First let me restate that I agree with others that a few errors here or there are no big deal as long as they don't get in the way of understanding the message. OTOH, going off topic and interrupting the flow of discussion to correct those mistakes does get in that way.
That said, I agree at least in part with Crooked that we shouldn't always meekly accept poor language skills in ourselves or others. Its sort of like Political Correctness (or PC). There is definitely a valid point to it but when overly applied to even the most picky of instances it can make the whole campaign seem petty and absurd. This means that such corrections should be judiciously applied to only the most egregious of cases.
Crooked also gave a couple of comparisons to buttress his arguments but I think those analogies fall a little short. First of all, he says that we correct each other's Spanish all the time. However, most of us are actively trying to improve our Spanish skills. Hardly anyone would feel insulted to be corrected because it is not their native tongue and they don't feel like they're expected to be fluent in it with out a little help. OTOH, English is at the core of our expected competencies, so to correct someone publicly on that could be seen as akin to calling him stupid.
His other analogy about when someone has broccoli stuck in their teeth. Do you point it out to them? Sure you do! But do you discreetly make gestures when no one else is looking or even take them to the side to do it or do you loudly tell them across a crowded dinner table?
And finally I think his analogy about the need for immigrants to learn our language also misses the mark. I think its great when immigrants like Cujo go to the extreme of eliminating all traces of their former accent from their speech. In many cases, this is done to avoid discrimination or to aid career advancement. However, I don't think it is necessarily what most people are thinking when they say that immigrants should learn our language. I think the thinking of most people is more similar to what others have been saying in this thread. As long as their meaning is conveyed and easily understood, it doesn't matter as much if their speech is absolutely perfect (particularly when there are so many native speakers with regional accents or slang of their own andwhose communication skills are really no better)
I sympathise with Crooked's concern about the decline of the English language. I just think that we need to pick our battles. My pet peeve recently has been with text messaging which almost necessarily by its very nature makes the spelling and grammatical errors one sees around here pale in comparison. A certain young lady that I've been seeing (and mentioned in another thread) seems to favor TM'ing so I tend to text back and I see myself having to choose constantly between either spelling everything out correctly with proper grammar and punctuation (and winding up with a Prolijo length TM) or DELIBERATELY misspelling, truncating words, leaving out punctuation and doing all sorts of other things that practically makes my heart cringe in order to keep my TM's short and easier to type. And, as I do that, I'm forced to wonder what all these modern communication forms are doing to our basic language skills.
I'd LOL if I wernt so
BTW, El V, I know I should just let El C, speak for himself but I have other "blinky" friends who use the internet and one thing that I know bothers them to no end because of the way they're handled by text-to-speech synthesizers are emoticons (misspelt words aren't handled much better). I know that the
judicious use of emoticons helps the rest of us understand the writers intent, but can only imagine what happens to El C's computer when he comes across a post by Florida
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but shouldn't it read instead, Grammer [sic], Punctuation & Spelling on CRT? And, no doubt, in pointing this out, I probably phucked [sic] something up. 
