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We have discussed merging proposals into CogSci before, such as the Neuroinformatics proposal, but with not much success. As I was browsing Area 51 I noticed the Autism proposal. Many of their sample questions would be perfectly on-topic here:

  • How is an autistic person's brain different from a non-autistic one?

  • At what age are autism disorders detectable with a reasonable level of certainty?

  • Are there any medications that mitigate the effects of autism?

And some are maybe on topic:

  • Can autism be inherited?

  • What are the best/recommended techniques to teach language to autistic children?

  • Are autistic children as happy as normal children?

Of course, some are about self-help, social and parenting factors and would be off-topic:

  • As an aspie who has trouble dating, it's been suggested that I should work to ask more emotional questions on dates. How can I develop this skill?

  • Should I tell my boss that I'm autistic?

  • Are there any scholarships for children who have autism?

We already have , , with a couple of really good questions, like:

Should we reach out to this proposal? If so, how?

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  • Done: discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/5509/…
    – Chuck Sherrington
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 9:16
  • Any edits or input on the wording are most welcome.
    – Chuck Sherrington
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 9:17
  • Actually, as worded the proposal is completely a subset of Parenting. The scope in the blurb doesn't appear to actually include any sort of scientific research
    – Zelda
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 17:03
  • @BenBrocka good point and there is already a discussion about that. However, some of the highest voted questions are scientific and would do fine here and probably poorly on parenting (although I am not familiar with that SE). There are still in the definition stage, so I am sure that blurb at the top will change with time.
    – Artem Kaznatcheev
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 17:07
  • For instance, see this highly voted expansion thread.
    – Artem Kaznatcheev
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 17:08
  • Yeah, I've seen that...surprised the proposal was never updated
    – Zelda
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 17:09

2 Answers 2

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I agree with your analysis. As you say, some questions would be on topic here and some would not be. I think all of the questions in your "maybe" category would be on topic if they were asked in a way that implied that they were seeking a scientific answer.

I also think that an autism proposal might welcome personal experience more than our site (e.g., answers like "this worked for me").

So in summary, I agree that this site would welcome many questions but that ultimately such a group may want a site of their own.

If you're inclined why not post a question on Area 51 linked to the autism proposal inviting people to ask scientific questions about autism on our site, perhaps with a few examples of our existing questions.

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I agree that this site is the great place to ask questions about Autism itself. There are already some questions about autism, and I'm going to share links to that tag and popularize this site.

I agree that the scope of the Autism proposal is much wider. However, its scope can be splitted and the questions about childer pass to the Parenting, those about work issues to the Workplace, and those about sharing life experience would pass to some Self-Help, Adulf Life or something like that (there's no such proposal, AFAIK).

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    thank you, and welcome to CogSci.SE! I look forward to your questions and answers :D
    – Artem Kaznatcheev
    Commented Jun 26, 2012 at 21:56

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