It might bear remembering that we're on a global forum. Not every member is a native English speaker. Even within the group of those who are we've got a bunch of variations - Brittish, Scottish, Canadians, Americans, Aussies, New Zealanders and S. Africans. If you want to break it down even further you can start getting into the different dialects...what might constitute poor or careless writing for one person may be the local standard for someone else. I would hope that those for whom English is a second language get an automatic pass but not all of them advertise the fact.
Well, dang, that kind of trumps this whole thread. I agree that you must give a pass to people who speak English as a second language, and even to people who speak multiple languages. If you give a pass to one anonymous group, then you must give a pass to everybody. (It would be different if you knew a person's background.) I would hate for someone who speaks Spanish or Japanese to get mad at me when I butcher their language. I am never going to become smooth in their language.
Having said that, there's no excuse for paragraphs that are 1,000 words long, or sentences that are 200 words long. Drop a period or a new paragraph every now and then. I'm in shock whenever I see a post that's a long wall of text, hardly any punctuation, and people who actually reply. There's is NO WAY the repliers read the whole thing. I don't believe it.
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