@Wrzlprmft But some do. Some in my private sphere (I'm a STEM Major, so autism is common among my fellow students) have told me that they're happy to have been diagnosed and are happy to share their diagnosis to medical professionals (to get communication training for autism and such), or other people who know what the diagnosis means and know how to act responsibly on that.

@Wrzlprmft Of course, autistic spectrum disorder is one of the most over-diagnosed mental disorders in the recent years. But, as long as there are people who, by having diagnosed, can have access to help that crucially depends on the 'disorder' diagnosed.(For autism, this is mostly training on social matters. Sometimes, help is needed for other mental problems mostly caused due to an inability to handle social situations)

Therefore, I think that the diagnosis can be of vital importance to some people and therefore I'm a proponent of the diagnosis on the whole, with the caveat that the diagnosis can be difficult to make, like many mental diagnoses.

Oh, also note that most of my comments considers the so-called 'high functioning' part of the spectrum (not to be confused with the 'autist savant', who display extreme skill in a single area (e.g. knows all train-routes in Europe, or 300 digits of pi by heart), but lack basic human skills in other areas, mostly social). Some the 'high functioning' people actually have the intelligence and capability of solving their social problems themselves and therefore can do without professional help.

@Discretelizard Sure, I do not doubt that. And there are people who are certainly suffering from their autism. But then there are also people who are happy the way they are. For these people, it can be the major problem if their surroundings try to impose their way of life onto them. Anyway, I do not want to take any absolute side in this debate; it is just a good illustration of the problem of defining mental illnesses.

This is contrasted with, say 'Classical Autism'. For the people being diagnosed with this it is usually obvious for even untrained observers that they cannot 'normally' participate in social situations, as they are just looking 'silly' at you. (a bit similar behaviour to sufferers of 'Down's syndrome' to the casual observer)

@Wrzlprmft Oh of course, I don't blame you. It's just that the autistic spectrum disorder is often misunderstood and regarded as 'nonsense' for 'people that don't wish to adapt to society', while many people diagnosed such can most certainly be useful in society, given the proper help. So, I feel the need to 'raise awareness' when I see posts that can be 'misinterpreted'.

Anyway, please excuse my 'barging in like a elephant in a china shop' (and that in The Ivory Tower, ha!).

@Discretelizard Your teeth will decorate our walls …

@Wrzlprmft I shall defend them with tooth and nail! Or simply sitting on you might suffice...

Ah well, my teeth aside, the reason I came here is this: I don't want to be rude, but I have the feeling from the posting behavior on Academia can be considered at least partly as a 'hive-mind' (i.e. a group uncannily sharing the same thoughts, as if you were a single mind). Can anyone share their opinion on this?

@Discretelizard In comparison to other SE sites, there is very little dispute in Academia’s community about how the site should be run. Apart from that I do not think that we differ much from other SE sites.

@Wrzlprmft Well, for a site where a lot answers are essentially a form of a well-written opinion, the fact that there usually is a single post or multiple posts with essentially the same basic point of view is a bit notable. But it is possible that this behaviour is common to other more sites that deal frequently with more 'opinionated' questions.

@Discretelizard As far as I can tell, this is quite usual. Keep in mind that we do not allow most questions where there are widely differing opinions. (See good subjective vs. bad subjective.) If we didn’t have a large fundus of questions for which there is a general agreement of the directions of answers, the community could not survive.

@Wrzlprmft Hmm, I guess that's true. Can't be very constructive when everyone is arguing. Well, thanks for the explanation.

(although not for the dental threats. Remember that the memory of an elephant is very long. One day, your witty remarks may come back to haunt you. Just be careful at the zoo...)

Oh and by the way, where are my manners? Here I go, threatening elephantine execution and I don't even introduce myself! Well, I'm a masters student in the intersection of Math and CS (sometimes in the union). I'm interested in doing research and although I'm not sure whether doing this in academia, industry or government is a good idea, but a PhD after finishing my masters seems like a good idea.

So, I'm not very well versed in Academia, but I'll contribute where I think I can provide good 'outsider' perspective.

@Wrzlprmft or @anyone_else_really Do you know how these feeds on tags on other sites work? Who can 'install' those things? The room owner? Mods? These sound like something that the Computer Science chat can use. That place is usually dead as a door-nail. Some 'other input' might liven things up.

Oh and I heard the so called 'ticker' is spawn of the devil. Can anyone confirm or deny?

@Discretelizard A moderator or room owner can add any RSS or Atom feed to the room.

If the room is dead, this usually doesn’t help though. It just becomes a feed graveyard instead.

@Wrzlprmft Ok, thanks. Time to request some, then!

@Wrzlprmft Well, dead is a bit of a hyperbole. I just think people don't have much to talk about unless prodded once in a while. One user (vzn) sure makes a habit of posting links to all sorts of things anyway, so it is basically a feed already. Unless the feeds give too much 'volume', I think it would be worth a try.