^
This is what I'm trying to explain to my mother.... something that's warm and fuzzy and accepts and not downgrades my intelligence to a 6 year old. (long story)

• Rants are highly discouraged, and tend to be deleted.
  
• Threads that go off-topic are placed in “quarantine.”
  
• Members are to avoid controversial topics.
  
• Posts that merely state agreement with previous posters are classed as meaningless, and are discouraged.

I don't like it at all.

The biggest problem that I tend to have with autistic online communities is unprofessional administration.  This is the only one I will use for that reason and should a major problem develop here I think I would give up on autism communities altogether.  *Some* autistics (read: not all) cannot effectively run a community professionally without their autism getting in the way (or other issues, for that matter.)  And it seems, at least in my experience, a lot of those autistics are in charge of major forums.  

Of course, having the ability to establish an online community doesn’t necessarily mean that you are much good at running it. Though as I have mentioned earlier I think the best way to counter the associated problems would be decentralization of rights.

Hate all those rules, except the last one. Often the off-topic discussion is more useful and interesting than the suggested topic. Also AFF has a small enough community that wasteful posts aren't too much of a problem-which is probably what you should aim for. Also, when the context is disability/not and related politics and treatment for the children, avoiding the controversial issues would defeat the point of the discussion, it isn't like a forum about programming where you can just stick to the facts.

Even the scientific 'facts' about autism are usually unproven theoretical opinion.

Ah ok, this is a somewhat different enterprise. I suggest you look at the f-word- it is a very well-run feminist blog that works on this basis (I don't agree with what they do and don' consider feminist, but they take a viewpoint, and get a reasonable variety of ideas within that.)

In fact there are some people there who blog about disability and feminism and also have their own blogs who might be willing to help you if you are clear about your aims.

The site has three areas-articles, reviews and a blog. Anyone can submit articles and reviews, but to blog you either have to be a member of the blog team or invited as a guest blogger. It works well, and offers more comment than a forum, but it is very very different from a support forum and would not achieve the aims of aff.

I suspect the web forum on which AFF runs is very effective at bringing more exposure to writings that provoke quick responses when it displays the most recently commented threads the most prominently. I have seen several calls for attention on projects that could possibly help autistic individuals be neglected by this system. In hindsight I suspect a different system could be better at promoting them.

Reposted from the wiki article:

I have noticed that at reddit what tends to get upvoted is the stuff that makes people laugh the most-that works at reddit because political satire does get people moving on issues like your granny getting her tits felt up by the TSA meanwhile a boat arrives with a bomb on it. However I don't think this would necessarily work on an aspie site because it relies a lot on comic timing.

As I said in my other post, you should check out the f word-they have historically been fairly good at getting sustained political projects accomplished including a book, and promotion of pro-active things like marches. I think their sort of model is something that would be better for the aims you are seeking to fulfill than a forum could be.

Scratch that, I didn’t see the left margin menu on the About Us page.