We are starting 2017 with a new initiative, every month we will post for all our members what’s been happening at 420 Magazine. We’ll include any relevant news, whether it’s website updates, changes to our guidelines, problems or issues that we’re dealing with that may effect you, new staff, new technology, in fact just about anything that touches your experience here with us.
We always say that we wouldn’t be here without our Sponsors. However it’s equally true that 420 Magazine wouldn’t be such a great mission without you, our members. We are always grateful for your presence, contributions & positive energy.
New Staff Member:
Well, he’s actually been with us for a couple of months, but given this is the first update, we’re delighted to announce that Dan Ultra has joined us as a Moderator. Dan joined the site back in 2014 and immediately caught our eye with his excellent video guides, which still sit at the top of some major forums. Dan’s going through his training right now, however you’ll see him around more soon. Thank you for joining the team, brother!
LEDs & Seed Banks: (Guidelines Relaxed)
Historically, LED & Seed sellers have given us a lot of work; spamming the forums, recruiting our members to represent them and undermining our sponsors. In the past, we’ve had to remove any mentions of non-sponsor LEDs. However, to avoid sending good members away due to confusion over why we limit non-sponsored product promotions here, Non-Sponsored Seed Banks & Non-Sponsored LED now fall under the Reference vs Promotion umbrella.
Reference: Members want to help each other by sharing what they use to grow and where to find it, especially when helping someone with a problem. This is completely fine and needed, in order to maintain such a large community of growers sharing and helping each other.
Promotional: A first post that bumps an old thread to post a link to a site selling a product is usually a sign of a spammer who came to promote their products without paying for advertising, which we call “sidestepping”. Repeat recommendations to the same site and/or product are also regarded as spam and are dealt with as such.
Non-linked references to non-sponsor LEDs are now permitted because we encourage sharing among members as much as possible: 420 Magazine is here for information, help & support.
Off-Topic Photos: (Guidelines Relaxed)
In light of Monsanto, Dupont, Bayer, Sygenta & others taking over the natural food supply in the US, we have decided to relax our Off-Topic (OT) Photo policy, to permit photos of non cannabis plants and miscellaneous pests, etc. that may be connected to overall gardening. More of us activists are standing up to fight back and grow our own food as well, so it fits well with our mission. What’s more, it still helps the cannabis only students, as many plants share the same procedures, care needs and pests. We have also decided to allow photos of pets, since they are commonly used for companionship, therapy and/or security.
Mushrooms: (Guidelines Relaxed)
420 Magazine is the preeminent Cannabis website. We focus exclusively on Cannabis & Hemp; its cultivation, history, legality, applications and benefits. However, human beings have been ingesting not only Cannabis, but also Psilocybin mushrooms for well over 6,000 years, if not longer. Both have been used for ceremonial, ritual and healing purposes in the past by many cultures. As Modern Science has rediscovered both Cannabis and Psilocybin Mushrooms in their search for therapeutic agents in the treatment of pain and other neurological conditions, light discussions of other, completely natural highs such as magic mushrooms (non toxic only) Peyote & Ayahuasca are permitted, provided there are no threads dedicated to it and/or the conversation does not hijack a cannabis themed thread or trail into recreational abuse.
Contests: (Guidelines Relaxed)
We’ve had more members who have tried to cheat in our contests recently. While they never succeed, the cheaters and their subsequent protestations of innocence in the face of incontrovertible evidence, suck up a great deal of our time as well as spoiling the fun for everyone. As a result, one public measure we have taken is to make all votes publicly visible.
Anyone caught cheating, will be disqualified and called out in the public thread, visible to everyone. Reason being that in the past, when we removed the offending entry without any announcement (to help minimize embarrassment for the member), it often led to uninformed (or worse, misinformed) members questioning our motives and calling us censorship nazi’s. More often than not, the cheater themselves would claim innocence, causing a higher workload for our staff. For these reasons, we now alert the community of what happened, to save all the confusion and massive workload on our team. If interested in familiarizing yourself with what we go through, you can see the most recent cheating incident here – 420 Magazine’s Plant of the Month – December 2016
Complaints About Sponsors:
We work hard not only at protecting our sponsors – without whom 420 Magazine would not exist – but also at representing our members. If you have a complaint against a sponsor, then your first course of action should be to contact the sponsor directly, via their email or website. If complaints are posted on site, are expressed with reason and rationale and do not in any other way contravene our Guidelines, (for example, no name-calling, immature language or multiple posts), then we will contact the sponsor in question and invite them to post in the thread. Inappropriate posts which are clearly ‘sponsor bashing’ will be deleted.
Spambots:
Anyone who’s been on the site over the last few weeks cannot fail to have noticed the plethora of virulent Asian spambots. Much of our moderation time has been spent cleaning the site of them, night and day. We know from experience that they will stop eventually, however we have already put in some new measures to deter them and are investigating others. We’re sorry if they make your experience here less fun and we thank you for your patience while we deal with them. For the record, we’ve already tried spambot blocking software, which left many of our international members unable to access the site, therefore we are unable to use it.
Tech Updates:
Both of our secure servers have been upgraded, so the website is noticeably faster and fully Google compliant.
Mobile App:
Our mobile app has been updated again and is is available for both Android & iOS. We are continually updating the versions and working through the inevitable bugs & glitches.
Website Additions:
We’ve been working on a new interactive section for Product Reviews & Strain Reviews, which we plan to reveal by April 20, 2017. It will include all of the same features you may have seen on other sites, however ours will be even better.
That’s it for this month. Thank you for being a valuable part of our Mission, we are truly grateful for you.
Sending you all lots of love and positive energy through the universe.
Greenest Regards,
Your 420 Magazine Team
