Duplicate Trope: Useful Notes.Asperger Syndrome

So as both science and society march on, it's rather pointless to have separate Useful Notes pages for UsefulNotes.Asperger Syndrome and UsefulNotes.Autism. Yes, the American Psychiatric Association merged Asperger's into the Autism Spectrum for being The Same, but More Specific, and growing numbers of autistic people choose not to identify◊ with functioning labels because of how misleading it is. Yes, this includes Asperger's Syndrome. It also excludes people like me who were diagnosed with PDD-NOS.

Currently, these are what the two Useful Notes pages are written like:

• Autism (renamed from "High-Functioning Autism" through this ATT query), is currently written in a rather encyclopedic, medical tone, pretty much what you'd get from a Wikipedia article. It uses language such as "more severe autism" and talks about treatments such as Applied Behavior Analysis (though not by name), considered by several autism rights activists as a form of torture similar to LGBTQ conversion therapy.^note It does mention this side, though. It makes little connection to how autism is portrayed in media, and doesn't do a good job at debunking stereotypes, which is the primary goal of Useful Notes.
• Asperger Syndrome, on the other hand, is written in a more informal tone, and while it's a bit bloated and gushy, it includes a list of common stereotypes and debunks them, and actually mentions anti-vaxxers. It also mentions things such as the controversy over person-first language (e.g. "person with Asperger's" versus "an Aspie"), and useful resources. It does a better job at one of the central missions of Useful Notes, which is to debunk stereotypes and help the reader understand the context of what is becoming a common theme in television and other media, whether portrayed accurately or not.

The only reason no one has vandalized these pages is because both of them are locked already. I know about Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Language, but like how Transgender was renamed from Transsexual, now is the point where it's no longer descriptive. We've been discussing merging these pages in the gushing cleanup thread, as they are redundant to each other.

With that, let's discuss merging these pages into UsefulNotes.Autism Spectrum.

Opening this.

\+1 to the merge.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Nov 23rd 2020 at 8:50:48 AM

We'll draft the merge at Sandbox.The Autism Spectrum.

Not sure if it needs a "the", but merge, sure (I call myself an autistic even though back when I was 8 they diagnosed me as an Asperger anyway).

on merging.

Merge.

Merge, but fold Asperger's into Autism instead of creating a new page.

Merge.

Merge

Merge Asperger's content into Autism

Merge.

I personally consider both Autism and Asperger's to be different (I have Asperger's myself,) but I will vote to merge because from what I can gather the scientific community has already done that with the two and I'm not gonna argue with them about it.

Merge.

++ to merging.

to merging at UsefulNotes.Autism Spectrum or Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Merge.

Merge into the Autism page.

As someone with Asperger's, merge both pages per DSM-5, which uses Autism Spectrum Disorders.

I don't mind either UsefulNotes.Autism Spectrum or UsefulNotes.Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Nov 23rd 2020 at 8:45:04 AM

Merge

Personally, I'm leaning towards combining the two into something like UsefulNotes.Autism Spectrum Disorder and making the old titles redirects.

I agree with the ASD thing, as it is a spectrum.

I know this thread is just about merging the two articles, but it's a bit annoying both articles read like they're solely written by and intended for people without autism, as though this is some kind of zoo exhibit or collection of trivia factoids. Even the less formal Asperger Syndrome article uses the term "subjects" a few times. If we go for a large-scale rewrite, that should definitely be addressed - and a section on infantilization wouldn't hurt.

Useful Notes are written to inform people who don't know everything about the subject, so it's not bad if they're written for allistic people, but it would be good to have more autistic hands involved in merging the articles. I do think we could stand to truncate some of the Asperger's article when moving it to the Autism one, but I also really like the whole "debunking stereotypes" section.

Plus-1 for merging BTW, I already explained my concerns in the Gushing thread as somebody diagnosed with Asperger's. (For some reason it keeps turning my + into a bullet point...)

Edited by mightymewtron on Nov 24th 2020 at 3:07:02 PM