It is my opinion that as long as you are not allowed to write in a variety on any existing Wikipedia, you should be allowed to write on it in a new Wikipedia. In private discussions before, Jimbo has used AAVE as a sort of measuring stick to judge whether or not some language should or should not get a Wikipedia, ie that AAVE itself should not. I'm perfectly aware of many of the reasons he has for this, but I disagree primarily on the following grounds: If we allow people to write in the vernacular on en.wikipedia and do not chase after them 'correcting' their grammar, then it is a more complicated question whose answer lies more in whether or not there is a community desire among proponents of AAVE to use entirely separate literature. However, since this is not the case - if I wrote a new, detailed, thoughtful, complex, well-researched non-stub article in AAVE, Scots, Singlish, or any other language which is considered by some to be a "non-standard form of English" (whether correctly or incorrectly), I think there is a 25% chance it would be listed of VfD for being 'utter nonsense', a 25% chance it would be "corrected" right away - ie, translated to standard English - a 25% chance it would be listed for cleanup, and a 25% chance that nobody would know what on earth to do with it. But I know there would be a 0% chance that people would agree to let it stay in its current form: the current trend on Wikipedia is towards prescriptivist enforcement, "correcting" others' "incorrect" spellings, their "bad grammar", "poor punctuation", etc. While some "misspellings" or "grammatical errors" on Wikipedia are in fact typos or unintentional, the simple fact is that the majority of them were intentional, either because the user did not know the so-called "correct" spelling, or in the case of grammar because they based it on WHAT REAL PEOPLE ACTUALLY SAY where they come from rather than the stuffy middle-aged millionaire bureaucratic language that the DoE tried so diligently but ultimately failed to make them use. If an article is entirely beyond understanding, that's one thing - if I write "Zuwolojii z' dh'sayints v'kritrs 'n sotx. Yi 'z tri maan brons o'zuwologii, alvim 'ndivizali 'portnt n' ts' oon raat" I would expect it to be deleted as vandalism, and while I would certainly rather somebody changed it to make it more understandable, I have no particular problem with its deletion. However, if I write "A creol langage is a langage who is fairmed whin a pijin-langage is gains native speakres", I do not believe that should be changed - pijin-langage should be wikified as [[pidgin language|pijin-langage]] and native speakres should be [[native speaker|native speakres]], but the rest should be left alone. Of course there will probably be dozens of responses about how people should use proper language, understand, comprehension, blah blah blah, what is really _correct_, blah, blah, blah, but this is my opinion. Mark On 03/05/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog(a)hotmail.com> wrote: -- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE