In a time where the Star Trek Gaming Community is quiet, you would expect that the various dedicated websites out there would be doing all that they can to promote the Star Trek Gaming Franchise and encourage activity, and after disappearing two months ago, Star Trek Games Head Administrator, ChessMess, remerged yesterday and announced that the website would be undergoing a refit.
There was wide spread confusion at first, as the initial post made by ChessMess seemed to indicate that the entire site was being shut down due to a post in his "Community Suggestions and Support" forum, where several dozen STGU visitors were protesting a large "Salt Vampire" image that appears at the top of the forum whenever a user has not posted for four weeks.
Most people found this warning highly irritating and had banded together to request its deactivation.
In the original statement on the front page of Star Trek Games, ChessMess said:
It has come to my attention that many are unhappy the way the forum attempts to encourage a more active community. Given that few post in our forums anyway there isn't much incentive to keep them open, thus we are closing the forums for now.
This has now been amended as follows:
Despite rumors to the contrary this site isn't closing down. Sadly some have chosen to be insulting and opportunistic around the decision to temporarily close the forums. So let me be perfectly clear, no where did I say "The site is closed", so anyone who says differently is jumping to conclusions or has some other motive.
Now with that clear let me address what my message is suppose to mean. More astute observers noted the "for now" part of the forum closing message. My intention was to make some serious changes in the forum and given that we are in a low period of activity there isn't much incentive to keep them online while I do it. I wasn't sure how long it would take so I left it open ended.
Unfortunately given that so much of the site is tied into the forums this had the rather bad effect of practically shutting down the entire site. I didn't realize this at first because as an admin the site displays normally for me. Anyway I've turned everything back on but some things are a bit askew given that I have disabled some mods and other various changes.
Anyway all that is boring, lets talk future. The site is going to undergo some major changes. I've been putting them off because I prefer the 'Big Reveal' approach like the caterpillar that disappears and emerges complete and glorious in its new form.
Following that route requires some serious investment of time in order to minimize the phase where everyone is looking at the chrysalis and wondering what in the world is going on in there. At this point that is something that I don't have large quantities of, so I'm going to be doing the changes in the clear. That means that parts of the site will break or be of no apparent value for awhile (maybe a day, maybe a month). One part of the site may look totally different from another, and so on.
As we undergo structural and functional changes, we will also be changing how the site communicates things and what it communicates. My best advice to you is hang in there and roll with the changes, or just go out and enjoy the summer and check back in the fall.
Hailing Frequency is releived to have had clarification regarding the fate of the STGU, and we look forward to its return later this year.
