Participants » Group Rules

1) Safe Space

1.1) No personal attacks, bigotry, negative judgements and insults are allowed in the group. Take up personal disagreements privately.

1.2) These groups are public forums. Do not share information about yourself and others that are not meant to be made public. Obtain permission before disclosing any other people’s personal information.

1.3) Participants who bully, harass, ridicule, scorn or otherwise attack the psychological/mental health of other autistic participants are not welcome on our chat network. This applies to private conversations too.

1.4) Administrators may restrict or remove access where observable conduct creates a reasonable safety, privacy, harassment, exploitation or serious disruption concern. Precautionary action is an access decision, not a diagnosis or finding of criminal guilt.

1.4.1) Decisions will be based on conduct and risk, not assumptions about a person’s diagnosis, personality, social ability, identity or appearance.

1.5) If you believe/suspect that there is a serious threat to our chat network (e.g. a severe security vulnerability in WhatsApp), please inform the Administrators who will then decide how to respond.

1.6) Anyone with a history of, or found to be persistently harassing others, will be barred from the chat network. Such harassment is defined as trying to contact someone even after being blocked on at least one social media platform.

1.6.1) Group members are encouraged to report cases of harassment to the Administrators. This chat network is meant to provide a safe space for the autism community to interact. Harassment is unacceptable no matter if the perpetrator is autistic or not.

1.6.2) Autistic people who promise not to harass others may be allowed to join private groups within the network on a probationary basis. They will be barred if they re-offend.

1.7) Avoid discussing topics that may offend people or lead to legal issues. Such sensitive topics include, but are not limited to sex, religion, politics, money and fake news. Members who persist in raising these topics despite administrators’ warnings will be removed.

1.8) Any autistic member deemed to be highly vulnerable will be removed from all public chat groups and placed into a safe private chat group without any public explanation. These include autistic people who lack the executive functioning ability to follow the rules on this page. Safety takes priority over inclusion.

2) Avoid Spam

2.1) Please stay on topic to keep the groups spam-free.

2.1.1) If you keep posting messages that others are unable to understand, our Administrators may guide you to convey yourself better. However, if you persist in writing unintelligible messages, you may be asked to leave these groups and invited to join the social support groups instead.

2.1.2) If you persistently disregard and challenge the directions of the Administrators, you will be removed from the group.

2.2) When you send a wrong message, use the “delete for everyone” option. To err is human; there is no need to apologise.

2.3) Our chat groups are NOT meant for excessive promoting of your causes or agendas. If it is relevant to the group, send it ONCE and do NOT pressure others to support your sharing.

2.4) Do NOT post photos or videos for social purposes (e.g. birthday/holiday greetings and live updates of personal/social events) except for the Family Safe Sharings group.

2.5) Do NOT repost long messages ad verbatim from the same group to itself. Likewise, do NOT post progressive chains (i.e. posts by multiple participants who add their names to a previous post with other names on it).

2.6) Participants are discouraged from sending messages between 11:30 pm to 7 am Singapore time to avoid disturbing other participants who did not mute their group notifications, especially in large groups.

2.7) Participants who keep sending unsolicited private messages to Administrators, even after repeatedly being told not to do so, can be blocked at the discretion of the affected Administrator(s). This will not accept their membership in the network.

2.8) Members may block unwanted private contact. Administrators do not mediate ordinary private disagreements, but conduct connected to WACS may be reported where it involves harassment, exploitation, threats, sexual boundary violations, scams, privacy breaches or other serious safety concerns.

[Refer to Annexe A at the end of this page for more solutions to reduce spam]

3) Stay Relevant to the Topic

3.1) Post topics to the most relevant chat groups. Topics less than 50% relevant are deemed irrelevant. Keep sharing RANT: Relevant, Appropriate, Necessary, Tasteful.

Do not repeat a point merely because nobody replied. Keep contributions concise and give others time to contribute. Correct mistaken claims respectfully rather than assuming bad intent. It is fine to read without posting.

3.1.1) Post the same information to only a maximum of 3 groups. Choose the 3 most relevant to post. Otherwise, this can be considered spam.

3.2) If you have a topic of interest not in our chat network, you can create a private WhatsApp group (outside of our chat network) and/or feedback to the Administrators who will decide whether to create it under our chat network.

3.3) Administrators are not curators. A boring but relevant conversation will be allowed to carry on. However, a conversation that may contravene Singaporean law will not be allowed to continue.

3.4) Persistent posting of irrelevant materials is grounds for removal.

3.4.1) Do not make false claims and post fake news. Check the legitimacy and reliability of the source and/or information before posting.

3.4.2) Memes (including jokes, greetings etc) are discouraged except for groups with no specific topic (e.g. Wholesome Safe Sharings).

3.5) [Conversation Stopper] When there is an excessive volume of messages (>100 within 30 minutes), it is recommended for the top 3 most active participants to TEMPORARILY refrain from posting in the group for 6 hours. This is to allow everyone time to digest the messages.

3.6) Emergency Announcements (EAs), are defined as requests for emergency help.

3.6.1) EAs can be posted directly into social support groups and/or directly into relevant groups. For example, missing children EAs in the Caregiver Support Hub group.

3.6.2) Otherwise, please approach an Administrator for assistance for posting into the correct groups.

3.7) Events, talks, webinars and services can be shared into our groups if they fulfil ALL the following conditions:

3.7.1) Relevant to the topic of the group being posted to

3.7.2) Of interest to the main target audience in the group being posted to

[For example, posting about insurance offerings and therapy services is fine on the Caregiver Support Hub, but not in the advocacy, career or schools groups.]

3.7.3) Do not contradict any other rules (e.g. soliciting for donations, aggressive/repeated spamming, exploiting/harming autistic people)

4) Neutrality and Objectivity

4.1) Administrators are to set their personal beliefs and issues aside when administering the chat network. Personal disagreements with a participant are NOT grounds for removal of that participant.

4.2) Administrators who abuse their power to ban participants for personal reasons will be disqualified. Administrators cannot use their status to coerce or pressure other group participants, except to ensure compliance with the group rules.

5) No Recruitment and Solicitation

5.1) Do not use WACS access to recruit members through unsolicited private messages or to solicit participation in unapproved groups, commercial arrangements, fundraising, political or religious campaigns, sexual activity or other high-risk arrangements. Relevant public opportunities may be shared only in accordance with the posting rules and any required administrator approval.

5.2) Bona fide causes are acceptable. Examples include job offers with no hidden conditions and promoting events for non-profit causes (including those with a fund-raising element).

5.3) Solicitation for donations is DISALLOWED, especially if the donation is managed by an individual rather than an officially registered non-profit organisation. As Administrators lack the resources and time to verify the authenticity of donation requests, we ask that all group participants solicit for donations outside of our chat network instead.

6) Miscellaneous Issues

6.1) If there are any differences in different translations of the rules, the English translation shall take priority.

6.2) Administrators are volunteers and act only when they are able to. WACS makes reasonable efforts but cannot verify every participant and does not monitor private conversations. Report serious matters (threats, scams, abuse) directly to the Police or the relevant authority rather than waiting for an administrator.

6.3) WACS is an informal volunteer community and is not affiliated with WhatsApp, Meta or any government agency.

Annexe A: Solutions to avoid spamming

• Post a link to the full text of a news article instead of copying it ad verbatim.
• Post a link to a photo album or Facebook post instead of sending many photos.
• Send large files using online file hosting or cloud services (e.g., MediaFire, Dropbox, Google Drive)
• Put your large files into one online folder and send a link to that folder
• Compress all your files into one file and send a link to that one file.

• When your message is only relevant to one person, send them a private message.
• If you need to collect a list of participants for an event or conduct a survey, please learn to use online survey services (e.g., Google Forms, SurveyMonkey).

Annexe B: Online Safety Advisory

For warning signs, reporting and response steps, account protection and meeting precautions, see the Online Safety Advisory.