GTPopping.com Sponsorships & Affiliations

[Luke Wyrsta]

Dear members

After careful consideration, GTPopping.com has decided to take a new direction as of 1st April in terms of sponsorships and advertising. We feel that this new direction will be in the best interests of the membership base as well as the site itself going forward. In the past six months, we've seen a subtle but noticeable change in the demographics of our membership. Previously, our membership comprised primarily Australian members with the odd international member. Of late however, we have had as many international members joining as Australian based members.

To move in line with the demographics of our membership, we've decided to open up GTPopping to a wider range of sponsors/advertisers.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank FishHead for its support over the past year. FishHead assisted members with many great offers and advice on popping and jigging related products and we are pleased to be able to advise that they will be remaining as one of our sponsor/advertisers under our new approach.

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor/advertiser, please contact myself or Brandon by PM.

To all our members, we would like to advise on our policy of posting links to other websites other than our sponsor/advertisers. We will not be prohibiting links to other websites where the item being linked is not available, out of stock or not shippable from our sponsors. That said, we also want to make it clear that we will not tolerate behavior that verges on spamming. In a nutshell, if you want to advertise on this forum, please do it the right way and become a sponsor/advertiser. If in doubt, please contact myself or Brandon.

Stay tuned and continue to enjoy GTPopping.com

Luke & Brandon

[Sam Cheadle]

Hi Brandon/Luke

I would like ask a hypothetical.

A registered sponsor/advertiser is a charter operator.

A member of gtpopping.com goes on a trip with the charter, but has a lousy trip and doesn't catch much worth talking about.

The member posts a report of this trip on gtpopping.com forums.

Will the post be removed from the site?

[Brandon Khoo]

Sam, I think this is the type of question where it would have been more appropriate to PM either Luke or msyelf.

You are seeking an absolute response to a question where we can't give an absolute answer. What I will say is that if you post a review along the lines of (for example), "LPB is #$%^, we caught no fish and the guide was useless and is an imbecile", I would remove it. Why? because that isn't a trip report, it is a rant and it personally derogatory.

We have no background to why, what the conditions were like, whether you know how to fish at all etc. On the other hand, if you post that we didn't catch any fish, conditions were awful, guides appeared to be inexperienced and you provided the background, I would have no problem with it. Of course, following on from my previous example, I would debate the point as to whether the guide was inexperienced because I think the two brothers from LPB are among the best GT guides you will find anywhere.

Provided a post is reasonable, I think we would let it stand. If it got personal, derogatory or was simply unreasonable, it would be at risk of removal.

[Robert Palcak]

Sam

As fishermen... in particular GT fisherman, we all know that the exciting thing about fishing is you never know what to expect on a trip. Sometimes all the moons align and you have a cracker trip where you get bragging rights and want to post your success. However, more often than not, we set our expectations way too high and for whatever reason, the fish just dont bite... and that my friend is just tough luck... it's also what keeps us coming back for more. Every die hard fisherman would understand that.

If on the other hand you recieved bad service, I dont believe revenge on a public forum is the way to handle it.

Just my 2 cents worth...

Cheers Rob

[Sam Cheadle]

I appreciate your response and think its perfectly reasonable answer.

I sorry you would rather receive the message via PM and was not trying to stir anything up. It's just something i have thought about here and elsewhere, and just wondered how you would handle that one given the organisation and yourself would have invested interest in each other.

I suppose i would only be pissed off with a group if i had been led to believe i was in for much more than i got. especially if i had spent heaps on the trip. But that said i know we are dealing with the elements, and they can not be fully predicted and sometimes it just not happening.

I haven't had a bad experience to date with GT fishing, but would use this forum to express myself if i did.

Cheers Sam

[Brandon Khoo]

Sam, I've been to some incredibly remote areas in what looked like pretty damn good conditions and not raised a fish for hours on end. That's fishing sometimes. If you pick a good outfit and good guide, you obviously increase your chances but there are no guarantees. Spending heaps is no guarantee in itself.

[Sam Cheadle]

Point taken and true enough Brandon.