I have a son with ASD, so he sometimes misses some social cues that others pick up on more easily. Here is how I would answer him if he asked me these exact questions. This may be overexplaining, and if so I apologize.
In normal conversation, such as in person or on the phone or even text messaging, short acknowledgements of having heard/understood with nothing further added are completely appropriate responses.
“This is true.” “OK, thanks” “Excellent” etc.
On this forum, however, every post generates a notification that there is new content to those following a thread. Those notified then open them to see that there really isn’t new content, just brief conversational bits that do not really further the discussion. This can lead to other participants feeling annoyed and/or shutting down participating altogether,
If you only want to address the one person, and the comment will not move the general discussion at all, you likely do not need to post your thought. If there is something you desperately need to say to one person, you can click on someone’s profile to message them directly. They may or may not be receptive to communicating this way, and that is OK.
Yes, but what’s the problem with that? How would it discourage/annoy the person getting notifications??? I think you can unsubscribe or something.
But why use this if you only “should” talk to a person?
IDK what you mean by this.
It’s not business, this is a place to be loose, and free. Not uptight and serious. What’s the problem with little funny, or comments that aren’t so serious? It’s not like this is a place where you have ti be serious.
I do not know where you are getting this from but this is a discussion forum for iNaturalist, and there are forum guidelines, which I would suggest you read because the idea that others unsubscribe from threads in which they are participating so you can “be loose and free” is not the solution.
I mean, we don’t have to be so serious while respecting the rules.
You were complaining that your son gets annoyed when people don’t respond to his comments and the comments don’t involve him. I mean, if he’s annoyed, I suggest unsubscribing to the “topic” if that is possible.
I meant it as like, some curators are very serious. I mean, it’s not the military so we should keep it a happy place. You know what I mean? And what I meant by loose and free was that people stay happy and not so solemn.
No. Not quite. I referenced my son because I have mentioned him, and his social difference, before and I was going to give the answer as if he was the one posing the questions. He does not participate on iNaturalist because his interests are not in nature, they lie elsewhere, so this is not the appropriate forum for him.
You asked:
Those are the questions I answered, as if answering for someone whose social cue recognition or awareness was not typical.
Curators are volunteers and we do not have a full window onto all that they do, but one thing they are not here to do is be performative and jolly up the place.
Just a note: serious and somber are not intrinsically bad, nor necessarily unhappy.
(Think of a public library. Quiet, calm, definitely a serious air. But filled with lovely books and such. Definitely happy. But still serious!)
It stands for Autism Spectrum Disorder. It’s the currently accepted name for the type of neurodiversity also known as autism or Asperger’s Syndrome, which often includes difficulty in understanding social norms.
The main thing to remember about the Forum is that it’s not any one user’s personal playground. If posted messages are off-topic, close to offensive, etc. the staff or moderators have the right to step in and push it back on track, change the frequency of posts, or shut down the discussion. Occasionally I may disagree with a decision to stop a discussion but, again, I’m just another user here.
Obviously if posts are truly offensive, that results in flagging and possibly suspension but that’s a different category altogether.
Something I and probably others would like to see less of are responses that could be covered just by liking a message. This includes responses like “Awesome!” “LOL” and emojis with nothing else added. They’re probably fine in a chat room but just make it difficult to wade through a discussion thread to find messages that actually say something.
The whole point of the trust system (which you should have been introduced to as a new user here) is to help people ease their way into the forum by purposely limiting their actions. That is what you came up against. You’re asked to read the guidelines and get a sense of the place before wading in to a lot of discussions, and those limits are there to encourage you to do more reading than contributing at first.
Posts should be constructive and add to the discussion. As others have said, it’s difficult to follow a conversation when there are lots of small posts thaqt are just a few words or emoji or something. The like button is there to allow someone to express something about a post without muddying up the flow.
I found this happens sometimes when you submit onboard camera and other edits (*where indicated in file name) to reduce accidental resubmissions seemingly
Discourse places a limit on how much a new user can post, in order to prevent someone from joining and then immediately posting lots of spam. But after that the user can gain trust and the ability to post more often, award more likes to the posts of others, and include more links in their posts.