<DIV>Often, it is difficult for even the educated to speak in perfect English, as in:</DIV>
<DIV>*Neither the kids nor Michael (<STRONG>likes</STRONG>/like) to go to the park now that they use Wikipedia.<BR>*One in six people (<STRONG>uses</STRONG>/use) a peer-to-peer network.</DIV>
<DIV>(I put my guesses in bold). My mom and I can't definitively tell which one is right. For these, it is a matter of which grammarian you talk to. If you insist on perfect grammar, something like this may cause excessive back-and fourth editing, maybe even an edit war. I'm just thinking worst-case-scenario.</DIV>
<DIV><BR><B><I>Stevertigo <stevertigo@attbi.com></I></B> wrote:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">Robert<BR>> Pseudo-academic, pseudo-egalitarian nonsense. That's the<BR>> same kind of talk that has damaged the education of much of<BR>> the inner-city youth in America.<BR><BR>Robert, if noone else will say it - I will. Youre so full of crap.<BR>Thank you very much for listening.<BR><BR>> Frankly, it is also racist in effect. This kind of attitude<BR>> has created two generations of poorly educated Hispanic and<BR>> Black youth in American cities. I couldn't think of a<BR>> better plan for the KKK to promote if they want to keep<BR>> racism alive forever.<BR><BR>God, what horrible garbage.<BR><BR>> And frankly, many of our articles are being damaged by<BR>> people with good intentions, but who have poor English<BR>> reading or writing skills (or both.)<BR><BR>Oh, God, what a crapload.<BR><BR>> In Stevertigo's bizarre universe, it is egalitarian to<BR>> encourage this illiteracy, which in the end would produce<BR>> unreadable articles. In our universe, we are trying to<BR>> ecudate an English speaking audience.<BR><BR>Well, cutting through all of Robert's crap - the one VALID point he makes<BR>(underneath all the crap, acrimony, etc...) is that a common language<BR>should'nt go willy nilly in different directions. But it's fucking elitist<BR>as tea-sipping lessons to dictate what is "proper" in most contexts -<BR>because you personally dont own it - whether it be a religion or a language.<BR><BR>Americans and Englishmen are a minority of English speakers. Toby(I think)<BR>made a valid point that there is already a page calling attention to pages<BR>in need of a rewrite - the problem is that people do what they are<BR>interested in.<BR>(And most pages are in need of a "rewrite" - whether its a complete hack<BR>job - or a little comma is missing somewhere.)<BR><BR>If people with little teeny tiny sphincters want to take it upon themselves<BR>to focus like a lynch mob on poor, unsuspecting Bengalis, fine. But dont<BR>bitch when I pull the hoods off your heads. Wanna correct the bad English? -<BR>DO IT. But dont come here talking about instituting ideologies that are<BR>fundamentally elitist.<BR><BR>WikiLove be upon you, Kaiser<BR><BR>- Steven MacGrieves<BR><BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>WikiEN-l mailing list<BR>WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org<BR>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l</BLOCKQUOTE><p><hr SIZE=1>
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