You know, I actually disagree with that. I am new to looking at Reddit, and haven’t even created an account yet. But from what I’ve seen so far, I haven’t seen more misinformation there than I do here or on FUD. The much larger number of active contributors on Reddit is refreshing and seems to get some good discussions going.
Also, and this surprised me, I see more actual conversations happening there than I do on Fud/Tud. I suspect this is because of the threaded display format, that facilitates back and forth discussions. Here it all gets sorted by time posted no matter who posts, making actual back and forth discussions harder when multiple people jump in, each one trying to lead the discussion in their own direction.
They didn’t run out of funding. Rather the opposite; they had a very large donation (or, maybe, donations). As is appropriate for a non-profit they then started spending it; they didn’t “lose” $2E6, they “spent” it.
They have three SM fora; TuD, BeyondType1 and BeyondType2. I think most people would regard that as not indicating good governance. They did close down EsTuD, did anyone notice here?
It’s beginning to seem clear to me that tudiabetes.org will continue to exist in perpetuity, like estudiabetes.org and so without the forum. That’s fine. I think having a permalink to somewhere explaining what happened would be good governance.
BeyondTypeX has the same structure; responses to responses are displayed hierarchically. It favours discursive discussion, whereas Discourse with its single topic approach requires contributors to explicitly split off a new topic (something I only learned how to do very recently!) As a result Discourse favours the more conventional consensus discussion.
Normally the sub-threads on Reddit pretty much disappear without trace unless a Reddit Monster; someone with thousands of net likes, comments.
Yeah, and that’s the problem with the Discourse software approach. If we’re just trying to get a consensus, then sure we get to see everyone’s vote, but absolutely no one is going to learn anything. Learning requires listening to, thinking about and reacting to the views of others. In other words it requires a back and forth conversation.
You stated “contributors to explicitly split off a new topic”. Correct me if I’m wrong: I thought only admins could do that here on Discourse? And they very rarely do.
And what do you mean “sub-threads on Reddit disappear without trace”? Looks to me like the sub-threads are all there to see, and continue until the back and forth discussion stops?
The decision would have been made by the executive director and/or the board of directors. From the perspective of Beyond Type 1 we are a “program”. They don’t have any contractual or legal responsibility to maintain specific programs. At most, they might be required to disclose terminating a program on their annual Form 990 filing. However, given the relative sizes of TuD and Beyond Type 1, I doubt that closing down TuD would be considered a major reduction in programming and thus the decision would not even require disclosure.
If you Google - “Who are the board of directors of Beyond T1”, the AI pulls a list that also includes the executive dirrector, Deborah Dugan. It’s a high profile group so you probably can find contact information for most at their day jobs.
Actually, estudiabetes.org now redirects to Nuevo año, nuevo sitio web, misma misión | Beyond Type 1 which is what they will probably do here since they are throwing all their energy into Beyond Diabetes. Probably some consultant told them that forums were not where it’s at so they went “all in” for the FB-style social app, which is not an information exchange.
Just to avoid any possible misunderstanding, those of us who were Moderators (not admins) on TUD didn’t get any advance notice about what was going on. When I logged on back in September and found my mod privileges no longer existed was how I found out. I was able to get in touch with the person who had been our admin head and SPOC with the organizational overlords, and she told me she’d been moved on to other responsibilities and this site was going to be mothballed. I had noticed that activity on the forum had been dwindling for some years (moderator status gave me access to stats), so not a huge surprise, but it seems like it could have been handled more compassionately.
Re Reddit, FB et al., I belong to a number of T1 groups on those platforms but none of them have anything like the same feel of genuine community I found here back in the 20-teens when I first discovered it. The traffic to those platforms is so huge, I never get any sense of continuity with the commenters. Big cities vs small towns, or superhighways vs local roads, whatever the metaphor is. “Community” is not just about information exchange—I think that’s a mistake people tend to fall into. They don’t feel like that; they’re very transient, very little sense of “Oh there’s a familiar face, what are they up to now” kinda thing like we’ve had here for so long. It’s more like that old saying about you can never step into the same river twice. And the vibe at the new “Beyond” site feels very much the same to me. It’s a “Big Social Media Platform™ “ Yippee! wannabe-FB or something.
I’ve had a membership at fudiabetes for quite a while (I had a role in helping to heal the schism we had back at the beginning) and it still preserves more of that community feel. I’ve participated only sporadically but I expect to put in more of my time there. Smallness is good! Hope to see other familiar faces there.
Would it possible, at a minimum, to at least get a thoughtful email sent out to the membership who built this forum… that it’s being discontinued and a similar platform is available where we all know it is.. at FUdiabetes.org it seems like a disservice to people who need it to do anything less. None of the powers that be are responding to anything so I don’t know to ask. The former admins seem to be no longer involved. I cannot how an organization just disconnects like this.
Thank you for the thorough answer. I was not aware that TuD has less traffic as I have only been posting since June 2025. I logged on to FuD And not very impressed do far.
As you know, I have been a regular contributor to TuD for many years. I didn’t have access to site traffic during that time but did anecdotally sense a shrinking community size. One of the things that always encouraged me, regardless of the active/nonactive measures, was the grateful comments of the lurkers who used the site. I always thought that even if I just meaningfully reached a few people in need, it was enough for me.
While I chose to participate solely at TuD over these last several years, I’m grateful that FUD is available in this situation. Since signing up and participating for the last few weeks or so, I’ve been treated well and the response has been good.
It’s given me the perspective of being a newbie on the forum as I carefully try to interact well with everyone. Getting along is not always a foregone conclusion in any group and my “social wisdom” is not always the best. So far, so good!
Terry, very thoughtful and inspiring comments. I had only been able to be in the community since May haven’t been blocked for a year, but I’ve gotten so much help since May that the closing bothered me. I did sign up at FUD not sure what it’s like yet I did look at beyond type. One did not like it all more like a informational thing than communicating.
@Andrea8 - Congrats on discovering the type of community that resonates with you! It’s unfortunate that you didn’t have more time with TuD yet provident that FUD can replicate the TuD environment well. Hope to cross paths with you over there.
