What's working and how?

Speaking strictly as a native speaker from the U.S., I think the quality of writing in English in South Asia is variable. I sometimes get annoyed when my marginally grammatical prose gets hacked up by someone who clearly doesn't know what they're doing. This is just the way things are with Wikipedia to some extent, however I usually find that articles I write about the U.S. only get edited when someone has something to add or my syntax really is off. There's less editing that seems to be purely driven by the thrill of seeing oneself in print or whatever.

So I'm wondering if partnerships would be helpful in general for assisting writing by people in second languages. It might improve the quality of articles where unpartnered writers and editors are getting in over their heads; at the same time benefiting from the local knowledge of writers who are inhibited about setting off on their own.

Another issue would be catching "Americanisms", peculiarities of Indian English, Britishisms that don't necessarily travel well, and so forth to move toward a more international style. "The Economist" may be a pretty good example. It's written for audiences on both sides of the Atlantic and probably doesn't grate on anyone's sensibilities. This is something Wikipedia could strive for too.

It's certainly true that there's lots of writing left to be done about South Asia! I've done a modest amount of writing about Nepal. There's a much higher density of writing about the Everest region, Kathmandu, and a few other places than other parts of the country. Many place articles seem to be of the "mailmerge" type with a few census variables plugged into the same invariable matrix. Obviously local folks in other parts of the country haven't involved themselves yet. 76.169.50.90 00:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)