The more things change, the more they remain the same. We all know that shortly after Doc was unceremoniously dropped from the club he co-founded, the HHI website mysteriously disappeared. Doc then tried launching an extremely amateurish site that, days later, suddenly disappeared. That was replaced with an archived version of the HHI site going back to 2007.
Now, a mere week since launching, that is now gone and has been replaced with a basic Simple Machines template for a discussion group where the only member appears to be Doc.
One wonders if Doc was read the riot act about using content that wasn't exclusively his. One has to believe Solomon was involved in both kicking Doc out of the club and refusing him rights to old HHI content.
Meanwhile, the old HHI site continues to post a questionable claim about being the victim of DOS attacks (though it appears more likely that someone with administrative rights deleted the site's index files), and provides a link to a site they claim will not be publicly accessible (interestingly, it's also now signed by "John Bartram, admin," which is new). So much for HHI's commitment to educate the public about all things history and archaeology.
We know some of our readers are former HHI-ers and if you have any details of what actually took place, we'd like to hear from you. You can email us anonymously or we promise to protect your identity. Considering the founders' arrogance and sense of self-importance they obviously felt about their place in the world, we'd love to get to the bottom of what caused HHI to implode.
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7 comments:
That site is so pathetic. Most visits today = 2. Most visits ever = 2 (probably me and HHW). Guess he can get some of his aliases to carry on a conversation with him.
But I have to admit, if you filtered out the Odyssey bashing and the posts by a few of the scumbags, HHI was a very interesting and informative endeavor.
We agree. There was some good information on the site. And it appeared "Vince" was trying to do some honest archaeology work. The reality is that most of the Odyssey bile was spewed by only a handful of people, namely Doc, Bartram, SatDiver and Scribe.
There was a *lot* of good information on the HHI website. It was an interesting and generally warm community as a whole. It's really sad that the apparent efforts to "restructure" the site more in keeping with its purpose resulted in its destruction. It truly amazes me what selfish cruelty small men can wreak on the innocent.
Hello HH Watch,
I frequently posted on the Old HHI and was a forum moderator there. I have not always appreciated the otherwise gifted ad hominem discourse here; however, recent events demonstrate that not all of your site's criticism was misdirected.
The Old HHI was a wonderful site, full of promise. I was not an am not in clear possession of all the facts related to the demise of the old site. I can say this much:
1. the disappearance of HHI came as a complete surprise to most of the membership and moderators.
2. the death of the HHI site was occasioned by a serious row between the founders. At its heart this row germinated out of different attitudes toward the OME coverage.
Very Best Regards,
Dear David,
Thank you very much for the insights about HHI. It sounds as if you understand that our criticism of HHI was directed specifically at the Odyssey coverage as communicated by a tiny group of misanthropes. We're truly sorry that a falling out between two egocentric buffoons resulted in the death of an interesting site and community. Best of luck to you going forward. And if you learn anymore, we would love to hear about it from you. Also, thanks for being willing to go on the record with a name.
Last two comments are very classy!!
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