Robert Robert, if noone else will say it - I will. Youre so full of crap. Thank you very much for listening. God, what horrible garbage. Oh, God, what a crapload. 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

Robert wrote: Even though I may often differ with some other Wikipedians about just what is correct English (notably lately over over-capitalization), I am strongly in support of using good English. If people want to persist in pseudo-phonetic renderings of the language let them do so on the yet-to-be-created ebonics Wikipedia. Language is also about a cultural continuity that includes Mark Twain just as much as Shakespeare. A generation that grows up on these fanciful spellings is well on the way to breaking its link with a cultural continuity. That's the cost of such dumbing down. Ec

RK wrote: 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? 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. 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". 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. 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. Despite the arguments over theoretical matters and value judgements, it's not clear to me that *any* of us would produce different encyclopædias. -- Toby

Awlthoh that wuznt reelee fuhnehtik, I agree with Steverigo in priciple. The only problem is that we are trying to create an encyclopedia (not insyklohpeedeeuh) that is, in most ways, similar to others. That's really what it comes down to. If you want to convince Fred that Internet-encyclopedia should use pseudo-phonetic spelling, then fine. Stevertigo isn't trying to promote illiteracy, he's trying to do a very noble thing to start a movement to make English more regular and accessable. Actually, I'm trying to do the same thing. It would be nice to collaborate with Steveritigo on first making English easier and then making a wikipedia in that language. --LittleDan Robert <rkscience100(a)yahoo.com> wrote: Stevertigo writes: 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. 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. This isn't about ownership, racism or colonialism. It is about writing article in English, for people who speak English. 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.) 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. It is your choice what kind of encyclopedia we should try to produce. I know which path I prefer. Robert (RK) --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).