User:Geo Swan/So English is your 2nd language, yet you want to contribute to the English language wikipedia?

=So English is your 2nd language, yet you want to contribute to the English language wikipedia=

The English language wikipedia is the largest (the German language is the 2nd largest). There are lots of fine contributors here for whom English language is a second language. And my hat's off to bilingual people.

But please, keep your contributions within your level of fluency. If you are too ambitious, and push the envelope of your fluency, you can generate extra work from the people who end up cleaning up after you.

I knew a former contributor, who was pretty fluent in English, but who nevertheless tried to contribute at a level beyond their competency. Their contributions were a constant problem due to their fluency gap. There were several key policies they never really mastered, but were sure they did understand.

Good faith attempts to ask them questions, or voice concerns, used to routine trigger them to respond with personal attacks. In retrospect their uneven fluency was the cause of the personal attacks they launched -- for two reasons.
 * 1) I suspect it was their fluency gap that prevented them from understanding our civility policies.  We aren't supposed to "respond in kind" to what feels like personal attacks.  Rather we should take a break from that article, or ask for help, or continue to do our best to keep our comments on the level of editorial issues, without regard to what our correspondents do.
 * 2) This unevenly fluent correspondent routinely felt that completely civil and colleggial questions and comments were personal attacks.  Since they hadn't taken in the principle of not "responding in kind" to perceived personal attacks, they felt entitled to retaliate.  So, what they regarded as legitimate retaliation would actually be the initial personal attack.

So, if English is your 2nd language, and you feel you are being personally atacked, please consider asking for an uninvolved third party to let you know if they think you were actually attacked. If you were attacked please ask for help getting the attacker to behave. Retaliation is counter-policy.

Unfortunately, we can't rely on all wikipedia contributors to observe WP:NPA. But please remember it is also possible that your fluency may have let you down, and you weren't attacked after all.

Unfamiliarity with some idioms native speaker take for granted may trigger the feeling you were being attacked. Rather than considering retaliation, consider simply asking for clarification of the troublesome comment.