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The question is this one. I must say I believe that the tag seemed appropriate, as well as the 1st paragraph of OP. Not picking up clues in a jokingly social environment is a skill I often found missing in people having autism.

Even if the test was only an online one, OP started the question with this very important information. I believe it should be kept, with all usual caution/safeguards.

On a personal level, I work with someone having the same issues, and I'm trying to find a way to explain to him he should do a test, but Q/A here haven't helped yet, and it's another story, even though I find it relevant, because symptoms are so similar.

What do you think?

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    I support this meta question, especially because it's tremendously difficult and long to have an official diagnostic in some countries. One thing though, maybe the question should be edited to indicate that the autism suspicion may explain the difficulties to get the clues but we're not sure about it.
    – avazula
    Commented Apr 4, 2019 at 7:47
  • agree. "maybe the question should be edited to indicate that the autism suspicion may explain the difficulties to get the clues but we're not sure about it." = that was my point with "I believe it should be kept, with all usual caution/safeguards." :)
    – OldPadawan
    Commented Apr 4, 2019 at 7:49
  • Why is the possibility that the OP has autism important? He's outlined a bunch of (bad) ways he expects a typical conversation to go. How will the answers to his question change if it's possible that he has autism?
    – DaveG
    Commented Apr 4, 2019 at 12:35
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    "How will the answers to his question change if it's possible that he has autism?" -> IMO = 100%. I suggest you read another post (of RichardU) HERE (it was posted here on meta too, but has vanished away...). You most probably won't answer the same way if OP is on the spectrum or not.
    – OldPadawan
    Commented Apr 4, 2019 at 12:40

2 Answers 2

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I'd like to start off by pointing out that I am the person who edited away the information about autism and removed the tag.

Why did I make the edit?

I feel that I should respond to this excerpt from @dhein's answer

And if someone still feels an urge to challenge this assumption, the way to do it would be writing a full frame-challenge as answer, rather than removing the tag.

My intention was not, and never will be to challenge an OP's assumption of autism based on any sort of analysis, no matter how formal or informal it is. I've had many people challenge my diagnosis of autism and it is an awful thing, so I apologize if that's how my edit came across.

I tried to make intentions with the edit clear in my edit message

Made several grammar edits and reworded the main points to try and make the question a bit more clear. I also removed the information about aspergers since you mentioned that it was not particularly relevant for answers.

As I mentioned in my edit message, the primary reason that I removed the content about autism is because the OP specifically wrote in the body of their post that the information was not necessary and that answerers should ignore it.

1) There were some suggestions about the Asperger's angle of the question. I merely put it to give a better reference point. I may be too thick to understand. The reason is not really that important. For all practical purposes, you may just ignore I said that and answer without taking it into consideration.

Note: Emphasis mine

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    Thanks for answering and sharing your POV. About that part: "For all practical purposes, you may just ignore I said that and answer without taking it into consideration." What bothers me is that you seem to have interpreted it as don't take that into account while I translate this to: please answer as if I was on the spectrum, but "standard/reverse angle" approach welcome.
    – OldPadawan
    Commented Apr 4, 2019 at 15:18
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I must say, I totally agree, that autism symptom related posts should be allowed and even required to have the autism-spectrum tag on them. Even if someone has not autism but is aware of having some autism specific traits in a given context, it isn't important in such case, if that person actually has diagnosed autism or not. If that's the kind of solution someone is looking for, let them just tag it as such. Its not our job to evaluate how useful such an answer would be, if that's what being asked for.

And if someone still feels an urge to challenge this assumption, the way to do it would be writing a full frame-challenge as answer, rather than removing the tag.

A little background from my personal experience.

I figured about possibly having Aspergers like 6 years ago. But it took me like 5 years till my therapist finally was convinced enough to diagnose me.

In that time I myself wasn't really certain if I would have autism or it would just be like my therapist kept saying "There is a significant amount of Aspergers related symptoms influencing me, but under the line that not being enough impact for giving a diagnose." So there were a lot of things I had trouble with being typical for autists (cause as I know now, I am an autist). But back then I wasn't really sure about it and always hesitated calling myself an autist before I had the diagnosis, cause despite I felt like one, technically I felt like lying, calling myself one without having the diagnose. If I had back then made a post here and had to fight for the relevance of the autism tag to my post (well, I created that tag, so in my case it would have been more the fighting for the tag's right to exist, but anyways), I would clearly have felt very discouraged by that and also that would have had negative impact on my journey to fighting for the diagnose. So I absolutely agree and think, if someone wants to have that tag on their OP, should rarely if ever be changed by the community.

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