Has this site suddenly become more nasty?

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No, I don't think it's been any more nasty. With that said, I also stay away from the PPR section (because things can get downright mean in there!).

I agree that intent is important, but it's also tricky, and it's been my experience that AS people are no better at mind reading than NTs, often worse even.

Yes, that's correct, I did. My main interest was in whether others had observed it becoming more nasty - of course you always get a proportion of responses which are less polite/considerate on any discussion board, as others have commented (and I have no view as to where WP sits on this scale compared to average) - but my own thoughts were that this situation was becoming worse.

I used the word 'nasty' (appreciated, not to everyone's taste...) to cover a multitude of possible posting styles (rude - not necessarily blunt -, incessant ...) and motivations (inflammatory, confrontational,...) which could be seen as counterproductive to a healthy exchange of ideas. Many with more experience on this forum have said there is no change, or that it goes in cycles; others have felt like me that, particularly in recent months, things do seem to be becoming increasingly nasty.

I am interested in the "cycle" theory, and wonder why this might be the case - possibly just random fluctuations in the type of people posting, and their mood, or maybe specific "cliques" develop where individuals decide to pursue attacks on particular people to whom they have taken a dislike. I guess these fizzle out over time - someone leaves, someone gets bored, etc. It would be interesting (of course, I use the word interesting in a very selfish, local sense!) to do statistical analysis of the proportion of threads which are 'dominated' by individuals, in the sense that more than x% of posts are from a single individual other than the OP - guess we should exclude them - where x is set to be a highish number). I wonder how this proportion changes over time, and whether it also might correlate with negative feelings some of us might have about the forum at particular times.

Anyway, thanks for your responses here and all the best for 2015!

True. And most the time you probably can't tell right away (unless you intended to get a reaction and/or pick a fight, because then you would expect a reaction), that's why I said "especially when the person tells you she/he is getting upset" (then you can't pretend you didn't know). And of course someone might get upset even if your intention was good/constructive, or you simply gave an honest opinion without a specific intention (it happens to me all the time, I say something, and someone gets upset), but in this case, if your intention was good (and/or simply to be honest), you probably won't go on and on about the same thing and turn the whole conversation into an attack against the other person (that's why the intention matters, whether the other person knew your intention or not).

That was unexpected. Thanks.

There are times where I strongly disagree, and like you I often still appreciate those posts. I don't think I've ever actually had a major problem with a poster, except once, which was primarily due to my sour mood at the time and various other reasons.

I can't imagine actually disliking a poster on this forum, unless they went out of there way to target people personally, on a regular basis. I'm sure that would be the same for most here.

It's hard to care about intents, undertones, and multitudes of reactions from others.
I just don't care at a feeling level.
I say what I think, and if others have negative reactions to my words, they can have them in their minds, and avoid reading what I post, or possibly there is ignore feature now, I'm not sure.
I am almost never offended by anything, so it's hard for me to understand the offense felt by others.

Are you saying you feel nothing when you hurt someone? If so I am still unclear, are you never hurt, too? For instance if you encounter a prejudiced person who tries to stop you from living your life or when someone insults you? If so, what is that like?

I am almost never hurt, I can't remember a single instance of having hurt feelings.
If someone insults me, I think that's ok that's their opinion.
If someone tries to stop me from living my life (I'm not sure what that means), I will ignore them or subvert them.
I didn't understand the meaning of the words "I'm upset" on an intellectual level until I researched it a lot, and now I know what it means on intellectual level, but not intuitively or emotionally.
I don't empathize or sympathize with sensitive people, they are like aliens to me.

It's absolutely astonishing to me the distinctions between those of us on the spectrum that seem so large to us, might seem dwarfed to anyone. Yet from what you've written about yourself, apparently average people and professionals might meet us and see as as quite similar. One style isn't better or worse, I just don't understand how what seem like such big differences to us, maybe don't, to others. Any theories why this is?

I don't know why average people and professionals would see us as quite similar.
Why do you think so?

I get the impression people recognize what seems strange to them and it seems like some combination of unusual speech or unusual eye contact or surprising intensity or unexpected straightforwardness goes into a special category where to me when you explain about never feeling hurt by another person, I wish I could be more that way, but it's been such a struggle to push myself into the world I maybe have to care now. Where when I was young, I had no idea what others thought. Even if someone was attacking me I was oblivious until they were screaming and if they attacked without screaming, did not understand it as intentional. Maybe I need to pay attention now for survival.

Or were you questioning what I meant about similar? I just meant having ASD is all.

People with autism have different personalities and eggsperiences, so I don't think that one is similar to another only because they have autism. I don't think regular people and professionals would think so either.

I find many autistic people harder to relate to than neurotypical people. There is only one place in the world where I have found myself amongst a decent number of people quite similar to me.

Sometimes, I wonder why there are not more people more similar to me on wp, like others who say that don't care about the things I don't care about and don't get upset or hurt feelings, I wonder if it is because they are naturally that different from me or if they have been socially conditioned into something that seems quite unrelatable to me.

I agree.

Generally, I just try to be polite. Also, I try to follow the golden rule (that is, I wouldn't write something that I myself would find upsetting to read).

With that being said, I don't never ever try to figure out how a specific person will react to what I write. If it is good enough for me, it is good enough for everyone.

Thank you - you expanded and clarified my point a lot better than I was able to. Nothing at all wrong with being blunt and straightforward. There's a whole lot wrong with being mean and unkind.

I am different from you I guess because I cannot navigate through all debate and I cannot often join in debates, because I think that my verbal processing is too slow, but I am not gifted like you are, but I don't care about it.
If someone writes that his feelings are hurt my mind stores the visual image of the written text, and I know that hurting someone is bad, and I do not want to hurt people, but it is no further connecting like all I read in debates is no further connecting, but I do know that someone got hurt in a context, but have difficulties to see the context.
My social perception is very fragmentated, mind forms singular points of information but no coherence.
The singular points of information I store.
And trying to apply them, but I rather avoid engaging socially especially in debate, because applying singular not-connected points, It's confusing.
I do like the pallas cats you posted, I read about them a lot the last days.