I just had an idea that I thought would be an interesting use of technology,
On the message board, as in Healingwell, us users could sign in and give a "personal rating" to each message we read if we felt like we could relate or felt that it described the type of experience/condition/UC that we personally had. (or if we felt it was nothing like what we experience personally)
Obviously, this would only make sense to rate certain types of messages - those having to do with either specific symptoms, combinations of symptoms, or of things that helped (or hurt) a person. Or to bring people to the table who have a similar constellation of symptoms (ie spondylitis, uveitis, proctitis, pancolitis, headaches, breathing problems...) Or similar age of onset, family history or not, food allergy etc...This information could also be gathered by a questionnaire that each member fills out.
But the idea is this: to establish a network for each poster (imagine a family tree or hierarchy) of relations between us posters, based on the statistical correlation of our ratings. We could discuss things further with these newly found "group" members. Then (hypothetically) we might get insight into bettering our condition, in the hopes of comparing apples with apples, and not apples with oranges.
I know we often discuss how there may be different types of UC or that people may have different causes medically which led to them having UC, or maybe even some of us consider UC as somewhat of an umbrella like description of this inflammation that could have different causes for different folks.