Author Topic: Watergardening Institute taken over by porn (Read 7679 times)

Esther · « **Reply #30 on:** February 02, 2007, 05:44:07 AM »

Yup, that's the one.

Go get 'em.

El Jefe · « **Reply #31 on:** February 02, 2007, 08:16:52 AM »

Well Amazon is going to refund me my money but they put me through to their Magazine clearing house because the clearing house insists that the publisher is still valid. They also insist that I will get my Magazine. I told them to cancel and refund me my money (which could take up to 2 months) The Clearing house did not want to hear it but took the information anyway for the Lawyer. What a pain in the Butt! Disappointing as I had been looking forward to it. Maybe we should throw our collective cash together and buy whats left of it and let Craig, Sean and Jerry write well written columns that are of genuine interest and factual!

We can rename it American Ponders Magazine!!

Andy

Craig · « **Reply #32 on:** February 02, 2007, 08:29:36 AM »

Lol....count me out. I think they were asking for 15K and you'd still have to deal with the creditors that own the rights.

Jerry · « **Reply #33 on:** February 02, 2007, 08:29:59 AM »

Andy you are flattering indeed. I have heard worse ideas!. If this were 20 years ago I'd jump all over it!

Jerry · « **Reply #34 on:** February 02, 2007, 08:32:58 AM »

Craig we could fill a void, *%$#@$ the creditors. A new magazine, a new name, a new staff.
Yes, just talk here, but the longest journey starts with one step.

happyoutsidegirl · « **Reply #35 on:** February 02, 2007, 10:48:30 AM »

All of this is bad news. I did get that mag. for several years but this year started a new one. It's The Water Gardener. I have only gotten one so far and I like it. I even got my little didy mentioned it it. I went on line to see it the first time and did some of there interactive questions and etc. I hope it lasts even tho it's only 4 a month. I am looking for a monthley if anyone knows a good one.

Desertponder · « **Reply #36 on:** February 02, 2007, 01:03:57 PM »

Several weeks ago one of the members over on "water gardening institute" emailed the Spiecharts about the forum.
Their return email stated "they no longer owned the board........it has been stolen from us..........but will pass on the information to the new owner."
Like I said, that was several weeks ago. I'm sure the new owner is letting it sit there and get ugly on purpose. It most likely has something to do with their court settlement. I'm guessing there was some kind of non-competition clause involved in the settlement. So when they started up the e-magazine and new board they got caught with it.
I wish the board would get taken down.

As far as typos, misspellings, etc. in their book.........this is very much a problem with the new age of computers and the publishing world. The process of several proofings by proofreaders has been pretty much eliminated from publishing. Hardly anything actually gets proofread anymore and we rely on spellcheck too much. It won't catch everything and doesn't work at all if the person producing the copy doesn't bother to use it. Being in the publishing business for many years it drives me nuts. I absolutely hate seeing misspelled words in printed publications!

El Jefe · « **Reply #37 on:** February 02, 2007, 01:04:59 PM »

Hmm I don't know, think of all the talent in here? I am an IT by trade as well as an electronics tech. There are almost ? 400? members in here with a common hobby/passion? can't tell me there isn't a wealth of talent to be gleaned from. Pick a core group Start an LLC and negotiate with the old creditors. What are you getting for 15K? Equipment? the Name? rights (to what exactly). All things considered this may not actually BE a bad idea.

May be worthy of a whole new thread.
Andy

Desertponder · « **Reply #38 on:** February 02, 2007, 01:27:28 PM »

There is already one new water gardening magazine out there. Many of us on Koiphen were able to get a free issue sent to us. I got mine a couple of weeks ago. I don't remember who the owner of it is. Its nice but very thin and not a great deal of content.

It is very, very expensive to publish a magazine, particularly one that is aimed at a specific hobby/interest that doesn't have a really large following and a small advertising base. The printing costs are what kill them. Printing is getting close to being cost prohibitive. Even the papers I work for are already looking at doing away with print publications and going strictly internet. We've all been told that many of us may not have our jobs in 3-5 years.

Jerry · « **Reply #39 on:** February 02, 2007, 02:27:16 PM »

Some new magazines that have to do with Ponding are "once a year".
The old site being a porn site is disgusting. Can't something be done?
Andy, Sean tells me we have many more members than what we see here. It is too complicated for me to explain here.

I have thought of doing a book on ponding. The idea would be to defray cost of the site
It would feature articles from the membership.

The tees were meant to get us in the red, I fear it's a bust. I am "eating" them. :'(
id lower the price if I could be sure they will get rid of them.
Maybe , buy 2 get one FREE ?

Sean · « **Reply #40 on:** February 02, 2007, 03:03:25 PM »

Hi Jerry,

I am sure your garner of t-shirts will become hot items again once spring hits and people have the fever to garden once again.
Right now, we do not have a lot of the membership viewing the forum, only about 30% of the whole membership has been keeping the forum active this winter. Things will change in a couple more months. It's the same every year, people hibernate in the winter.

Cheers,
Sean

El Jefe · « **Reply #41 on:** February 02, 2007, 04:51:44 PM »

Domain Name: watergardeninginstitute.com

Status: clientDeleteProhibited, clientRenewProhibited, clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited

Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com

Expiration Date: 2007-07-01
Creation Date: 2006-07-01
Last Update Date: 2006-07-01

Name Servers:
park29.secureserver.net
park30.secureserver.net

Extended Information - :
IP Address: 68.178.232.48
IP Location: United States
Website Status: active
Server Type: Apache
Cache Date: 2007-02-02 17:29:44 MST

Well I tried to do a Who is lookup to see if I could find out the new owner but no such luck, Interesting though, Greg and Sue claim it was stolen, question s by who!

Jerry I would wait on the shirts too an put up a sticky post at the beginning of summer. They look good! heck I will take 2!
I understand about the loss in Membership numbers, I had a similar issue and it took me awhile to find the corrupted record that made my boards membership look like about 1/3rd it's normal membership once corrected it was right where is should have been.

Had a friend of mine take over Swat Magazine when it was about dead, he has managed to turn it around and make it profitable, guess we would have to see what the assets vs liabilities were. I was doing a WHOIS search and found 9 pages of watergardening entries (websites) I didn't do a search on Ponds or ponding but that amounts to more than a small following.

Things that make you go Hmmm

Mikey · « **Reply #42 on:** February 02, 2007, 08:10:01 PM »

Andy: What is a "WHOIS" search?

El Jefe · « **Reply #43 on:** February 02, 2007, 09:07:23 PM »

It helps to identify the owner of a domain. It will give you all the data on file on the owner, contact info etc. Plus you can find out when the domain is up for renewal. The WHOIS system originated as a method that system administrators could use to look up information to contact other IP address or domain name administrators (almost like a "white pages").
andy

Johns · « **Reply #44 on:** February 02, 2007, 09:53:04 PM »

For Whois, all you gottta do is type www.dnsstuff.com in your url and hit enter. Scroll down the page loooking on the left side until you see Domain Name tests. The bottom one is a Whois. Type in gardenendeavors.com and click "whois". About 3/4 of the way down the page, you will see the registrants name, in this case, me.

Here is the info on Watergardening institute:

Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: WATERGARDENINGINSTITUTE.COM

Domain servers in listed order:
PARK29.SECURESERVER.NET
PARK30.SECURESERVER.NET

****************************************************
See Business Registration Listing
****************************************************
Copy and paste the link below to view additional details:
http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx?domain=WATERGARDENINGINSTITUTE.COM

Strange that the registrant is different than above.....

Mikey · « **Reply #45 on:** February 03, 2007, 10:26:39 AM »

Thanks Andy & John

El Jefe · « **Reply #46 on:** February 06, 2007, 09:03:10 AM »

In trying to e-mail Sue I received this "We're sorry. There's a problem with the e-mail address(es) you're trying to send to. Please verify the address(es) and try again. If you continue to have problems, please contact Customer Support at (480) 624-2500.

<sue@watergardening.com>:
The e-mail message could not be delivered because the user's mailfolder is full."

Why would it be full? Hmmm lots of PO'ed subscribers maybe? $:-\$

Esther · « **Reply #47 on:** February 06, 2007, 11:26:16 AM »

I wonder if she even looks at her stuff. Wonder if she's gone or ill.

Desertponder · « **Reply #48 on:** February 06, 2007, 11:46:02 AM »

Her email is probably full of spam from all those spammers. I have suspected that there have been ones that have lifted emails from that forum as I've recently had a large increase in bad spam. I'm betting they just don't want anything to do with any of it any longer. Greg and Sue may not be responsible for honoring/refunding the subscriptions sold, it just depends on what was settled and how it was settled in the court case. I've got a feeling they have to be very, very careful about having any contact or anything to do publicly with water gardening.

Bonnie · « **Reply #49 on:** February 07, 2007, 05:48:10 PM »

Shanna, I really hope they aren't responsible.....

BUT until I hear otherwise, I WON'T support them anymore by purchasing more of their publications,etc.

Esther · « **Reply #50 on:** February 08, 2007, 04:53:12 AM »

I agree. I lost faith in Sue a long time ago.

Desertponder · « **Reply #51 on:** February 08, 2007, 08:57:16 AM »

Oh yeah, I agree, they're done.

Lorraine · « **Reply #52 on:** February 08, 2007, 11:20:11 AM »

I was cleaning up my 'Favorites List' and saw that the Gardening Instud. is really bad! Deleted it from my list. How sad to end up like this. And the mag. too. Quite a few lost their money they paid for getting it. It was a nice mag. at one time. I still have copies of them when I was getting it on reg. bases. How sad! I miss reading a pond mag. I know with the internet we don't need them but I still like having my hands on it,even with the daily paper I like to read it not look at it on a screen. Just wanted to comment on that site, seems they or some one would take it down.

Jerry · « **Reply #53 on:** February 08, 2007, 11:49:34 AM »

Having started ponding on that site I was always grateful. When it deteriorated I felt we could make our own site and do it better. I was always amazed at the loyalty and good wishes our members expressed toward the Spichert's.
I was stayed politically correct in my critiques, I had too having founded this site.
The fact is they didn't give a rat's ass. it is that simple! Funny, I am still holding my tongue!

If you lost some money with those folks, be grateful it was just a few dollars (yes, I sent donations too) We could have been skinned big time, if they were real con men, thank God they were not.

LeeAnne151 · « **Reply #54 on:** February 09, 2007, 11:12:46 AM »

The money I lost at the end ($55 approx) was nothing compared to what I received.

I enjoyed 6 years of free membership on their forum, made some wonderful friends and learned so much, not to mention all the hours of enjoyment chatting with others who share my love for ponds and gardens.

I have 8 years of the magazine on my bookshelf and many issues are very worn out from being read so many times. I've got three ponding books they sent as part of a subscription renewal too.
Correction: my first issues are from 1996 so I have almost 10 full years of mags.

I think it is really too bad that many people didn't know their forum before they started to have severe financial and personal problems that made them not pay attention to it. After all, when you are losing your business, running a free internet forum or answering emails about it, is hardly important....

Esther · « **Reply #55 on:** February 09, 2007, 11:30:48 AM »

So character is determined by what life gives us?

Lorraine · « **Reply #56 on:** February 09, 2007, 11:39:33 AM »

Gesh I hope not! If you become what life has dumped on you, Man are we in trouble!

LeeAnne151 · « **Reply #57 on:** February 09, 2007, 02:08:08 PM »

That isn't what I meant.

I meant that it was too bad that some people joined the group so near the end that they have only had bad experiences.

Joyce · « **Reply #58 on:** February 09, 2007, 02:43:17 PM »

I knew what you meant Leeanne!

Esther · « **Reply #59 on:** February 10, 2007, 07:24:21 AM »

I knew what you meant also Leeann. I was around long enough before the bad stuff began to happen to have learned the how AWGS and Watergardening Magazine was supposed to work from experiencing it. Maybe that is why I was so upset when they stopped working correctly and it seemed that nothing was being done about it. For all I know, there were great efforts to correct the situation but we were all left hanging with no appologies made. I have derived many hours of pleasure from my subscriptions and the time spent on AWGS and am grateful for the knowledge gained thereby and give the people who deserve it a resounding THANK YOU

. But when the previous service began to lack I also observed and gave a resounding response

, hoping to let the offenders know they needed to pick up on the slack. The answer I (we) received was

NOTHING.