I’m curious as to the development of aba not taking into account their patients long term and short term effects. The fact that autistic adults are screaming this is an abusive dog therapy designed by a perverted ableist doctor falling on deaf ears as more parents are shuffled into this miracle 17.5 billion industry. I hope you include the many articles written by autistic adults and attorneys about the harms of ABA and manage to include them in your synopsis of ABA so that all facts can be viewed and it would also help future consumers if the Dr who designed aba background wasn’t white washed, guy was a sexual predator who abused animals and designed therapy by abusing kids in the same way he did dogs. If your gonna be thorough please cover all sides
- Oh hi, anonymous visitor! I think it's safe to say there is quite a bit of work still to do before the ABA entry is anywhere close to fairly balancing the views of autistic people, who are overwhelmingly opposed, with the views of people who do ABA for a living, who are of course broadly in favour.
- It's a tricky thing to navigate, because as you probably know, Wikipedia is theoretically written from a Neutral Point of View, and all potentially controversial statements need to be backed up by reliable sources. So we can't just go in and edit the ABA entry to say something like 'this is a set of abusive practices, backed up by terrible-quality science and heavily promoted by people making enormous profits from it'; it's necessary to represent all sides of each debate as fairly as possible, using information from published sources - newspapers and books can work, but peer-reviewed research is particularly helpful, and even more particularly secondary medical literature, where relevant. Annoyingly, but not entirely unreasonably, that means the vast majority of writing by autistic people is not really citable here; for the most part, we're looking for things that have gone out through reputable publishers, and autistic people are still systematically under-represented in formally published literature on autism. -- Oolong ( talk) 18:40, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
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See discussion for further observations on the topic of whether the links for threeweeks and Fest should be there or not. BAK 09:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Brilliant explanation. Thank you. :) -- Quiddity ( talk) 21:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I did chuckle at your comment on your edit of William McGonagall! -- Jmc ( talk) 20:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
As per Averixus's suggestion under Talk:Autism spectrum#Plan of action, I wanted to start a list of things that need changing on the Autism spectrum page. I'm dealing with a hostile editor threatening to revert any changes I make, so proceeding cautiously here. I will move this list to the main Talk page when it's ready.
"Autistic" redirects here. Not to be confused with Autism.
It doesn't make sense to suggest that people might confuse this with autism. Either 'autism' refers to the exact same thing, or (historically) it refers to a sub-category of ASD.
The autism spectrum is an umbrella term...
This first paragraph should start by explaining what the term means in broad strokes, before introducing the other names it is known by (including 'autism') and explaining what is meant by a 'spectrum' (the existing explanation is unclear, and reads like it may have made a bit more sense before some earlier text was rewritten). As an opening paragraph, this is considerably longer than it should be. There should be a brief account of the previously separate diagnoses that were collapsed into this in DSM-5 and ICD-11, and how the new manuals divide the ASD category, but I think this warrants its own paragraph.
Symptoms can be detected before the age of two
There was a requirement of 'onset prior to age 3 years' for a diagnosis of 'autistic disorder' in DSM-IV, but not for Autism Spectrum Disorders more broadly, and the requirement seems to be entirely absent from DSM-5. The uncited claim that 'experienced practitioners can give a reliable diagnosis' is obviously wrong in many cases.
The causes of autism spectrum conditions remain uncertain
They really, really do, and I don't think it's helpful to have a substantial paragraph on this before we get to the Contents table. This should be fully dealt with in the separate section below; a single sentence in the introductory sentence would be sufficient.
Diagnosis is based on observation of behavior and development
Is this the right place for this? It's quite detailed when it comes to childhood diagnoses, and I'm fairly sure many of those details will vary from country to country, which is not made clear here.
Autistic spectrum disorder is considered a lifelong condition with no simple test or cure
This paragraph relatively solid, although again I'm not sure this level of detail belongs in the opening section. If we're talking about cures, it's probably worth mentioning that as far as the best evidence we have goes, most autistic people don't want one; or, given that this question hasn't been researched as much as it should be, at least that many autistic people have said they wouldn't want to be cured. I don't think the sentence on research that has 'pointed to the reversibility of phenotypes' belongs here; this is a very strong claim, and would require strong evidence.
The reported prevalence of ASD worldwide is variable
This should be dealt with in a section on prevalence, and expand considerably on the fact that 'Apparent increases in the prevalence of ASD have been attributed to changes in reporting practices': there is an important and dangerous misconception that actual prevalence has skyrocketed, and it deserves to be addressed seriously.
Advocacy groups have emerged, some as part of the autism rights movement
A bit odd to mention the autism rights movement (autistic rights movement) but not the huge charities set up by parents, given that the rest of the paragraph is talking at least as much about the big charities. A casual reader might get the very wrong idea that parts of the autistic rights movement promote drug treatment, biogenetic research, behavioural therapy, and 'beliefs about envirotoxins', when these are all things that have been largely opposed (or at least selectively resisted) by autistic-led organisations. I'm amused by how obviously this sentence was written by someone with an axe to grind: "Critics, including those on the spectrum, have bemoaned the entrenchment of some groups' opinions". Also, that Washington Post article is really misleading. Someone ought to take a careful look at the other links too, at some point.
Contents
Six screens down! Still, better late than never.
Classification
On a skim read, this bit looks reasonably solid. Someone's made a valiant effort to condense the latest diagnostic manuals into 2-3 paragraphs each!
We might want to lose 'Further information: Autism § Classification' which starts 'Autism is one of the five pervasive developmental disorders (PDD)'. Historical information like that obviously needs to be marked as such, and anyway this is the kind of needless redundancy that makes duplication of pages like this such a chore.
Signs and symptoms
This is obviously written from a 100% medical lens, with little regard for the perspective of autistic people, which I flag up here as something worth thinking about critically. I acknowledge that there are challenges to maintaining NPOV while respecting subjective experiences, and ASD is of course a clinical diagnosis, and in some sense that is our focus here. So I'm not proposing any changes here except for the following:
people with ASD can exhibit notable ability
If we're bringing this up, we ought to talk about 'spiky skills profiles' more broadly, and possibly 'splinter skills'. Depending on what you think counts as a 'notable ability', I'm not sure that only a small percentage of autistic people have them. But then, a lot of people have one or more notable abilities! Especially people with intense interests.
There are two possible developmental courses of ASD
Exactly two? Really? This seems a bold claim. This next one is less tenuous, but it's pre-DSM-5, with much of the data cited being much older still; I'd want to know if it holds up at all since they removed the strict requirement for signs to be evident before the age of 3: 'Most parents report that the onset of autism symptoms occur within the first year of life.'
Regressive autism
There's a paragraph on 'regressive autism' before the section on it starts, presumably missed in the recent merger. We have five paragraphs on this, but they say surprisingly little of real substance. No mention is made of autistic burnout (c.f. Raymaker et al), or other examples of the occasional loss of abilities reported by many autistic adults. No kind of explanation is pointed to at all, really; I know of several proposed mechanisms, but this is obviously not an area that has seen conclusive research. My sense is that this material should be cut down and/or moved out of 'Signs and symptoms' into its own, subsequent section. This is a lot of detail, and we haven't even got to 'social skills' yet.
Social and communication skills
The 'double empathy problem' should be brought in right at the start here; there's plenty of evidence at this point that it's misleading at best to suggest that 'Impairments in social skills present many challenges'. c.f. CJ Crompton, K DeBrabander, B Heasman (2021) and DEM Milton (2012), as well as Crompton et al (2020) and MA Gernsbacher, M Yergeau (2019). In short, the assumption that the social difficulties autistic people experience are the result of deficits in the person is not supported by the available evidence. This section should be rewritten to account for this new evidence and long-standing methodological critique; the current framing is not scientifically supported.
Behavioural characteristics
Many of these are not behavioural characteristics. 'They may develop these difficulties of creating connections due to anxiety or depression' is an interesting suggestion, why not the other way round? Seems simplistic.
I don't think 'abnormal responses to sensations including sights, sounds, touch, taste and smell' stands up as a behavioural characteristic when the sensations themselves, and the way they're processed, are different.
The second core symptom of autism spectrum
Probably best to mention what the first one is supposed to be before getting on to this. This section as a whole could be better structured.
Self-injury
I'm not convinced this belongs under 'signs and symptoms' at all. It's also currently full of inadequately sourced claims, and doesn't explicitly make the obvious links with stimming, with meltdowns, or with distress, aside from chronic pain. In fact, there seems to be no mention of autistic people's distress anywhere in this article, in so many words, which is... interesting. There's only one mention, in passing, of meltdowns. Nothing on shutdowns, catatonia or even inertia, either.
If we're going to have a section on self-injury, can we make sure not portray it as if it's just a thing that happens sometimes when you're autistic? That's harmful. It's important that people at least try to understand the reasons.
Causes of autism
I question the need for four screenfuls on causes when there is also a separate entry on this, and when we could pretty much summarise the state of scientific knowledge of causes as 'it seems to be overwhelmingly genetic, but highly polygenic, and there is ambiguous evidence for a large number of possible environmental factors. It's definitely not vaccines though, this is conclusive.'
Most of the studies on so-called 'risk factors' fail to account for likely confounding factors, notoriously the high likelihood that parents are autistic themselves (but frequently undiagnosed) and being autistic causes environmental factors. As discussed elsewhere, autistic people are far more likely to be unemployed and isolated, for example. There is no point citing any studies on risk factors unless they have carefully accounted for this kind of thing (and preferably been independently replicated).
Pathophysiology
I'm not going to go into this, but I think it could benefit from the attention of someone with a critical eye and limited patience for preliminary findings.
Mirror neurons
I think this one's been directly refuted in the 13 years since the most recent cited study on it. Possibly of interest in a history of science kind of way, but maybe not worth a paragraph here.
As of 2012, there is a consensus
How strong was this consensus? How strong is it now? The citation given doesn't mention a consensus. The abstract says 'We suggest that the social brain, and its dysfunction and recovery, must be understood not in terms of specific structures, but rather in terms of their interaction in large-scale networks'.
Temporal lobe
'It has been argued' ... 'one fMRI study' ...does this warrant a paragraph? There are a lot of other things we could be learning about here. Similarly 'ASD could be linked to mitochondrial disease'... is it, though? If so, how? Is 5% of autistic kids meeting the criteria a lot? If it is, what does that tell us?
Serotonin
Interesting stuff, but still seems to be super speculative. Entry claims '45% of ASD individuals have been found to have increased blood serotonin levels' but study actually states up to 45%. Mulder et al. (2004) suggested 'at least 25%'.
That's it for now.
Great to see you here! Now I, 3Oceans, and m:Wikimedia Korea(WM-KR) are preparing Neurodiversity Editathon(Off/Online Event of editing Wikipedia). I hope the initiative becomes international: so it would be helpful to make the foundation admit they have eliminated Autistics from participating for the sum of the knowledge. Can you encourage workers in Wikimedia UK(WM-UK), to making the initiative to cooperate with Autistic editors / Autistics and wikimedia community in Scotland, England, or Ireland? I think AMASE/ARGH can make this. - Ellif ( Talk) 12:59, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
@ Oolong: I will say this for the last time: when you are reverted, do NOT revert back and take it to the talk page per WP:BRD. It doesn't matter if you're right or not, I gave a rationale and you have to discuss it on the talk page. It is clear and simple; end of story. Again, I do not oppose your edits, but they have to be supplemented by reliable sources, which you at least thankfully did eventually. If you keep edit warring like this in the future, I will have to unfortunately report you to WP:AN/E. Please understand the importance of WP:RS and updating info only if the sources are updated too. Wretchskull ( talk) 13:39, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
- As previously discussed, if you simply abided by Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary, this would never come up. You are supposed to 'revert an edit made in good faith only after careful consideration', 'when the reverter believes that the edit makes the article clearly worse and there is no element of the edit that is an improvement'. 'For a reversion to be appropriate, the reverted edit must actually make the article worse.'
- Simply apply these tests before you revert people's good faith edits, and we won't have this kind of conflict.
- In this particular case, your reversion was to change an entry about a condition that no longer appears in any diagnostic manuals to put it back into the present tense. Your stated rationale was simply 'not supported by source'. This is nonsense. You need to provide a valid rationale if you expect people not to revert.
- No, not every edit has to be 'supplemented by reliable sources'. That is not how Wikipedia is supposed to work. You need to understand Wikipedia:When to cite. Specifically, 'anything likely to incur a reasonable challenge should be sourced to avoid disputes and to aid readers'. If it is not open to a reasonable challenge, it does not require a citation. The importance of Wikipedia:Reliable sources is that 'Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered'. The point of Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) in particular is that 'Biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge'. That means removing or updating claims that are no longer supported by reliable, third-party published secondary sources.
- Perhaps you have noticed that Asperger syndrome has had an uncontested hat-note for the last couple of months, reading 'This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: some parts of the article do not accurately reflect either the new DSM-5 or ICD-11 criteria. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.' You are doing the precise opposite of that by incorrectly reverting updates to the page.
- And no, the Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle does not require us to go to the Talk page in every instance; the guidance is quite explicit that there are alternative, valid approaches. Here I followed bold, revert, revert. In this case, the reversion was made by someone with a history of poorly-justified reversions, a habit of misrepresenting the content of sources, and a tendency to completely ignore valid points made in Talk. Speaking of which, since you still haven't addressed it on the relevant Talk page, why did you delete @ Eco-Climber's comment there?
- You do not get to pretend like you are following Wikipedia guidelines on all this and I am not.
Oolong (
talk) 12:15, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- @
Oolong: The problem with this reply is you seem to completely contradict yourself multiple times. First of all, I did provide a valid rationale: the addition wasn't supported by any source. You MUST update the sources when updating information as well. You cannot, for example, update the number of individuals with a certain condition without updating the source itself, which only display the previous figures. Same thing applies here. Second, this is a large claim about the disorder, so it should absolutely be referenced. Third of all, "a history of poorly-justified reversions" is not assuming good faith, as I made it very clear to your that I do not oppose your edits and that I only reverted when necessary, and each one was. It was absolutely justified, so you didn't abide by either WP:BRD or WP:GF. Regardless mate, I'd love to just quash the animosity and move on. I'm sure you find this as tiresome and unnecessary as I find it.
Wretchskull (
talk) 16:21, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- Hi again, there is no contradiction at all. I'm tired and irritable, so I'm going to be civil here, but not gentle.
- You didn't provide a valid rationale. As I said in my comment above, you put a statement about something that no longer appears in any diagnostic manuals back into the present tense. Of course that's supported by sources. It's no longer in any diagnostic manuals, a fact for which ample sources have been supplied.
- It is not 'a large claim about the disorder'. If accurate sources fifteen years ago were describing AS a certain way, but it's established AS is no longer considered a separate thing by any reliable source, it follows inexorably that it is now accurate to say, of what those sources say, that AS 'was said to be' such and such. It should also be obvious that it is now misleading, at best, to talk about AS in the present tense.
- My comments about poorly justified revisions etc. are not an accusation of bad faith. They are an entirely factual account of why I would much prefer to avoid trying to engage with you on talk pages. I am agnostic about the reasons why you have been behaving like this. However, I see no reason to expect different, given that you haven't addressed any of these problems to date. You haven't so much as gone back and posted 'oh, no, you're right, now that I actually read these citations I posted, I can see that they show the opposite of what I previously claimed.'
- You are correct that I find this animosity tiresome. 'Tiresome' is a mild word for it, frankly. It is unnecessary, yes, in the sense that none of your reversions have been necessary. I'm strongly in favour of moving on: I think I have have explained what is required; you can think through any future edits on these topics, especially any reversions, and provide actually valid rationales for them; or you can simply not make such edits. Oolong ( talk) 20:18, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- @
Oolong: The problem with this reply is you seem to completely contradict yourself multiple times. First of all, I did provide a valid rationale: the addition wasn't supported by any source. You MUST update the sources when updating information as well. You cannot, for example, update the number of individuals with a certain condition without updating the source itself, which only display the previous figures. Same thing applies here. Second, this is a large claim about the disorder, so it should absolutely be referenced. Third of all, "a history of poorly-justified reversions" is not assuming good faith, as I made it very clear to your that I do not oppose your edits and that I only reverted when necessary, and each one was. It was absolutely justified, so you didn't abide by either WP:BRD or WP:GF. Regardless mate, I'd love to just quash the animosity and move on. I'm sure you find this as tiresome and unnecessary as I find it.
Wretchskull (
talk) 16:21, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Your edit summary for Revision 1095491344 on Neurodiversity
Heya! I was reading your edit summary for this revision of the article Neurodiversity. I agree with your edit; the art should not have been deleted. However, I take particular issue with your edit summary:
"The image description makes clear that its intent matches the description. The user responsible is autistic, as per their profile. Undid revision 1095474172 by 92.1.144.176"
It seems as if you're attacking the user and deeming them as autistic in an attempt to degrade their character, and you really shouldn't be attacking others in this manner. We have an entire policy ( WP:NPA) on not personally attacking people. Please don't attack others like this, even if you're in a dispute with them. It degrades your own professionalism and damages the reputation of the person you attack, but yours' more tenfold.
I understand this isn't necessarily normal stuff, but I'm personally a huge proponent of remaining professional and/or civil on Wikipedia. Avoid personal attacks at all costs. InvadingInvader ( talk) 02:49, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
- No! Goodness, @ InvadingInvader:, it hadn't occurred to me it could be read that way. I'm autistic myself. I was pointing out that the user who made the graphic is too, because a previous edit had denied that it was autistic-made. Oolong ( talk) 10:19, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
|
Editor of the Week | |
| Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week in recognition of your great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project) |
User:Cassie Schebel submitted the following nomination for Editor of the Week:
- I nominate Oolong to be this weeks Editor of the Week for the frequent and quality additions on pages related to the topic of Autism. That article and others, such as, Autism Spectrum, Applied behavior analysis, Neurodiversity, and Asperger syndrome have all been vastly improved by their edits. They have been a Wikipedian since 2005 with over one thousand edits, with an average size of almost 250 bytes. Only 23 of these edits are currently deleted.
You can copy the following text to your user page to display a user box proclaiming your selection as Editor of the Week:
{{User:UBX/EoTWBox}}
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| Oolong |
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Editor of the Week for the week beginning July 17, 2022 |
| Contributes good additions on pages related to Autism, Autism Spectrum, Applied behavior analysis, Neurodiversity, and Asperger syndrome. Wikipedian since 2005 with over one thousand edits. |
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| dedication |
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Thanks again for your efforts! ― Buster7 ☎ 12:28, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
- Hey, I don't think I ever said thanks, especially to @
Cassie Schebel. Thank you!
Oolong (
talk) 17:50, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
- I'm just doing my part to make sure the hard work behind Wikipedia is appreciated <3 Cassie Schebel, almost a savant. <3 ( talk) 15:15, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
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Hi @ Oolong I read your articles and I was thrilled. I have just started my account in Wikipedia but I don't find any topic worth interesting for editing. What should I Do? Ellenmarker ( talk) 14:36, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
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I’m curious as to the development of aba not taking into account their patients long term and short term effects. The fact that autistic adults are screaming this is an abusive dog therapy designed by a perverted ableist doctor falling on deaf ears as more parents are shuffled into this miracle 17.5 billion industry. I hope you include the many articles written by autistic adults and attorneys about the harms of ABA and manage to include them in your synopsis of ABA so that all facts can be viewed and it would also help future consumers if the Dr who designed aba background wasn’t white washed, guy was a sexual predator who abused animals and designed therapy by abusing kids in the same way he did dogs. If your gonna be thorough please cover all sides
- Oh hi, anonymous visitor! I think it's safe to say there is quite a bit of work still to do before the ABA entry is anywhere close to fairly balancing the views of autistic people, who are overwhelmingly opposed, with the views of people who do ABA for a living, who are of course broadly in favour.
- It's a tricky thing to navigate, because as you probably know, Wikipedia is theoretically written from a Neutral Point of View, and all potentially controversial statements need to be backed up by reliable sources. So we can't just go in and edit the ABA entry to say something like 'this is a set of abusive practices, backed up by terrible-quality science and heavily promoted by people making enormous profits from it'; it's necessary to represent all sides of each debate as fairly as possible, using information from published sources - newspapers and books can work, but peer-reviewed research is particularly helpful, and even more particularly secondary medical literature, where relevant. Annoyingly, but not entirely unreasonably, that means the vast majority of writing by autistic people is not really citable here; for the most part, we're looking for things that have gone out through reputable publishers, and autistic people are still systematically under-represented in formally published literature on autism. -- Oolong ( talk) 18:40, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
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See discussion for further observations on the topic of whether the links for threeweeks and Fest should be there or not. BAK 09:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Brilliant explanation. Thank you. :) -- Quiddity ( talk) 21:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I did chuckle at your comment on your edit of William McGonagall! -- Jmc ( talk) 20:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
As per Averixus's suggestion under Talk:Autism spectrum#Plan of action, I wanted to start a list of things that need changing on the Autism spectrum page. I'm dealing with a hostile editor threatening to revert any changes I make, so proceeding cautiously here. I will move this list to the main Talk page when it's ready.
"Autistic" redirects here. Not to be confused with Autism.
It doesn't make sense to suggest that people might confuse this with autism. Either 'autism' refers to the exact same thing, or (historically) it refers to a sub-category of ASD.
The autism spectrum is an umbrella term...
This first paragraph should start by explaining what the term means in broad strokes, before introducing the other names it is known by (including 'autism') and explaining what is meant by a 'spectrum' (the existing explanation is unclear, and reads like it may have made a bit more sense before some earlier text was rewritten). As an opening paragraph, this is considerably longer than it should be. There should be a brief account of the previously separate diagnoses that were collapsed into this in DSM-5 and ICD-11, and how the new manuals divide the ASD category, but I think this warrants its own paragraph.
Symptoms can be detected before the age of two
There was a requirement of 'onset prior to age 3 years' for a diagnosis of 'autistic disorder' in DSM-IV, but not for Autism Spectrum Disorders more broadly, and the requirement seems to be entirely absent from DSM-5. The uncited claim that 'experienced practitioners can give a reliable diagnosis' is obviously wrong in many cases.
The causes of autism spectrum conditions remain uncertain
They really, really do, and I don't think it's helpful to have a substantial paragraph on this before we get to the Contents table. This should be fully dealt with in the separate section below; a single sentence in the introductory sentence would be sufficient.
Diagnosis is based on observation of behavior and development
Is this the right place for this? It's quite detailed when it comes to childhood diagnoses, and I'm fairly sure many of those details will vary from country to country, which is not made clear here.
Autistic spectrum disorder is considered a lifelong condition with no simple test or cure
This paragraph relatively solid, although again I'm not sure this level of detail belongs in the opening section. If we're talking about cures, it's probably worth mentioning that as far as the best evidence we have goes, most autistic people don't want one; or, given that this question hasn't been researched as much as it should be, at least that many autistic people have said they wouldn't want to be cured. I don't think the sentence on research that has 'pointed to the reversibility of phenotypes' belongs here; this is a very strong claim, and would require strong evidence.
The reported prevalence of ASD worldwide is variable
This should be dealt with in a section on prevalence, and expand considerably on the fact that 'Apparent increases in the prevalence of ASD have been attributed to changes in reporting practices': there is an important and dangerous misconception that actual prevalence has skyrocketed, and it deserves to be addressed seriously.
Advocacy groups have emerged, some as part of the autism rights movement
A bit odd to mention the autism rights movement (autistic rights movement) but not the huge charities set up by parents, given that the rest of the paragraph is talking at least as much about the big charities. A casual reader might get the very wrong idea that parts of the autistic rights movement promote drug treatment, biogenetic research, behavioural therapy, and 'beliefs about envirotoxins', when these are all things that have been largely opposed (or at least selectively resisted) by autistic-led organisations. I'm amused by how obviously this sentence was written by someone with an axe to grind: "Critics, including those on the spectrum, have bemoaned the entrenchment of some groups' opinions". Also, that Washington Post article is really misleading. Someone ought to take a careful look at the other links too, at some point.
Contents
Six screens down! Still, better late than never.
Classification
On a skim read, this bit looks reasonably solid. Someone's made a valiant effort to condense the latest diagnostic manuals into 2-3 paragraphs each!
We might want to lose 'Further information: Autism § Classification' which starts 'Autism is one of the five pervasive developmental disorders (PDD)'. Historical information like that obviously needs to be marked as such, and anyway this is the kind of needless redundancy that makes duplication of pages like this such a chore.
Signs and symptoms
This is obviously written from a 100% medical lens, with little regard for the perspective of autistic people, which I flag up here as something worth thinking about critically. I acknowledge that there are challenges to maintaining NPOV while respecting subjective experiences, and ASD is of course a clinical diagnosis, and in some sense that is our focus here. So I'm not proposing any changes here except for the following:
people with ASD can exhibit notable ability
If we're bringing this up, we ought to talk about 'spiky skills profiles' more broadly, and possibly 'splinter skills'. Depending on what you think counts as a 'notable ability', I'm not sure that only a small percentage of autistic people have them. But then, a lot of people have one or more notable abilities! Especially people with intense interests.
There are two possible developmental courses of ASD
Exactly two? Really? This seems a bold claim. This next one is less tenuous, but it's pre-DSM-5, with much of the data cited being much older still; I'd want to know if it holds up at all since they removed the strict requirement for signs to be evident before the age of 3: 'Most parents report that the onset of autism symptoms occur within the first year of life.'
Regressive autism
There's a paragraph on 'regressive autism' before the section on it starts, presumably missed in the recent merger. We have five paragraphs on this, but they say surprisingly little of real substance. No mention is made of autistic burnout (c.f. Raymaker et al), or other examples of the occasional loss of abilities reported by many autistic adults. No kind of explanation is pointed to at all, really; I know of several proposed mechanisms, but this is obviously not an area that has seen conclusive research. My sense is that this material should be cut down and/or moved out of 'Signs and symptoms' into its own, subsequent section. This is a lot of detail, and we haven't even got to 'social skills' yet.
Social and communication skills
The 'double empathy problem' should be brought in right at the start here; there's plenty of evidence at this point that it's misleading at best to suggest that 'Impairments in social skills present many challenges'. c.f. CJ Crompton, K DeBrabander, B Heasman (2021) and DEM Milton (2012), as well as Crompton et al (2020) and MA Gernsbacher, M Yergeau (2019). In short, the assumption that the social difficulties autistic people experience are the result of deficits in the person is not supported by the available evidence. This section should be rewritten to account for this new evidence and long-standing methodological critique; the current framing is not scientifically supported.
Behavioural characteristics
Many of these are not behavioural characteristics. 'They may develop these difficulties of creating connections due to anxiety or depression' is an interesting suggestion, why not the other way round? Seems simplistic.
I don't think 'abnormal responses to sensations including sights, sounds, touch, taste and smell' stands up as a behavioural characteristic when the sensations themselves, and the way they're processed, are different.
The second core symptom of autism spectrum
Probably best to mention what the first one is supposed to be before getting on to this. This section as a whole could be better structured.
Self-injury
I'm not convinced this belongs under 'signs and symptoms' at all. It's also currently full of inadequately sourced claims, and doesn't explicitly make the obvious links with stimming, with meltdowns, or with distress, aside from chronic pain. In fact, there seems to be no mention of autistic people's distress anywhere in this article, in so many words, which is... interesting. There's only one mention, in passing, of meltdowns. Nothing on shutdowns, catatonia or even inertia, either.
If we're going to have a section on self-injury, can we make sure not portray it as if it's just a thing that happens sometimes when you're autistic? That's harmful. It's important that people at least try to understand the reasons.
Causes of autism
I question the need for four screenfuls on causes when there is also a separate entry on this, and when we could pretty much summarise the state of scientific knowledge of causes as 'it seems to be overwhelmingly genetic, but highly polygenic, and there is ambiguous evidence for a large number of possible environmental factors. It's definitely not vaccines though, this is conclusive.'
Most of the studies on so-called 'risk factors' fail to account for likely confounding factors, notoriously the high likelihood that parents are autistic themselves (but frequently undiagnosed) and being autistic causes environmental factors. As discussed elsewhere, autistic people are far more likely to be unemployed and isolated, for example. There is no point citing any studies on risk factors unless they have carefully accounted for this kind of thing (and preferably been independently replicated).
Pathophysiology
I'm not going to go into this, but I think it could benefit from the attention of someone with a critical eye and limited patience for preliminary findings.
Mirror neurons
I think this one's been directly refuted in the 13 years since the most recent cited study on it. Possibly of interest in a history of science kind of way, but maybe not worth a paragraph here.
As of 2012, there is a consensus
How strong was this consensus? How strong is it now? The citation given doesn't mention a consensus. The abstract says 'We suggest that the social brain, and its dysfunction and recovery, must be understood not in terms of specific structures, but rather in terms of their interaction in large-scale networks'.
Temporal lobe
'It has been argued' ... 'one fMRI study' ...does this warrant a paragraph? There are a lot of other things we could be learning about here. Similarly 'ASD could be linked to mitochondrial disease'... is it, though? If so, how? Is 5% of autistic kids meeting the criteria a lot? If it is, what does that tell us?
Serotonin
Interesting stuff, but still seems to be super speculative. Entry claims '45% of ASD individuals have been found to have increased blood serotonin levels' but study actually states up to 45%. Mulder et al. (2004) suggested 'at least 25%'.
That's it for now.
Great to see you here! Now I, 3Oceans, and m:Wikimedia Korea(WM-KR) are preparing Neurodiversity Editathon(Off/Online Event of editing Wikipedia). I hope the initiative becomes international: so it would be helpful to make the foundation admit they have eliminated Autistics from participating for the sum of the knowledge. Can you encourage workers in Wikimedia UK(WM-UK), to making the initiative to cooperate with Autistic editors / Autistics and wikimedia community in Scotland, England, or Ireland? I think AMASE/ARGH can make this. - Ellif ( Talk) 12:59, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
@ Oolong: I will say this for the last time: when you are reverted, do NOT revert back and take it to the talk page per WP:BRD. It doesn't matter if you're right or not, I gave a rationale and you have to discuss it on the talk page. It is clear and simple; end of story. Again, I do not oppose your edits, but they have to be supplemented by reliable sources, which you at least thankfully did eventually. If you keep edit warring like this in the future, I will have to unfortunately report you to WP:AN/E. Please understand the importance of WP:RS and updating info only if the sources are updated too. Wretchskull ( talk) 13:39, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
- As previously discussed, if you simply abided by Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary, this would never come up. You are supposed to 'revert an edit made in good faith only after careful consideration', 'when the reverter believes that the edit makes the article clearly worse and there is no element of the edit that is an improvement'. 'For a reversion to be appropriate, the reverted edit must actually make the article worse.'
- Simply apply these tests before you revert people's good faith edits, and we won't have this kind of conflict.
- In this particular case, your reversion was to change an entry about a condition that no longer appears in any diagnostic manuals to put it back into the present tense. Your stated rationale was simply 'not supported by source'. This is nonsense. You need to provide a valid rationale if you expect people not to revert.
- No, not every edit has to be 'supplemented by reliable sources'. That is not how Wikipedia is supposed to work. You need to understand Wikipedia:When to cite. Specifically, 'anything likely to incur a reasonable challenge should be sourced to avoid disputes and to aid readers'. If it is not open to a reasonable challenge, it does not require a citation. The importance of Wikipedia:Reliable sources is that 'Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered'. The point of Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) in particular is that 'Biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge'. That means removing or updating claims that are no longer supported by reliable, third-party published secondary sources.
- Perhaps you have noticed that Asperger syndrome has had an uncontested hat-note for the last couple of months, reading 'This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: some parts of the article do not accurately reflect either the new DSM-5 or ICD-11 criteria. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.' You are doing the precise opposite of that by incorrectly reverting updates to the page.
- And no, the Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle does not require us to go to the Talk page in every instance; the guidance is quite explicit that there are alternative, valid approaches. Here I followed bold, revert, revert. In this case, the reversion was made by someone with a history of poorly-justified reversions, a habit of misrepresenting the content of sources, and a tendency to completely ignore valid points made in Talk. Speaking of which, since you still haven't addressed it on the relevant Talk page, why did you delete @ Eco-Climber's comment there?
- You do not get to pretend like you are following Wikipedia guidelines on all this and I am not.
Oolong (
talk) 12:15, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- @
Oolong: The problem with this reply is you seem to completely contradict yourself multiple times. First of all, I did provide a valid rationale: the addition wasn't supported by any source. You MUST update the sources when updating information as well. You cannot, for example, update the number of individuals with a certain condition without updating the source itself, which only display the previous figures. Same thing applies here. Second, this is a large claim about the disorder, so it should absolutely be referenced. Third of all, "a history of poorly-justified reversions" is not assuming good faith, as I made it very clear to your that I do not oppose your edits and that I only reverted when necessary, and each one was. It was absolutely justified, so you didn't abide by either WP:BRD or WP:GF. Regardless mate, I'd love to just quash the animosity and move on. I'm sure you find this as tiresome and unnecessary as I find it.
Wretchskull (
talk) 16:21, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- Hi again, there is no contradiction at all. I'm tired and irritable, so I'm going to be civil here, but not gentle.
- You didn't provide a valid rationale. As I said in my comment above, you put a statement about something that no longer appears in any diagnostic manuals back into the present tense. Of course that's supported by sources. It's no longer in any diagnostic manuals, a fact for which ample sources have been supplied.
- It is not 'a large claim about the disorder'. If accurate sources fifteen years ago were describing AS a certain way, but it's established AS is no longer considered a separate thing by any reliable source, it follows inexorably that it is now accurate to say, of what those sources say, that AS 'was said to be' such and such. It should also be obvious that it is now misleading, at best, to talk about AS in the present tense.
- My comments about poorly justified revisions etc. are not an accusation of bad faith. They are an entirely factual account of why I would much prefer to avoid trying to engage with you on talk pages. I am agnostic about the reasons why you have been behaving like this. However, I see no reason to expect different, given that you haven't addressed any of these problems to date. You haven't so much as gone back and posted 'oh, no, you're right, now that I actually read these citations I posted, I can see that they show the opposite of what I previously claimed.'
- You are correct that I find this animosity tiresome. 'Tiresome' is a mild word for it, frankly. It is unnecessary, yes, in the sense that none of your reversions have been necessary. I'm strongly in favour of moving on: I think I have have explained what is required; you can think through any future edits on these topics, especially any reversions, and provide actually valid rationales for them; or you can simply not make such edits. Oolong ( talk) 20:18, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- @
Oolong: The problem with this reply is you seem to completely contradict yourself multiple times. First of all, I did provide a valid rationale: the addition wasn't supported by any source. You MUST update the sources when updating information as well. You cannot, for example, update the number of individuals with a certain condition without updating the source itself, which only display the previous figures. Same thing applies here. Second, this is a large claim about the disorder, so it should absolutely be referenced. Third of all, "a history of poorly-justified reversions" is not assuming good faith, as I made it very clear to your that I do not oppose your edits and that I only reverted when necessary, and each one was. It was absolutely justified, so you didn't abide by either WP:BRD or WP:GF. Regardless mate, I'd love to just quash the animosity and move on. I'm sure you find this as tiresome and unnecessary as I find it.
Wretchskull (
talk) 16:21, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Your edit summary for Revision 1095491344 on Neurodiversity
Heya! I was reading your edit summary for this revision of the article Neurodiversity. I agree with your edit; the art should not have been deleted. However, I take particular issue with your edit summary:
"The image description makes clear that its intent matches the description. The user responsible is autistic, as per their profile. Undid revision 1095474172 by 92.1.144.176"
It seems as if you're attacking the user and deeming them as autistic in an attempt to degrade their character, and you really shouldn't be attacking others in this manner. We have an entire policy ( WP:NPA) on not personally attacking people. Please don't attack others like this, even if you're in a dispute with them. It degrades your own professionalism and damages the reputation of the person you attack, but yours' more tenfold.
I understand this isn't necessarily normal stuff, but I'm personally a huge proponent of remaining professional and/or civil on Wikipedia. Avoid personal attacks at all costs. InvadingInvader ( talk) 02:49, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
- No! Goodness, @ InvadingInvader:, it hadn't occurred to me it could be read that way. I'm autistic myself. I was pointing out that the user who made the graphic is too, because a previous edit had denied that it was autistic-made. Oolong ( talk) 10:19, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
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Editor of the Week | |
| Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week in recognition of your great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project) |
User:Cassie Schebel submitted the following nomination for Editor of the Week:
- I nominate Oolong to be this weeks Editor of the Week for the frequent and quality additions on pages related to the topic of Autism. That article and others, such as, Autism Spectrum, Applied behavior analysis, Neurodiversity, and Asperger syndrome have all been vastly improved by their edits. They have been a Wikipedian since 2005 with over one thousand edits, with an average size of almost 250 bytes. Only 23 of these edits are currently deleted.
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| Oolong |
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Editor of the Week for the week beginning July 17, 2022 |
| Contributes good additions on pages related to Autism, Autism Spectrum, Applied behavior analysis, Neurodiversity, and Asperger syndrome. Wikipedian since 2005 with over one thousand edits. |
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Thanks again for your efforts! ― Buster7 ☎ 12:28, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
- Hey, I don't think I ever said thanks, especially to @
Cassie Schebel. Thank you!
Oolong (
talk) 17:50, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
- I'm just doing my part to make sure the hard work behind Wikipedia is appreciated <3 Cassie Schebel, almost a savant. <3 ( talk) 15:15, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
Peace is a state of balance and understanding in yourself and between others, where respect is gained by the acceptance of differences, tolerance persists, conflicts are resolved through dialog, peoples rights are respected and their voices are heard, and everyone is at their highest point of serenity without social tension.
Hi @ Oolong I read your articles and I was thrilled. I have just started my account in Wikipedia but I don't find any topic worth interesting for editing. What should I Do? Ellenmarker ( talk) 14:36, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
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