How to make WP better

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I love the outlet wrongplanet has given me to find acceptance in myself, and understand better the common issues with AS. But I think I've gotten to the point where I need apply myself to life a bit more. While I commend wrongplanet for what it does, and Alex for creating it, I simply do not find the social interaction in it I need. Facebook I do. Here's an example: I contribute to a discussion. Then someone else does. Then someone else. But it doesn't feel like a dialogue. I like contributing, but rarely is there any feedback to what I have to say, its more of a place where people can just post whatever they are thinking. There is nothing wrong with this. But it is not something that is conducive to making friends. I have made friends with people on facebook I have never met. But wrongplanet I have not. I really wish I could make friends with other people with AS, but so far I have only found a spot where people with AS post random thoughts and then ignore the responses. I am not judging anyone, I am just saying, this is how it is, this is the nature of the site. I mean, I probably act exactly the same way that everyone else does, its just the way the site is set up.

The point is that I don't think I am going to find friendship here unless the setup of the site were changed. I know many people do, but these are the people that really get into it, I do not have the time or energy to make this site my entire life, and even if I did, I don't think it is entirely healthy.

One thing I have noticed is that the site has gotten more impersonal as membership has increased. There are so many people and discussions, it is less of a community and more of a giant pool of random people.

My suggestion is that the site could find a way to make the community more personal. How about this---make groups (like facebook or myspace) that people could join, and then have certain discussions within these. Aspergers is very diverse. Especially with the increased number of members, I think it is necessary to break up the community into smaller subgroups. These subgroups could be based on groups people create and join.

What do you think? Anyone else here feel the same way I do?

just realize this topice should have gone in the wronplanet.net forum---I originally was intending to say bye and that I wasn't going to use WP any more for the aforementioned reasons, when and epiphany struck me on how to make the site better.

Anyway, I know wp is what it is and doesn't have to base itself off of facebook. But people with AS need friends more than anything else. Especially friends with the same issues. WP could improve its social networking capabilities to be more conducive to this by doing some things differently. I am positive that this would improve the ability of friendship making. In fact, there are many other things that could be done, but I think creating groups is the most important one. But how about increasing profile information (if one wishes to) and making profiles more central to the site.

I think that is a good idea. There could be different groups for location & interests for example.

Of course, this would depend on how easy it is for the site admin to upgrade it.

I'd like to know where the search function is, I can't find it.

Also, I've just noticed there is a chatroom, maybe you will have more luck making friends there.

Thanks

Peace

New categories under the Forums would work for almost everything you suggested. This is a forum after all, not a social networking site. But additional features are always nice.

I agree with vegasdelphia, but I know lots of forums (phpBB 2) have capability for group functions.

I would group into 4 trends and functions of posts and threads:


1 Making friends: MySpace or Facebook for Auties
2 Chat through posts – discussions through chatting
3 Asking for help and advise
4 Discussing about autism in essays and literature

There are probably others that are not examined here.

As to 1) I have some doubts that you can make real friendships in MySpace or Facebook exchanges. Here is an opinion of a long user of Facebook : "I'm well aware that we live in an ever smaller world in which communication is easier than ever before. I also know that the supposed divide between "real" and "fake" is an illusory one.” But, I add, sometimes you have here a taste o frustration and illusion, and you would like to consolidate what it’s impossible to consolidate on line

2) Chats is all right and I often indulge in it.

3) It’s absolutely necessary and useful and one of the main reasons for the existence of WP.

4) Discussion: here I am personally very interested, because of my experince and my lifelong devotion to the themes of the unease of life in its deepest and difficult implications. This unease may be dealt at some depth, sometimes with some unfortunate technicality, often with the help of essays and fiction. But here you have to make some separation between casual chat, which may also flow into discussion in depth (but not always does and often dies out fast) and some more determined effort to go deeper and with more continuity, running the risk to cut someone out, if only fo a while.
This is the reason for which I would like to see the existence, within “General Autism discussion”, something like Autism discussion in essays and fiction.

I know its a forum. I just think it would if more social aspects were added, since people with AS need social interaction more than anyone.

Yes we could have more categories, but for the general purpose they are there for, they pretty much cover the bases. But they are just so general they still consist of a sea of people. But if you had more subcategories of groups, rather than only two levels (the forum and the topic), with groups, you could have categories of groups, then the groups, then the topics to discuss. And you could leave up the regular forums as well.

So anyway, if I like astronomy for example, I can look around for topics on astronomy in the forums. But there is no continuity. One random person posts on astronomy, then goes to something else, and the other posts on astronomy are a different person. So you don't get a continuous idea on other peoples ideas or personality. If you had a group for people who like astronomy (that you would actually "join" in order to encourage people to frequent the group) then it would be many of the same people, so the dialogue would be much more continuous, and things would be much more organized. Want to talk about astronomy? Go directly to the group. Rather than looking around randomly through dozens of topics that you aren't sure about, and only finding a few that interest you---it would save time and energy.

Or how about politics? Maybe I want a place to discuss with people of my own political persuasions---liberals or conservatives may not want to have to wade through opposing views all the time---sometimes they may want to just discuss with likeminded people. Or how about Christians? Buddhists? Atheists? How about gamers? Or people into cars? Or random wacky humor? Yes, these all have places within the forums. But the primary problem is: there is no continuity. I love being able to go somewhere to have discourse with people I am familiar with interested in similar things, rather than wading through people I don't know and ideas I have no interest in. The point is not to get rid of anything. It's merely to organize those same ideas in a different way. You will still have the same people expressing the same things. They will just be able to do it with people they "know" and people that have the same interest. This will cause clusters of interest, rather than spread out over broad categories such as "Hobbies". By all means, keep hobbies up as a forum. I just mean, create groups within that section, that people can create and maybe create a profile for at the top, such as "astronomy" and do a bit of collective customizing.


I guess I just wish there was more of a social networking sight for those with AS. But there is not (that I am aware of). So I think if WP began to lean more in that direction it would be quite popular and beneficial. It would fill a need of auties and aspies but would not detract from the purpose of the site, which is, after all, communication of people with and about AS.

I know this is not facebook and I don't want to just say "be more like facebook" if thats not the purpose of the site---but the purpose of the site IS communication, and IS about helping people with AS cope. And I feel that evolving into a more socially based site would be conducive to both of those goals. I know that change from what you are comfortable with is hard. But face it, today, the only constant IS change. Technology must adapt to the needs of its users. The internet HAS become a more socially based institution, rather than simply a means of obtaining info. And it will only become more so. For this reason, people will expect to be able to communicate socially on the internet much more than in the past. Peoples expectations have been raised by well designed social sites.

well, I took the liberty of creating my own facebook group, so anyway, looks like we'll see how that goes! If you are interested in joining pm me and I will make you my facebook friend and invite you to the group (its a secret group so it requires an invitation of a friend)

STOP LOCKING THREADS FOR NO APPARENT REASON, IT PISSES ME OFF LIKE NONE OTHER.

what do you mean? this thread is not locked

Hes not talking about this thread.

I like the idea of groups, but I cannot join MySpace or FaceBook.

...why?

I think making a Myspace style friends network is a bad idea. I PM/email/IM/use other site to communicate with people I meet here. To set up a phony popularity contest like Myspace were most the persons on your "friends" list are not in fact really friends would
just make those who are not on one of those meaningless list feel your one big NT click
that they are not part of.

you don't have to have a list of friends. but anyone can join any group they want to. that has nothing to do with popularity, only what people want to discuss.

Segmentation into groups still sounds equalily bad to me. How about you describe these groups now? The pool of people on WP is not so large to permit much segmentation.