It may not sound politically correct to say this, but we do have a problem on wiki with the standard of english used in some articles by people who do not speak english as a first language. 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.
While that is being done on a case by case basis, some articles can stay on wiki for ages before anyone notices, or can be found by people who are busy elsewhere and cannot immediately do a rewrite.
Take this example from [[Chronopia]]: ------------------ The city is the largest city in Ereb Altor. It is said to be ruled by an great time-mage, but noone has ever seen him. Below the Emperor there is a huge army of lesser time mages, odinary-but-still-extremly-powerful-mages and a huge and extremly powerful army of elite-highlanders with necrological weapons.
it is simply impossible to revolt against the Emperor, but that does not mean that there is no crimes commited in Chronopia. Despite the ultrahard goverment with all its time mages and undefeatable, enless legions of elite warriors there are LOTS of crimes comitted everywhere - The Emperor does not care for the people that live in his city, all he cares about is time itself. ------------------
Goatasaur has been doing a lot of work trying to turn this article into readable english but there are many other articles in a similar vein that are barely readable. 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. Quite a few of our computer programming pages have similar problems with poor english making it difficult even for the expert, let alone the lay person, to understand what the article is about.
Most of the contributors to these articles are genuine, sincere and doing their best, but they are far below acceptable standard in an english language encyclopædia and risk damaging wiki's credibility as a reliable source.
My suggested solution: A special page perhaps listed on the Recent Changes pages at the top, to which people when they find grammatically and linguistically challenged articles can add them. Users when they have the time can work through these, rewriting or rewording them. 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.
Pending a rewrite, a tag line could be added (similar to the 'contents is disputed' line already used) at the start of the article, indicating that this is a first draft and is being updated and edited to achieve a comprehendable form of english. That way, someone finding the article on a google search would not think its standard is reflective of wiki as a whole.
JT
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