Lojbab on lojban list (Was: Re: reply to And #3)

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

Lojbab to Jorge:

> My muddling in the discussions that I do tends to focus more on
> "the vision thing" than on the tecnical stuff, and suits my role
> (as Cowan has called it, I think) of beingthe Lojban "visionary".
>  I'll accept that label more easily than I will one of
> "authority".

A blinkered visionary. Blinkered visionaries make good leaders.

> This is nice in theory, but in practice, people look at the total
> volume of a list, and the extent hat their mailbox fills up between
> readings and/or weedings  and uses these as a basis to determine
> whether to kee p subscribing or reading. I for one have a tendency
> to read nearly everything post (like I am doing now) or almost
> nothing.  I think most other people do the same. meanwhile, not
> only are "Subject" lines misleading in many postings, but the
> mailing list is unthreaded, so that if you read less than a certain
> large fraction of the posts you really have no idea who is
> responding to what about which topics.
>
> Meanwhile a large volume of technical stuff establishes an image
> of the list and of the project that intimidates the beginner, one
> which a few easy posts will not counterbalance because the person
> won't know which of the posts are aimed at beginners (and a subject
> label "beginners" will not necessaru ily solve this though it might
> help).
>
> Then, there are a lot of people who are indeed interested in the
> technical stuff at least interested enough to try to read it, but
> who would be more interested in easier stuff.  With the technical
> stuff however, they react passively whereas with easier stuff they
> react more actively.  So as long as technical discussions dominate
> the list they will not contribute. But in different atmospheres
> they wil more actiuvely contribute.

We've had this discussion time and time again. Lots of people
have favoured splitting the list into a biginners and a technical
list, and you have vetoed it.

What are you trying to achieve? Are trying to persuade Jorge,
me and others that we shouldn't engage in these debates? If so,
you've not been succeeding. Or are you actually trying to stop
the debates? If so, you could declare yourself list-owner &
ban them.

This discussion always ends up showing that a reasonable number of
people think them useful and worthwhile, but that many people agree
with you that there's a downside to them. I wish we could resolve
this once and for all. If the list definitely isn't going to split,
then let's decide exactly what sort of content the list may and
mayn't carry.

> And finally, all this high-level technical discussion gives the
> imopression that something important is being decided, something
> that will CHANGE THE LANGUAGE.

This reflects your own anxieties rather than anything inherent
in the discussion. Take one of the major ongoing threads about
the meaning of nu: I have been trying to discover what nu is
supposed to mean, given what is in the baselined documents and
in established usage. It is just a slightly more sophisticated
version of a beginner's question.

> This is of course counter to the baseline philosophy,

No it isn't. Only what is in the baseline is baselined. A
lot is left undecided and vague.

> and it fails to recognize what I have said a
> coule of times - that without pc, and Nick, and Colin and many
> others weighing in on these issues, they would not be capable of
> resolving anything EVEN IF the state of the language was subject
> to "resolution" (which is of course a kind of prescription, which
> again copunters the spirit of the baseline).

This is a complete misrepresentation of any post-baseline
discussion.

It doesn't matter who weighs in on these issues: they still
represent the state of our collective understanding. If someone
with a better understanding doesn't weigh in, then their
understanding will not affect our collective understanding. If
they do eventually weigh in then we can update our collective
understanding. None of the people you mention have demonstrated
that their understanding of the issues is indispensable. You
mention them simply because you have a notion of them as some
kind of Lojban senator or commissar, some of whom have worked
their way up through the ranks on the merit of their Lojban
usage.

[...]
> Why do I do so?  because you guys seem to think that it is
> important that YOU do so, and that this will have some import on
> the language evolutuion. I cannot igniore this unless I know that
> pc or Cowan is monitoring it, sin ce I trust them to let me know if
> you guys discuss anything significant.

How come you take the views of us guys seriously enough to feel
obliged to read what we say, but at the same time criticize
us guys for expressing these views?

> >I remember that
> >I started to participate here responding to a challenge from you to
> >translate a Lojban sentence into everyday English.
>
> I'd like more of this.  The phone game was nice, but maybe we need a more
> public version, where someone posts something in Lojban and then after a set
> period of time everyone posts their own interpretations (without discussion),
> followed by discussion of the various choices . Not unlike what Mark did.

That would be good, especially if the pace was really slow so I
could find time to join in.

--And