We are no longer accepting applications from those using comcast.net.

[Peter C. Russell]

I have a question for Nick, is this thread still being censored????

It's OK with me but don't we as due's paying members have a right to know the rule's on censorship? and if you are going to delete my responses to your thread can't you at least send me a private message explaining why.

Hope your skin is a little thicker today.

[Nick Gromicko]

A couple years back we were electronically sabotaged by a Canadian non-member who started making the same post, off topic, on every thread. Her actions were illegal, even in Canada. This caused us (staff and I) some problems in that it became difficult to relay important information to the membership (one of the main purposes of the message board).

Our solution was to provide a safe haven from non-members here at the MISC forum. MISC forum is unique in that it is readable by all, but only members can post here. This way, staff and I can communicate information to the membership without harassment and sabotage by non-members who used to try to drag the thread down with off-topic posts.

It has become pretty clear to all that some InterNACHI members simply enjoy fighting with non-members. I'm not critcizing these members... to each his own. I takes two or more to tangle and if some members enjoy battling it out and continuously responding to non-members, we have plenty of open forums for them to pound away on each other by choice. It would be difficult for anyone to argue that we censor this message board, what with so many forums being open to all and unmoderated.

Recently, however, some members have dragged their battles over to our safe haven (MISC forum) which is bad enough, but it got worse. Some members have even dragged their battles to off topic threads, like this one regarding comcast.net. This is a form of sabotage that we do our best to prevent.

For those many members who enjoy responding to and fighting with non-members, there are plenty of other forums that permit posts by non-members and so plenty of opportunity for those members who desire argumentative exchanges to engage in them. We respect those member's preferences and so have continuously rejected requests to delete non-member's posts and impulses to restrict more forums to members-only.

[Peter C. Russell]

So what your saying is this thread is censored, which by the way Nick is fine with me. My problem is that I asked direct questions to you on this thread and they were deleted without any explanation to me, whether it was public or private, that's what disturbs me. I can except the explanation you have provided but I feel slighted as a 4 year member, I just felt I deserved better than that.

Thank you for stepping up an explaining why all of my threads where deleated and I hope you censor the non-members who come here only to slander us in revenge as much as you censored my replys to your thread.

[Nick Gromicko]

The other reason we did it was to provide requested data to Joe Farsetta. Had we revealed what was going on the data would have been skewed. He proposed to IT Dept. that we actually monitor every post (hundreds per hour at times). Worse.... actually read each one. Worse.... after reading each one determine if the post indicated that it was made by a banned non-member under a false name. And then if so, delete it. IT Dept. argued that Joe's request would take tens of thousands of man hours. I agreed to gather data to determine what the truth was. Part of that data collection included an experiment using this thread I started. After analyzing the monitoring of this thread, the deletion of posts, and the time it takes... then extrapolating it to the entire message board I came to the conclusion that the IT Dept. drastically underestimated the manpower needed to fulfill this request.

[Nick Gromicko]

Peter writes:

I hope you censor the non-members who come here only to slander us in revenge as much as you censored my replys to your thread.

We won't be deleting non-members posts as it is believed that these arguments are fueled more by members who continuously respond to non-members than the non-members themselves. All such proposals to go to a moderated message board have been rejected by IT and Blaine Wiley.

A proposal to delete the first member's post in reply to any non-member was rejected as well.

A proposal to put up a red flag saying "This is a member who statistically replies to argumentative non-member's posts first" was rejected as well.

Sabotage (hijacking of informational threads in the MISC safe haven forum) will be dealt with at times by deletion of off-topic posts for reasons explained. We don't consider this censorship as there are plenty of open, unmoderated forums available to all.

[Nick Gromicko]

Also, a proposal to make MISC forum readable to all but a forum where only staff can post was rejected by IT and staff. I think the reason is pretty clear by looking at the posts in this thread... many members contribute valuable on-topic posts to informational threads, the value they add is great, and so the price of blocking them in return for enjoying 100% on-topic threads is a price too high for us to pay.

[Mark R. Long]

Originally Posted by gromicko

Comcast.net blocks many of InterNACHI member's incoming emails as spam. Some of these emails may include messages from consumers who are trying to contact an inspector. For that reason we are no longer accepting membership applications from inspectors who use comcast.net.

http://www.nachi.org/comcast.htm

For the Moment, Comcast says that they are not blocking Nachi.org's IP address. Not sure how long that will last, but hopefully it will continue.

" Thank you for contacting Comcast Customer Security Assurance. We have received and reviewed your RBL removal request.

Below each IP address you submitted in your request, we have included the result of our research. Please do not reply to this message.


66.45.229.10
We have received your request for removal from our inbound blocklist. After investigating the issue, we have found that the IP you provided for removal is currently not on our blocklist.

We need the IP address currently blocked to further investigate this issue. The IP address is a number separated by decimals and is located in an error code starting with "550" in the returned email from Comcast. You can learn more about how to identify a blocked IP by visiting our Frequently Asked Question page at :
http://www.comcast.net/help/faq/index.jsp?faq=SecurityMail_Policy18667

Please verify the IP(s) and resubmit your request to http://www.comcastsupport.com/rbl

Sincerely,
Comcast Customer Security Assurance"

[jcohen]

if we are a member already with comcast what shall we do

[Dominic J. Maricic]

Justin, if you have a non comcast email account then make sure it's associated with your InterNACHI account and you won't have any problems. If you only have a comcast email account, get another one. I can set you up with one @HomeInspectorPro.com for free, or you can use GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.

[cbuell]

In my comcast account I can go and find the emails trying to get to me that were stopped as spam. The last time I emptied that folder there was a years worth of emails----450 or so---none of them had anything to do with InterNachi----more about improving the size of things if you know what I mean

[Dominic J. Maricic]

Charles, the problem was that Comcast was blocking InterNACHI emails before they even get to your spam folder so you didn't have a choice in the matter.

[Frank Magdefrau]

Originally Posted by gromicko

Comcast.net blocks many of InterNACHI member's incoming emails as spam. Some of these emails may include messages from consumers who are trying to contact an inspector. For that reason we are no longer accepting membership applications from inspectors who use comcast.net.

http://www.nachi.org/comcast.htm

Are you sure about this-


Thank you for contacting Comcast Customer Security Assurance. We have received and reviewed your RBL removal request.

Below each IP address you submitted in your request, we have included the result of our research. Please do not reply to this message.


"66.45.229.10"
We have received your request for removal from our inbound blocklist. After investigating the issue, we have found that the IP you provided for removal is currently not on our blocklist.

We need the IP address currently blocked to further investigate this issue. The IP address is a number separated by decimals and is located in an error code starting with "550" in the returned email from Comcast. You can learn more about how to identify a blocked IP by visiting our Frequently Asked Question page at :
http://www.comcast.net/help/faq/index.jsp?faq=SecurityMail_Policy18667

Please verify the IP(s) and resubmit your request to http://www.comcastsupport.com/rbl

Sincerely,
Comcast Customer Security Assurance

[Dominic J. Maricic]

I got that same sort of BS from Microsoft for 3 months about 2 years ago. "You're not on any blacklist". It wasn't until I filed BBB complaint and got to talk to one of the blacklist guys who hides in a top secret room that I found out they actually blocked an entire range of 72 IP addresses becuase there was a spammer among the range.