[WikiEN-l] poor writing skills of some non-english speaking wiki contributors

[james duffy]

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

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail