Diabetic Round Table

Once upon a time…

Many years ago over in the MSN groups, the Diabetes, Hypoglycemia, and Transplant Corner was born. It was, I think, the first of our MSN diabetic support groups. It spawned the now infamous Wednesday night chats as well as a number of new groups. The Diabetes Support Room was one of the oldest and may have even pre-dated DHT. Our good friend Phatz formed Life After Diabetes and acquainted us all with the idea that we are warriors, battling this dragon we call diabetes.

We were ready to try life off of MSN so Phatz and I created the Diabetic Round Table on InvisionFree forums. It bridged the gap between MSN and the rest of the internet for a while. While some of our friends from MSN came with us to the forum, many preferred to stay on MSN. We’ve met new friends over the past two years but the forum remained a quiet home.

We’ve decided to try the community blogging format. Our old friends will be instantly promoted to authors, new friends may be held at the contributor level for a while. Anyone (except spammers) can comment and participate in the discussions, even without registering. This is a nice feature of blogs. Other nice features include tags, RSS feeds, and the supportive community of the blogosphere.

So the question is, what do we want to accomplish here? In many respects, the same thing we have always wanted: Good peer support for people with diabetes and their families and loved ones. We aren’t doctors and we don’t hand out medical advice. We don’t have all the answers. But we do understand what it is like to live with diabetes in the real world. None of us are perfect. We battle the dragon in our own way. We succeed. We fail. We pick ourselves up and go on with the battle.

As a community, we have certain expectations of our members and visitors here. This is our little home on the web and as such, we expect it to be treated with respect. We have been brought together by diabetes. This means we have very diverse backgrounds in politics, religion, philosophy, and everything else. Even our approach to diabetes will differ. It is important that we respect each other here and remember why we are here.

We reserve the right to remove content that is not appropriate to this community. It’s our home. We want everyone who visits to feel welcomed. The same courtesy that you would give to your friends and family should be applied here. Please do not participate in name calling, personal attacks, political attacks, religious attacks, racial slurs, or any other negativity. It’s okay to disagree, of course. I would be surprised if everyone always agreed. Please remember that there are real people on the other side of the computer screen and treat them the way you would want to be treated.

Spamming is expressly forbidden. We’ve always been interested in new diabetic products and other things that members find. Our problem has been with people who join with the intent to sell their product and that’s really the only reason they’ve joined. It’s obvious, don’t bother. We will delete spam. End of story.

Contact Zazzy

The original of the painting used in the header can be found at The Pied Piper Pub in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.