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Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 12:43:46 -0400
From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
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Subject: Re: [lojban] Growth and decline in lojbanistan
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On 9/15/2014 8:49 PM, mukti wrote:
> On Sunday, September 14, 2014 5:53:33 AM UTC-3, And Rosta wrote:
>
>     /What and where are these historical studies? Was 2003 the
>     historical peak?/
>
> gleki was referring to some informal research I've discussed in IRC.
> I've tried to measure lojbanic activity over time by looking at things
> like the number of messages in the mailing lists and the number of
> members of LLG.
>
> Mailing list activity seems to have peaked in 2001-2002: The combined
> number of messages in "lojban" and "jboske" topped 7,500 during those
> years. 2003 was the year that LLG reached peak membership (36). Mailing
> list activity declined, but a lot of activity was diverted to the phpBB
> forum supporting the newly formed BPFK.
>
> The years after 2003 saw a steep decline in all of these measurements,
> bottoming out in 2008 (2,100 messages in "lojban" and
> "lojban-beginners", less than 30% of peak activity) and 2009 (17 LLG
> members, less than 50% of peak membership).
>
> Because of the sudden decline -- 2004 mailing list activity was about
> 50% of the previous year -- I've been tempted to read 2003 as the
> critical year, and to look for clues that year as to what happened: What
> contributed to the rapid growth in previous years, and how was that
> growth reversed so quickly?
>
> It looks to me like the adoption of the baseline policy 2002 -- and the
> consequent failure of BPFK to fullfill its expectations despite heroic
> efforts by both chairs -- is where the wheels came off the bus. Which is
> why I would like to bring proposals to the Annual Meeting to determine
> whether specific terms of the baseline policy are still aligned with the
> values and the experience of the community, or whether there's another
> way forward.
>
> I'd be interested to hear from those who were around throughout the
> 2000s: What, from your perspective, happened? And what lessons can be
> drawn for the future?

I think that there were a couple of other factors.  The short version of 
all the following is that the modern Internet made a whole bunch of new 
forms of activity possible, and Lojbanists turned to those new forms and 
away from the mailing list.  At the same time, we had a major change of 
leadership, and the creation of the BFPK absorbed an enormous amount of 
attention and focus by key people for a critical period of time.

The splitting into multiple mailing lists possibly removed critical mass 
from Lojban List.  I think the disjointness of the various independent 
activities was the major cause of reduced list traffic.

The rise of IRC meant that the Lojban List wasn't necessarily the best 
single place to post, and it was the most active Lojbanists that 
"disappeared" to IRC.  The much discussed rise of xorlo came about 
primarily through off-list activity

The rise of the tiki/wiki format for Lojban web pages again gave a new 
outlet for (especially experienced) Lojbanists other than the mailing list.

In addition, I think that there was a turn towards translation of larger 
works that started with xorxes work on Alice.  The mailing list was less 
a place to work with others on such larger efforts.

There was a major change of leadership, as I stopped leading, and my 
wife almost totally stopped Lojban activity.  John Cowan had greatly 
reduced his leadership activity after CLL was published, for multiple 
reasons.  Nick Nicholas dropped out soon after, also for multiple 
reasons.  The new leadership wasn't focused on "leading" the entire 
community so much as getting major accomplishments done, and they were 
communicating much more through back-channels than on the mailing list. 
  My leadership, on the other hand, had been conducted almost entirely 
on the mailing list.

Another significant change, which started before 2003, but increased 
rapidly at that point, was a rapid increase of international Lojbanists.

The 2008-ish rebirth is probably significantly due to the work of Matt 
Arnold, at first on his own and later as President of LLG.  He brought 
attention to current Lojban activities to the home page, and also talked 
up Lojban a lot on the mailing list, encouraged a rebirth of regular 
LogFests which had suffered when I no longer hosted them (and LogFest 
was no longer associated with the annual meeting.  Matt did a lot of 
good stuff for the community (His focus was not on LLG as an organization).

At about the same time, we figured out how to use amazon.com to sell 
CLLs and have them do most of the order fulfillment.  We've since gone 
from selling 25 copies of CLL a year to perhaps 125.  That fueled 
considerably more rapid growth in the community, and enormously cut the 
overhead of time spent filling orders.

lojbab

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