16 Days Ago......an observation.

I also find, that there's a lot of people who I see have turned up desperately needing advice and support after a diagnosis, but it can often be hard to re type the long messages of advice and good will.

I sometimes feel bad if I don't reply with my experience of diagnosis, but can often find it hard to answer them all with similar messages. Maybe I need to draft a default answer!

Maybe some newbies are due to the upgrade, I was autisician, until I lost the ability to log in and created "another", but have now gone too long without reverting back.

Hopefully the site has decent enough detection for bots, but I think they're getting to be so advanced it isn't always possible to identify them.

I always wonder "why, what are they gaining?"

Iain said:

Maybe the bots will take all our distilled wisdom and actualy make a better friend for those lonely autists than other autists could.

I find that thought rather poignant.

I agree Iain, it's getting harder and harder to actually discuss anything at all, I sometimes wonder if I said the sun was shining, would I get a load of people arguing with me that it wasn't and about the unfairness of it all and their god didn't make the sunshine for sinners like me.

I find that there are a lot of thread killers, people who seem to actively monster certain threads and certain subjects.

I've noticed lots of new people here over the last couple of weeks, and I wonder how many of them are real people and who are bots, sorry to those genuine human beings, but I'm very wary when loads of new people suddenly appear, especially after a so called soft ware upgrade.

I like meatier subjects, politics, religion, history etc, I don't watch you-tube, do social media, games or so many of the other things so many people seem to do, there's nothing wrong with those things, they just don't interest me.

Some things that I think would make the site better are no really old posts, I think this could be achieved by not having a list of previous on a related subject popping up when you start to write a new thread.

I'd like a space for us older latelings to discuss things.

I'd like people not to be so afraid of contovercy, but not to monster threads either, to discuss rather than just make statements and to actually reply to any questions other poster have. Not all questions are meant to be hostile, many of us just want to understand the point of view of another and engage creatively with them.

Unknown said:

What do YOU think needs to happen here, to keep things rolling?...or at least interesting.....for any genuine human autist here (or who find themselves here).

Define 'genuine human autist' 

I assume that the people who are making + answering the threads here at the moment do find them interesting.

There are only a handful of members left regularly posting here from when you and I started on the forum over 2 years ago.

If I remade the threads I made then, I doubt that they would have anything like the traction they had then.

It's a totally different group of people here now.

What I'd suggest is that if anything in particular interests you, then make those threads.

Also, think about what you are looking for from the forum and why?

It served a very important purpose for us both in the early days of realising our autism.

Maybe those days and the forum's usefulness have passed, for us?

Maybe - I like obscure, personally, makes me think about stuff. If lots of people replied it means it also piqued their interest. If others aren't interested they can start their own threads about their own interests.

Hi Number, I don’t think we’ve interacted yet, I’m new here and am still settling in-tho I don’t respond to every thread I do read most of them, and I will make some of my own at some point-if my anxiety lets up. New threads will keep things fresh, ones I like to engage in on old forums I used was happiness thread, get to know each other, what you did today-those were always popular. Might not be the sort of things your interested in or were hoping for but thought I would share all the same just in case.

ps the search bar at the top of the page doesn't work on mine - I type in there and hit enter but nothing happens. Site bug?

All valid points and ponderences.

Old threads are churned up by either bots, or by newbies who are searching the archive for help and guidance.

I know this isn't answering the question (because I'm still new and have no useful thoughts on it), but here's a different question...

I have noticed a few posts popping up after months/years with new comments. Is this normal? I know posts on Tumblr circulate for years and suddenly start trending for no discernible reason), but wasn't sure if that is the case here too.

I thought this would be a more "in the moment" kind of chat thing, with virtually all old threads being dead and buried once they get to a certain age. The potential of posts being dredged up from years back, after things have changed, or you don't want to be reminded of something, puts a new perspective on it

It is getting harder to have conversations on here with situations where people will throw the toys out the pramb and cry bullying if you do something as simple as fact check them when they post a blatant lie.

I've certainly reduced my participation.

The bots are going to be pretty active as they move from digesting information about autism to actively seeking engagement and responses to flesh out their understanding.

Maybe it's a good thing to educate them - maybe not but trying to guess is someone is a bot or just a maladjusted human is difficult.

Maybe the bots will take all our distilled wisdom and actualy make a better friend for those lonely autists than other autists could.