BrainTalk is important and probably more so than we can imagine. For every one of us who use it as a soap box or street corner hangout, there are dozens of "lurkers" who just depend on it being there. Just so they know that they are not alone and that if things get dire enough to overcome their hesitancy that there will be someone who understands.

Such a community lifeline is far too important to owe its existence to the health, stamina, or whim of just one man. It should be structured to survive just as the Internet was structured to survive by distributing control and resources.

John Lester has done a great work over the last few years and we all owe him a great debt. He has created a community which is unequalled in the history of the planet. One which future historians will study. It would not be hyperbole to put him in the ranks with Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog project.

But John, assuming you read this at some point, it may be that it is time for your child to leave home. If you come to agree then I suggest that it would be fitting that you took a role in bringing that about. We know of your interests in such communities. I assume that (perhaps unconsciously) BT has become less interesting for you as other projects beckoned and you yearned to move on.

While they seldom know it at the time, people of genius often do their best work in their youth. BT may well be the most wonderful creation to spring from your hand, but only if you finish it. Help us, John. We need independence and redundancy. A governing board drawn from the members and a phased and dignified exit by its father.

Perhaps you are overbudened. Shift your load to our shoulders.

Perhaps you find BT to be boring after 11 years, particularly when compared to the possibilities of your projects at Linden Lab. That would be normal. So change the dynamic! You are into innovative uses of online communities and BT gets in your way?? No, managing BT gets in your way. Take a lead role in the final step of setting your greatest work on a solid foundation from which it can manage itself. Your work is half done. It is time to finish it.