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Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 09:14:22 -0400
From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
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Subject: Re: [lojban] Revitalizing LLG: Suggestions for the 2014 annual meeting
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On 8/23/2014 12:33 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
>     Probably.  I'm not sure that I could do it, and actually be able to
>     communicate.
>
> There are enough speakers in IRC who can at least produce Lojban
> sentences if not in real time but at least with the help of a dictionary.

But the suggestion specified meetings by email, not on IRC.  I don't 
even think of IRC most of the time, even when I have dead time, and 
certainly not when I am actively running a meeting.  (And this presumes 
that one of those speakers on IRC is actually there when someone has a 
question; my experience has been something like a 50% rate of even 
getting a single response when I get on IRC, and usually that is merely 
a greeting.  Only once in many years have I found a conversation going 
on at all, and it was in English.

> You response surprises me.
> Non-Lojbanists might conclude that Lojban is not even a working language.

Any conclusion about Lojban reached based on the voting membership, many 
of whom date from when Lojban was NOT a working language, would be bound 
to be erroneous.  Then bear in mind that the primary focus of the 
membership is on organizational matters rather than Lojban matters.

One might question the fact that almost all discussions of byfy matters 
has been in English rather than in Lojban (even when conducted by people 
who have demonstrated the ability to write voluminously in Lojban).  But 
of course if they were in Lojban, there would be zero chance that I 
would read them, for example.  I could do so, but it hasn't been my 
priority given the lack of time I have been spending in recent years.  I 
could wish it were otherwise, but it isn't.

> However, is it culturally neutral to continue using non-Lojban for that?

No, but the purpose of LLG meetings is to get LLG business done (and do 
so as quickly as possible, since business matters aren't the highest 
lojban-related priority for much of anyone in the community except 
possibly me), not demonstrate cultural neutrality.

>     We aren't getting a set of meeting minutes in English.  Do you think
>     Robin will be able to more easily produce them in Lojban?  And he is
>     presumably as fluent a Lojbanist as we have.
>
> I didn't know he couldn't. I thought only a lack of his time could
> prevent him from doing so.

Lack of time is precisely the reason.  And for most of us, dealing with 
Lojban text (either writing it or reading it) takes a lot more time than 
dealing with English.

> But even then assign other people for that. E.g. I can do initial
> translation and you can check them afterwards (since not I will be
> signing them anyway).

No one produces minutes in English, so you have nothing to translate.

And I personally wouldn't likely have the time to check and substantial 
amount of text written in Lojban for validity, much less correctness of 
translation.

But the people who originally proposed doing meetings in Lojban 10+ 
years ago. never even produced a set of Lojban bylaws, which would 
undoubtedly be the first required official document.

Indeed I just checked and the whole effort to do meetings in Lojban 
appears to have been approved in 2002 but was removed and/or tabled 
indefinitely in 2003.  The one remaining motion approved in 2002 and 
never superseded, was that official stuff on the web be translated into 
Lojban.  So far as I know, absolutely nothing was ever done on this by 
the people advocating it.

>     We would have to start by having a translation of the Bylaws into
>     Lojban (and agreeing on that translation).  I would then suggest
>     translating whichever book of parliamentary procedure that John
>     Cowan specifies into Lojban.  Otherwise we lack the terminology for
>     a parliamentary meeting.
>
> Terminology can be made on the flow during translations with adding them
> to jbovlaste.

They can be, but they aren't.  And it has been noted that there are 
active people nowadays who don't know how to add to jbovlaste even 
though there are instructions. (I don't claim to be active in this 
sense, and I also do not know how because I haven't bothered to figure 
it out, never having wanted to add a word.)

Remember, BTW, that jbovlaste is an official project, but its contents 
are not automatically "official" merely by being added.  We'd need some 
sort of formally published dictionary, approved by byfy and/or LLG 
(depending on the conditions specified in the 2002 statement).

There is an official project to come up with Lojban parliamentary terms, 
but the one report (anonymously submitted, possibly Mark Shoulson) said 
that it was "being worked on" by the submitter, who was apparently the 
only one involved.

>         I also suggest translating existing documents into a code with
>         members
>         of the LLG (or at least by le jatna) signing them as official ones.
>
>
>     Not sure what this means.  Code kia?  Which existing documents?  Any
>     translation of the Bylaws that was going to supplant the current
>     English ones would probably have to be approved as a Bylaw amendment
>     in order to be treated as "official".
>
>
> Your replies showed that the Bylaws can be superseded by other bylaws
> that weren't even published.

So far as I know, no Bylaws have been superseded, and there are no 
unpublished bylaws.  So I have no idea what you are referring to.

> This hampers the development of the existing and new projects.

It shouldn't.  There is absolutely no mention of "projects" in the bylaws.

If someone wants a new project, then per 2002 minutes:
> John Cowan proposed that we institute official LLG projects as follows:
>
>     Leader of project presents it to President.
>     President consults Board.
>     If Board approves, transmit information to Webmaster to post on official project list.
>     Webmaster to poll project leaders at least every 3 months.
>     Project leaders must then report to Board.
>     Board may decide to not continue project as official.

the following amendment was incorporated before approval (amendments a 
and b from the minutes)

> That the initiators mail the request to both webmaster and president,
> and if there is no response from the Board in an agreed-upon time
> frame it will mean it's automatically added to the official project
> list as "no objection"

I haven't seen any proposed projects submitted to the Board since then. 
  I can accept that people may not know the above procedure, which 
probably should be added to the project page.  What Robin appears to 
have implemented was a more informal method that hasn't gone to the 
Board, but it looks like the reporting scheme completely broke down by 
2006 and most projects never had a single report submitted.

It's a nice idea, but no one wants to do the necessary paperwork, as is 
true for most LLG efforts.

> If there was an official list of bylaws that are not superseded then we
> would be able to translate them to Lojban.

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Bylaws+of+The+Logical+Language+Group%2C+Inc.

no changes since 2007.

The Lojban license was put up by Robin and not modified since 2005.

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+Web+Copyright+License

The 1997 and 2002 statements haven't been modified since they were produced.

> People would be able to rely on them knowing that those bylaws are not
> superseded.

Bylaws cannot be superseded without a vote that meets the criteria 
specified in the Bylaws themselves.

> If any bylaw can be ignored/superseded at any time and no one in the
> world (except members of the LLG) knows about them then
> why do we have those bylaws?

If someone official ignores a bylaw, any member (and probably any 
non-member as well) can object, most easily via point of order during a 
meeting.  It then must be dealt with under the rules for parliamentary 
procedure.

I'm not sure how much non-members are likely to be affected by changes 
to the Bylaws, without any specific examples.

>     Of course, given that CLL is one of the baseline documents, you may
>     be calling for a translation of CLL into Lojban.  That would be an
>     interesting challenge, and a rather voluminous one.  We'd need
>     all-Lojban dictionary-quality gismu and cmavo lists too, and I never
>     did accomplish the dictionary-quality cmavo list in English.
>
> This project is
> 1. time-consuming
> 2. we don't have a working platform for doing CLL 1.1 even in English

Correct.  Hence, nothing gets done.

> My personal view is that linking to examples using numbers is a bad
> practice in CLL but since it is the official refgram and not a tutorial

It is a book, one of those things that appears in print, and it is the 
norm in such books that examples are numbered and referred to by number 
in the text.

Hypertext can avoid such inconveniences, but at least so far, we are 
dealing with print as well as on-line.  That would likely be true of a 
Lojban version as well.  I certainly wouldn't ever try to read 600 pages 
in Lojban on a computer screen (or on a Kindle for that matter - I 
haven't read that much text yet on a Kindle in English)

> Anyway CLL partially works as a good tutorial too (as others are
> criticized by many people coming to IRC channel). This means that
> translating CLL into Lojban itself is partially useless since many
> concepts and parts of grammar in Lojban explain themselves.

Nothing explains itself.  And the purpose would be to meet the standard 
that all of our official documents be produced in Lojban (whether or not 
they would be used much in the Lojban form isn't the primary consideration)

>         Official documents initially written in Lojban can be translated to
>         English later.
>
>     Which ones are those?
>
> You decide. I imagine the full code including all documents that
> describe how LLG and BPFK works.

None of them were originally written in Lojban, and as yet, none have 
been translated, so your response doesn't answer your original statement 
about said initially written ones.

Most people knowing that the documents were initially written in English 
would read them in English UNLESS a) they were seeking the experience of 
reading the Lojban text or b) the Lojban text officially superseded the 
English original, which would be replaced by a back-translation.

> This all looks strange. It sound like all members say "Yeah, I support
> Lojban but I'm not going to learn it".

Yep.

> Why so?

In some cases, because they got involved when there wasn't a language to 
learn.  In others like myself, I learned it but haven't recently spent 
enough time to maintain my skill (and for me, I have never learned a 
language other than English to the point of being able to think in that 
language - I came close with 6-year-old Russian but couldn't understand 
adults, but Lojban in my mind is always glossed to English before being 
interpreted.)

> Why not add people to LLG and BPFK that can produce correct Lojban
> sentences at least in written form?

LLG pretty much takes anyone who wants to join and is committed to the 
goals and responsibilities of membership (which are primarily 
organizational - see the Bylaws).  BPFK takes people under whatever 
conditions the jatna sets.  I suspect right now merely being willing to 
DO something is the primary requirement.  Actual skill in Lojban is 
secondary to that.

Your suggestion might be ideal, but beggars can't be choosers.

At one time Pierre was leading a project to come up with a means of 
certifying various sorts of Lojban skill levels.  That project, like 
almost all others, seems to have produced very little beyond intentions.

lojbab

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