James Duffy wrote:
While the contributors write serious and worthwhile articles, their limited knowledge of english can produce articles that require major rewriting to reach a usable standard.
Once upon a time, when I thought I was going to be the next Great American Novelist, I took a lot of creative writing classes. One thing every teacher held was that good writing came from constant re-writing.
Having said that, I expect almost every article on Wikipedia, whether it was written by a native English speaker or not, could be improved by rewriting. After all, that is the Wiki way.
[snip]
The [[History of China]] has been disastrously written by one person who continually refuses to accept there is a problem and reverts attempts to revert the article to a readable version rather than one littered with dramatically flawed translations of chinese words into english.
What I see in this instance isn't a case of a non-native English speaker having a problem expressing her/his ideas, but someone who doesn't want to play nice on Wikipedia. Maybe someone not closely involved in the situation could intervene & try to figure out if said person is just being bull-headed, or actually has a concern that she/he needs help expressing to the rest of us Wikipedians.
We could even leave a message as part of the welcome note to new users telling them that we recognise that not everyone who contributes to wiki may speak english as a first language and that, if they have any doubts about their own ability to write a clear article in english, or if they simply want it double-checked, they can add it to that list.
Regardless of the outcome of this warming discussion, I think this would be a wonderful idea. I know I would be more likely to help out on the German & Latin Wikis if I knew someone would be willing to help me with my command of those languages.
Geoff