From @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed Dec 12 22:40:19 1992 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 14 Dec 1992 11:44:40 -0500 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5246; Mon, 14 Dec 92 11:42:39 EST Received: from UGA.BITNET by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) with BSMTP id 2810; Mon, 14 Dec 92 11:09:13 EST Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 03:40:19 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: GENERAL/POLICY IMPORTANT - Proposed change in Lojban Pub. Policy 1/2 X-To: conlang@buphy.bu.edu, cortesi@informix.com, lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: Lojban Policy change 1/2 Abstract: The following (broken into 2 messages) proposes a major shift in LLG publication policy regarding what goes into Ju'i Lobypli (JL), and addressing what I see as being a critical issue raised by those proposing a newsletter associated with the ckafybarja (coffeehouse) writing project. That is the need to see more Lojban text reach final publication stage more quickly, while also removing me, from being the bottleneck behind which such text is backed up. Thus, instead of the ckafybarja newsletter, I am counterproposing a change in JL editorial policy, such that much more text will appear in print, with a much shorter review process (and less perfection in the result and fewer English trasnslations and other crutches for the learner). This would be done by using the community of people who have demonstrated some skill in the language as editors-de-jour of individual pieces, who will negotiate an acceptable level of Lojban quality with the authors either through Lojban List postings or private correspondence - email or snail mail as appropriate). My own limited effort would be in coordinating to make sure that all text gets reviewed (and I might delegate the coordinating task as well), and to make sure that as much finished text as possible sees print, while ensuring that all text makes it into the Lojban text archive. My subsidiary goals will be to set some guidelines for the editors to maximize text quality and consistency. I want to reduce the amount of time I spend preparing the non-news portion of JL, to little more than standardized formatting, so I can spend more productive time on technical issues, writing books, and actually using Lojban myself once in a while. If those of you reading this agree in principle (and please respond quickly), there will be some immediate changes, that will affect what goes into the issue of JL I'm now working on. Specifically, I will be trying to get current revisions of all Lojban text written for the ckafybarja project, Ivan's story of the stairs, and possibly Nick and Iain's MEX efforts, all into the current issue. There will be no translations provided beyond what is already written, unless I take one or two short pieces and give a literal English and colloquial English translation in order to show people what they may want do for themselves. Except for news, the Sapir-Whorf discussions long-promised for this issue, and the edited ckafybarja project summary and papers, there will no other technical material in JL17 (I may include the draft MEX paper as an enclosure, but will not let it be a delaying or budget-busting factor). I will need the best possible revised texts within a few days, a week at most, or I will go with what I have. I intend to have JL17 out by Christmas, and that won't be easy unless I change tactics fast. JL will eventually contain much more Lojban text, probably eventually more than 50%, and without the padding of translation. There will be added technical material and news, but not as much. The bulk of pedagogical writing will go into the grammar summary, textbook, and dictionary writing, and not into JL (though if space, time, and money permits, we will continue to publish pieces of those works as supplements.) I am of course especially interested in the views both of those who proposed the ckafybarja newsletter, to see whether this proposal supplants most of the needs semu'i the proposal, and of those people who have not written much Lojban text, as to whether you would find this policy change motivating to you in learning the language and in trying to write Lojban text yourself. DISCUSSION: I have been reviewing the mass of discussion and text for the ckafybarja project in preparing Ju'i Lobypli (JL) #17 (thanks, Veijo for assembling things together - it made things go MUCH faster, even though I'm adding back in some stuff you deleted.) I am jumping to some conclusions, reading between the lines, etc., on some of things that were proposed - especially in conjunction with the "newsletter" proposal. And I am making a counter-proposal that may not quite be what people were thinking of, but which is more likely to be successful in the short run and perhaps long-term as well. I first of all need to make it clear that LLG/Lojban Central/Nora and Bob think it is great that people are thinking about doing things separately from the 'official' way. Lojban got started because we wanted people to feel that they could make the language 'their own', and this newsletter proposal, as well as the ckafybarja project as a whole, is a sign of a certain maturity of this sort in the community. I don't want to be seen as pre-empting an independent effort, if the independence of the effort is the essential feature. I don't think it is in this case. Meanwhile, I think this approach maximizes my ability to delegate my editorial job to others, and if other people are doing that job as I envision it, they may not have time to separately edit the newsletter and write their own Lojban texts. My success at leading LLG, has been in recognizing trends in the community, and adapting the 'official organization' to these trends, to keep the organization pushing in the direction the community as a whole seems to be moving. The organization ends up encompassing all the multitudinous indpendent efforts of individuals and groups, supporting them, while hopefully not stifling them. Meanwhile, none of them should become so exclusionary as to splinter the effort. This is what JCB never learned to do; I've thus far been doing better. It is time for me to tyr to recognize a trend and adapt to it. Thus we have subgroups by interest type (computer applications, Sapir-Whorf, the international language movement), Lojban List for the netters, a couple of local conversation/study groups, the JL and LK communities, and now, what seems to be an emerging need for a sub-community of... Well, what is the sub-community this proposal addresses. Ostensibly, it seems to be (1) the people who want to write creatively in Lojban, using the ckafybarja as a common basis for such writing. But there is a considerable overlap between this community and a couple of related, but different, sub-communities. If these related interests are addressed at the same time, the effort stands a better chance of success and growth, and also of remaining well integrated with the rest of the community. These other subcommunities I see are: 2 the Jimbobs who have reached a level of competence in the language where they can learn from each other by using the language, but not so much by talking about the language to others of less skill; (this group parallels Nora and my and Sylvia's situation in the spoken Lojban community - we cannot improve our spoken Lojban until we can get enough people at our level of speech, and then pull them aside and interact with them; the Jimbobs are at this level, but working in written rather than spoken Lojban). 3 the netters who are used to interacting at a message traffic rate which is more conversation-like than letter-like, leading to Lojban List threads of messages that quote each other in limited context that are mystifying to people who haven't been following the thread. The ckafybarja papers summary, as assembled by Veijo, is so much more coherent to me than it seemed in passing. The individual trees merged together revealing a lush and beautiful forest (I didn't realize until now that Veijo actually posted two etudes, rather than repeated revisions of the same one.) 4 the less active Lojbanists who want to learn the language, are probably going to concentrate on the written language at first from lack of access to other speakers (or from lack of time to do more than read). They probably want to see completed text reflecting the way the language IS, without the debate of the creation and review process. The threads that are involved in creating texts include much discussion about what is right and what is wrong, much of which is good feedback to the people actually communicating, but distracting for the person trying to learn that wants to know the right answer. 5 the community of people who want to see Lojban a success, and who recognize that the mark of success is to have text in and about Lojban in print, in volume. The more text in the language, the better. JL has been focussed on the less active Lojbanist of group 4. The Lojban List readership has been a mixture of all of these groups, but most are closely associated with group 4 as well. But the people who write material for Lojban List (and ultimately for JL) are primarily people oriented towards the other groups, especially group 3 (which among the people on Lojban List is essentially the same as those on the List in group 2). I've felt the need to set a high standard for Lojban text in JL to set a pedagogical example for the community. People expect us to produce GOOD Lojban. Unfortunately, I've learned in the past few years that I cannot manage the organization and teach the language, and write books, and also edit a lot of Lojban text and write and translate as well. Schedules have slipped, and JL publication has reached a sorry state of irregularity, and even with delays the amount of Lojban text remains small and far from the current forefront (slated for JL17 has been Ivan's translation of the story of the stairs from Bulgarian - excellent Lojban but written over a year ago; I would hope Ivan, and the rest of the Jimbobs are writing better Lojban than they did back then.) To meet the needs of the non-netters of group 2, we need to see much more Lojban text in print. More publication might also inspire more Lojbanists to write in the language. But Bob and Nora cannot review and produce JLs at the current standard of text quality with a greater volume of text than present. Indeed, adding kids to our family has cut my Lojban time, and the automated tools that we've been developing are incomplete and not nearly enough to do the job. (Interestingly, The Loglan Institute hit the problem once before, and failed to solve it. In 1984, when their publication The Loglanist (TL) ceased production, text was taking more than a year to reach publication, by which time it was semi-obsolete because of language evolution, and the people producing TL were spending so much time producing it that they couldn't get any real work done. Sound familiar???) I thus believe that the ckafybarja newsletter proposal is as much a cry of dissatisfaction from those of those of the community who want to see more text in print, with the slowness and unresponsiveness of the JL review and production process, as it is a need for a specific organ for the creative writers of the community. If so, a solution that addresses the problem from the point of view of all of the sub-communities mentioned above may be better. The answer has been provided by my experiences in learning Russian. Simply put, you learn languages from a high volume of usage and input and eventually expression in the language. Quality is nice, but my Russian has improved tremendously by dealing with the daily communicating within the needs of my 5 and a 6 year old native Russian-speaking children, who have a rather limited set of interests, an idiosyncratic and age-limited vocabulary in Russian, and their own severe imperfections in their use of their native tongue. That daily give and take is very high-volume, and both the kids and I make countless grammatical errors. But every once in a while, I realize that I'm doing it wrong because my error results in miscommunication or a failure to communicate, AND I LEARN. (And so do the kids; Avgust in particular speaks much more clearly than when he left the orphanage.) The Lojban learning process needs to better emulate this natural language learning process. As JL is the primary mass organ of communicating in the Lojban community, I need to find a way to make JL meet that need. That means removing my own text-reviewing productivity as the roadblock to JL text-publication. It also means lowering the pedagogical 'perfection' of the writings, providing fewer English translations, so that people will actually use the language to read the text. It also means co-opting the people who were interested in editor-de-jour-ing the new newsletter and getting them to instead perform a similar process for JL. ---- lojbab lojbab@grebyn.com Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273