I would vote to leave well alone, at least for the moment. There are a number of issues here. The important thing with a board like this is that it is large enough for a community to develop, without becoming so large that it becomes unmanageable. At the moment, this is about right. There is a good community here, and splitting it up too much might jeopardise that. Although T1 and T2 are very different conditions, there is enough common ground that the majority of posts are likely to be of interest to both groups. If it was split up, most people would only look at their own areas of interest. I am a T2, but many of the posts by T1s have been of great interest to me - but I would have been much less likely to see them in a T1-specific area. Likewise, although I am not a T1, I do know a fair bit about it and I have quite often joined in discussions about T1. This would have been less likely to happen had they been in a T1 specific area.
Another problem with separate forums is what to do about the rarer forms of diabetes. Logically, if there were to be T1 and T2 areas there should also be LADA, MODY and GD areas. However, they would almost certainly be very low traffic and my guess is that they would be far too small to reach the threshold that you need for a community to develop.
I can see the argument for a "Newbie" area - but now that we have the "Ask the experts" forum that is more or less what that is. Personally, I would rather call that forum "Advice for the newly diagnosed" - because I'm a bit uncomfortable about the idea of self-appointed experts (and I include myself in that - I know a lot more about diabetes than many people - including most doctors - but I really wouldn't call myself an "expert"). That said, I might change my mind about this if this forum becomes a lot more popular in the future, then it might necessary to be split up to keep it manageable. However were that to be done I would plea for careful discussion to avoid ghettoisation. It would be interesting to know how much the traffic on this site is increasing - it would then be easier to judge whether this is going to become more of a problem in the future. Maybe our kindly Admin would like to post some summary statistics at some stage :?:
Lastly, to address the OPs point - it is useful to know whether you are talking to a T1, T2, parent or non-diabetic HCP (we have a handful). If you click on people's usernames then you will see their profile, and that will usually contain that information. Also, do a make sure that this information is correct in your own profile.
In short, if it ain't broke don't fix it - and this board ain't broke!
