The section designated by the AC: topic is for peer support and for sharing of personal experiences and concerns of interest to autistics and cousins. This is also the "autistic playground." Often a thread starts in the DR: or PA: section, and leads to an exchange of fixation-oriented or perseverative play among ACs and friends. When this happens, the "play" thread should be moved to the AC: section.

The section designated by the DR: topic is for discussion of disability rights, political and advocacy issues of interest to autistics and cousins. This is primarily a "learning" section where people who are interested in these issues can learn more about them, and can find out about opportunities to develop and practice advocacy and self-advocacy skills. For the most part, people participating in this section are NOT trained and experienced advocates prepared to get involved in helping other individuals with their personal advocacy problems. It is not reasonable to post requests for list members themselves to get involved in problem-solving for other individuals. Most of us are not ready to take on this kind of commitment. Some of us are already overcommitted in advocacy and activist activities. It is appropriate for people needing help with individual situations to post a brief description of the situation and a request for information about where they might be able to go to seek help. List members may be able to suggest places to go to look for legal information or for trained advocates. (And if someone does happen to be ready and willing to get personally involved in an individual advocacy situation, he or she can volunteer after reading the brief-description-and-request-for-information post.) It is appropriate to post announcements about, and invitations to participate in, group activism activities not requiring extensive training or long-term commitment, such as demonstrations or letter-writing campaigns.

The section designated by the PA: topic is a Parents' Auxiliary for discussions of interest to parents and other family members. See the "Special Information About The Parents' Auxiliiary" message for detailed information about this section.

The VP: topic is the Virtual Party room. It is used for fun social exchanges that are of interest to the people participating and watching, but that are so high-volume that they may overload the mailboxes of people who can't log on and check their mail frequently. The VP: room is used under two main circumstances:

1. A party is scheduled and announced in advance. Everyone who wants to take part in it can log on and post during the scheduled time. Since all these people are logged on and are reading and replying to mail at the same time, conversational exchanges can happen in a matter of minutes, and several hundred messages may be posted in the course of a few hours. People who don't attend the party would log on the next day and find these several hundred "party chitchat" messages filling up their mailboxes. In order to prevent inconveniencing people who don't want to receive several hundred special-interest party messages, parties are held under the VP: topic.
   
   
2. Spontaneous "wackaphilia" outbreaks: In this forum where a number of participants share common autistic proclivities for perseveration and echolalia, it is common to find discussion threads in the AC: topic consisting entirely of perseverative play and often including lots of quoting of previous messages. This is a form of autistic communication and social interaction, and it is definitely appropriate on ANI-L. If you are going to consider playful perseveration a waste of bandwidth and be annoyed about it, you will probably not like being on ANI-L, and if you decide to stay on the list you may wish to read only the PA: topic.

The CO: topic is for making plans about conferences and other face-to-face gatherings that a number of list members plan to attend. This is the place to discuss things like travel arrangements, sharing rides or rooms, places and times to meet, and similar issues that would not be of interest to people not planning to attend the event. Conference-related posts that would be of interest to others, such as reports about the content of sessions at a conference, should be posted in one of the main sections. General announcements to notify people about upcoming conferences and events should be posted to All:.

The address for the list is the same for all topics. All posts should be sent to ANI-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU regardless of which section they're meant for.

The topic for a message is designated in the subject line of a post. A post with a subject line that reads

Subject: AC: <subject>

Subject: PA: <subject>

IT IS NECESSARY TO INCLUDE THE COLON AFTER THE TOPIC DESIGNATOR! Otherwise the computer will not recognize it. Blank spaces, commas, hyphens, or other punctuation marks will not work.

A post with a subject line that reads

Subject: All: <subject>

A post with a subject line that mistakenly does not include a topic designator (including the colon) will also be posted to all subscribers of ANI-L. Please be careful to include an appropriate topic designator (including the colon) on every post.

Examples:

1. Someone wants to post a personal message which is of interest primarily to autistics and cousins (such as a personal experience of an autistic person, or a message about square-dancing llamas). The person would compose the message and send it to ANI-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU. The subject line would look something like this:
   
   

   Subject: AC: I danced with a llama!

2. Someone wants to post a message which is of interest primarily to parents (such as a discussion about a child's IEP). The person would compose the message and send it to the same address: ANI-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU. The subject line would look something like this:
   
   

   Subject: PA: Getting ready for IEP meeting

3. Someone wants to find out about employment accommodations he or she can request under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The person would compose the message and, once again, send it to ANI-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU. The subject line would look something like this:
   
   

   Subject: DR: Employment accommodations for autism?

4. Someone wants to post a message which is of interest to both ACs and family members (such as information about conferences, books, or media events, or urgent news about list security problems). The person would compose the message and, as always, send it to ANI-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU. The subject line would look something like this:
   
   

   Subject: All: New movie about autism

   There are VERY FEW occasions when it is necessary to post to all sections. Nearly all posts should have AC:, DR:, PA:, CO:, or VP: in the subject line.
   
   
5. Someone wants to reply to a message from any section of the list. The reply is meant for the same section where the original message was posted. The person would simply use the "reply" command. The reply will be posted in the same section as the original message.
   
   
6. Someone wants to reply to a message, but to change the section. An autistic person or a cousin may see a post in the Parents' Auxiliary and want to respond with some perseverative word play, or number play, or other autistic-style fun. Or a parent may see a post in an AC-oriented section and want to respond with comments about parenting issues. The person can use the "reply" command, but CHANGE THE TOPIC in the subject line.

Subject: Re: AC: I danced with a llama!

Subject: Re: PA: I danced with a llama!

Alternatively, the person could change the reply's subject line to something new, such as

Subject: PA: Dancing

Similarly, someone wanting to reply in the AC: section to a message originally posted in the Parents' Auxiliary would change the "PA" in the subject line of the reply to "AC."

It is very important to make sure your posts are addressed to the correct section! Please check the subject lines of all outgoing posts before you send them, to make sure they are addressed properly.

See the "Information About Listserv Commands" message for instructions about setting your topic selections.