More Bad English, Please (2010) | Hacker News Reader

More Bad English, Please (2010)

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23 pointsfloriangosse14 comments

This is a good point to make! I don't know how accurate the article is about the emotion or reason behind this phrase being written.

I've always taken it as a social shorthand for communicating that the writing may not be interpreted 100% in the way it was intended so more thought may be required before responding. Also, I take it to mean that the writer is aware their writing is not perfect. Some may perceive that as embarrassment but it could also come from a place of humility, respect to the language, and to establish a baseline of understanding with the reader.

Just because someone is in the minority doesn't mean they feel embarrassed about it.

Maybe people associate bad grammar and limited vocabulary with lower intelligence, which may be somewhat justified for native speakers. I think announcing your poor English will make readers be mindful and see through your language barrier.

I don't think it's really about feeling embarrassed. I remember reading about a study that showed people with foreign accents are judged to have lower intelligence levels. I think, in general, bringing your language handicap to people's conscious mind will prevent them from making such subconscious judgements.

Hey (Good) English is hard. Be thankful most of the planet feels compelled to learn it and you natives don't even have to learn a single foreign language. I wish I would be in that position, but I'm not. So excuse my french. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go back to my English lessons which consist in watching american TV-shows ...

Sometimes when I stumble reading poor English I wish there was a way I could gently, privately, suggest corrections without making the author feel criticized.

I never feel it is appropriate to do so in a comment or reply because I am not critiquing their ideas. Usually the meaning is perfectly clear, but to a native speaker's ear it can just feel awkward.

Of course, we all make typos or fail to proofread adequately so we could all benefit from a kindly edit now and then.

I could not disagree more stridently. If the goal is clear, concise communication, the ask-er should be reasonably fluent in the language they presume to get a response in. If I had to start asking questions in a primarily-Japanese tech forum, you can bet I would make sure my written Japanese was pretty darned good before I start bothering native speakers whom I'm hoping will help me for free. Yes, that process might take years, but that's what I'm signing up for if I choose a primarily-Japanese supported widget. If I'm imposing on someone, the expectation is that I am going to bend over backwards to not waste their time, and that means communicating clearly.

See: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#writewell

This is the old internet mindset, which apparently is not appreciated anymore. I agree with you, nobody that is helping strangers out of love and compassion, with no dollar signs attached to that role, should go out of their way to suffer fools. I guess the days of BBS's and forums with always-stickied "Search the site first" and "For Beginners" threads is in the past.

ah yes. the thousands of moderators that thundered at you with "USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION!!" while the first 10 result pages just yielded topics of people who got told they should use the search function.

merry days...

Inevitably leading to innumerable "the search function is broken" threads...

I really miss forums, in some ways. There are so few of them that are really active these days.

I liked them for their community character, this is totally missing in wikipedia, stackexchange and HN, but these three are still better information sources than the forums back in the days.

And one person saying "never mind, solved it." with no further information about what they did.

> I guess the days of BBS's and forums with always-stickied "Search the site first" and "For Beginners" threads is in the past.

Whenever you have a problem of people doing something you don't want them to do your last solution should be "let's put a sign up".

But here it's actually the other way around. The context is non English native "contributors" ready to participate in FLOSS. Their contributions are deeply needed; They are the ones taking the time to learn a different language, most likely yours, in order to help.

It can even be strange, as a comment on the original post noted, that English with all its idiosyncrasy persists to be the common language. If it's yours, be happy that you are the lucky one not making the most efforts.

So it's in fact selfishly that natives speakers should take the burden to try and understand their questions, Help them and then reap the benefices (patchs).

But why say it's okay to ask questions if you're learning about $TECH, but not okay if you're learning both $TECH and $LANGUAGE_JAPANESE?

Why is learning about one, and asking for help with it, okay while learning about both, and accepting help for both bad?

> If I'm imposing on someone, the expectation is that I am going to bend over backwards to not waste their time, and that means

...reading the fine manual?

And ESR's grammar advice is insufferable.

Because $tech_forum and $language_forum are different environments for different topics. Topics for one would rightly be OT in the other.

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