Important: This article could just be an outlier. I haven’t looked into many other articles on the site. I’m also not a writer of articles, just a reader. I respect the work of the ProleWiki writers and even this article is a good one. I might come off as harsh here, but I believe that the information itself in the article is good.

Edit: user ledlecreeper27 pointed out that the piece of text I am talking about was copied from RationalWiki when ProleWiki was new. This information adds very important context. I hope (and somewhat believe) that the criticism I provided can still be of value and use.

Some time ago I decided to look at ProleWiki (I haven’t ever really looked at it) and I stumbled upon the article on LGBT+, which made me a bit confused. The article has a section for refuting myths about homosexuality which employs very impartial, informal, and argumentative language. While the idea behind the section itself isn’t bad at all (although the title of the section also is quite partial, something like “misconceptions about homosexuality” would sound more “official”), the language just comes off as a personal blog post more than a wiki page. It’s like a bullet point list of arguments with language like “That is a slippery slope fallacious argument; in other words, bulls##t.” (My censorship)

I’m not trying to argue that you should be respectful towards homophobes. My problem is that the language that’s used in the article makes it read less like a trustworthy source of information and more like just some person on the internet arguing. I think that impartial and formal language would make the information on the site seem a lot more reliable. Also less focus on presenting arguments and more on just presenting information would go a long way in making the articles seem (and be) more informational. All of the information in the arguments can be represented in a more impartial way, which would probably not only make the article more dense in information, but also make the arguments more convincing (but making the arguments more convincing isn’t the most important thing here, unless… read the next paragraph).

But here’s the important thing to note: all of what I wrote is assuming that the site is trying to be a reliable source of information, and similar to sites like Wikipedia. If the site is meant to just be some communists presenting arguments it’s fine… kind of. I believe that impartial language actually makes an argument seem more convincing.

I avoid using the term “objective language” and opt for “impartial” instead, because I think that it is disingenuous to claim that your writing is objective. To me, impartial doesn’t really mean that the idea is being represented in some centrist manner, just that the text attempts to sound neutral by avoiding for example calling things “stupid”. I guess I’m just talking about formal language.