Author Topic: Possible Autism support group on here?  (Read 4313 times)

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Offline PrincessChai

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Possible Autism support group on here?
« on: January 01, 2016, 08:06:53 pm »
 
I have noticed that there are a lot of Furries both in documentaries and in my experiences with the fandom who have Autism Spectrum Disorder. Which is awesome. And I want to be able to address that in a positive way, especially since both Furries and Autistics get bullied a lot in a society that limits the possible and existing ways of thinking. Although the idea is to make it a support group, I think it would be important to keep the subject matter light. Topics to cover could be finding ways to be peaceful activists, sharing petitions, sharing stories- whether from current events or from personal experiences, presenting and discussing special interests and diagnosis stories, sharing helpful blogs and posts from outside of furtopia, and much more. I hope the administrator will consider helping me develop this, it would be great. Any advice would be welcome.
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Offline Kobuk

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Re: Possible Autism support group on here?
« Reply #1 on: January 01, 2016, 09:19:15 pm »
Just my .02 cents here.

If you've noticed the various forums Furtopia has, there is what's called the "Life Problems & Help" forum. It's not a specific forum for anything in particular, but rather a forum for persons to discuss various issues they are having like friendships, family issues, work, etc. Perhaps you could create a single thread in that forum for people to discuss autism stuff?

*adds in another .02 cents to the jar*

While your idea/suggestion sounds nice "in theory", a lot of furs here may or may not be qualified to help others with various autism issues. In other words, we're not doctors, councilors, etc.  People should be careful on what sort of advice they are giving to others.

Offline redyoshi49q

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Re: Possible Autism support group on here?
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2016, 10:58:55 am »
As Kobuk has already mentioned, we have a number of forum sections in which threads on the subject of autism could be made.  Depending on the nature of the thread, sections such as General Non-Furry Discussion, Furry Connections and Contacts, and Life Problems & Help are potentially suitable (note that while the latter two are private to registered forum members, the former is publicly viewable, and may consequently be viewed by web crawlers and archivers).  In fact, we have periodically had threads on that subject, though I don't believe there are currently any that are within our gravedigging limits; you're more than welcome to create a new such thread yourself.


While there's the initial impression that creating a forum section will generate more traffic on a subject, it generally doesn't work that way in practice (we've had a number of forum sections that have been archived because they haven't seen enough use to justify keeping them open).  Rather, forum sections are generally created when there's a volume of related content in order to both organize it and separate it from other subjects (this most recently happened with the creation of the MLP section, for instance).  The General Furry and Non-Furry Discussion sections are used as catchalls for low volume discussion topics because having a dedicated section for a wide variety of subject matters would cause the forums to be filled with sections that are almost never used.  I hope this explanation helps to make the reasoning of not having your proposed section more clear.
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