To me, it seems that people on this website are more concerned with voicing their own problems, like how they have no friends, and on learning more about each other than about doing anything substancial. I don't mean to offend, and I myself have asked WP about the goofy things that NTs do and tried to learn more about other aspies, but there must be a forum around here to do something real. I am a philosopher and an idealist and young and agressive and I would like to talk to you guys about doing some real things. I have a few observations about this place that I think are reasonable generalizations:
* People ask for information about aspergers a lot and get many many answers
* People ask about each other a lot as if they can't believe that there are others like them
Ex: over half of the topics in the General Discussion Forum have a question mark in them!
* People don't seem to talk about their interests very much
What these things tell me is that there is a lot of information and knowledge that the guys on WP have, but if they just focus on answering Asperger's related questions and random "does this bother you too?" type questions, then we are never going to get anywhere to do anything else. The specific topic forums don't have as many topics but do foster detailed discussion. But the main forums make it seem like everyone here is just here to BS.
I have ideas for what can be done, but I want to know about what people would support. I think that if we set up an Asperger's Wiki (a la Wikipedia.org) we could condense all this great support information into one giant wiki to catalogue everyone's knowledge about aspergers, but from an aspie's point of view. There are too many static web pages out there that detail one person's philosophies and are not a truely open resource. A wiki would be great since everyone has something to contribute and in my experience, the masses are far more intelligent than a single person. Once a wiki is set up, we can move a few things from the forums onto the wiki and refer people with questions there. That way, questions won't be repeated here and will instead be already answered on the wiki.
I think there should be more topic specific board on this site in order to facilitate discussion. A lot of stuff in life doesn't fit in the five special interests boards and we could even set one up to plan regional events.
From there, I think that we can develop a culture of our own through the information on the wiki, the things that people post, the events that people plan, and the way they do things together. I don't see all aspies as introverts. I think they think differently and if we create a little planet of our own on this wrong planet, then we can all feel more at home here.
09 May 2006, 8:08 pm
