Closedown

1. INT. John’s Gmail Account. Night.

A mess, obviously. Unopened mail everywhere. It is ignored, as ‘Compose Mail’ is clicked, and a flurry of text appears on the screen.

Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 20:50:36 +0100
From: John Hoare
To: Observation Dome Admin
Subject: Media website thingy

A website covering film/tv/newspapers/radio/any media at all.

A front page, which will be a cross between OD and G&T.

Left hand side being a group blog type thing.

Right hand side being a load of cool articles/interviews/reviews.

Won't be done until after waaay DJ, and probably after a G&T redesign, but you've got time to think if you want to be involved or not.

For what it's worth, originally I was going to do something that just I contributed to, but I thought I'd open it up and make something a bit bigger. But I suspect a lot of you either won't have time to do anything for it, or would prefer to keep anything you do on your own sites, or other sites that you contribute to. But the offer's there if you want it.

--
John Hoare
www.ofla.info | www.ganymede-titan.info

1575. INT. Noise To Signal Staff Forum. Day.

The backend of the whole enterprise. Great ideas for articles scatter the floor, unused.

The future of NTS

Mon, 02/11/2009 - 15:35 — John Hoare

Man, this is a hard post to write. I originally started it with a quote from Rimmer's speech at the start of Out of Time, but that didn't seem quite appropriate for this post somehow. (You can read it aloud in your head if you like, though.)

Anyway, I've talked to a few of you privately about this, and it's probably time to talk about it properly here. Put simply: I'm not sure whether any of us really has the time or inclination to run NTS properly any more. The fact we only had five updates last month really indicates the fundamental problem. I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that I personally have other things I want to concentrate on; I'm not sure I really have the time to devote to NTS. As is obvious by the lack of articles from me recently.

So, what do we think? I'm thinking along the lines of giving people time to publish anything they want to on the site, then posting a final series of farewell articles, and then closing the site to new content. The archives would remain up indefinitely, and we can even keep comments open for the next few months; but the day-to-day running of the site would end.

How do we all feel? Is there anyone who wants to make a case for the site continuing? I certainly don't want to make it look like this is a done decision; but we only have to look at the lack of updates recently to see that something is wrong with the site; and I'm not sure we have enough time or energy as a group to make it work.

And so here we are. As we come to the end of 2009, we aren't looking forward to what the New Year will bring for NTS. Instead, we're driving wistfully into the sunset... or fucking off, if you wish to be crude. (And, as ever, we do.)

There's no juicy reason. No big argument. Nothing, unfortunately, very exciting. (We should have learnt from Favrd.) Just a simple lack of time, and perhaps a bit of desire to move onto other things, however sad it is. The site won't be disappearing in its current form - hell, we're even leaving comments open for the foreseeable future - but come next year, we won't be updating with anything new.

We'll be back later this month with a roundup of our best bits, as Davina would say, so it's not quite goodbye from us yet. In the meantime, from all of us - we hope you've enjoyed our little ramblings over the years. It was fun.

About this entry

By John Hoare
Posted on Monday, December 21 2009 @ 1:28 am
Categorised in Meta
12 comments

Comments

*sob*

By Seb Patrick
December 21, 2009 @ 1:03 pm

reply / #

Aww bum. No Christmas Dr Who reviews then?
Thanks for all the good stuff anyways, I’ve enjoyed it lots. Ta.

By Paul
December 21, 2009 @ 1:42 pm

reply / #

There’s a possibility we might slip an End of Time review in at the end, but it depends how much, erm, time we have. No promises, unfortunately!

By John Hoare
December 21, 2009 @ 2:27 pm

reply / #

You suck.

(Translation: I’m sad.)

By Marleen
December 21, 2009 @ 6:15 pm

reply / #

>You suck.
>(Translation: I’m sad.)

My German is worse than I thought.

I’m sad too.

By Dave
December 22, 2009 @ 3:56 pm

reply / #

Worst. Xmas present. Ever. :-(

By Muz
December 26, 2009 @ 12:22 pm

reply / #

That’s a real shame. I’ll miss this place, one of those websites I’d visit regularly to see if a new article had appeared.

Personally, I’d be happy if the site only put up two or even just one new articles a month but that’s just me.

By Zagrebo
December 31, 2009 @ 1:58 pm

reply / #

It was very disappointing to read this. :-( I too would prefer very occasional updates rather than a full halt to new content on the site, but if this is your decision…

C’mon, there’s just enough time for reviews of Avatar and The End of Time before you go, surely? Pleeease?

By Nick R
December 31, 2009 @ 8:36 pm

reply / #

As much as we didn’t want to close the site, we all knew ‘occasional updates’ would end up being far too occasional! We’d rather not let the site wither like that…

By Tanya Jones
December 31, 2009 @ 9:14 pm

reply / #

Yeah, we did think about ways of continuing. But sadly, there’s just no real driving force behind the site any more - we’ve all moved onto other things, or just don’t have the time. It didn’t seem worth carrying on to post the occasional update which few people would read.

Glad you liked the site, though! I’m proud of the stuff we’ve published.

By John Hoare
December 31, 2009 @ 9:40 pm

reply / #

I posted my comments about NTS closing on completely the wrong site (The Icon Bar, so probably only Moss saw them) so I shall stop lurking and say thanks for all the excellent articles you’ve all posted over the years. You wouldn’t believe how much more productive I’d have been at work if you hadn’t bothered.

Cheers, everyone!