Forum Guidelines - Please Read Before Posting

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420

Founder
420 Staff
420 Magazine's Posting Guidelines
Welcome to 420 Magazine, the premiere website bringing the positive message of Cannabis and Hemp awareness to the world. Thank you for activating your membership and agreeing to abide by our posting guidelines. We appreciate your decision to join our Mission.

Age & Maturity
420 Magazine and its members are serious about bringing Cannabis awareness to the world. Members must be 18-21 years or older to register, as required by your local, state and federal laws.

We appreciate and encourage mature behavior and we expect all members, staff, and sponsors to show respect for each other at all times. Fighting and/or disparagement whether on or off-site is not acceptable and may result in an immediate termination of membership. Please use the free spell check software we have provided and refrain from posting in all capital letters, or writing in the style of a rAnSom NoTe, or the excessive use of juvenile slang and/or the use of extra exclamation points, commas, or other symbols *&^???. 420 Magazine is an adults-only website, and in our experience, posts and posting styles of this nature tend to attract minors.

420 Magazine is a Reference Site, Not a Market
Posts from members pertaining to the buying/selling/trading/swapping/testing/giving of seeds, clones, pollen, cannabis, hash, mail order Marijuana or any other substance or article are not permitted. Due to repeated feedback from our valued members about solicitation and spam via private message, members must have at least 50 posts to use the Private Message system. Members can however PM Admins and Moderators as soon as they have registered.

MMJ Dispensary & Delivery Services
Dispensaries & Delivery Services are expected to comply with all of our Posting Guidelines. Posts pertaining to other substances, including drugs are not permitted and will be deleted. Sponsors can advertise their medicine with prices and availability, however are prohibited to implicate 420 Magazine in any transactions by discussing logistics of exchanging money for product in our forums and/or private messages. Additionally, Medical Marijuana patients are asked to refrain from using the website to solicit caregivers and/or collectives.

The Medical Marijuana Co-ops, Collectives & Dispensaries forum is reserved for our MMJ Sponsors to advertise their shops and services, so please do not promote your business without first becoming a Sponsor. We only work with ethical businesses, offering legal services to legal patients in their respective legal states. Please contact sales@420magazine.com for more information.

Some dispensaries make false reports against each other online, to slander their competitors. Because of this, we are forced to organize strict guidelines to protect all of us involved. Please respect our guidelines as they are in place to protect you. We do not tolerate bashing and/or flaming and have a zero tolerance for trolls.

If you would like to show us your products, please use our gallery. Any off site links and/or photos will either be deleted or re-uploaded to our gallery to avoid a forum full of missing photos when the source deletes them. Photo Gallery Guide - How to Resize, Upload & Post Photos

Promoting your business here is a privilege, not a right.

Participation
420 Magazine supports vigorous and spirited debate, please make your posts meaningful, civil and reasoned. Expletives are discouraged and subject to edit without notification. Please do not hijack topics or post duplicate messages. Our website is a place of learning and teaching; exclusively about Cannabis or Hemp related topics, which means any off topic posts and/or blogs will either be moved to the Off Topic Area or deleted.

Our members are mature and serious about bringing the positive message of Hemp and Cannabis awareness to the world. We treat each other with dignity and respect. Our members are from all races, creeds, sexual preferences and nationalities. Contribute if you have something to say, read and learn if you do not. We strongly promote positive energy, paying it forward and lifting each other up. Life's too short to waste on egos and nasty behaviour.

Recruiting & Hyperlinking
420 Magazine allows linking to most other websites for the purpose of providing a reference. We do not allow either recommending, linking to or discussing other Cannabis related forums/communities, blogs, listings or networking oriented communities such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Twitter. We would like to be more directly connected with the entire global Cannabis community, however there are many bad seeds who spoil the fun for the rest of us. In the past, allowing posts to these other websites has gotten out of hand, resulting in forum spam with non sponsored products and attempts to recruit our members for other websites.

420 Magazine understands that its members may belong to any number of other Cannabis content sites on the net. We acknowledge that friends may occasionally reference these other sites in their private discussions either here or elsewhere. 420 Magazine takes no issue with this practice but we do prohibit recruiting whether it occurs on or offsite, which may result in a termination of a member's account. 420 Magazine reserves the sole right to interpret the distinction between "referencing" and "recruiting" based on frequency, context, and/or prior advisories. No one will lose their access because they made a one time reference to a friend. Members that become disgruntled and suggest members leave the site, or that have been previously advised, or that habitually reference other sites, may be interpreted as practicing recruiting.

Commercial and/or promotional links to external websites from members are prohibited. This also applies to websites like Amazon, eBay & Etsy. Off-site links in signatures are not permitted for members; only Sponsors may tastefully link to their websites. This helps preserve sales for our Sponsors as well as saving our valued members from fraudulent links to phishing websites and/or sites tracking IP addresses.

Before linking to offsite references, please utilize our Search Feature to find and link to on-site content; if available. We encourage members to participate in establishing desirable content here, instead of sending everyone off site. 420 Magazine is a free website existing solely due to the support of our Sponsors, who help sustain our mission of bringing cannabis and hemp awareness to the world.

We work very hard to make this the best source of information for everyone. Please show respect and do not promote other websites here, instead help us build our international alliance of free thinkers.

Guidelines Violations & Responsible Members
420 Magazine is for education and enjoyment, to learn and make friends. Please actively participate in helping us maintain our positive vibe while you are here. We have a dedicated team of moderators that actively help members with problems and resolve any policy violations. Mistakes and errors will be treated with kindness and understanding; deliberate or malicious violations may receive a warning, infraction or ban.

Every post/blog/private message contains a
full
"Report Post" icon located to the bottom left. If someone makes an inappropriate comment in your thread or DM, please use the report feature. Our moderators will get your report and treat it with discretion while resolving the problem. Please do not engage or reply directly. This tends to make the problem more complicated for the moderators to resolve.

420 Magazine has no desire to read member DM's, nor do we share this information with unrelated parties. However, if someone reports an inappropriate DM, Senior Administrators may review a specific member's DM's for the purpose of resolving the issue. Private messages are only accessible to intended recipients and Senior Administrators, not to Moderators or any other staff members.

If one of your posts gets edited/deleted, please wait at least 48 hours for an advisory before contacting us for the reason. One moderator might delete something quickly to remove the violation and/or negative energy, while another may deliver the advisory when they come on shift. Not all staff members have the same responsibilities/powers; all advisories are discussed among us and we work collectively as a team.

If we have to edit or delete a member's post, we always send either a short or expanded advisory explaining our reasons why. If you believe your post was edited, but have not received an advisory, then send a DM to a moderator. Members often think their post has been edited when it has not, so please don't complain publicly as it only generates negative energy and tarnishes our reputation. Just send us a DM and we will investigate. Even joking about posts being edited can cause problems, as members often take it seriously, and then see us as "censorship Nazis".

In the event that a member is banned or becomes upset and resigns in a dramatic fashion, please understand that it is our standard practice to close journals and delete all references to the exit. This is not personal or vengeful on our part. The practice is solely to prevent cascading discussion of the event and preserve our moderator capacity. Please do not disrespect our staff members, just because you disagree with our guidelines, and if you have questions, we respectfully request you ask one of our staff members by private message.

Unfortunately, we do not allow public discussions of previously banned members. Historically, whenever members have discussed banned members in public threads, it has almost always summoned the trolls to stir up unnecessary drama. This drama is what fuels them and gives them happiness, however on our side, the workload gets quadrupled from all of the dramatic discussions that follow. For more information, please refer to our Questions & Answers - Previously Banned Members & Banned Websites.

Enjoy sharing, teaching and/or learning while you are here, the world is watching so please act as mature adults.

Privacy, Personal Security & Grow Journals
Members are responsible for their own security and should be mindful that posts in the public area are discoverable by search engines and/or identity thieves. Blindly providing a stranger with your phone number, email, home address, or other personal information puts you at risk of all sorts of negative consequences (i.e. ruined credit, bank account targeting, harassment, or worse like a raid or robbery). No one wants to be the unfortunate sucker that got conned.

Because of this risk, 420 Magazine prohibits the public sharing of personal information via our website. Our staff will help protect your anonymity by removing personal email addresses and links to personal websites as they are found. For your own safety, we ask that you not give out your personal information to anyone, until growing cannabis is no longer a federal crime.

If you receive spam messages from other forums, platforms, magazines or someone trying to sell you a product or service, please alert one of the 420 Staff so we can handle the matter accordingly. This type of behavior is unethical, unfair to our sponsors who pay to advertise and a violation of our guidelines.

420 Magazine requires growers who post grow journals to do so in accordance with applicable and current state laws. We disavow responsibility for any actions taken by any members that fall outside the bounds of the respective laws or customs that bind them. 420 Magazine has neither the capacity nor inclination to actively moderate all posts for these conditions but we will remove any post that we determine, at our sole discretion, to be suspect of a violation in this area.

When inviting other members to visit your grow journals, please do not post duplicate invitations on multiple threads as this is considered spamming and is prohibited. Not only does it upset members who have to receive the email notifications, but it sends the wrong message to others to follow suit. Please make use of the Private Message system for inviting members from your contact list.

On occasion, threads will drift off-topic. While we tolerate a degree of this, if it persists the discussion will get in the way of existing and future members and guests, with subscribers getting emails informing them of updates that are irrelevant to them. Members have actually left our community because of this in the past. Extremely long off-topic discussions may therefore be edited and/or deleted on a case by case basis.

Polling our member demographic is considered private company data and is prohibited. We do everything we can to ensure our member's privacy, some of them are older and can be careless and/or naive at times. Law enforcement also have been known to entrap people by using similar tactics.

LED Grow Light Manufacturers & Suppliers
Due to numerous spam attempts from non-sponsored LED companies, grow journals or posts/threads that showcase non-sponsored LED grow lights are prohibited. It's okay to post a grow journal with a non sponsored light, as long as you're not discussing, promoting or photographing it. Sadly a few bad seeds in the LED industry have used underhand and unethical marketing tactics by spamming our forums, taking over LED threads and promoting non-sponsored lights to sidestep advertising. Any grow journals that are found to be showcasing or promoting the lights of a non-Sponsored LED company will be deleted.

We have a responsibility to protect our members from illicit promotion by untrustworthy businesses. These companies create a plethora of drama that takes us forever to moderate. They pay people with free lights to come to forums and post journals so they can sell lights without paying to advertise. This is unfair to us, our members and our legitimate sponsors who pay for privileges that these other companies seek to receive for free.

Although we vet potential sponsors and seek only to work with those with a record for reliable products and good customer service, 420 Magazine makes no warranties or representations of any kind concerning the specifications, performance, safety or any other aspect of LED units advertised on its website.

If we receive complaints concerning a sponsor's actions, we will investigate to the best of our resource capability. If a sponsor is shown to have failed to deliver their product or service other than represented, or if they repeatedly spam threads, use inappropriate language, go beyond the four corners of the sponsorship agreement or in any other way repeatedly infringe our forum guidelines, 420 Magazine reserves the right to restrict posting privileges and/or suspend and/or cancel the sponsorship agreement.

All 420 Magazine sponsors are required to represent and warrant in writing that they will abide by US law; however, members are hereby reminded of their responsibility to perform their own due diligence before making any purchases as 420 Magazine is not responsible for the veracity of a sponsor's claims or legal standing. 420 Magazine is not a party to any transaction between a sponsor and member and will not become a party to a transaction. Members and Sponsors act as their own agents.

Medical Discussions Dedicated to Making & Administering Concentrated Cannabis Oil
420 Magazine welcomes threads discussing the treatment of a wide range of medical conditions with CCO. We ask all our members however to remember that, unless explicitly stated, those giving advice are not medical professionals and that every patient is different. We strongly advise seeking professional medical advice before self-medicating with Concentrated Cannabis Oil, unless already familiar with the effects of ingesting cannabis.

Members Unable To Access Their Account
The most common reason for this problem is that the member has not validated their email address by clicking the link in the automated email they were sent upon registration, so please check if you have done that first.

If you did receive the email, clicked the link and it still didn't validate, note that certain browsers and devices can cut urls in half, making them inoperable. When this happens, you will need to copy/paste the two sections of url into the browser at top and hit enter, to take you to the url to validate the account.

If you are still unable to access your account, please send an email to support@420magazine.com

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, aggression, 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.

Contests
While our Contests are for fun, with prizes from us and our sponsors, we are rigorous about keeping them open, fair and free of cheating. To ensure our contests are cheat free, all votes are now transparent. It might take some of the fun out of being anonymous, but it has been extremely effective in stopping the constant cheating we used to endure. Another helpful protocol is to only allow entries and votes from members with 50 posts or more, which prevents members setting up fake accounts to vote. We have zero tolerance for cheats and always find them out. Before entering any contest, please ensure you read the guidelines, published in the first post in each thread.

Promotion (i.e. campaigning) for yourself or a friend, or any attempt at voting more than one time per person (i.e. multiple user names, etc.) is considered cheating and is prohibited. Promotion also includes family and friends who register a new account for voting purposes. Campaigning in any form - including but not limited to mentioning the entry in any thread outside the contest, a signature link to the entry and campaigning via PMs - will result in the entry being removed from the month's contest. A second instance, either in a different contest during the same month or in any future contest, will attract a lifetime ban from all future contests.

General Rules
All video clips must be 420 related, except in the Off Topic Area, and embedded in the post. Check out our How To Post/Embed Videos tutorial for instructions on how to correctly embed a Vimeo or YouTube video into a post. To protect our valued members against phishing attacks, we have disabled HTML on the entire website. Therefore, posting HTML embed codes will not work here. To avoid trojans and viruses, links to external audio/video sources are prohibited. We wish to host all content on site, for the convenience of our members.

All photos/images should be 420 related and uploaded to our Photo Gallery. Uploading to our gallery helps the community because your data continues to educate others, even beyond an expired membership. Plus you can find your photos anytime you want, to reference and share. You may also use gallery photos in private messages, just not attachments, because attachments in DM's are impossible to moderate.

Please "Upload Photos" to the "Photo Gallery" for all 420 related photos; like cannabis, hemp, nutrients, grow lights and security pets. Max Size for Gallery Uploads is 20MB per photo and 40 photos per post.

Please use "Attachments" to "Attach Photos" for all non-420 related photos; like cars, landscapes and offtopic memes and keep them restricted to the Off Topic Forums. Max size for attachments is 5MB and 10 attachments per post.

All images uploaded to our website, whether they be gallery uploads or attachments, give 420 Magazine shared copyright ownership privileges to use in our own promotions. We may use a photo here and there in our marketing materials or featured articles. You still retain your copyright, we just get permission to use it as well.

Off-site image links can be deleted or moved outside of our control, leaving us with dead links and an untidy website. Raunchy photos and/or nudity are prohibited.

Our Photo Gallery Tutorial describes the steps required to upload and embed a photo in a post. Please refer to the Off-Topic Forum Guidelines for additional information.

420 Magazine's news department screens all candidate stories for content, source credibility and citation methodology. We only post stories that meet our high standards and we accept that members also wish to spread cannabis awareness. Submit news tips to news@420magazine.com for consideration and processing.

Discussions of media piracy, growing without homeowner consent or getting animals high are prohibited. Medicating your pet properly and responsibly with edibles for medical purposes is perfectly fine, however getting an animal high for fun is not. Photos of weapons, blood, gore and death are also prohibited.

420 Magazine does allow discussions of BHO, however does not permit the posting of BHO tutorials. Making hash oil using the butane method is inherently dangerous and 420 Magazine does not want to put the safety of our members at risk.

Please do not discuss the shipping of seeds. We appreciate that this may be a bit of a dilemma however, unfortunately, importation of seeds into the United States is still a felony. It is acceptable to reference a strain's origin for reference purposes, provided you don't recommend or link to a non-sponsored seed bank.

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, discussions of other, completely natural highs such as magic mushrooms (non toxic only) Peyote and Ayahuasca are permitted, provided threads dedicated to it are posted in our Miscellaneous Off Topic Forum and conversations do not hijack a cannabis themed thread. Conversations regarding shipping, trading, or selling magic mushrooms, or anything that could implicate 420 Magazine in a Federal crime, are prohibited. Light mentions of hard drugs and/or synthetic stimulants are only permitted for reference purposes, for those weaning off of them and onto Cannabis as a replacement. While we hold no malice towards those who choose to use hard drugs, our policy ensures that our core membership focuses strictly on Cannabis & Hemp related topics. Restricting the use of hard drug terminology also prevents keyword searches from ranking our site in these areas.

Please register a legitimate email address that you check on a regular basis. When members use a fake email and abandon it, the server keeps sending email notifications and newsletters to that email. If the email is closed, then the email provider reports to the internet police that we are spamming. This results in us being blocked and/or blacklisted and everybody suffers. The second consequence is that members try to login and can't because they have to access the old email to do a password change, etc. As a result, we have to spend a lot of time with them, attempting to get them back into their account. For the reasons stated above, we run checks for fake emails in our database several times a month, and any accounts found to be linked to email accounts that are bouncing back, are automatically moved to the "users awaiting email validation" usergroup and lose the ability of future access as a result.

420 Magazine does not wish to perpetuate the myths collectively known as Reefer Madness. These fallacious arguments and other dishonest tactics have been used for decades to scare the public and avoid truthfully debating the benefits of Cannabis. We recognize that budding young activists sometimes need to touch on these topics in order to learn to debunk propaganda with facts, so we respectfully request that appropriate context always be provided when discussing this topic. Please do not dignify the prohibitionists' argument by buying in to the negativity, posting videos or linking to these types of websites.

For more information and further explanation of our Posting Guidelines, please check out the 420 Guidelines FAQ's

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact support@420magazine.com

Thank you for your understanding and support, we are truly grateful.

Welcome to our family of free thinkers.

:Namaste:
 
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