RareShare: A Community For People With Rare Medical Problems

How do you know if your conditon is rare enough to be included without going to the site and checking their index of communities?

When the site first opened I requested them to include a separate community for RSI/carpal tunnel syndrome although it is not exactly rare since it affects about 10% of the US population. Although I never received a response I now see a general "Nerve Entrapment" community which includes other disorders similar to RSI. That community has a single member. Instead, had they allowed this, I might have pointed people there from other RSI forums on the web.

I thought the idea behind rareshare had the potential for much greater growth than they have seen - with only 2000 monthly uniques currently. And I think making editorial decisions about which groups should exist and which ones should not indicates that the spirit in which the site was created is more of a throwback to old media rather than enacting the web 2.0 idea about the individual taking control of the medium.