I have tried to explain to my wife and my "meet space" friends about my "virtual friends", but they don't understand how I could feel like you are my friends. I've never seen most of you in person. I don't even know what 99.9% of you look like. How can I possibly feel like we are friends? But I do.
Many of us, have been on this site nearly daily for years. We have shared the joy and frustration of thousands of shows together. Helped the clueless and discussed minute details of
NEC code. We've kept people safe and perhaps even saved a life or two. Over and over, those of you I have had the chance to meet
face to
face, have quickly become real life friends. WHY? Why would so many complete strangers find it so easy to connect. The answer is we share a common joy for helping others, growing in our own knowledge, and a love of this virtual space. CB is OURS. WE built it. WE share it. WE protect it. DvsDave may be the one who paid for the domain name, but this isn't really his site and he knows it. It's OUR site. OUR thoughts. OUR community. Our friends.
Although I never spoke a word to Michael in person, only shared a few private messages with him, never met his wife, never worked with him in person, I'm sad today. Someone who shares my passion for this very special place and community is no longer with us. Someone who loved to share his knowledge and help others, just like we all do, is no longer in our community. I feel sad at the loss of a "stranger" because his passion for what we do here on CB was a strong as mine, and now it's gone from the world. Because we share that passion, for this place and what we do here, we have found that we are not really strangers after all.
This community will go on, but there will always be something missing without MSTaylor's voice.