There's very little about WP I like now

Post Reply New Topic

We really do need the poop emoji.

There's something to the poqer of suggestion...

The place is just one big slab of ice (the size of Mexico)with a tiny bit of tundra on the coastal edges. Nothing there for anyone to see unless you're a fossil hunter. The rocks are rich in fossils from the important era when fish were first leaning to walk on land. But if you're not a fossil hound there aint much to see there.

I disagree on the Wild West analogy. Old West was violent and lawless, with every man for himself; it wasn't much of a community. I'd say it was more like New York City in 1900 or Israel in 1950. Where people who were persecuted back in Europe could come to a welcoming community, a home in a true sense of the word, and make a name for themselves. Man, woman, young, old; it was all irrelevant. If you had good business skills, you could get rich; if not, you could easily find an OK-paying job. Plus, your extended family, friends, and neighbors all had your back, if need be.

This observation is more accurate. Although I'll add one thing: like in a real school, there are popular site members, the proverbial jocks and cheerleaders, who have the mods' full support. So in the end, we have the WP equivalent of jocks and cheerleaders drowning out the weaker-willed members, save for a few gung-ho dissidents. Bluntly put, WP became like the NT society it once provided a respite from. I know it's 2019 and not 1999, when the internet's fun factor was at its peak, but still.

I'd say the beginning of the end happened in 2012, when rules started being more strictly enforced, zero-tolerance style. And the final nail in the coffin was when this site changed from the blue-and-green color scheme to the current one. Today, this site is moribund: holding its own due to existing die-hards, but slowly atrophying as those members lose interest, due to their own aging or disillusionment with the site's changes.

i havent been here in those golden times u speak about. but i did feel a huge flashback to NT BS quite recently. well, several. and some minor ones along the way. i kinda told myself well, maybe its not NT BS, maybe its general BS i got used to attribute to NT society, having nothing to compare with xD

very few other places will have me.

I've had plenty to compare it with and I think you're right, a lot of it is general BS.

sadly belonging to autistic spectrum doesnt exclude other... spectrums...

We're just as susceptible to human nature.

It didn't used to be this way. I joined in 2005, this site's heyday. Many new members were joining, people shared thoughts, ideas, and whatever ailed them. It gave me lots of insight on my childhood aspie experiences, something no therapist could hold a candle to. Ditto for other people, I'm sure. Especially considering that most therapists out there are garbage when it comes to helping aspies. I wasn't insane.

It was only a matter of time until the decline happened. Rules got tighter and more strict, anti-male bias became the norm, favorite members emerged, and free sharing of opinions was squelched. The new user interface was WP's final nail in the coffin. After that, massive problems started: CAPTCHA errors, frequent downtime, massive latency, lost posts (when you compose something, then lose it because CAPTCHA "ate" it), etc.

On top of all that, AS/autism is becoming more mainstream. NTs are more aware of it than before. Aspies are more comfortable admitting it in public. So there's a lesser need for a "save haven" there once was.

it's still a nice tradition IMHO.

Well said. I went from a miserable kid, to an ugly guy no girls went near, to a handsome middle-aged man who can pass for NT. So for me today, visiting and using WP feels like a quaint throwback to my young, ugly, socially awkward years. Like a "remember when..." kind of thing. It's also still helpful for AS-specific issues, like finding out if aspies react more strongly to antidepressants than NTs do. But all in all, it's not the same site I once knew.

r/Aspergers on Reddit could be an OK substitute, but I don't have the time nor the energy to establish a "brand"/reputation on a whole new site. Plus, it's the same domain that hosts the Red Pill and other unsavory teachings.

Last edited by Aspie1 on 30 Apr 2019, 9:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i first saw the site in 2004 but delayed joining for 6 years as i was busy at work and feeling jejune in general. wish i'd joined anyways. i suppose i can read the back pages and get a taste for how it was.

There's been a well-documented move away from traditional internet forums to newer forms of social media.

People get what they need from a community and move on. The ones that don't tend to be the ones who have been complaining about the same issues for years. Hell, I usually just pop by once a day to see if anything needs my attention before bouncing out. Having been one of the longest reigning moderators, even I get tired of dealing with the same issues from the same people day in and day out.

I can't comment on how things used to be, but I still find WP the best of the autism sites that I use, and I strongly prefer the old-style forum format - partly out of familiarity, but also because most other platforms seem to have too much line-noise in the form of ratings, mentions, suggestions, awards, etc.

The fact that there are some people who's opinions I find distasteful, or even who's personalities I don't like, doesn't bother me a great deal - if you get a diverse bunch of people together, that's bound to happen, whatever the platform, and the alternative is that we fragment into ever smaller cliques. It only annoys me when, as so often happens on PPR and L&D, every thread gets gate-crashed by the same small bunch of people raking over the same tired old arguments. I don't wish to exclude any of those people from participating in the community, and I realise that people's sense of "decorum" and subject boundaries may vary enormously, but I do get tired of potentially very thoughtful and interesting threads dying out because there was yet another flame war about a completely tangential subject.

I like to have a bit of banter and a laugh while I'm here, but mostly I prefer exploring the details of a subject and getting insights into other people's points of view. I know that debating isn't everyone's cup of tea, and some people might find the way I use language, wedge too many details into a post (and use parentheses far too much), a bit impenetrable (as here, probably!) But, it's all part of the way my Aspie brain deals with communication, and I'm not here to see how many "Yes, me too!" posts I can rack up (Why you too? Which bit were you agreeing with? Did you always feel that way about it? Any good examples? How do you cope with it?...) On most other platforms, I don't find it so easy to do that; I feel like there's too much pressure to respond quickly and briefly with trite sound-bites, which just doesn't suit either what I wish to get out of it or what I would like to contribute.