How can we better support neurodivergent newcomers to the community?

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.

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