I've been wanting to post something on this thread for a while but I didn't really know what to say to be honest. I've been coming to this site since at least 2002, and despite only going to one meetup and meeting relatively few BLers in person, I felt like I got to know quite a few... personalities on EADD in particular pretty well. And now as I come back to the site I see things have changed. There are a lot of new names I don't recognise, but the stuff going on here is still the same and it's nice to see. I kind of deduce that there may be some older posters here whose names have changed, and there are definitely some older posters who I still recognise.
But lots of those old names don't seem to be coming up any more. Some of them perhaps just drifted away from the site like I did, probably some of them lurk but don't post (again, pretty much what I did). But it's really sad and heartbreaking to see just how many of those old names aren't posting any more because they've died. And one of the things that really hit me looking through the shrine posts, is the number of times I saw someone posting a message of condolence one one of their friends' threads, and knowing because of a thread I'd just seen that that person has also left us.
Be careful out there people.