How can we better support neurodivergent newcomers to the community?

PSF
1

Easy to ask, but maybe hard to answer honestly: are neurodivergent people welcome in the PSF? On our Discourse?

They’re conspicuous by absence in our current CoC’s enumeration of protected classes:

Every member of our community has the right to have their identity respected. The Python community is dedicated to providing a positive experience for everyone, regardless of age, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion (or lack thereof), education, or socio-economic status.

The latest such got suspended from Discourse today, which I cautioned them in advance would happen, and which they already expected from the time of their first tentative, agonizingly self-doubting post - they’re used to it.

I don’t know them well. We met on Stackoverflow when I tried to answer one of their Python questions, and we’ve had friendly - but shallow - interactions there ever since. I like them. They can be exhausting to interact with. When focused, they can pump out a very long post with a dozen (or more) links, relevantly supporting chains of substantial interlocking arguments - and all of that scrupulously proofread - faster than I can even think. They often don’t pick up on “normal” social cues. That’s not a matter of choice, or ill intent. Their brains are brain is [1] wired differently.

This particular person never screamed at people. They replied at length, always trying to make their points with logic and evidence. Relentlessly earnest - well, just plain relentless once they latched on to something.

That’s who they are. They’re as “friendly” as they can be - but, no, they weren’t abusive. Of course the lack of “normal” social skills and signaling could lead you to feel abused by them, but I know they earnestly tried to avoid giving offense. At times they agonized over it. But they just don’t see the world in some ways neurotypical people see it.

Are such people welcome here? To me, for some years the answer in reality has been “not really - look at the record”. And I think that’s a real loss for the community. “Good riddance!” doesn’t work for me.

My prescription would boil down to “lighten up & cut some slack - they’re just pixels on a computer monitor”. But that will never gain traction, so I leave it to you to suggest a solution I’m not the one eager to drum such people out, so the answer can’t come from me. What would it take to get “you” (whoever you may be) to tolerate them, if not embrace them?

You cannot, for example, require them to be “empathic” to neurotypical eyes. [2] Some on the spectrum even have significantly more empathy than the norm for neurotypical people, but are so overwhelmed by the feelings that they can’t express it.

Lastly, hyper-empathy in autism can be particularly challenging because it’s common for autistic people to have a harder time vocalizing their feelings than neurotypical people. This is often due to alexithymia in addition to neurotypical standards that feelings must be spoken verbally to be understood. For autistic people, it means that they may experience a mountain of emotions while appearing uncaring or unmoved.

That appeared to be the case in our latest loss, from carefully reading everything they wrote (reading with an empathic heart, not reading to argue or defend or find fault). They struggled not to leave cause for offense.

They expected from the start to get kicked out. According to me, it’s not really to our credit that we fulfilled that prediction in what may have been record time :frowning_face:

BTW, I don’t intend to “argue” about this. I hope to spark introspection and discussion, but that’s it. If I don’t reply, it’s because I already said what I had to say. I’m not an expert in this field, just someone who has seen this too often to stay eternally quiet about it. If the community doesn’t care to pursue it, so be it.

Neither am I looking to relitigate Karl’s case - too late for him. I’m asking if there’s will to change. If you don’t think “y’know, I may need to reconsider this”, your answer is “no”. You’re free to say so, but there’s really no need to - the status quo wins by default. I expect it would take something of a minor miracle to see real change here. But nothing ventured, nothing gained :smile:.

  1. the singular “their” was intended ↩︎

  2. it’s important to note that because part of the CoC requires demonstrating empathy ↩︎

28 Likes
2

I am also very much interested in an official response to this question. And not just this Discourse - are neurodivergent people welcome elsewhere in PSF-managed spaces?

4 Likes
3

Of course the answer is “Yes, they are welcome as long as they behave in accordance with the forum rules and the CoC”.

But there’s another question lurking in your post: “Should neurodivergent people be conducted / moderated differently than all other participants?” And here the feasible answer is probably “no”, as otherwise a can with many more questions will be opened…

So we have to trust that the moderation team and the CoC WG will handle the cases appropriately.

10 Likes
4

This is a difficult issue to address because there are so many things here. I will refrain to comment on specific events and interactions beyond that I hope Karl is doing well, even if, based on his what he said in previous discussions, tend to take moderation very personally so I fear he’s in a dark place at the moment.

The only thing I feel “qualified” to address here is the text regarding the protected classes. Such lists are impossible to get right. The preferred text should read something like “Please be kind and respect everybody.” However, that is not enough, because it leaves too much room for intepretation. But if you start listing specific classes, then everybody who feel they belong to a class that they think should be protected will complain that there class is not there. So in the end, you’d need to list essentially every aspect of a person and then the list almost loses meaning. It’s like with wedding invitations, if you keep it small people will often not mind being invited, but if half of town was invited but you weren’t you’d think something was up. Even if it was just an honest mistake.

Now to something I feel less qualified to discuss due to me not being diagnosed with a neurodivergent disorder nor having medical expertise on the subject:
Just talking about “neurodivergent people” is casting a very broad net including (from a quick googling) at least 7 different diagnoses, each of with you can be diagnosed with varying degrees of. So if the CoC is updated to add “people diagnosed with neurodivergent disorders” to the list, then you are very unspecific. For example, this could be interpreted to mean that you cannot correct people when they did math wrong, because dyscalculia is a neurodivergent disorder and correcting someone who has that can be seen as hateful. And if we pick and choose what neurodivergent disorders to list, you’d need to motivate why? Should it also include that you need to have a diagnosis of specific severity to be on the list? Should it take into account that different countries probably diagnose these disorders differently?

It’s a real catch 22 moment for the moderators and the PSF, and I do not know what the correct course of action is. I think the most “lawful neutral” of these options would be to just reiterate the list of protected classes in the jurisdiction of the PSF.

3 Likes
5

A few thoughts I have on this.

I don’t think it’s fair to generalize that “neurodivergent people cannot help themselves to misbehave”. I have worked with many such people over the years, I also have many such friends. Some indeed struggle with understanding and being understood, but many are perfectly capable of longterm careers where communication plays a crucial role.

Importantly, I call those friends and coworkers “neurodivergent” because they shared their diagnosis with me. I’m careful not to judge people’s brain biology based on their behavior. In fact, it is impossible for the moderator team to know the medical background of participants, it is inappropriate to ask for that information, and unfair to special-case rules on this basis.

Unfair, because even in cases of misunderstandings or intentional damage, our expectation is that participants need to be able to respond to feedback and learn from their mistakes.

Any communication in writing is complicated by the fact that it is devoid of physical cues. Internet communication is doubly complicated by how many participants are complete strangers to one another… and many speak English as a secondary language. All this requires us to take action when communication becomes abrasive, regardless of the reason.

To make this explicit then, neurodivergent people are definitely welcome to participate. Many do. Everybody makes mistakes, I know I do plenty. But everybody needs to be responsive to feedback. If we can’t agree on a minimal level of courtesy, we need to intervene. Otherwise, we’re creating missing stairs, which creates both distrust within the community (“how can the mods allow this?”) and encourages copycats who could help themselves, but now see that they don’t have to.

Now, can we improve our ability to accommodate neurodivergent community members? I think so. We’re open to suggestions. But it’s not going to be something we can devise a silver-bullet solution to over a Discourse post.

Also, as a personal note, I am disappointed that this topic is popping up right after a moderator action. It was exhausting for the team to prepare the guidelines, decide what to do with the onslaught of posts and flags, make decisions on suspensions, etc. You’d think we’d get at least a weekend off where everybody could touch grass and recover. Giving it a few days for the dust to settle would really help. Now it just makes me sad.

You might not realize this but while it is easy for an individual to write and publish as fast as their keyboard will allow, it takes much more coordination to get “official responses” from groups that only meet at regular intervals. In that time you’ll already hear individual participants call to question integrity of those groups for being silent, while other participants will be busy arguing with each other. Well-meaning silent observers of all this will start being concerned about the state of things, some will even share their thoughts. All this happened last time.

I understand this topic is important to raise, and I fully intend to give it our best care and attention. But the timing is just harsh.

59 Likes
6

Are the neurodivergent welcome here?

Answering for myself: Yes. I am neurodivergent and I feel more welcome at Python community events than at general events or especially non-Python tech events.

Personally, I don’t like to disclose this detail about myself and I know many others don’t. There are all sorts of potential professional and other consequences. But if I don’t, I’m expecting bad-faith “you don’t understand” accusations.

I want to keep this comment short, because that previous thread certainly was exhausting to read. I feel welcome at Python events. I resent having to disclose my own status so I can avoid having my perspective dismissed when I say I feel welcome at Python events.

I’m glad that the Python community is not like other communities, where “welcome” means you’re welcome to suffer hazing, antagonism, and constant interrogation of gate-keepers. In that case I would have left long ago and written “Automate the Boring Stuff with PHP” or something.

37 Likes
7

Please note that I didn’t ask for an official response (the first reply did). I wanted to start a community discussion. CoC WG and SC members are certainly parts of the community too, but a numerically small part.

There wasn’t anything hasty about this on my side. I wrote the OP, off & on, over several days, starting when Karl first publicly self-identified as neurodivergent. I expected the eventual outcome, not based on “neurodivergent” alone, but from what I knew of their specific patterns from earlier experience.

When it happened, I made a few final edits, and posted,

I appreciate and regret that the timing is at best inconvenient for you, but I have to confess I wasn’t thinking about you (in the larger sense of WG/SC members) - I wanted to invite the larger community to engage before it faded from memory. Part of which includes me - it will soon enough fade from my memory too. I wanted to get the post done before I reverted to comfortable complacency. “Out of sight, out of mind” is very powerful,

Now that it’s done, I’d advise y’all to try some patience too. Let it play out? There aren’t any flame wars erupting in this topic yet, and none would be welcomed by me either. There’s no rush. The topic has come up, off and on, across years. This time is already the most substantive discussion of it I’ve seen in Python-world.

8 Likes
8

I should note that, while I would very much appreciate an official response, I’m not demanding one RIGHT NOW or anything. You’re welcome to touch grass as much as you like, though personally, I’ve always thought contact with strange leafy plants is massively overrated… the whole “outdoors” place is just way too bright and uncomfortable for my liking :slight_smile:

5 Likes
9

I agree. That wasn’t my intent. The “they” in my first sentence was the “singular they”, hoping to avoid some claimed offense at using “he”. I was referring to Karl. He in fact often did not pick up on social cues.

As others already noted, “neurodivergent” is applied to a great many behavioral patterns. There’s nothing easy about the topic, and “one size fits all” should never be applied (or assumed to be intended).

I edited the post to try to make this clearer (“brains are” didn’t match the intent).

3 Likes
10

Is “not picking up on social cues” by retaliating, being abrasive or writing up political screeds an aspect of neurodiversity? What’s the significance of neurodiversity in this context? If the focus had been, say, on neurotypical members mistreating neurodivergent members of the community as a result of not picking up on social cues, this might’ve made some sense to me, but instead, it’s been framed as an apologia of a neurodivergent user. I don’t think it’s helpful to use neurodiversity as a crutch if you want to advocate for more empathy towards people who are misbehaving.

If you were to ask, should the community be more patient with people who act out on occasion, then the answer might be a qualified yes - but it might entail more moderation and not less. Should seasoned members of the community try to provide guidance and support behind the scenes? Individually perhaps - but nobody would support codifying that kind of thing. Should the CoC WG try to avoid “othering” or attaching stigma to sanctioned members of the community if at all possible? Well, I suppose so - but then transparency might take a hit.

These are trade-offs that people would need to discuss in good faith. For my part, I’m sympathetic - I don’t like the coldness and procedural-ness cases like this are dealt with sometimes.

[Edited for clarity.]

5 Likes
11

Hi Tim

Just FYI, I’ve heard a few people say they’ve found the whole situation distressing - even if flame wars haven’t erupted

A lack of “screaming at people” doesn’t mean that the conversation isn’t unwelcoming

7 Likes
12

I find it much more distressing that it seems people want to shut down discussion that’s important to if people feel included by implying things that cannot be engaged with, and I already put myself out there in a way I wasn’t really fully comfortable with in some of what has led here.

5 Likes
13

The “whole situation” has probably been distressing for everyone reading or participating in the discussions, regardless of their opinion on the topics at hand.

(but I must say this particular thread is pleasantly considerate for now)

10 Likes
14

Please note: This is not addressed at any Python officials. If you
belong to the SC, the CoD working group or other related group,
please skip this post until you have enough free time and feel well
recovered! And thank you for your work! :slight_smile:

  • There are neurodiverse people who behave terrible.
  • There are neurotypical people who behave terrible.
  • There are neurodiverse people who behave well.
  • There are neurotypical people who behave well.
  • There are all possible levels, intensities, shades, combinations,
    variants of all this.

Neurodiversity does not imply bad behaviour!

Neurotypically does not imply good behaviour!

As a neurodiverse person myself (mild Asperger’s) I explicitly
wish to be informed and even educated about any problematic
behavior on my side. I explicitly wish to be told, when I’m
acting out.

How else could I ever learn to navigate this otherwise
undecipherable, permanently contradictory and confusing social norms?

BUT (and that is a big BUT), I want to be told what exactly was
the problem. Don’t simply tell me, that I misbehaved. Tell me why,
tell me what was wrong, explain to me what I have caused, what
feelings I induced in you or others. And when doing that, don’t
assume that I know or understand what “everybody knows”.

Being neurodiverse is not an excuse for bad manners! Yes, many of
us have problems understanding common and accepted social norms and
therefore following them. But most of us can still learn – even
social norms and even if that’s hard because for many of us it’s a
tough challenge to learn what doesn’t passionate us in the first place.

So, a bit more lenience towards people who are initially acting
problematically? Yes. But just letting everything pass because
somebody plays out the neurodiverse card? No.

“No” not only because of my reasons above, but also because I see an
ever growing number of terrible people abusing neurodiversity as a
cheap self-defence.

27 Likes
15

Related to the specific forms of neurodivergence at work in this specific case. He did not see himself as retaliating or being abrasive at all. He saw himself always as making logical, respectful arguments. That he was unable to pick up on that others mostly saw him as being vindictive and abrasive is the point. The more he was pushed back on, the more determined he became to be “even more logical & respectful”. Which always backfired on him in reality.

Which I don’t know for facts, of course. It’s best guesses based on a mix of experience, age, common sense, Occam’s Razor, general relevant reading, lack of ill will, private attempts to converse with him, and expecting that I too move the needle on some brands of autism meters. Indeed, I muttered “there go I but for the grace of God …” more than once :frowning_face:

Writing political screeds is, I think, essentially unrelated to the above. When a topic came up that seized his interest (be it the Python packaging ecosystem or political issues), he embraced it with a single-minded dedication that I think most neurotypical people can’t sustain for more than, say, an hour at a time. That seemed to be a different axis of neurodivergence in play.

But I may be wrong about all of that.

The fundamental question remains whether the community is content to say “outta here!” in such cases. I agree “anything goes!” can’t be the answer either.

8 Likes
16

I can’t answer for the whole ND community, but as a member I can answer for myself at least. I feel welcome here. The CoC as it is, even if it doesn’t explicitly list neurodiversity in the “Our Standards” section, makes me feel welcome by the collection of behaviours it recommends. That section explicitly identifies groups which membership of shouldn’t affect the positive experience, but I never took it as implying that membership of other groups are in any way allowed to be disrespected (it would require a very strange reading of the rest of the CoC test).

I’m not super active in neither this or other online communities; but occasionally I’ve needed to interact, and discuss ideas, and I felt the environment mostly positive (and found that there’s a chance to be protected when it isn’t). In the past I’ve been active in some other communities, and involved in coordinating a couple of them. From that I’ve learned how hard and thankless the job of moderators is (probably as hard and perhaps more thankless than the job of open source contributors), and how communities rely on that to keep existing. I’m extremely grateful from the people helping uphold the CoC (moderators, the WG, the SC, etc…) for their work, and I’m quite sure that this community would be far worse for me and others without that work.

I’ve messed up interactions, both on and offline, and I’ve appreciated it best when people (either affected or a third party) have informed me in a friendly and patient manner. I have never been in this particular position with the moderators here, but I have some trust that it’s the way they’d approach it; I’ve never seen evidence of the contrary, other than speculation or hypotheticals about what moderators could be doing in the threads discussed the last few days.

There’s a particular point in the CoC that I’m aligned with which is “Gracefully accepting constructive criticism”. Even if I find some interactions more difficult with other people, I think we have a better community if we all take that. Yes, as a ND I’m likely to be receiving more of that “constructive criticism” (and I may have some additional chances to give it when NT put expectations on me that are reasonable for other people but not for me). Again, I can’t speak for every ND person, but that expectation (both for me and for others) seems reasonable despite my neurodivergence, and has been at play in many of the recent events.

Adding up on other posts, I think the recent events have raised the flags for perhaps a bit of extra clarity about when moderation action has happened (which may involve some tooling change), but once again I know these things will take time from a group already doing a hard job, so I’ll wait for them to communicate what’s their conclusion before trying to ask anything specific of them.

Hope this helps.

21 Likes
17

I’ve been accused before of having a keen appreciation for irony :wink:. I was tickled today to see that Karl is one of the very few people to whom Discourse awarded an “Empathetic” badge:

This badge is granted when you have 500 liked posts and give 1000 or more likes in return. Wow! You’re a model of generosity and mutual appreciation two_hearts.

I wasn’t aware of that when I included a link to the “Hyper-Empathy in Autism” article in my OP. It’s “evidence” of that empathetic behavior was evident to some bots’ algorithms (I was given the nickname “timbot” early in Python’s life).

Speaking of likes, I believe I clicked the “heart” button on every reply in this topic so far. I’m not angling for that badge. Instead I was signaling that, to my eyes, every reply so far added something of genuine value to this discussion. I’m very happy to see that potentially uncomfortable real-life issues still can discussed in a civil manner. Thank you all!

4 Likes
18

I think we can pivot to a more useful conversation if we challenge the framing here a little bit. “Neurodivergent” is too broad a label to be useful in a yes/no question. The framing here is “inclusiveness and tolerance”, but I think a better framing would be “accessibility and affordances”. Please bear with me for a probably-too-long explanation.

First off, the potentially problematic behaviors enumerated here are not common to all neurodivergent folks.

I personally have quite severe ADHD. I have also been quite successful in the Python community. I would not necessarily take that to be a general statement on the friendliness to neurodivergence, beyond a single data point. It can bolster the existence proof — some neurodivergent people can be quite successful in our community — but of course the folks who are unsuccessful due to barriers created by their neurotype are not posting here. While I can identify with some of the executive function challenges which might lead to the maladaptive outcomes described by the OP (if this post is not evidence enough, one former colleague used a “microglyph” as a unit of email text volume, measuring at 1000 words, if you are wondering whether I find it easy to keep my posting volume under control), some of them are unfamiliar. Even within the label of specific disorders, neurodivergent people are not a monolith.

Thus, a policy which is comprehensively, uncritically accepting of all “neurodivergent” behavior is just a policy which uncritically accepts… all behavior. There’s overlap between stereotypical behaviors of ADHD and autism, but there is also some overlap between behaviors associated with those EF disorders and behaviors associated with Cluster B personality disorders, and we definitely would not want to normalize accepting those behaviors.

But that’s not because people with Cluster B disorders are evil, either. People seek treatment for those disorders, and they are “disorders” because people struggle with them and seek to recover from them. So I don’t think we should ever say something like “no, we are not accepting of neurodivergent people”. I don’t think we should be ever be rejecting any specific kind of person.

So if we must reject some behaviors (which may be disproportionately challenging for certain neurodivergent participants to refrain from), but we want to be accepting of neurodivergent people, what can we do?

One of the high points of PyCon US 2024 for me was the “neurodivergent pythonistas” open space, where we discussed a version of this question. Not “is [PyCon / the Python community] accepting of neurodivergent people”, but, “what affordances can be put in place to make PyCon more accessible to the neurodivergent people within our community”? We may never be able to be perfectly accepting to allow everyone to feel comfortable, but what systems or tools can we put in place to do better?

This requires us to be specific. There’s no general purpose “neurodivergent” affordance; you have to look at the support needs of a particular group, and ask them what would make things easier. I would not want to over-index on the specific moderation action that provoked this discussion, because … well, to be honest, there’s a lot going on there and I’m not sure that this is within the bounds where communication affordances would be sufficient.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to learn here, either. There are definitely people for whom this forum is intimidating, or well-meaning folks who find the rules confusing or obscure. In the spirit of ‘no bad ideas in a brainstorm’, here is one such proposal:

For some autistic people, arbitrary heuristics can quite effectively substitute for what have been called “‘normal’ social cues” in this thread. For example, many of us can read a nominally vague rule like “You can make your point in one or two posts, repeating the same arguments isn’t productive” and understand what is being said, and easily stay on the right side of the intent of that rule even if we have to make 3-4 posts instead of 1-2. For some autistic people, this rule may be maddeningly vague, with so many edge cases as to be useless. To start with, it’s very easy to rules-lawyer this in one’s mind to make the Argument of Theseus, which of course is not the same argument over and over again, it’s incorporating subtly new counter-points every time!

So one possible affordance might be the “extremely overly-specific” guidelines. I’m not the right person to write this, but an autistic person who has learned to very effectively navigate corporate communications might be. The aforementioned rule might has a companion heuristic guide like “never write more than 3 posts in a thread responding to the same person unless materially new information has been introduced that you can respond to.” This would then probably need a definition of “materially new” and this is one reason I am not the write person to actually try to write this, because I don’t know what depth of detail would be actually useful for people who struggle with this sort of social rule.

As with any affordance, (c.f. the Curb-Cut Effect) this may end up being useful to other audiences. For example, some of what we think of as ‘normal’ social conventions may be quite anglocentric or dependent upon some United States or tech-industry idioms that we do not even realize are regionally or occupationally specific.

Also, like any affordance, it’s pleasant to think about being nice and welcoming and inclusive to all audiences, but there’s also probably a ton of work to be done to actually construct these.

To conclude, instead of relitigating moderation policies, it would be a good use of the energy pent-up in this topic to:

  1. brainstorm some affordances that might be helpful
  2. be mindful of the work that might be required to construct them, and maybe volunteer for some of it
  3. think about how to contact the audiences those affordances are intended to help, and validate that they would in fact be helpful and solve a problem

I hope that this suggestion can lead to some more fulfilling interactions for everyone.

28 Likes
19

As a neurodivergent person myself, I appreciate concrete and clear feedback on what exactly someone has a problem with. I spent too many years being told I should “just know” and being dismissed with “if you have to ask…” That said, some of us on the spectrum haven’t caught on to how to “tone down” our interactions so as not to come across as abrasive. That’s a skill that can be learned but it’s not easy, nor is it always clear why just explaining something logically isn’t sufficient and that feelings need to be taken into account.

It’s a hard situation for both the moderators and for folks on the spectrum. I did not read the thread being referenced; I have in the past been asked to help (in a completely different context) understand whether some behavior or interaction was a neurodiversity thing or just an asshole thing. And, while yes, both neurotypicals and neurodiverse folks can be assholes, often there’s unspoken assumptions about behaviors and modes of interaction that underly the friction among them.

Thank you for bringing this up Tim.

11 Likes
20

Thank you, Anna and Glyph, for offering helpful and constructive ideas.

Indeed, it has taken a lifetime of concerted effort for me to improve my written communication skills to compensate for the auditory processing issues that I face with ADHD.

Heuristics have been helpful for me. I also agree with Glyph’s three-step suggestion for affordances would be constructive steps forward.

11 Likes