Threads Of Autism

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For me it depends on how the post is written. I found the Autism Card thread too hard to read. I think it was poorly edited. When I post long posts I usually try to make them as short and readable as possible. So far this thread seems to be more readable than the other thread.

I want to participate on this thread, but there is some more stuff I have to think though, as it occurred to me after reading the material here yesterday that it could be a valuable asset to the system if there is a specific thread to talk about the possible significance of how material organizes around various patterns of message making, and I am not talking about the design of ther system. As mentioned, I think the basic design is pretty good and so have nothing much to say about that..

The reason I originally wanted to make this thread was to share my observations of how jumping from thread to thread breaks down concentration and can even keep community from forming, but people have already made a point here that a long message can keep people from reading and cause them to go (jump?) elsewhere, so....the question could arise if there is some other quality aside from a message being short or long that would keep a person reading that particular message. Actually a lot of questions arise, such as should everyone be reading the same thing, and if they do, how would this affect community? Would it be negative or positive?

A very interesting (to me) question which has started to come up after yesterday is how subjective interest affects the perception of time and how the internal and/or external material responses of an individual or group of individuals causes other surrounding material to organize and reorganize.

So, no cat pictures then?

Seriously though, littlebee, I think you are stating the obvious. Of course the landscape of WP is formed by the participants. And the landscape changes over time. Such a thing cannot be controlled and I don't think it should be.

I know this isn't true for everyone, but I'll list some things that make posts difficult for me to read.
1. Bad grammar and spelling
2. Run on sentences
3. Too many irrelevant details
4. Not breaking long posts into paragraphs or poorly organized paragraphs
5. Repeating the same things over and over again

Why have you come to the conclusion (bolded by me) that jumping from thread to thread breaks down concentration and can even keep community from forming?

Also, you ask what aside from thread length would keep a person reading a particular message?

Here are some possibilities:

1)The message resonates with them specifically. It mirrors part of their personal experience or shows shared values.

2)The message shows values which are not shared, are actually in strong opposition to the reader's values, thus inspiring a rebuttal.

3)The message is entertaining or is informative about something they are interested in.

4)The message is about a horrific news story and inspires an angry response.

5)The message contains a quote from the reader.


A message that doesn't hit any of those points is unlikely to be read in full unless it is so short as to be effortless to read.

Whew...:-) Didn't expect to get responses so soon but will quickly answer...

Ann2011 wrote:

People can make totems out of just about anything including various ideas, probably....


So you do not think people should try to shape their environment?---not that this is necessarily even what I or anyone here is trying to..but probably we are, as most everybody is trying to do that...

littlebee wrote in the intro to this thread:



So, do you think it is possible that organizing material in various ways can affect the quality of attention of a given group? Well, we all know it can, as a long message, according to some here, and some long messages even according to me can make a person go into zzzzz (sand land), though I think reading a lot of short messages can do that, too, hough the energetic affect around that phenomena is a bit different.

Some people wanted my thread to be locked because they thought that would change something, and now it IS locked and it did change something.

Secondly, you seem to be saying that the way we look at various material, how carefully and from what perspective, does not affect the future organization of that material. That is unlikely.

I think you message is very interesting. Judging from your previous liquid acuity, you must have realized that you were opening the door to this kind of response, so it would be logical to assume you are deliberately playing the contrarian. This assumption may be true or not, but if a person thinks it is true, that would affect his own response. One question that arises is if all thinking on here is even individual or if there is group think. Quite a few threads have been written about that and also threads about material being repetitive.

I do not have time to respond to the other two messages right now, as I have to go someplace.

I don't even know what you're trying to say any more...

I really don't. I know this is not the norm, but I believe in adaptation. The only thing I can control is my own behaviour, so that's all I worry about.


I don't understand.


Nope, just saying what I think.

A quick comment before I got:

The cat-totem comments were in reference to a discussion on another thread...but you would have to read the whole thread to understand...sorry about that...my bad...

but this illustrated one thing that can happen when there are too many threads of various ideas and meanings in various limited contexts...or also possibly a thread of gibberish (which my thread was NOT)---it can break down the community in some way, as you did not understand what Ann and I were talking about in this one instance of the cat and totems because you probably did not know the context, but we did.....so too much context or certain context can break down the possibility of understanding---for some, but not necessarily for all... This goes back to the concept of different strokes for different folks....and there can be smaller communities within a larger community, and at least in political contexts these groups can vy for the vote or endorsement or funding of a larger community.

littlebee, a tip, a little less verbosity and maybe we'd be able to understand you Your points are all over the place, this is why your thread is so far not really succeeding. You repeat yourself, when you could write exactly what you want to in much less.

If you want your thread to appeal, it needs to be split down the middle. A little wordy for the people who prefer lengthy threads, and as little as possible for the people like myself with ADHD who simply cannot understand where your point is going.

I want to help you have your thread succeed, but it just seems like it's never going to get going if you're all over the place with your point.

Perhaps have a few reads over what you want to say before clicking the submit button. Take out information that isn't relevant, or already repeated.

sh*t---i really have to catch a bus now...To Wind (love that name:-)---WHY do you think this thread is not succeeding? To me it is really succeeding...very interesting comments, especially but not only Janissey's...so many of them...rich with new ideas and stuff to think about....

what does a succeeding thread mean to you?

For a thread to succeed = That it stays on topic.

The name Wind was just random. I'm not a creative person. It was windy that day

Block of text will also make it hard for me to read too. Also too many misspelled words and lack of periods. And of course TYPING LIKE THIS IN YOUR WHOLE ENTIRE POST OR PARAGRAPH.

Self is able to understand a fair amount of less abstract-worded posts.

Hello-o~~~:-)I would have to write about ten messages to answer all the questions and ideas given so far that in some way connect or could connect to the topic. Maybe I should do that, and force myself to, but short messages don't work to convey a certain material quality I am aiming tor in my online participation. The reason I am only writing an average of 2.78 post per day is that I am forcing myself not to write more messages, even when I feel like it, as I am convinced that many short messages dilutes a material affect I am aiming to create...sometime about approaching from two ends of the stick and the resultant middle. I am thinking about posting this first part here separately as a short message but the idea is abhorrent to me, even physically abbhorrent as it is obvious after much hands on research into this subject of short and long , and of alert and zzzzz for many years that if I do it this way then people will miss something very important. I have no real data that people reading these ten short messages would find it any easier to follow the thread of my thinking and understand me then if I were to write one long message and also no real data that more people would read the material. In fact I think less would.

(In regular life social situations I am a very good listener and mainly listen to people and ask them questions about what they are saying, and when I communicate try to make sure I keep it short. On my job a lot of troubled people come to talk to me and I will listen to them with devotion for a long time, but it was not always this way)..

Agreed with all your points, To kind of synopsize, people tend to read what is interesting to themselves and also, different strokes for different folks. When a person does make a long message on a specific topic he is likely to be targeting a more specific audience. I think we could look at much of the material on my locked thread, such as about word roots, as a good example of someone doing this, and there are certain implications about making that thread with that kind of title which indicate some lack of understanding on my part, not about the subject matter so much, which I think I really do have an understanding of, but how it would go down on this system with this particular group of people. Probably this lack of understanding was because I am autistic, though I did not see this at the time, but everybody is kind of autistic in some way or other, imo including so-called nts, so I do not know if this is logical to factor into the dialogue, as there is always this anomaly factor in human relationship.

One point you did not mention which I think is a very significant is that people will tend to read material which they believe will affect the perception of others toward them or their group in a way that is negative. It kind of could be fitted in with point 2, but I think it is an entirely separate point that relates more to perceived position in the pecking order and how certain material might alter this causing benefits or detriments. On an individual level it could be connected more to self cherishing and what some call ego, On a group level it could connected more to protecting others so, an altruistic motivation.. but could still relate back to ego in the sense of not liking to be thwarted and needing to buffer up personal feelings of low self esteem by identifying with a group. For the purpose of brevity I am skipping for now an important idea about having an altruistic motivation toward oneself.

Another point that could be added is that people can skip reading material simply because it is too painful to concentrate on anything for that long a time. In fact I know this to be true with myself. I was going through terrible suffering at one time and could not concentrate to read my two year old child a simple story or play blocks with her. I needed to do certain things or even just think about certain things to try make the unbearable pain go away, and that reading her a story was not one of them. It just wasn't focusing on her at that time unfortunately and very sadly it could not be.



I did not answer this question yet--sorry---and will do so later, though I think what I wrote about emotional pain might touch a bit on the answer.

Wind, what do you think of this message (if you have even read it:-)? Is it too long? I tried to make it shorter. Could I have said this better in a different way, or would that be too long. to go into? I think if you are interested it might seem shorter and if you are not interested it would definitely seem much longer.

I personally could have written that message using fewer words. It took me a few years to learn how to do that, but it was worth it.