From nobody@chain.digitalkingdom.org Tue Dec 19 16:44:33 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list bpfk-announce); Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:44:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GwpZP-0003Tj-6s for bpfk-announce-real@lojban.org; Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:44:32 -0800 Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GwpZO-0003TU-7I for bpfk-announce@lojban.org; Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:44:30 -0800 Resent-From: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Resent-Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:44:30 -0800 Resent-Message-ID: <20061220004430.GT13756@chain.digitalkingdom.org> Resent-To: bpfk-announce@lojban.org Received: from chain.digitalkingdom.org ([64.81.66.169]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Gwnyz-000110-Na; Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:03:00 -0800 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list bpfk-announce); Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:02:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from Debian-exim by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GwmcF-0005Gs-UM for bpfk-announce-real@lojban.org; Tue, 19 Dec 2006 13:35:16 -0800 Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com ([66.249.92.174]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GwiUz-0006V5-Jz for bpfk-announce@lojban.org; Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:11:39 -0800 Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id m3so1756705uge for ; Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:11:28 -0800 (PST) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=kzSNavgP3p/9XrxyGPtqCjGDr/aLlljJWK/mVZYzfwL76GxoD+mul7dlXaI5cAXIbLOqIPR5RPfJCTSc/abMFe5RwNz1qu10gt5JEhogKq4ylEuiuVy1KcDq+Sl6WMeJV/I3MqIMI6YYSEGfauScqdnRi5XHYo9j5/1pTXYElRQ= Received: by 10.78.204.7 with SMTP id b7mr4225351hug.1166548287882; Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:11:27 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.78.144.4 with HTTP; Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:11:27 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 12:11:27 -0500 From: "Matt Arnold" To: bpfk-announce@lojban.org, "Robert LeChevalier" Subject: [bpfk-announce] Re: BPFK In-Reply-To: <458771EE.9020108@lojban.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <458771EE.9020108@lojban.org> X-Spam-Score: -2.5 X-Spam-Score-Int: -24 X-Spam-Bar: -- X-archive-position: 122 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 X-original-sender: matt.mattarn@gmail.com Precedence: bulk X-list: bpfk-announce X-Spam-Bar: -- Resent-Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:44:30 -0800 X-archive-position: 126 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: bpfk-announce-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: bpfk-announce-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: bpfk-announce@lojban.org X-list: bpfk-announce This is in response to offlist comments by Lojbab. Bob, I'm sending this to you and to bpfk-announce; the list was having problems but tell me if you only receive this through your personal e-mail. 1. Utilizing Me For Busy Work 2. Definition Of "Active" (In This Context For My Purposes) 3. Do We Even Need Recruitment? 4. My Understanding Of What It's For And How It Works 5. Ways Forward 1. Utilizing Me For Busy Work I need clarification on the difference between writing a proposal for a section and shepherding it. Is it just being curator for the wiki page through the wiki interface? Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it. That's not language design work, that's curator / secretarial. Leave the wiki editing to me if you want. In addition, I am very happy to transform formats, transfer content to different mediums and user interfaces, and perform other curator / archival services for absolutely any Lojbanist. I do the same thing for the Penguicon wiki with geeks who refuse to use that wiki. For the Penguicon Google Calendar and Google Spreadsheets where we've been getting work done-- there are those who won't use Google services as a matter of principle. No problem; they just send me their content and I put it up there. Let it be the same with you. One of my super powers is that my taste in user interfaces differs from most *NIX geeks I know, so that my skill sets and theirs have a complementary lack of overlap. I'm happy to create logins for myself on a hundred different systems and carry out your wishes. 2. Definition Of "Active" (In This Context For My Purposes) I consider the ones I hear from _at all_ to be "active people in Lojban." If you're around at all, I'll be talking to you on a regular basis about "hey, what have you done for BPFK lately?" You'll be unable to slack off without being reminded of it. The reminders will be as regular as you are comfortable with, so you will either eventually do work or tell me to go away. I even got some of your phone numbers and mailing addresses at Philcon, which I would use with your permission, and I'd like more of them. I'd like you to each tell me the communication method that works best for you and that you are least capable of ignoring me in. You don't _have_ to take BPFK that seriously, although I beg you to, but I just want to know the degree to which each of you will take it seriously. It's that important. It's really, really important to finish BPFK, as the foundation for most other things that can by done in the entire language project. It seems to be somewhat of a bottleneck in which we are told in many other projects "we're not ready to do this because we're not sure what a lot of the words mean in sufficient detail." You each have my intense appreciation for _anything_ you do to move this forward. 3. Do We Even Need Recruitment? Although I would like more, I'm not sure yet that the solution is to get more BPFK commisioners than the ten of you. (Arnt, Jay, John, Bob, Nora, Pierre, Robin, Jorge, Mark, Theodore.) It could be that we have all the talent that we need, so long as they will do the work, no matter how slowly, just so long as it's steady. Further members would just make consensus more difficult to achieve. 4. My Understanding Of What It's For And How It Works *deep breath* So far as I can tell, BPFK it is for creating a set of approved documents. These will contain definitions of all cmavo in reasonably thorough detail, and correct issues with some gismu where the existing gismu definitions are insufficient in some way. The pages will then be published as an alphabetically-ordered reference lookup, electronically and as an attractive bound paper book with all the cognitive ergonomics my graphic design skills can provide. (Yeah, I'm learning LaTeX.) A "section" is a group of related cmavo needing the above process to be done. A "proposal" is a document, expanding the understanding of the words in a section with examples, as thorough as reasonable, of how they can be used, or offering changes to solve the problems with them, if any. 5. Ways Forward I propose that "checkpoints" be discarded for now. I would like to focus on a smaller subset of the language at a time than BPFK has previously done. I would like everyone to form teams of two or three to work on a section. Choose someone with whom you have a fairly good understanding or good ability to attain understanding. I would like for none of you to be inactive at any given time. Others will not be inactive, they'll just be on a team for a different section. I'd like the maximum being worked on at a time to be six sections total, each with a different team of three or two, or maybe one person if he has proven himself diligent. I will keep asking you how close you are to being done with your section. When you are done, I call a vote on your current section and the whole BPFK goes and reads it. Inevitably everybody argues. If suggestions are made that improve the section, the document is changed and I call a vote again. If it is a complete gridlock on a clarification/expansion (not a change to the existing language), what if we do as follows? What if anyone who argues has to team up with those who agree with them to write an alternative proposal? If for whatever reason they cannot, they lose. - If there only exists one proposal, - and its opponents consider it less attractive or useful than they would like, - but at the bare minimum it is pragmatically functional enough to be speakable and non-contradictory, - and more than 75% of BPFK members are in favor of it who vote before the deadline, ... then I give the dissenting coalition an extension within which to show a good-faith effort to make progress on writing an alternative proposal. If for whatever reason they cannot, or if progress on writing their alternative stagnates with no progress for weeks, then I end their deadline extension and the only existing proposal passes. A higher burden will be placed on altering part of the language as it already exists. The existing language feature, if it is acknowledged to have the bare minimum pragmatic functionality to be speakable in principle and non-contradictory, will be considered its own "proposal" and the burden of proof would fall such that the status quo would stay the same by default. What do you think? - Eppcott