Hey Dave,
You are indeed welcome to YD. Please feel free to fill your boots and get in amongst it with your advice, responses and postings general.
To answer your questions: one of the reasons why it is now largely referred to as simply 'YD' and not its former rigid banner of 'Yorkshire Divers' is that its ownership and membership used to contain 95% Yorkies (its ownership still is based in 'God's Country'); this very quickly changed - which was always the owners' Jay (Heads Up) and Andy's (Andy2Tanx) intention - to encompass a larger UK and latterly worldwide membership.
We are a non-denominational 'church' - we welcome all agencies/clubs, all diving styles/ethoses, all levels of diving experience (newbie-novice to the Uber Techies and the Rebreather wallahs) as long they are safe divers willing to banter and learn or offer advice.
It has also now largely met one of its initial aims of being the probably the largest independent (i.e. non-alligned to training agency or publication) diving forum in the UK, with the all consuming membership requirements of:
1. Keep it civil, friendly and banter-laden.
2. Keep it informative, funny, relevant, historical, interesting, (light & merciless piss-taking allowed, as long as it's not meant or sent with an ill will), no rucks allowed.
You know the script: the usual stuff that adults enjoy - no real rocket science to it. The only daft question is the one you didn't ask.
We cover as many Diving topics as you want to talk about - and quite a few that have nothing whatsoever to do with it
Welcome aboard again and yep, hope to see you on a dive - we've got plenty of 'diamond geezers' from 'darn sarf' (Matt & crew??), so if you're after new buddies and a regular dive calendar too, we should be able to hook you up no sweat.
Cheers,