From matt.mattarn@gmail.com Mon Jan 02 12:53:27 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list llg-board); Mon, 02 Jan 2006 12:53:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from zproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.162.200]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1EtWgF-0006Rq-HT for llg-board@lojban.org; Mon, 02 Jan 2006 12:53:26 -0800 Received: by zproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id f1so2418617nzc for ; Mon, 02 Jan 2006 12:53:22 -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=AIpjno75sAVucr9uhJ4o+wxGA+a10tFHRLL4VM2+RR4gKi1zCVQVVDUy3cjt3AhJlDkl3fXpBF6U+9yZhYRuBGb1XWveWRAbyeCU2K6x5a8NR+p7sWid/YYUrVpEK1oiy4t3hh6CndcVpy3cYJsHsjg3EkR2IHeDqBiJXRkyizY= Received: by 10.64.148.14 with SMTP id v14mr270117qbd; Mon, 02 Jan 2006 12:53:21 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.65.110.14 with HTTP; Mon, 2 Jan 2006 12:53:21 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 15:53:21 -0500 From: Matt Arnold To: llg-board@lojban.org Subject: [llg-board] Re: Two organizations In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <20051219070640.GB3514@ccil.org> <43AB97DF.8030703@lojban.org> <20051226195753.GB5289@chain.digitalkingdom.org> <20060102042644.GJ4087@chain.digitalkingdom.org> <20060102173819.GL29659@miranda.org> X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) X-archive-position: 55 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: llg-board-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: llg-board-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: matt.mattarn@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: llg-board@lojban.org X-list: llg-board > > first one, is absolutely bizarre. Go do something with Lojban, with > > other people. You will then be an informal Lojban organization. (In so > > far as "informal organization" makes any sense in the first place!) > > I may be feeling up the elephant's belly right now, but AIUI, the idea is > to have an organisation that is free from the constraints of being > chartered in a U.S. state, and having to hold meetings and maintain quorum > and whatnot. Not that the scope and structure is to be loose or undefined. Despite the fact that we have often been referring to the organization as "informal" among its many potential or possible attributes, so far as I know Jay is the only person who thinks informality is the whole point. If it were the whole point, we have already have such a thing for almost twenty years. It's called the Lojban community, and any person who gets the mailing lists is in it by definition. Membership, by contrast, is a formality, and therefore it is automatically not informal. By the way, a google search for "up to the elephant's belly" returned no matches. What does it mean? > > We can better spend our time on things that the LLG itself will do. > > After all, we're the LLG board, and we're beholden to its members. > > Not the future-members of another organization, even if they are a > > superset of our own members. > > Yes, I agree. There is a good reason that I have been discussing Arnt's proposal with the LLG before going straight to the beginners-list and lojban-list. This organization, if it is to bear any resemblance to the International Esperanto Association, would take over authorities and responsibilities previously assigned to the LLG, such as publishing books, organizing Logfest, and the www.lojban.org wiki. Jay noticed this immediately, and I noticed it too. Arnt, the link to the International Esperanto Association came from you. Is that what you intended? May I be frank? So long as we keep the language definition and development firmly within the control of the LLG through BPFK, maybe we need to give up one or two of those other functions to a larger, more representative -- and more active -- democratic body. Arnt said: > if we had a user org that basically did nothing, but that used Lojban > in its publications, and was bigger than the LLG, thus becoming the main > Lojban org, this problem would be solved, I think. That's not doing nothing. Creating publications is doing something. I'm thinking along the same lines but larger, to include every type of potential venue for communicating in Lojban. - organizing Logfest. - scheduling phone chats. - scheduling IRC meetups. - creating and administering the Lojban MOO and roleplaying micronation. - chartering branch clubs such as the one here in Detroit, and the potential one in California. The Lojban website (except for its formal LLG-sanctioned sections), and publishing books would fall under this heading, but it's already being done quite well by the LLG and should remain as it is and not be split off. The new org would absolutely not control what the language _is_. It would not be an organization about language design, math, logic, or the sciences as the LLG is. It would solely be in charge of creating purposes toward which languages are put. Trust me. I know what I'm talking about. I started a weekly Monday-night gathering at a local restaurant. It's as informal as you can get without dissolving completely. We have no charter. No mission statement. No membership roll. Only one thing: show up at the same time and place. And yet! And yet! You would not believe how much formal organization and voting goes into showing up at the same time and place! No incorporation or committee of a half dozen people can decree the time and place and expect the attendees to be available for it. So it is with meetings through IRC, VoIP and Logfest. > I would definitely describe people who promote Lojban on SF conventions as > "activists". :-) Point taken. I prefer "lojbangelist". -epkat