I, for one (and i think most coders and tech people will agree with me), enjoy the snarky personality of software such as WordPress and chrome. Most of it is nerd culture or pop culture references.

This is precisely my point: The current wording is targeted toward the people who build WordPress. People like you and me enjoy and understand these references. But we are not the end-user. The majority of people who use WordPress do not fall into either the coders or tech category.

The language discussion is really a discussion about target audience. WordPress used to be an application for the people who build it. That is no longer accurate. WordPress is now a publishing application for everyone and as such the wording needs to be for everyone. Does that mean it needs to be more generic? Yes. Does it mean it has to be bland? No.

The wording in an application tells the first-time user what is expected of her when she uses that application. While casual and geeky language works well for bloggers and techies, it does not fit the framework of the professional workspace. I've been in meeting with executives who have expressed concern that the application "sounds like a teenager" and sets the wrong tone.

Just as importantly the wording in an application should clearly explain to the user what is going on. The most grievous example of WordPress not doing this is the "Are you sure you want to do that?" message. It says nothing about what the user just did or what went wrong but indicates the user did something wrong. In reality this message is usually triggered when something went wrong between the browser and the server and it has nothing to do with the intent of the user.

A proper scientific study of this would be to put the messaging of WordPress in front of a random selection of the target population and asking what they understand from each of the messages. This would be expensive and time consuming but considering the wide reach of WordPress and its impact on the web in general it is worth asking the question if it isn't time we do something like this to get a better picture of who the end-user is and how that person perceives both WordPress' messaging and the application itself.