And this is excusable why?

Because not everyone on this BBS is as educated or naturally intelligent as everyone else on the BBS, and I would prefer that peoples' ideas were reflected here regardless of how well they did in English class. People don't come here to have their spelling/grammar coached. They come here to talk about the empeg, and sometimes in this particular forum, to discuss other things.

At the end of the day, I agree that a person out in the real world is going to be judged on the basis of their communication skills. But on the BBS, I see the correcting of minor mistakes as more nit-picking than it is actually trying to help someone else. You seem to think it's the latter, so I guess we just interpret it differently.

I am not saying this is an epidemic, but I have seen examples where I thought it was more than a "gentle" correction. I've seen other forums (and in my distant past, dialup BBSes) gang up on users with less-than-perfect use of English and scare them away. Now, most of us are nice, agreeable people, but this topic seems to come up a lot, even on minor offenses.

And, to be honest, the rules of English grammar are obscenely complicated to begin with, and I think that a lot of the "mistakes" people make which sneak their way into the langauge are just a natural part of the evolution of the language itself.