/** Adoption of contentious sentences **/

There has come up the issue of whether it's reasonable to adopt contentious sentences. Seeing how it didn't relate to the sentence where it was brought up[1] but still might be of relevance to the community, I figured I'd bring this to the wall rather than restrict its scope to a private message.

My view is that one shouldn't feel obliged to leave a sentence an orphan just because someone disagrees on its correctness. Nor should one consider it disingenuous if someone else adopts a sentence one doesn't agree with. Just as it's not considered necessary to orphan a sentence that someone finds fault with until the matter is resolved, it is fine to adopt an orphan being discussed. Owning a sentence doesn't mean one gets to overrule consensus or ignore evidence.

Furthermore, this hasn't been a problem in my experience. Discussions sometimes take a while when people are passionate or get entrenched in their position, but things tend to sort themselves out eventually. When a need to change the sentence is demonstrated and supported by broad consensus, the owner simply modifies the sentence or orphans it to allow someone else to adopt it.

In the rare occasion where an owner simply ignores the request, a moderator usually takes care of it after a couple of weeks without any further problems.

[1] http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/303422