Is it because English is a 2ND language for many in this forum?

I wish you were right. Unfortunately what you see here is too typically American.

In many cases I can tell the "innocent" mistakes of non-native speakers from the sloppy and careless mistakes of the natives. One reason I like to answer the questions of the non-natives is that, in many cases, they try harder to be correct, whereas the natives emulate Rhett Butler: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." .

Writing as an aged Brit who tries to speak and write 'English', I think you are partly right. But there's an awful lot of text-eese (sorry for the word) and complete ignorance that the written word is a shared word on an international forum. I can often tell the difference between lazy English-speakers and people who are foreign.

It is a result of lack of caring more than anything else.

There is no way to track down who is asking or responding to a question so if they can't be held liable why worry about the small stuff.

I would hate to see how a lot of these people live...that is another topic all together.

This is probably due to laziness of the people. We often play online games like World of Warcraft, Runescape or any that connects us with the world. We intend to learn the culture of other countries like malaysians love to use the world 'lah' . People will slowly be influenced by it and get used to it... I hope I helped.

Cheers