Outpost Gallifrey, the best Doctor Who fansite, will be shutting down after 13 years. The site already scaled back its operations massively two years ago, but it's still a huge blow to lose its news page and the site's forum. The forum, of course, is where so many of the best rumors about upcoming episodes pop up, as well as invaluable set photos taken by a legion of heroic fans. I have to say, I don't quite understand founder Shaun Lyon's reasoning for not handing the whole thing off to someone else:
People will wonder out loud: why don't we spin it off, or why don't I pass it along to others? Simply put, Outpost Gallifrey is nothing but a concept, a concept I created, but which now rests in the hands of the fans who utilize it every day. It's a title, and you don't need a title to continue... you already have the community. Like our site and forum, the Internet has grown exponentially. There are other communities to visit on the Internet, obviously, and we encourage you to visit them. But of course, if these communities do not serve your needs (and we expect many won't), we encourage you to take the course that I did 13 years ago: create your own space. This is, in fact, why we're giving notice to the Forum community two months early — sufficient time for our members to find their own direction, to create new communities, new forums, and perhaps utilize new methods of communication. Through the friendships and community you've created here.
Erm... but the community still needs a place to gather around, right? The thing that makes a decent website so valuable is that it does enable communities to form. Take the site away, and those communities are, effectively, gone. But here's hoping someone else steps up to the challenge of replacing this site. [Outpost Gallifrey]