Upgrade and maintenance
I've received several emails and phone calls today from DEAs asking if I knew anything about the sudden disappearance of the Home Inspector Forum (HIF).
The HIF apparently went offline in the early hours today and has not since returned.
Some members believe the closure is related to the banning of controversial member, DuncanM, last weekend, when he posted the picture of a person, believed by some to be of a child suffering Down Syndrome, holding a message* bearing his reply to another earlier posting.
(* A message is submitted to an online service which then superimposes the text onto a picture which the user can then download. The picture is supplied by the service provider)
One member took offence to the use of the picture and requested his own account be deleted in protest.
Sniffing blood, IDEA director, Jim Gillespie, a frequent visitor and subscriber to the forum who once contributed heavily himself until asked to respond to questions concerning the commercial direction he was steering the organisation (in contravention of its then constitution), wrote to the HIF administrator, admonishing him for not policing the heavily-trafficked forums (particularly posts criticising the director's own behaviour) and attacking the behaviour of certain other members by name.
(That tirade, incidentally, came in the same week David Halligan of Property Energy Surveys, and a candidate standing for a position on the IDEA committee, openly wrote on the forum that I was a "f**king d***head", which Jim Gillespie, in an email to myself later, considered "trivial nonsense", in contrast to his organisation's Code of Conduct.)
A handful of other members also voiced their own exceptions to the posting of the picture too.
Support
However, since his removal, HIF members have created several posts questioning whether the "PC mob" were just raising hysteria through sensationalism; accusing some members of jumping into the affray because of personal grudges held against the banned member, and countering that the post was clearly tongue-in-cheek and taken out of context.
Some members believe the picture used was not even a Down Syndrome sufferer (I personally think the person in the picture might actually be an "actor" as I recognise the face - I could be wrong, however).
Before the forum's closure, a thread petitioning DuncanM's reinstatement was created which, when I last looked, ran to over 4 pages and was overwhelmingly in support.
So was that why the forum was closed?
No, but you enjoyed the controversy nonetheless, didn't you!
The real reason for the HIF's closure is in fact because of "maintenance and upgrades".
It's true. It was hoped the upgrade would not affect forum life but obviously it has.
However it was supposed to return by 0600 hrs today...!
Not to worry, though: just down another Prozac and stay tuned - normal service will resume.
Tags: debris
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