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.