I got an answer downvoted for helping someone and snarky comments about how I shouldn't have helped him because the person felt it wasn't a good enough question.

There was enough info the question to allow me to solve his issue, ok it wasn't a great question, but it was good enough IMO. I think his entire question ended up getting deleted and with it my answer.

As a non-English living in a country where English is not even an official language, I strive to write good quality answers, either technically or in grammar. A good answer takes an investment of time to write. If someone is not willing to take some time to correct the English and research an answer, it is natural low-quality answers are not welcomed. It takes less work answering them ourselves than improving bad answers. Furthermore, what the owners are asking is that 90% of the users take care of the 10% that generates noise for free, and are telling the majority of the user base there are others that are more important than them.

To reduce redundancy:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16947508

I hope you stick around HN, regardless of your command of English. High English proficiency isn't in the HN guidelines - most of the smart people in the world don't speak English at all! The one violating the guidelines is the other commenter who criticized you; please don't let them ruin things for the rest of us.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I did not get out of my way to talk about his command of English, he is the one mentioning it about problems in other forums. I am not native, however if in an English forum, I will have to talk English. Otherwise, nothing prevents me from selecting forums in a language I am more proficient. Beware of the extremism in being politically correct. The truth will always be the truth.

What I think you fail to understand is that there are many, many native-English speakers who cannot write properly and have bad grammar and spelling. This is not just a non-native English speaker issue.

I think if the intent of the speaker is to answer a question and they can be understood reasonably well, but their English is not perfect, then we should give them some slack.

> we should give them some slack

I appreciate the spirit of the parent, but I think even that message starts with the wrong premise. It assumes that the group with high proficiency in English ("we") decides whether or not to welcome others with low proficiency ("them").

In fact, the commenter several levels up is as much a member of HN as you and I. The guidelines for contributions are not about English proficiency, but about intellectual value. We want more members making more valuable contributions. If they misspell every word and break every grammar rule, it doesn't matter as long as I can understand them and the comment contributes something.

What is outside the guidelines is one commeter criticizing another's language, especially using words like "atrocious". That comment contributes nothing of intellectual value to HN.

I’m not sure you and I have disagreed on anything I said.

Hmmm ... in hindsight it looks like I took one phrase out of the whole comment, interpreted it literally, added some analysis of my own, and really pounced on it. Now I understand what happens to public figures. Sorry.

All good :-)