[We] base our responses on what is generally regarded as acceptable/correct.
I don't necessarily disagree but of course the challenges of this are that:
We all have different judgements of what is generally regarded as acceptable.
We have different ideas of what is correct.
But the wider issue for me here is that there is no authority to which we can defer. I think that this is our main point of disagreement here. From my observations of previous discussions, it seems to me that Piscean's view is that the authority should be
frequency of usage. Emsr2d2's authority seems to be
conventions. GoesStation's authority seems to be
style guides. And my authority seems to be what's the most
effective way of communicating (or rather--what I think is the best way!) There are pros and cons to all these attitudes, I think.
I hate to misrepresent anybody's views, and I certainly don't mean any disrespect. I'm just trying to develop the issue raised here in a productive (albeit provocative!) way.