Reading your responses makes me think you truly don’t understand. But then I see the above quote and think you do understand. So I’m a little confused, either you like this forum, because it actually helps people or you don’t like the idea that they are attempting to use this forum to support their business of selling seeds. 
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Wow that is surprising to me that it would cost that much. I am a software engineer and have run production software on servers that are significantly cheaper than 10K… idk if they just aren’t very cost efficient or what but over 10 grand a month to run a small forum sounds high to me. A forum like Stack Overflow would be a different story, although I’m sure they must make alot of money from ads at least.
It’s pretty simple to understand - I have had grow diaries here and was considering entering my buds into a contest or something. But my seeds were from Nirvana Seeds and Barney’s Farm. So I was disappointed that I could not enter my buds in the contest. And then everyone else began telling me that I should be more respectful. I wasn’t shouting or angry, I just felt like it’s lame I can’t participate just because I did not buy any of your products. Feels like the forum is really just here for the marketing value and not simply for the joy of helping the community.
I should probably note that I do have a disorder which makes me see things in a very black / white type of way and very Us / Them. We like to develop an idealized image of the people and things in our lives but if something causes the image to no longer make sense and split then typically we devalue that person or thing. So it is probably just part of that process, it is just the way I am.
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I wasn’t referring to the cost of a small forum, as far as the 10’s of thousands. I was referring to the cost to run this forum. Which again I don’t know the cost. But when I was looking for alternatives, for a forum, I ran across options to set up a forum without the software to actually run forum. The platform that ILGM uses is discord. Discord basically sets up everything necessary to run forum software and server space. For the private forum I’m involved with, it can basically run itself, without much need of Administrator’s help. Just pay the bill monthly and it runs. I’m not exactly IT illiterate, but don’t have the knowledge necessary setup and run a forum like Discord offers here.
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I understand, that’s one of reasons I attempt to be respectful to everyone. Plus if someone starts to be disrespectful here, the moderators will step in and explain that all opinions are welcome as long as they are stated in a respectful way 
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Have you seen the contest entries??? The buds in the contest were extremely competitive!!
Keeping this line of communication going is fruitless with someone with your point of view. Try bankrolling a forum of this size (pictures take space which cost money)
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Almost… The forum backbone is from the Discourse software… 
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Discourse, Discord, whatever it takes 
I do get the 2 confused.
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Forum cost doesn’t really factor into the competition, if anything you could charge a membership fee but then you wouldn’t have as many members. If the forum cost doesn’t make sense and is a burden on your business, then you can always choose to axe the forum. My guess is that it probably increases sales enough to offset the cost. I have no idea how much traffic this forum has, but the more traffic the forum has I am guessing the more sales they end up getting - the relationship is not so much one of cause but almost definitely would have some correlation.
I don’t understand why you feel the need to change my point of view, it isn’t like it actually effects anything and I had valid reasons for being disappointed when I was hoping to enter my buds into a contest.
Not quite. By your reasoning, you could have enrolled in a tomato growing forum and then start whining because they wouldn’t accept your buds in their best tomato contest… 
I’ll say it again, for the third time, that Bud of the Month contest is a contest made by ILGM for ILGM customers who are growing Ilgm’s merchandise.
They don’t mind if you’re growing whatever genetics you want. Every now and then there’s contests that will include any seed banks… But this one is for Ilgm stuff only.
How hard is it to understand? That’s their prerogative, since they’re paying for everything here…
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I’m not trying to change your point of view, every grower here understands this rule and has never complained about it…you’re the only one….need I say more! You could always try and persuade the banks you purchased from to start a support forum and contest if you feel this strongly about the subject. It boggles my mind that you can’t let this go 
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No - that would only be true if I was upset that I couldn’t submit my tomato plants into your contest. I do grow tomatoes too. And peppers, eggplants, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, peas, carrots, beans, swiss chard, kale, dill, rosemary, basil, thyme, and a bunch of other things. But i wasn’t expecting to submit other types of plants into a cannabis contest.
Nice try though.
Exactly, now you seem to be understanding it. So why would ILGM want to promote other seed banks, by allowing genetics from another bank in contest that is set up to promote ILGM genetics. I admit I have a problem with needing to use common sense. Which, this issue is clearly a common sense issue.
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No I’ll just start posting on other forums. Until now this was the only cannabis forum i posted on regularly. I don’t care about what seed banks do, there are plenty of cannabis forums. I might do my grow diaries somewhere else next year. Doesn’t seem like ILGM will miss me as I don’t buy their genetics.
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No because the forum would increase sales REGARDLESS of whether they hosted open competitions. It should be common sense that thousands of people visiting your forum every day will increase sales and that exactly how you structure your competitions is sort of irrelevant to that fact.
If anything, I would be more likely to buy ILGMs seeds if I saw how they perform in an open competition.
Let’s put it this way - if ILGM’s seeds won an open competition such as the Cannabis Cup then I would be much more surprised than if they won a closed competition where only ILGM exists.
You would be correct about that. But understand, the people that have been responding aren’t ILGM employees, myself included. We were honestly attempting to help you understand. But it seems you would prefer to threaten us with, I’ll stop posting on the site that you don’t support in any way.
You know the old saying "Don’t go away mad… I will let you figure out the rest 
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I know and it was implied. But subtlety doesn’t seem to be your strong feature…
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I apologize if the idea of me posting on another forum sounds threatening to you. I just don’t have enough time to post the same information across multiple forums. So if I decide that another forum seems to be a better home for me, then I will probably do most of my posting over there. I’m not the type of guy that likes to cheat on his forums with other forums.
So then why did you make an analogy about submitting completely different types of plants? A cannabis plant originating from different seed stock is a far cry from trying to submit completely different species of plants.
Also, I never made any personal insults towards you. I don’t see why you feel the need to make personal insults towards me simply because I disagree with rules of a competition on a cannabis grow forum.