No need to stigmatize the English of non-native speakers posting in the English forum. The solution is to allow them to post there in Esperanto, without the usual comment in red.

Anyway I wasn't putting this forward as a serious proposal.

It really is somewhat discriminatory, but it doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

I support it.

Sudanglo has a great idea there! I like it! Let them post in Esperanto or both English and Esperanto.
Erinja sent her students to Libera Folio. I used to read LF very often. But there is a climate that has evolved there that I find unpleasant. Yes, in deed, the Esperanto is better, but to constantly read people complaining about what others are doing with their own money, calling them farcical, etc. is depressing, to say the least. There are several posts there criticizing Dennis Keefe, who is sponsoring Esperanto Insulo in South China this coming January and February. Since none of those criticizing have contributed money, time, or effort to Dennis' wonderful initiative, I find that they are just spouting off hot steam. I much prefer the friendlier and more positive "etoso" here at lernu.net.
Besides, just the fact that someone reads lernu (Learn!)is a sign of humility. We all need to learn.
For example, I read Portuguese and Dutch but I cannot write in either of those two languages extremely well. I never comment, because I would have to write horrible Dutch or Portuguese and I would feel embarassed. If I were allowed to respond in Esepranto, I probably would.

erinja:
In the new lernu, to be released next year, do you think it would be a good idea to include a forum section only for experienced speakers? Everyone could read it, but only those who had passed a certain level of language exam could post in it.

It wouldn't motivate me to improve my Esperanto language skills.

erinja:
What do you think? Is that a bad idea? Is it too elitist and discriminatory, and therefore offensive?

I agree. Creation of such forum section I would receive like creation of an elitist (closed) circle. I would do like in real life: Ignoring. The closed nature of that section simplifies keeping distance = ignoring.

erinja:
Or would it be a good incentive to study the language to a point where you could post in that forum, and beginners could read the postings in that forum, knowing that the grammar in it will always be more or less correct?

I understand the intention of that "language reference". But, why that advanced folks don't create content to the community? I.e. high language quality books or make speaker scripts of TED-like presentations? Instead of, that thread will magnetize folks who - sorry about that hard words - prefer to memcentrigi kunhelpe their excellent language skills instead of build up community which act respectfull to everybody independent of its language level.

erinja:
Do you have other for achieving a similar goal (a forum section with reliably good grammar, to help learners)?

Yes, I have. Forum and private messaging facilities should base technically at some Wiki system. I.e. German webpage ubuntuusers.de is doing that. Furthermore that Wiki system should have very well access control list facilities. That would allow granular user views. Similar like an different view of "normal" user and adminstration user. Having that available it would be easy to tag/mark parts of an message being bad grammar or writing style and let it only be visible to the creator of the tagged message. Furthermore for beginners it would be very usefull to get overall hints means categorizing of language error types. In detail links to excisting language learning courses. Doesn't need that detailed. But some overall hints would be great.

erinja:
For those who are beginners, have you had difficulty understanding posts in the forums here, and do you think that grammatical errors contributed to your difficulties?

Yes, of course. Humans make mistakes and inside respectfull community there's no need to be ashamed about making mistakes.

sudanglo:
As an experienced user I have no problem in simply ignoring posts that are written in poor Esperanto - or, if the topic interests me responding to what the poster might be saying.

Ignoring something doesn't change anything.

sudanglo:
But I see the point in having discussions in model Esperanto for a beginner to read.

Yes, I agree. But only for polyglotts or linguists solely the language is interesting. For others, language needs an topic to get interesting.

sudanglo:
It might be enough just to label a new forum as 'Advanced Users - Spertuloj'. After all, if you own some woods and put up a notice saying 'Private Woods' most people would stay out.

Ah, really?

sudanglo:
Or you could implement a button 'Text unclear', which people could click on to warn beginners not to bother too much with trying to understand some particular post - such a button could be useful in the English language forum too.

I like the 'Text unclear" button which would be possible inside Wiki system based forum system. But the tagging should only be visible to the regarding users. Otherwise it will trigger same like a Badge of shame.

sudanglo:
What I do think would be excellent, is if you could find some way of converting the enormous number of 'reads', that one sometimes see in the statistics, into a commensurate level of posting.

That enormous number of reads could also be done by Web crawler(?).

RiotNrrd:
Yes, poorly written Esperanto can be annoying for beginners.

Depends on. If poorly written language comes with an interesting idea I sure will try to understand/grasp the idea indepedent of language level. Of course that needs some intellectual motivation to find intention behind "baby" language communication.

RiotNrrd:
I don't seem to remember ungrammatical and/or misspelled posts as being an onerous stumbling block for me when I started. If I couldn't figure something out, I skipped it or asked questions about it. I didn't just sit there spinning my wheels, muttering "does not compute, does not compute, does not compute".

Yes, because you have a lot of community sense/Gemeinschaftssinn. As far its accepted that every message has an intention behind, poor language skills gets relative.

RiotNrrd:
Personally, I think a better alternative is to change the social default we have right now about correcting other people's posts.

Some people fear of being blamed due to mistakes they make. They fear due to fact, that there excists people who much like to drill inside others wounds. (Wounds like personal impairments). Btw., I still don't understand fully that motivation.

RiotNrrd:
Today, correcting someone's posts without being asked is considered rude.

I believe, that this depends of your native language culture. If that corrections comes with respect and detailed hints I don't see a problem. "Der Ton macht die Musik/ The note/tonal sound makes the music".

RiotNrrd:
The biggest problem with the forum today, in my opinion, is that it is quite possible to make a mistake, make the same mistake again, then make it yet again - each time reinforcing the mistake in ones mind as NOT being a mistake - and people won't tell you that you are doing it wrong because they don't want to be rude. So, as a practice arena it's not doing a lot of good, because people rarely ever get any feedback, even when feedback is sorely needed.

Yes, I agree. Memorizing mistakes again and again makes it difficult to unlearn.

RiotNrrd:
I'd rather people would be "rude" enough to tell me when I make a mistake, so that I only need to do it once. Do I like being corrected? Not particularly. But it certainly speeds up the learning process, and actually does belong here.

I would like to believe that the Lernu forum is more than a place meant for purely social interaction; in a purely social setting, correcting peoples language IS rude.

So teachers are most rude persons of the world? At off-line world I experienced, that pre-request like "Do you want some help to correct some (German) language mistakes?" relativizes correction rudeness.

RiotNrrd:
But in an educational setting the exact opposite should be true. The reason we are here is to learn and practice Esperanto; getting it right and assisting others to also get it right ought to be the primary goal, with social interaction being something secondary (perhaps a strong secondary, but still not #1).

I already mentioned above. Not everybody has that community sense/Gemeinschaftssinn. A lot of folks prefer to find out every differences between them and you. It seems to be some kind of self-positioning and maybe deep distrust to others. I don't understand that attitude but I can well defense against. Solely needs to switch off community sense/Gemeinschaftssinn temporary.

sudanglo:
I remain of the opinion that rather than a ghetto for spertuloj, the simplest way of dealing with the issue is to provide a convenient way of flagging poor or good language.

Like I already mentioned above. An message system based at Wiki system could be capable to realize that.

sudanglo:
Perhaps rather than marking texts which need revision, perhaps there should be a way of signalling that a post is in particularly good style (and free of grammatical errors).

Do, but that could need revision of several persons.

sudanglo:
For the guidance of beginners the marking of 'good' posts would be just as effective as the marking of 'bad' posts.

However the carrot might be better than the stick in this case, and might incentivize posters, who could then experience a warm glow of achievement from having their posts stylistically approved of.

I would prefer an clear defined certificating situation like KER to get that "warm glow of achievement". At last time I met a lot of well self-promoting masqueraders/actors onsite.

erinja:
On the culture of correcting others, in principle I agree that on a learner's site, it would be good to correct people. The flip side of that is that Esperanto culture generally considers it rude to correct people, and I wonder if people would come from our forums, used to correcting people left and right, and become insufferable bores in normal Esperanto society, continuing to correct people incessantly.

Every new community member could change Esperanto culture. I see it a illusion that every - especially very young - Esperanto newbies will accept fixed status of excisting Esperanto culture. Newbies come with their own ideas and they want to realize their ideas.

cFlat7:
The "Rate Style" button seems like a good idea. Maybe there could be another button by which the author of a post who gets rated with "Many errors" could request feedback rather than it just be given.

I like that "request feedback" feature idea.

sudanglo:
The rating could be easily graded Erinja.

Say 5 stars for excellent style and free of grammatical error - a less generous starcount for posts not reaching this standard.

No stars - the poster needs to work on his Esperanto. Exercising this rating facility would be done by the forum members themselves. But nobody should be compelled to vote.

Doing that without detailed hints solely demotivates. What value has an generalising "your complete Esperanto language skills are non-sufficent"?

robbkvasnak:Sudanglo has a great idea there! I like it! Let them post in Esperanto or both English and Esperanto.

That's been done to death here. The site rules say, explicitly, that the non-Esperanto forums are reserved for posts in the respective language. Esperanto is ok to include, but only accompanied by an appropriate translation.

The only reason why we even have forums in English (and other languages) is to help beginners who don't yet feel comfortable posting in the Esperanto forums, or want to ask for help but aren't yet able to do it in Esperanto.

Anyone who would like to make a post in Esperanto only is welcome to go to the many Esperanto forums. Anyone who wants to mix languages in the same forum thread is welcome to go to the Study Group forum at lernu, which is open to posting in all languages. Anyone who finds these accommodations to be insufficient for their 'multilingual posting needs' can go to another website with a different set of rules.

I totally agree with Erinja.

The reason we shouldn't allow Esperanto-only posts in the English section is because there are likely many people visiting the English section that do not (yet) speak Esperanto. Seeing big blocks of what is (to them) incomprehensible gobbledygook in what is ostensibly a place for beginners is a great way to scare the beginners off.

The forums are clearly marked as to what language is expected in each one. I don't see why this is troublesome.