--- Stevertigo stevertigo@attbi.com wrote:
Robert
Pseudo-academic, pseudo-egalitarian nonsense.
That's the
same kind of talk that has damaged the education
of much of
the inner-city youth in America.
Robert, if noone else will say it - I will. Youre so full of crap. Thank you very much for listening.
Frankly, it is also racist in effect. This kind of
attitude
has created two generations of poorly educated
Hispanic and
Black youth in American cities. I couldn't think
of a
better plan for the KKK to promote if they want
to keep
racism alive forever.
God, what horrible garbage.
And frankly, many of our articles are being
damaged by
people with good intentions, but who have poor
English
reading or writing skills (or both.)
Oh, God, what a crapload.
In Stevertigo's bizarre universe, it is
egalitarian to
encourage this illiteracy, which in the end would
produce
unreadable articles. In our universe, we are
trying to
ecudate an English speaking audience.
Well, cutting through all of Robert's crap - the one VALID point he makes (underneath all the crap, acrimony, etc...) is that a common language should'nt go willy nilly in different directions. But it's fucking elitist as tea-sipping lessons to dictate what is "proper" in most contexts - because you personally dont own it - whether it be a religion or a language.
Americans and Englishmen are a minority of English speakers. Toby(I think) made a valid point that there is already a page calling attention to pages in need of a rewrite - the problem is that people do what they are interested in. (And most pages are in need of a "rewrite" - whether its a complete hack job - or a little comma is missing somewhere.)
If people with little teeny tiny sphincters want to take it upon themselves to focus like a lynch mob on poor, unsuspecting Bengalis, fine. But dont bitch when I pull the hoods off your heads. Wanna correct the bad English? - DO IT. But dont come here talking about instituting ideologies that are fundamentally elitist.
WikiLove be upon you, Kaiser
- Steven MacGrieves
I would like to add a couple more words to the subject
The word "english-speaking" is misleading. Wikipedia is for english-speaking clearly, but here, english-speaking does mean any person able to understand english, not native english-speaking person. In that sense, english wikipedia is for english people is true, if it encompass any person able to read english. It should not limit itself to native english only. You guys should be proud. So many of us are using your language now. Even when no native-english is around, if that is the best for us to communicate. I agree wikipedia should be properly written. I just don't know along which standards, I always failed to find a grammar book for your language, as French language has. But in any case, the language escaped you. English language is not only the language of native english. It is also ours. Maybe, is it an international english.
I know quite well I am part of this terminology gap.
I am fully aware of my limitations. Which is why I never participate in writing meta pages on en (which I do a lot on fr), as I know people are very keen in having those very properly written. Which is also why I very rarely refactor other people prose; I add, I sometimes remove, I create mostly. This way, I try to avoid people from accusing me of "damaging" their work and letting an article in poorer shape than it was before my input. I basically only create because I think "not very good" is better than "no article" at all.
I also several times asked other people to review my work, and usually people did so very kindly. I must say I don't really appreciate that some mention in the comment box that "obviously this has been written by an non-english and needs much work" and then leave without doing more than correcting a typo. If someone is willing to go through all my major contributions to clean up after me, it is all listed on my page and old contributions page.
I know quite well Robert is including me in these people who should be elsewhere than here, as he suggested a couple of times that I should quit wikipedia if not being able to read and express myself properly in english.
That is one of the reasons why, I quit trying to do anythink on the knowledge article, being aware it would risk again being considered vandalism as he said I was guilty on the gaia articles.
Now, I have some doubts. I see that he is doing the same with the next contributor he is sharing an article with. Similarly, while in disagreement with him,
see http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Knowledge&diff=1017714&...
He is using the supposed "inability to understand and speak english" to bully people he does not agree with.
This is so embarassing
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