It Didn't Have to Be This Way

Bora's leaving ScienceBlogs.  Now, I'd have to consult my father for the proper engineering analogy, and he's at work at the moment, but let me try:

So far, all the bloggers they've bled over (so much more than) PepsiGate are about equivalent to losing a bunch of their walls.  It makes the place look pretty shabby, and let the rain in, and created serious problems, but the place could be shored up.  It will never be the same, but it's at least still standing.

Losing Bora, though, is like having a major load-bearing wall knocked out.  They could lose the place right down to the foundation.  The whole structure's ready to topple right over.  And if PZ decides to go, there goes the foundation.  Hard to see ScienceBlogs surviving as anything other than a ruined mound if that happens.

Bora's farewell should make Adam Bly et al do that serious thinking they've seemed to avoided up until now.  I've seen a lot of tacking up of tarps and cheerful assumptions that she'll be right, good as new, but no in-depth contemplation of how the place got into such a sorry state to begin with.

So, dear Seed Media overlords, read Bora's post.  Absorb every word.  Go back and read the farewell posts of the others who have left.  And realize that if you don't make some major adjustments ASAP, ScienceBlogs will end up as either the ugliest house on the block or a vacant lot.

I don't want to see that happen.  And what really saddens me is that it didn't have to be this way.

For now, you can follow Bora here.  And I shall leave you with the appropriate video (do not ask me how hard it was to find):


Bob Dylan- The Times They Are A-Changin'
Uploaded by BabaORiley. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

*Update: PZ puts it in rather starker terms.