About the Loss of Those we Know and Love

I read Smile's blog and post, and to be perfectly honest, the site IS losing its appeal. I'm sticking with getDare because even though I'm not an extremely active user, I care about this site. Seeing Davros leave, fork drop out of activity (and I'm betting those 2 are connected), and now Smile leaving saddens me. In the end when I see people leaving, I feel like we all should be working even harder to make the site better. I have no clue who the new big posters are, arguments break out that I frankly don't care about, and it needs to stop. Instead of leaving, I'm just going to get more active, and while I'll mourn the loss of people I knew and admired from afar, ultimately we all need to move on.
I appreciate all the work the mod/admin team is doing to keep it together, but they can't do it alone. I'm the co-admin of some forums that have just gone live, and it's not easy at all. But things only get harder when the userbase won't work with us to make the forums as good as they can be. We have some great users, many of whom have been made mods now (like Pingu and, I know the promotion was forever ago, Chloe), some of whom just stay users (like BettyBoop), and some of whom have left or are leaving (like Smile, Davros, and Sum). The ones who still are here (and it really isn't many, I have a hard time even including myself in the "great user" list) do their best to make the site better. But ultimately, this falls to everyone, not just these few users, to improve our community. Frankly, it's not happening. I'm sorry if I didn't mention you, and you truly are a "good user," as I said, I don't know many of the new guys (like cheese).
Unlikely as it is that many people who aren't quite as integral in getDare will see this blog, if you aren't, please try and get involved. We need to work together, and no matter how cheesy and cliched it sounds, we're all just a team here. There shouldn't be mod/admin vs. user battles - it's a huge part of what degrades the site. Here especially, some cases are weird or different, but most of the time mod-user wars are unnecessary.
A thought for the admins/mods - maybe a new rule is in order about goodbye threads. Isn't that what the blog system is for? My experience here led me to make a "no goodbye threads" rule in my forums, because they lead to flame wars and choosing sides. Nobody likes those. Honestly, if you're leaving, it shouldn't be a big thread, it should be a personal blog post to let people know who care about you and your blog that you'll be gone. Seeing as lots of users don't use the blog system, it's a good way to decrease the problem.
Whether you're a mod/admin, or just another fellow gD user, following the advice I'm giving here is all your choice. As I said before, I'm only doing this because I've got a connection to getDare, and I hate to see the people I know disappear. If you don't like my advice, just flame me and get on with life. If you do, please take it to heart - for the people here now, the mods and admins, and in memory of the people who've left us because we weren't striving to be our best.
I may make a few more advice blogs, both to the mod/admin team and the normal users, if this seems to help anything. If it doesn't make an impact (and I doubt it will), then my advice blogs stop here - trying to involve myself in this is like getting into politics. Once you get too far in, there's no turning back, no matter how much other people hate your guts for it.