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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."
It would be great news if they then donated the domain to a fan based organization who could then preserve, maintain and preferably enhance the whole website and continue to move it forwards.
But I suspect it will be sold to the highest bidder, no doubt something to do with the new upcoming prequels.
Actually it says that the production team has been eliminated (which kinda sucks just during this holiday seasons), and the ultimate fate of the site is still unresolved.
Kaaaaaaahn!!
damn you temporal agents...
They should have thought twice about having a 'Red Shirt Friday' in the office I guess...
Could memory-alpha.org be part of the reason? I know I go there for all things Trek (huge nerd here...get over it). I can't remember ever going to ST.com for anything.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
The last editorial on the site is about the writer's strike. It would be logical to draw your own conclusions.
"Is this site worth a write-in campaign?"
Nope.
(Count the mods who break their legs in a rush to mod this as "flamebait" even though I'm answering the question asked.)
While reading the summay. Last fall/winter/ this spring i watched all 6 star trek series and 10 movies in chronological order by episode. Memory alpha was an indispensible resource for getting the order right, as well as reading background info and things on just about evey episode while i was watching, i cant remember ever going to the official site...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
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.
The website is a mess anyways, Memory Alpha is much better, its the star trek wiki, http://memory-alpha.org/
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.
Watch what you're saying. The person in question may be reading this, armed with moderator points...
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
if it is, the mirror will have a goatee and be evil!
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
Voyager. I'm not sure how but I'm sure it's Voyager's fault the site is closing down.
Some CBS exec happened to catch a re-run of the Voyager episode with Tuvix and said "That's it. Kill the site."
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
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.
It is a good day to die.
714 regular episodes * 45min
22 animated episodes * 25min
10 movies * ~120min
565 hours / 9 months (sept to may i believe) is roughly 2 hours a day, so i averaged about 3 episodes a day, not as bad as it sounds.
And for the record, i have a job and live with my fiancee.
As for my overall opinions of the franchise...
Enterprise, definitely watchable and definitely underrated. Never watched it when it aired, but the 3rd and 4th seasons were better than a lot of Voyager.
TOS, good, has stood the test of time pretty well, but not fantastic.
TNG, also good, but soooo overrated. I was a little young when it was on (1yo and 8yo), so i hadnt seen much of it, its all pretty good and there are some classic episodes, but its definitely overrated IMO.
DS9 was a rewatch for me, but it was as good as i remember it and is still my favorite series.
VOY, another rewatch, worse than i remember since i was still only in middle school when it was on. It got off to less of a rocky start than TNG or DS9, whos first 2 seasons were pretty bad, but voyager got worse as it went along. Overall i think i liked enterprise better than voyager.
And the movies dont require much comment, i think the accepted order of best to worst is 4, 2, 8, 6, 3, 10, 1, 9, 7, 5.
It was a fun experience, and i recommend it, its not as daunting as it seems, 2 eps a day and you can do it in a year. Part of the fun for me was watching them in chronological order, which helped break up TNG, DS9 and VOY, although i still had to watch 2 seasons of voyager straight through. Interesting to note, the finale of TNG and the premier of VOY are only separated chronologically by the first 7 episodes of the third season of DS9.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."