[cheat-master30]

Originally Posted by Rapscallion

Over the last twelve months or so, my moderating team and I have noticed a trend towards people claiming the latest fashionable ailment - Aspberger's Syndrome. Anyone else getting this?

I'm getting more members as a ratio than exist in society, though it could be because genuine 'aspies' are able to fit in better on an online forum.

My team and I aren't worried by someone genuinely having this particular afflication, but truth to tell we can't tell a blind bit of difference between them and other posters (possibly due to the electronic nature of the environment), and we wonder if there is a huge overdiagnosis, or if people are just claiming this as a way to be special. We've even had people announce it as part of their "Hi, I'm new" posts.

Is it just us?

Rapscallion

There are two reasons that this could be happening/is happening:

1. You actually have a decent amount of people with that affliction joining, and the ratio is high because your message board is far smaller than society in general and the proportion of those at your forum would still only be a small portion of of the proportion in general society. Not really impossible.

2. And/or they are faking it. Also possible, and because of a ton of reasons:

1- Trolling to get attention
2- You can be anyone, so they did so for no real reason
3- To manipulate users

Trolls should be banned, those trying to trick your members into donating to them/helping them and hoaxing the forum should be banned but anyone else should just be allowed, whether they're actually suffering from it or not. Because as you said, if there's no seemingy difference between those with this and without, why should you really care less?