[WikiEN-l] This is the English Wikipedia

[Daniel Ehrenberg]

Often, it is difficult for even the educated to speak in perfect English, as in:
*Neither the kids nor Michael (likes/like) to go to the park now that they use Wikipedia.
*One in six people (uses/use) a peer-to-peer network.
(I put my guesses in bold). My mom and I can't definitively tell which one is right. For these, it is a matter of which grammarian you talk to. If you insist on perfect grammar, something like this may cause excessive back-and fourth editing, maybe even an edit war. I'm just thinking worst-case-scenario.

Stevertigo <stevertigo at 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


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