A Repost: #ELTchat: the loss of eltchat.com – Plan B
This is a repost for #ELTchat
For the last – well, almost two years now, since September 15 2010, #ELTchat has kept us on our toes and forged hundreds of professional and personal relationships amongst its followers who turn up on Twitter every Wednesday to talk about topics they have suggested and voted on – a community of peers which was created by a small group of colleagues – which grew and grew some more and became something that counts as an important part of our continuous professional development.
Like many great ideas, it didn’t hit just one person but several.
And that is how #ELTchat was created. 
The website to keep up the communication of its members, a base and repository of our ideas was one of the first things we all thought of creating – the wiki came later.
Andy Chaplin was keen to join the moderation team and help with podcasts and technical stuff; he was quick to buy eltchat.com and announced the good news to us after the fact.
A few months later, right after TESOL France 2011, he suddenly disappeared – some say for reasons of health.
We never found out for sure.
We never received a single word of response to our emails.
eltchat.com was and still is registered in his name.
And yesterday we lost it
On August 8 the domain expired and we have no way of taking over unless it goes up for sale again; it was very sad that Andy Chaplin did not find it appropriate to renew.
The news is really upsetting.
The work we have put in on this website cannot be told in a few simple words – but it has been a labour of love and we have got so much out of it that we have never regretted one single moment
We are pretty upset at the behaviour of this individual – disappointment is one big understatement.
But we trust that our community of #ELTchatters, our PLN for short, will again gather round the new domain which we have purchased – eltchat.org
It will take us a few days to put the website back on its feet
And all will be as it was before – all the posts in place all your thoughts and comments, all the polls and great summaries which got us on the shortlist of the ELTon Awards nominations
We will be back with a vengeance
We are not just a website – we did not get on the ELTon awards shortlist as just another website!!!
We are a great community of teachers and we have a Plan B!
See you all in September!!!
Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto Bruno Andrade Sue Annan Andrea Wade
Henrick Hoprea Mike Harrison Sue Lyon Jones Vicky Loras Lizzie Pinard
Tyson Sebunt Melania Paduraru Vicky Saumell David Dogson
Lesley Cioccarelli Cecilia Lemos Fiona Price Miguel Mendoza
Arjana Blazic Doug Peterson Chiew Pang
Huge Thanks for all these reposts
Marisa Constantinides – Shaun Wilden
P.S. We would greatly appreciate it if any of you belonging to this great community of teachers, teacher educators, bloggers, #ELTchat followers, reposted this on your blog
The tone of your post (“We are pretty upset at the behaviour of this individual…”) seems a little cruel considering that you have no idea what has happened to Andy Chaplin. It has been suggested that he was in ill health – perhaps he is very sick and the last thing on his mind is maintaining a domain name? I think it’s insensitive to suggest that he just couldn’t be bothered unless you know that for a fact.
This is not my post Claire and but a re-post. I met Andy 3 years ago and I hope he is fine. If you know anything about him please let https://twitter.com/Marisa_C or https://twitter.com/ELTchat know about it. The post is writen and reposted to be able to retrieve the lost eltchat posts not because we don’t care about Andy. We are all very worried. If you read the comments on Marisa’s blog, you will se that. http://marisaconstantinides.edublogs.org/2012/08/10/eltchat-the-loss-of-eltchat-com-plan-b/#.UDPkLULNqFI
Hi Eva,
Many thanks for reposting and showing your support to #ELTchat and the community of teachers who are #Eltchat
I agree with Claire that if one is seriously ill, the last thing on their mind would be to sort out the business of renewing or transferring the rights of the domain to the moderators
We did spend a lot of time worrying and writing agonized emails
Then one day we saw a new google+ account
I think that if he was well enough to do that he should have replied to one of us to say something, to let us know
That is what we are all very sad about
Marisa