Cannabis Chronicles

Planet Ganja forums

Planet Ganja

Planet Ganja is a mid-sized internet community that serves a unique role and need for the Cannabis community. Because the PlanetGanja forums are not supported or funded directly by a seed bank or seed sales, it remains independent of a seedy business. Because it’s owners remain committed to free speech principles, PlanetGanja also fills a special niche, allowing uncensored public discussions of topics that might be taboo on most other message boards.

Rather than being large metropolis like Overgrow once was, we find PlanetGanja’s size and atmosphere to be more akin to a moderately sized community. In size and scope, PlanetGanja’s forums remind us of a former favorite site of the 3LB’s, CannabisWorld. The atmosphere is a little different than our old home, but in this case that’s not something that’s solely determined by a board’s size.

To the best of our knowledge, PlanetGanja is between two and three years old, so it’s similar in age to the ICMag forums that we previously reviewed. In the world of cannabis, lasting a couple years seems to be a sign of stability, so we’d consider PG to be a well established site.

The site’s owners are private individuals from the Cannabis Community, who go by the handles Prawn Connery and Gadabout. As with any other site, PlanetGanja also has the usual array of moderators to help monitor the forums and keep things in order. One further staff person deserves individual mention, JJonahJameson, a former site administrator who currently serves as the moderator of the site’s meet & greet forum. JJJ is a great guy who we’ve corresponded with a little, he impresses us as an individual with both intelligence and integrity, and the marijuana community could use more folk like him.

We’ve said before that a site is only as good as it’s growers, and there’s no doubt that a good number of quality growers call the PlanetGanja message board home. Mrs Fly’s Garden of Mixed Delights is just one of the many quality grow threads that can be found at PG. PassionForMaryJane and HempKat are two other growers who not only contribute quality growing information, but also provide interesting contributions on cooking with cannabis and other related issues of interest for medical users.

The very features that make PlanetGanja special, it’s independent operation and free speech aspects, are also a couple of the traits that might make it unacceptable to some individuals. It’s said that free speech only comes at a certain price, and in this case the toll due could best be described as “background noise”. PlanetGanja’s forums host more heated debates, and feature more interpersonal conflicts, than most other message boards.

As individuals who enjoy the right to freedom of expression, we do find a lot of advantages to PlanetGanja’s very lightly moderated approach, but we also know a lot of folks could disagree. Some medical marijuana users might find the more openly contentious and argumentative atmosphere of some threads to be bothersome. Certainly there are outspoken individuals at PlanetGanja who are not afraid to “mix it up” a bit, and getting on those individual’s bad side can lead to more than a little turbulence. Like everything else in the human experience, free speech has it’s good and bad sides.

Planet Ganja’s forums feature more overtly political conversations than most Cannabis related message boards. Many other marijuana forums deliberately avoid featuring forums devoted to political discussion, believing that political discussions tend to get heated and become divisive. PlanetGanja, on the other hand, embraces political discussions, and it’s political forum is among the site’s most popular features.

PG also features a “shark tank” and “seed wars” forums. These particular sub-forums are only visible to registered and signed in users of PlanetGanja, which is a pretty good thing, since these are the places where the free speech concept is given it’s most free reign. The seed wars forum is a place for uncensored discussion of the seedy canna-seed business, and in times past it’s seemed to be one of the most heavily visited and used forums on the site. This forum truly features debates that would be taboo at nearly every other site we’ve ever frequented.

Not everyone will find the atmosphere of PlanetGanja to be to their taste, because of the lightly moderated approach the PlanetGanja owners follow. Not everyone finds heavily moderated forums to their liking either, so we aren’t looking to find fault with either philosophy, we’re simply trying to objectively describe the very different atmospheres that are found at different sites.

Certainly the free speech aspect of PlanetGanja can become annoying when tempers start to flare and conversations get heated, but that’s a small price to have to put up with, for the ability to fully speaks one’s mind. PG’s forums are unique in the way they can provide an alternative soapbox for individuals who’s message might not be welcome at other sites.

We’re pretty sure Gad and Prawn would want us to tell you that their grow threads are really good too, and there is a lot of truth to that. But, almost every site has their share of outstanding growers, and, at it’s essence, PlanetGanja provides an independent minded forum for independent minded people. It’s a place where folks who aren’t afraid to speak their minds, or go against conventional wisdom.

If for no other reason than that alone, we’d find the PlanetGanja website to be an essential element in the make-up of the cannabis community.