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Startrek.com Shutting Down
Curlsman writes to let us know that the fan site startrek.com, operated for 13 years by CBS, is being shut down and its staff laid off. Is this site worth a write-in campaign? From the (perhaps final) post: "Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team. Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately. We don't know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years. If you have comments, please send them to editor @ startrek.com — we hope someone at CBS will read them."
you work somewhere for 13 years and get laid off, I would use eliminated too.
The last editorial on the site is about the writer's strike. It would be logical to draw your own conclusions.
An "It's dead, Jim" 404 page would be most appropriate.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Don't Paramount have a movie coming out, by the very name "Star Trek", for Xmas next year? Seems like a dumb time to drop the site.
Not if they plan to re-use the domain to promote that film.
It's unfortunate that the Star Trek site is being discontinued. Even if the site cannot be maintained any longer (despite a movie apparently being in production), the resources accumulated on the site are important, at least from a historic perspective. For a television and movie franchise to last around 40 years, and have the influence it has had on pop culture and scientific development (the standard "flip phone," for example, was created by a Motorola engineer who readily admits it was inspired by the "communicator" from the original Star Trek series), it deserves at least a Web site that archives important information about the show. I used to work for MSN (at Microsoft's Redmond-West campus, where MSN was operated out of) in the late 90s, when the site still existed in its early state startrek.msn.com. Even after moving beyond the days of "MSN Shows" this very site lived on and evolved to keep up with the series and discuss the latest episodes of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise, as well as maintain a comprehensive history of the various series and movies. It never outlived a purpose as a site. I, personally, maintain several Web sites, including one that has sent over 240,000 letters to legislators in Illinois to encourage proper investment in public transportation infrastructure in the Chicago area. Considering that I personally spend about $200/year on the sites I am in charge of, it's shocking to me that StarTrek.com can't even be maintained as an informational resource by such a massive media conglomerate. Even if a salary needs to be paid to a developer to maintain the site, it's still peanuts. Even if there can't be the kind of investment to keep the content fresh, what exists now deserves to remain available to the public with whatever little maintenance it requires. Please, at the very least, maintain the Web site as it has existed as a resource to the fans, to the occasional watcher, and to the curious about the details of literally hundreds of installments of high-quality and socially important science fiction television and movies that have influenced generations of people to set higher standards for advancement, understanding, and peace. Star Trek, a fan of the show or not, must be acknowledged as having had a huge impact on pop culture and our technological and scientific direction. The least one can do is keep a Web site running on a server for what amounts to peanuts.
Seriously... This is something I always wondered about with blogs -- what happens when a major site like this (that I'm sure has been linked to by blogs and used as fodder for blog posts) shuts down? Can you imagine how many blogs will be inconvenienced when Youtube goes the way of the dinosaur as well? All it takes is some bean counter to kill half the internet.
.... or perhaps not.
Live Long and Prosper, "startrek.com"
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
You can earn all the money in the world with your sort of attitude, but you'll still have approximately the same number of days on this earth as I do. The "pursuit of happiness" is an on-going experience, not a goal. If someone wants to spend a third of his working life maintaining an excellent web site (+other resources) on Star Trek, good for him. He's happy, he's harmless, he's giving other people joy.
If you haven't found what makes you happy yet, heed the example of this sort of person - don't put him down.
Kill it off now! Make it disappear for 5-10 years. THEN bring it back. The problem with the entire ST franchise is that it has been run into the ground. Kill it, let people forget about it for a few years, THEN bring it back. Hopefully by that time, Rick Berman (however you spell it) will have died off and some other writer can bring back this franchise.