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[bpfk-announce] Re: [ lojban.org ] - New Post - Salvo 1: 27 April



In the light of this, all I mean to say is that the current constraints 
on my time and net access are such that I will try to contribute to
discussions that appear on jboske & occasionally read the phpbb if
it is primarily a locus of record rather than of debate.

This is no sort of complaint. It's just notification & explanation
of my silence.

Hopefully people will use jboske for technical debate, and phpbb
for the mechanics of formal decision-taking, in which case it will
be feasible for me to participate to the degree to which I had
been hoping to. 

Finally, let me note that I understand & accept that Robin & others
don't have the time & inclination to get involved in technical
debates about the language, & I would hope that Robin will similarly
understand that other people don't have the time & inclination to
explore the phpbb resources he has so diligently provided. If he has
sweated blood to give us good IT resources, I likewise have sweated
blood to try to get Lojban a sound linguistic foundation; let's
proceed with mutual respect.

--And.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: webmaster@lojban.org [mailto:webmaster@lojban.org]
> Sent: 28 April 2003 15:38
> Subject: [ lojban.org ] - New Post - Salvo 1: 27 April
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> The following message has been posted in Meta-BPFK.. 
> 
> Author  : nitcion
> URL     : http://www.lojban.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=125#125
> Subject : Salvo 1: 27 April
> Message : 
> 
> This is polemic. Deal 
> 
> Before anything else, I will say (for the zillionth time): I will not 
> allow bpfk discussion to turn into the morass of jboske or lojban 
> list. And since you stuck your head out on the topic, over at the 
> Poll topic in NAI: that means you, Jordan. I *will* be nazi about 
> on-topic discussion. If anyone here feels impinged on, then feel free 
> to go right back to jboske, and the utterly unnavigable debate there. 
> If you don't like the fact that this is how I'll run things, then it 
> is in your power to unseat me (and let's see any of you lot run this better) 
> 
> And: it is simply unacceptable that I allow the free-form topic 
> meanderings that email enables. I will not preside over a repeat of 
> December 2002, and I shouldn't think you'd like one either. The 
> discussion here shall be organised and enforced into threading; and 
> in my opinion, this is the best way to enforce it. Frankly, I don't 
> see how this is that much more impractical than the wiki, which 
> people were happy to participate in. At any rate, this remains the 
> forum on offer, and until someone is prepared to invest the time to 
> come up with something better, you might as well use it. Since we 
> ummed and awwed for three months on what to put the discussions into, 
> you'll pardon both the webmaster and me if we are less than 
> enthusiastic about the prospect of switching now 
> 
> Greg: if finding the right forum and dialing up is a hassle, no email 
> to phpbb gateway that preserves the integrity of the current fora 
> will avoid that hassle that I can see. Your emailed posts must always 
> go to a specific, on-topic forum, or we will have chaos. If anyone 
> knows of a better solution, let's hear it. (I'd imagine it would be 
> something like storing the ID numbers of each topic, and allowing 
> email to go only to specified topics --- though you'd have to 
> download the current topics from the web anyway. I don't think that'd 
> be hugely more practical than logging on and going to the right forum 
> in the first place. This is probably doable, but I'm afraid neither 
> Robin nor I will do it; if any programmers here feel strongly enough 
> about it, phpbb is a pretty open architecture, off you go.)
> 
> As to what causes the low level of participation, I'd have thought 
> the size of what I'm expecting people to do is daunting enough. We 
> can discuss ways of lessening that load; I want this done too, after 
> all. I'm now of the opinion, for example, that the shepherds should 
> do things like ask for volunteers to do corpus searches, or delegate 
> particular cmavo issues, once they have been broadly identified. But 
> make no mistake: this is all work that needs to be done. And noone is 
> going to do that work for you. (We know who we expected to do that 
> work for us, and how far that got.) You want a dictionary, you 
> contribute to it 
> 
> Arnt: you are correct that we all have day jobs. The dictionary will 
> get written despite that, or it won't get written at all. It has a 
> much greater chance of getting written like this than what we had 
> before. And if it takes five years, let it; as long as we're making 
> more tangible progress than we have in the past ten, I'm not dismayed 
> about missing the May 15 deadline. If you all need the psychological 
> boost, there are stacks of trivial paradigms out there. Compass 
> points, say, or mathematical constants. Do a scan for all Lojban text 
> ever for those cmavo, see if any issues have come up, read through 
> CLL, see if what it says makes sense, spend a day working out if 
> there are any other emerging issues, and hey presto you're done. 
> There'll only be 10 or 20 paradigms that offer a real challenge 
> 
> Yes, the discussions here will get abstruse, and I explicitly 
> organised things in the charter so that not everybody needs to 
> participate in every discussion. I will expect people to participate 
> in *some* discussions, though. And not to diss those in the rest. And 
> there's only one paradigm being discussed right now anyway; things 
> will get a lot busier 
> 
> Though I also remind you --- and that includes Craig: participants 
> need to identify and link to places where the debate has already been 
> conducted, in preference to redoing it (the djez principle). And Bob 
> is right that this is not the forum to open up freeform novel topics, 
> outside of the very restricted pro-con format. The forum for that 
> remains the main wiki and/or the much maligned jboske --- which has 
> been silent since January 
> 
> But Bob: Your reasoning that people aren't using phpbb because they 
> are horrified at Craig's or Jorge's revisionist proposals insults my 
> intelligence. There's been no shortage of fundamentalists to offer 
> rebuttals, and nothing has impeded anyone from going off and 
> researching another paradigm. The volume of posts on NAI is miniscule 
> compared to the greater flareups we have seen; that's not the issue. 
> I am happy for the vote, rather than fiat, to decide what is in of 
> out of bounds, in any case. The vote is already --- and unashamedly 
> --- rigged in favour of conservatism, because of the requirement of 
> consensus for change; if consensus isn't reached, the status quo 
> remains. That outcome is supported by the bpfk charter, and I do not 
> regard it as being under threat. But a community vote on this will 
> carry more moral weight than any amount of pronouncements from Lojban 
> Central, at this stage. I want to give the community the chance to 
> pass its own verdict, both on the more radical proposal (NAI=UI), and 
> the less radical (CAhA NAI) 
> 
> And even if we will disagree on details, Craig is doing the right 
> thing in identifying issues for discussion; and I will not rule 
> anything out of bounds until I see Craig's detailed record of the 
> standing of NAI. Bob, you are being unjustifiably peremptory to be 
> demanding detailed proposals and pros and cons right now. Craig is 
> working on it --- and he's doing more bpfk work right now than anyone 
> else. Let him continue his work 
> 
> I have already suggested that a decision on CAhA NAI might need to be 
> put on hold pending CAhA; but this does not get in the way of Craig 
> exploring what NAI does in general at this stage. Whether CAhA NAI 
> does in fact get put on hold is Craig's call first; then mine; then 
> ultimately the voting commission's 
> 
> If you want to respond to this post with a complaint, don't. All of 
> our time is worth more than that. There are seventy-odd paradigms out 
> there. Go out there and work on one. Identify the problems that 
> happen when you actually do the work --- and that, we can discuss. 
> The job of advancing Lojban is now on each of your shoulders 
> 
> --------------------------------
> -- 
> Thanks, The Management
> 
>