point of view but you have to know that he just put the same title as on our instagram account.
He is a bit clumsy on the communication and use google trad to translate in english. As you can see along the thread, he is minimalist on the communication, like “hello, pictures, bye”.

You also have to know that we don’t post a link to a shop for the simple reason that we don’t have one for the moment. Because of the situation in our country, we can’t sell seeds by ourself and have to work with resellers.
To be totally transparent, on a seeds pack sell, it’s around 70 to 80% for the reseller, so if you are buying a pack from them around 30€, less than 10€ are for the collective. We are not a company, we are doing it because of passion.

I tryed to explain the situation to Lemonadejoe on novembre 19th, also asking if a there is a shop service on this forum because we are not able to sell our seeds. Having no answer yet.
It’s totally understandable to have costs to run this forum, but as explained above, we don’t have the same earnings than a company able to sell directly to the customer.

We didn’t put links to our website or to the resellers shops.

Keep in mind that we are doing this by passion, without paying ourself, trying to share our work since 10 years.

Rules are rules and i explained to Cristalin why the last post was considered as another ad.
We are sorry for this mistake.

What’s the next step ? There is a way to unlock the topic ?
How much is it to be part of the “sponsors” on OG ?

By the way, thanks for your support.
I hope we will find a favorable outcome because we like this place, we like reading your good vibes and see results of our work from other people.
We will be glade to cooperate with OG, depending as much as we can afford it.

I am still available through PM to discuss about it as I was on mid november.

[ShiskaberrySavior]

I for one hope that you can work things out with @LemonadeJoe I’ve grown a few of your seeds out with good results and feel OG community would enjoy some of your genetics .

Good luck and hope to see you around the forum .

[Gaz29]

@4lv1nn

What’s the next step ? There is a way to unlock the topic ?
How much is it to be part of the “sponsors” on OG ?

By the way, thanks for your support.
I hope we will find a favorable outcome because we like this place, we like reading your good vibes and see results of our work from other people.
We will be glade to cooperate with OG, depending as much as we can afford it.

I don’t think it’ll cost you too much to sponsor here , then you’ll have a lot of people here on Overgrow knowing how/where to buy your seeds etc.
I hope this helps you stay around and share your genetics with us …!
Good luck with this mate .
Happy growing,
Gaz

[LemonadeJoe]

@4lv1nn

What’s the next step ? There is a way to unlock the topic ?

Let’s continue in our private conversation…

[Papalag]

Hope it all works out I love the work that USC does

[DesertGrown]

Agreed! They have some nice genetics and have made some incredible crosses/strains since their start.
I remember when they started at OPG almost a decade ago. They used a lot of nice landraces in their breeding projects and still do.

Durganchitral, Sour Kush, Colombian Gold x Jamaican Lambsbread and Turkish Landrace comes to mind right away.
They have a lot more to offer in their stable now that they’ve been at it for a while and would like to see what they come up with next.

I’m sure they’ll get it all worked out.

[4lv1nn]

Hi folks !
After a discussion with Joe, I have a bad news for you.
Unfortunately we are not able to pay x$ a year for advertising also we can’t offer x$ in freebies.
We have to focus and invest our earnings in usefull thing for the future like to register a company ,to pay a developper for our website or to improve our packaging. The advertising part will come after this steps.

We hope to be part of OG sponsors in the future, maybe next year, and continue to share with you.
We don’t want to bother admins and waste their time with our mistakes.

@Cristalin and I wish you all the best hoping to see you as soon as possible with new stuff.
Thanks a lot for your messages and support, we really appreciate all your good words to stay motivated on our work.

[Northern_Loki]

@4lv1nn

We have to focus and invest our earnings in usefull thing for the future like to register a company ,to pay a developper for our website or to improve our packaging. The advertising part will come after this steps.

Best wishes towards your business venture, @4lv1nn. I’m sure that you and your team will be successful.

[Wuachuma]

Well this sucks

Vibes Co seems to be the most marginalized group in all forums while also being the most ripped off
Vibes Co are hobbyists who do preservations out of passion - only a select few members actually sell seeds as it was against the original ethos of Vibes Co to sell any seeds, we are lucky to even get any seeds from any of them as they aim to keep their genetics exclusive only to passionate preservationists.

A similar thing happened at ICMag where Dubi of ACE Seeds paid ICMag to ban most all Vibes Co members simply for telling the truth about strain lineages (Dubi tried banning me for exposing that the Congo is actually the Candian Congo - Congo x NL x Mexi x Afghan).