[WikiEN-l] This is the English Wikipedia

[Toby Bartels]

RK wrote:

>Stevertigo wrote:

>>I think this is nonsense. Proper English is a product of
>>specialization. English is not the property of English
>>speakers, but a lingua franca that everyone owns.

I didn't respond to this in my other post,
so that I could respond to RK as well.
I'm at a loss to interpret your claim
"English is not the property of English speakers".
You might well argue that not all English speakers
live in the US and the British Commonwealth
(you refer later to Bangladeshis, for example),
but surely nobody but English speakers uses English?
Where is the claim to it by those that don't use it?
And where is their claim to the English Wikipedia?

>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. Only in the last decade
>have educators finally had the nerve to attack this point
>of view, and to correct the course that our schools were
>making.

I don't know how to interpret this either, however.
One might try reading [[Ebonics]] for some facts first,
but I'm not even sure if this is what RK's talking about.

>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.

The Booker T. Washington plan for avoiding "racism" in a society
(for our purposes, belief in the relative worth of different races)
by embracing "culturism" (mutatis mutandis) within a society.
Cultural diversity is a wonderful thing,
and it'd be a shame to lose any of it
(from hip hop to the habitual tense)
out of a desire to (as they say) "act white".

I actually agree with what seems to be an implicit premise of yours:
Adopting the trappings of mainstream society
helps oppressed people become better off.
And oppressed people will always do this as they see the need;
I'm hardly in a position to criticise them for it.
But the world will be worse off for losing its subcultures,
and the onus is on the oppressors to make such loss unnecessary.

Of course I disagree with what seems to be another implict premise,
that failing to adopt, or even know, the trappings of mainstream society
is necessarily a sign of "poor education".

>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.)

Except for the user that refuses to accept correction
in certain articles on Chinese matters
(which sounds more about cooperation than English usage),
how is anybody making our articles *worse*?
Good content in bad prose is better than bad content in good prose.
And if JTDirl comes along and improves the prose too --
then we're much better off than if they never wrote anything!

The solution is JTDirl's page to report bad writing --
which can begin as soon as [[Wikipedia:Votes for rewrite]] is cleaned up,
or even earlier if he wants to create a new utilities page --
not to avoid the creation of the bad writing to begin with.

>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.

As I read it, SV implied that he'd standardise the English on Wikipedia.
And despite what I've said above, I couldn't support any other plan,
because we are in fact writing in standard English --
more precisely, that English that is widely understood around the world.
Using AAVE or Bangladeshi dialect would limit our audience,
and *that's* why we should rewrite such into standard English --
even though standard English is no more correct or educated.

>It is your choice what kind of encyclopedia we should try
>to produce. I know which path I prefer.

Despite the arguments over theoretical matters and value judgements,
it's not clear to me that *any* of us would produce different encyclopædias.


-- Toby