It may be that there are several strands of grievance that members want to air. Philip's post raises two matters that are probably best kept separate if we are to achieve the clarity and understanding that we all need. It seems to me, (and I think this is the general view of the moderators) that the major current cause of complaint is the deleting of members' posts, and that's a subject which deserves its own distinct discussion.
Philip also brings up the matter of tough critique, and within that of how we approach poems posted by members for whom English is a second language. This doesn't strike me personally as a topic with much mileage. If we post at Erato we expect tough critique. If it hurts, that's an occupational hazard. In the Deep End especially, as the rubric makes clear, toughness is the name of the game. Moderators reserve the right to move posts out of the DE if they aren’t considered up to the necessary level. That’s a judgement call, of course, and there’ll be protests, of course – but it’s going to happen, and we all need to accept the fact.
If a member participates here using English as their second language, that carries its own risks. I can write French and Italian prose slowly and laboriously – I can read both languages reasonably fluently – but the idea that I could participate in a poetry forum in one of those languages is laughable. And I’d deserve to be laughed at if I tried.
It’s an absolute bottom line that if you take part in the work of this site you are a fluent writer of English. There’s no reason at all why linguistic failings should be excused out of some misguided sense of charity. And it’s as well to remember that a characteristic of the membership in all poetry forums is its high density of people who teach English in one form or another – professionals of the language, in other words. They know whereof they speak.
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