[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [bpfk-announce] Would bribery help?



Robin Lee Powell wrote:

If it would help motivate people, I will gladly offer money for some
of the less-thought, more-tedium sections.

Off the top of my head, I think $20 for a BAI or UI section and $10
for anything else is reasonable, but I'm willing to offer more.

-Robin, who really doesn't want to do all this shit himself.




I don't think you will find anything that will motivate people in the current circumstance. When what is already being done is generating 40-80 messages a day of byfy discussion (which seems to be the current rate) along with plenty of lojban list traffic, (and who knows what is going on on the IRC channel), most people with enough time to spend on byfy are trying to follow the discussions, leaving them no time to do any new work.


This of course has been the classic problem with Lojban work, and why so little was done for years on major projects. Every major accomplishment has involved people going off and working in more or less silence for weeks/months and then presenting a more or less complete chunk for people to respond to.

The byfy has become a deliberative body, but it seems unlikely to become a work-producing body. Some small number of individuals will likely end up doing all the work, leaving the rest to deliberate on it. The small set of individuals will consist of {Robin Powell} iff Robin Powell's rate of doing the job all by himself is greater than the rate that everyone else will get around to choosing to do a piece or two to take some of the load off. Finding ways to stop the deliberating for a while MAY get some more work done, but no promises.

The best suggestion for the latter may be perhaps, when existing topics of discussion die down, start working on new topics as you choose OFF LINE, and don't post them for discussion until/unless the whole thing is done, or other people have taken on and posted their section efforts. I wouldn't even necessarily post what sections you are doing, since you require a more or less complete counterproposal in order to disagree anyway other than in a deliberative sense. The only way we are likely to ever see an alternate proposal on some issues will be if people are working on them before they have a proposal to respond to.

The result of people working mostly on their own, and without a lot of discussion until things are done, may not be as good a product but it will get *done*, and it seems like you are caught between trying to get the job done this year, and trying to get the job done "right" according to the byfy, which if it is possible might take several years.

(I note in passing that CLL took approximately 4 years to write. Cowan posted each section as it got done, to enormous volume of comments, mostly from Jorge. Then Nora and I did separate passes on the complete book, having participated earlier only in response to specific questions for us from John. The result was that the three of us were largely burnt out when it was done - so even that a low rate of productivity was still "too much" for us. byfy can probably get done with its work faster than CLL was completed, but I doubt that there is any way to speed it up significantly from its natural rate other than by doing it yourself.)

lojbab