Five Years On: A TrekUnited Message
| 27 February 2010
This post is probably of little interest to many, but it may interest a few who knew me from TrekUnited.
Five years ago this month I became involved with a newly formed community. A site for fans of Star Trek started by a good friend of mine, Tim Brazeal. I won't go over the story of how I became involved, I'll save that for my memoirs. What I will talk about is how I came to the decision to no longer involve myself with TrekUnited and it's associated projects. Essentially how I became, disinterested. I feel adequate time has passed for me to publically reflect on this.
The events of FedConUSA, which again is something I'll reflect on at a later date, played a big part in me stepping down, but a much larger part was the lack of desire to pedal TrekUnited into something that could finally at least break even financially. You might say I had a plan, or an outlook for how TrekUnited might appear by now.
It involved a redesign, not just visually and technically, but also of the aims of the group. The SaveEnterprise in my opinion had been dead for a while, and many of the foundations TrekUnited was founded on were no longer necessary. The group was still running in the same fashion as it was during the campaign of 2005, with a council of sorts that performed little to no function, filled with people who performed no real service for the group. Many people throughout the membership still had access to private areas when they were clearly no longer doing anything.
The site cosntantly attempted to be a news source. Instead I wanted to change the front page to become a news aggregate instead. It would simply seek out and post all news from other sites automatically with the relevant link backs. It would require no effort on the TrekUnited teams part.
If the site was to continue to operate within a network, it was to do so in a more unified way. This is more a technical thing so bear with it but the grouped sites could have easily been moved to sit under one URL, in one "Joomla" installation, collecting news using one news feed and then only show news relevant to the segment of the site you were visiting. The entire site would then be visually redesigned to allow for better use of Google advertising.
These changes would have enabled the TrekUnited team to focus on two areas, the forums, along with thier moderation, and promotion. TrekUnited was always good at exploiting ways to get people to the site. By providing homes for niche groups.
The site was crippled by a failed attempt to branch out and appeal to a much broader audience. This was mainly caused by miscommunication and a failure to operate under a single banner, a single purpose. Several visions existed for how the network of sites should be managed, but no clear unifying one existed to follow, causing the inevitable collapse.
Everyone reading this will know me as someone who likes to think he knows what he's doing, or at the very least works hard to provide some direction and leadership. With TrekUnited I was unable to do this as there were always those fighting against me, fighting to keep thier own little beacon lit. This was ultimatly an environment I couldn't work in any longer. My ideas and plans weren't able to come to fruitition, and thusly it was pointless remaining. Were my plans radical? Perhaps, but I ask you to look at TrekUnited now and tell me what you see.
I see a site that saddens me. A site which is a shadow of its former self. It used to be a site of passionate people who, when grouped together, could achieve almost anything. Now, it's become stale and irrelevant. Five years on and I almost regret any involvement at all, because Im ashamed to look at what it has become.
Frankly a part of me wishes I could just step back in, bringing back some of the great people that I worked with, and whip TU back into shape. I would fear however that people have become comfortable in thier ways and would not like someone like me coming by delivering ultimatums and making wide sweeping changes.
Anyway, sorry for the disorganised rant, but I hope it clears some things up.
