Talk:Meta

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Allistic vs. Non-autistic

They mean the same thing, but "non-autistic" is less jargon-y and more people would understand it. In the interest of making our content accessible to autistic newcomers and to non-autistic people, should we have a preference for writing "non-autistic" over "allistic"? --AutExplorer (talk) 17:36, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Personally, I'd like to keep "allistic". It should be basic terminology and treated as such in my opinion. However, linking "allistic" to Allism here and there throughout the wiki would be a good idea, then people can immediately click on it if they hear it for the first time! --Fochti (talk) 19:14, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree. The very first instance of "allistic" could also have "(non-autistic)" next to it, in addition to being linked to Allism --Fire Eider (talk) 21:02, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Citing community consensus

How should we assert "distilled wisdom" such as ABA being harmful? (It seems important to do so, see e.g. this thread: https://twitter.com/WIRblog/status/1563002859246956544)

We could use phrases like "Many people within the autistic community agree that...", but we want to avoid "false controversies" (thanks @fochti for this phrase!) where it seems like there's disagreement on a topic when really there's broad agreement.

Much of what the #ActuallyAutistic community has done is share our experiences until we collectively distill certain things that seem broadly true to us. This is like What We Do, and it would be really valuable to share this knowledge with with new #ActuallyAutistic people and with the world at large.

We're talking about knowledge about knowledge: not just "ABA is harmful", but "There's #ActuallyAutistic consensus that ABA is harmful"

Special citations for asserting community consensus

One possibility would be to have have certain special citations:

• [community-consensus]: means there's rough community consensus within the #ActuallyAutistic community
• [community-controversy]: means there's meaningful controversy within the #ActuallyAutistic community; sizeable groups on more than one side
• [experimental-theory]: experimental theory, not yet tested and accepted or rejected by the #ActuallyAutistic community at large

Examples:

• ABA is harmful [community-consensus] [1] [2] [3]
• Most people within the #ActuallyAutistic community prefer identity-first language [community-consensus]
• Masking isn't worth it [community-controversy]
• Monotropism explains everything about autism [experimental-theory]

Tags like "[community-consensus]" could link to an explanation of what community consensus means, how knowledge is distilled within the #ActuallyAutistic community, etc.

Very open to suggestions about what the actual tags should be. For example maybe instead of [community-consensus] it should be [actuallyautistic-consensus] or [autistic-consensus] or [aa-consensus] or [our-consensus] or [consensus] or [consensus-view] or...

I really like the idea of special citation tags --Fochti (talk) 15:20, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Special language for asserting community consensus

Alternatively we could write out certain key phrases:

• There's consensus within the #ActuallyAutistic community that ABA is harmful.
• There's consensus within the #ActuallyAutistic community that most autists within the #ActuallyAutistic community prefer identity-first language
• There's controversy within the community about whether masking is worth it
• There's an experimental theory that monotropism explains everything

Writing out the phrases feels a bit wordy, and also shoves the content of the sentence to the end. Could also be written the other way around:

• ABA is harmful, according to rough consensus within the community.
• Most people within the #ActuallyAutistic prefer identity-first language, according to rough consensus within the community.

But this still feels wordy. I think I like the special citation form.

Citation storms

Another possibility (which we could do in addition to using tags like [community-consensus]) would be to have "citation storms", where we maybe cite like 50 or 100 Twitter threads of lived experience of #ActuallyAutistic people.

But a citation storm can't stand in for something like [community-consensus] tags, because a citation storm on its own doesn't assert that there aren't other popular views within the community.

--AutExplorer (talk) 15:07, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Signing lived experiences

When writing their lived experience, should the person sign their (user)name? I understand some might not want to have their experience linked to them, so maybe the guidelines could mention that you can put your username if you wish to? I also understand that that might make the articles a bit clunky/harder to navigate --Fire Eider (talk) 16:37, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

We were thinking about adding "Lived experience" sections where it might apply. This alone would make it clear that whatever people put there is 100% subjective. If people want to sign what they put there they can, but no pressure. Once we know how to handle this consistently and elegantly we will update the guidelines. --Fochti (talk) 15:24, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Handling citations (answered)

How do we do citations? I tried to fix Overlapping neurotypes but I don't know if that looks right. I want some more info before I fix other pages, please

It looks good to me --Fire Eider (talk)

For now we have this: Help:Style guidelines#References --Fochti (talk) 15:19, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

English (US) vs English (UK)

I think we need some consensus on whether people should use American English spelling or British English spelling. Whatever we're gonna use, it should be put into the style guidelines. (Yes, I always focus on the most important topics! :D) --Fochti (talk) 22:47, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

autistic vs Autistic

We need some consensus on whether we capitalise "Autistic", like "Deaf", or not; prefarably sooner than later :D What do you think? --Fochti (talk) 22:47, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Personally I'm accustomed to using lowercase. If others prefer uppercase, my suggestion would be: (1) use uppercase 'A' to refer to the Autistic community as a distinct subculture, but (2) use lowercase 'a' to refer to autistic people when talking about our neurotype itself. Thus a person could be 'autistic' (the neurotype) without necessarily also being "Autistic" (participating in the Autistic community). Mona Pereth (talk) 15:11, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

That's a great suggestion! We will put some thought into that and update our style guidelines accordingly as soon as we agreed on something. Might take a while though :D --Fochti (talk) 16:01, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

REQUEST: make external links open in new window

I think the usual thing is for external links (to other sites) to open in another window/tab. I think maybe that's how it worked yesterday and it got changed. Here's the docs on how to adjust the setting: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgExternalLinkTarget --Severian (talk) 01:57, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

hmm, strange, no specifically-related settings were changed! (The default theme did change; perhaps that explains why the behavior shifted?) I checked wikipedia, and it seems that their external links *don't* open in a new window. And also looks like mediawiki by doesn't open links in a new window by default either. --AutExplorer (talk) 16:41, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Adding images (answered)

Is there a way to add images to a page? The help says to upload an image, but I don't know where to upload it to

Yep! Here's the upload link:

--AutExplorer (talk) 15:38, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Link for the lazy: click me to upload a file :P --Fochti (talk) 17:39, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Where to get autism-related stuff

Should we have a page saying where to get autism-related stuff? On the one hand, this could be a useful resource. On the other, it could very easily turn into a spam page, w/ nothing but free advertising

What do you mean by "autism related stuff"? --Fochti (talk) 18:39, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Good question. That may be too difficult to judge. Anything from noise-cancelling headphones to T-shirts w/ Autism-related sayings

Deleting pages (answered)

Is it possible to actually delete a page (for example if it's redundant or spam), or do you need to make it a redirect? If so, where would you redirect a spam page to? --Fochti (talk) 01:44, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Okay, it is possible, but only if you're one of the wiki's administrators --Fochti (talk) 20:47, 25 August 2022 (UTC)