So I can absolutely say with certain conviction that the members on this site are responsible for my improved health and prospects for the future. Without this site I would now be trying to cope with the drugs and/or insulin regime that I would prefer to put off for as long as I possibly can.
I cannot credit this site for my going low-carb and "reversing" my T2D with lifestyle changes and no drugs. I am amazingly lucky to be able to credit my doctor for that choice, since I tend to trust the White Coats and do whatever they say (or at least, I did, before coming to this forum seven months after my diagnosis).
What the forum has done is validate my doctor's choice, and that of so many others here (often made personally and not on professional medical advice). The forum provides a kind of reserve army of enthusiasts to bolster the morale (and education) of others who are bewildered and scared when recently diagnosed. In the treatment of newly diagnosed T2D in particular, it often helps them evaluate the advantages of the low-carb lifestyle and figure out whether it would work, for them. (Of course the forum does so much more than that; I just wanted to give a salient example.)
It is funny what makes a forum successful. I belong to about half-a-dozen fora, mostly linked with various electronics hobbies -- I am an enthusiast for finding and restoring "vintage" radios and TVs from the 1950s and 60s as well as building some "vintage style" valve equipment from scratch.
Of those other fora I belong to, the most successful in my mind is a tiny enthusiast niche. It is UK-based and its members do nothing but find (in garbage tips, in people's atticks, at boot sales) black-and-white television sets dating from the mid-30s to the 1960s and return them to working condition. We are probably only a few hundred members but the passion level (and eccentricity, I have to say!) is extremely high. The expertise of the most proflific posters boggles the mind, as we brainstorm together to figure out arcane faults in ancient electronic gear and help bewildered newbies. The moderators have a light touch,
except that they viciously bring into line anyone who goes off-topic (and will quickly create a new thread if warranted by the off-topic topic, if you see what I mean).
Another forum I belong to (an American one) to is relatively large. The hobby it is connected with has nearly 1 million adepts. Only a small minority of them participate actively in the forum. Although they do have their hobby in common, the passion level is much lower, and a lot of threads go off-topic and deteriorate into personal or even political mud-slinging. I was an active forum member for about a year but eventually left, having become disillusioned.
Its takes quite a lot to make a good Internet forum!