Making it even more annoying is a little bit of revisionist history already going on at the site. The original message that announced the lay offs said:
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.
Since then, that changed to:
CBS Interactive, which oversees StarTrek.com, is reorganizing the way it does business to align the division’s workforce with its new vision that focuses on building communities online.
CBS Interactive remains absolutely committed to StarTrek.com and to growing the site along with its users by directly tapping into and utilizing the passionate fan base that has supported the site.
It has been your support and contributions to the lore of Star Trek that are what make StarTrek.com a vibrant place to be. To that end, we encourage you to keep the conversation alive and flowing using our message boards.
Why am I posting about this? Well, for one it is Star Trek related so why not. Another is its a shame to see people get fired a week before Christmas. Also its sad to see such a dedicated and long lasting site dedicated to all things Star Trek finally get gobbled up and destroyed by the corporate parent. It wouldn't surprise me if CBS retains ownership of the domain name (unless those in charge are just that tech stupid), but just changes it so its selling the latest Star Trek trinkets rather then being a primary source of Star Trek information. CBS Interactive probably figures its just cheaper to apply a standard CBS Interactive template to the site and do an update once in a while then the constant updating that occurred with a full staff. The way I see it, even if the site remains running, without a staff dedicated to the site with genuine love of Star Trek, its really dead site running. I guess I will just shift my Star Trek online love to Memory Alpha.
Star Trek.com
1995 - 2007
Update: Based on a post Lying in the Gutters regarding Wizard Universe firing staff and using fan provided content and combine it with the above altered news item, a trend appears. They use their own fans to create content for the site for free rather then pay staff to do it. That may explain why they "encourage you to keep the conversation alive" as all it takes would be one person to skim the message boards for the latest Star Trek happenings and simply have them write a story or edit their post accordingly. Very efficient way to run a website. Doesn't make it a great website, just efficient.
But won't that, inturn, make for mistakes and misrepresntations? I go to StarTrek dot com to get my information straight from the horses mouth. Unless the company releases information to the public, or unless that information is already common knowledge, then any info on this site would be stuff I could obtain from the hundreds of blogs and forums out there. Doesn't make any sense.
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