Suggestion Box

I spend most of my time on the site reviewing, rather than writing my own creations.

When I come across items that are not well-written, I sometimes struggle with how to offer advice, as I don't know the author's background.

I do look at profiles when it becomes an issue for me, but often those don't help at all. Many people don't write a profile at all, or not much of one, and those who do don't always mention things that would help me to target my advice appropriately.

Notably, I am often left wondering whether a writer is a non-native English-speaker, or is a native speaker who just has poor grammar skills. They may have very similar issues in their writing, but the advice on how to improve can be very different.

It would be helpful to me to have some indication of an author's English experience. It would be helpful to know their educational level and age, but the thing that I think would make the most difference would be an obvious and consistent way for those who are not native speakers to indicate that.

Writing.com is a great resource for non-natives to learn English and the last thing I want to do is discourage them by giving reviews that are more appropriate for a lazy American high-school student than a conscientious but unskilled Filipino or Russian. Things that the American should have been internalizing since before they could walk can be very tricky for non-natives to understand. English is weird. We all know that.

Failing that, a newsletter post about why it's useful to give a decent amount of background in your profile might help.