Stephen Edelson, Ph.D., has created another excellent page at the Center for the Study of Autism in Portland, Oregon. This site is working hard at becoming the best-organized place to find Autism information on the Web. The Autism maillist is mirrored through UseNet via a list server as bit.listserv.autism . Since the maillist used to be very active with approximately 100 messages per day, this newsgroup is an excellent way to view messages of interest. Since most modern newsreaders will follow threads of subjects, it is easy to skip messages that you have no interest in.
Current activity is much lower but varies.
A newer UseNet newsgroup is alt.support.autism . This is a much more active group and does have about 100 messages a day. IRC If you are interested in chatting with others who are involved with Autism and PDD, primarily parents, a channel has been setup on IRC . I recommend mIRC as the IRC client software. This is Dr. Bernard Rimland's organization, he publishes a quarterly newsletter with updates on what is happening around the world in Autism research.