Date: Wed, 7 Sep 1994 00:04:14 -0400
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@access.digex.net>
Message-Id: <199409070404.AA03355@access3.digex.net>
To: veion@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi
Subject: Re: Lojban WWW Server news
Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net
Content-Length: 3586
Lines: 61

Since you got the tape, and I only mailed one thing to you, there is no
diskette.  I suspect that I probably realized that it is easier and cheaper
to just login and upload, or let you ftp from here at digex if I needed to get
something to you.

I suspect that in the long term, you may BE our main ftp site if you wwill
have that big a disk space.  But we might as well take advantage of a US site
while we have it.  Sooner or later though, the student who set it up will leave
Yale, and we will keep the site only as long as we don't have to ask for much.
But the net is changing so much that 1 or 2 years from now seems rather
difficult to plan for.  By then, ftp may be almost obsolete %^).

I have thought about an FAQ many times, but there really are a few kinds of
FAQs involved here.  In effect the basic FAQ is what is now the Lojban
brochure - Athelstan wrote the first draft as an encoding of all the questions
he was typically asked, in order to save time (at that time we weren't on the net so we reinvented the FAQ independently).

The intro brochure is weak on technical description of the language, 
concentrating on the what and why of Lojban.  We are missing a good answer to
the 'how to learn Lojban question - an index and guide to our various
teaching materials, and how and when/what order to use them.  This is
forever being put off since ythe in progress books will change the answers
so greatly.  But it is still needed.

Then we need an FAQ on beginning technical aspects of LOjban.  The overview
was intended to be a first cut at this, but it has been roundly derided as
too dry, and not answering a lot of interesting and important questions.

Then there is the one that could evolve out of a good index to Lojban List:
a true FAQ that  is based on the questions people interested in Lojban tend
to ask about the hows and whys of varioous features of the language, like
the gismu culture words, how gismu are made, how attityudinal scales are
supposed to work, the perfectrive tenses, word order.  These are non-trivial
questions, and the long if oft-repeated discussions on Lojban List shows
that the answers, oif good, will also be LONG.  I have yet to see an FAQ
that dealt with the long answers to technical questions.  No, maybe I
have - the occasional posting on ASCII representation of IPA on sci.lang
is probably a sort of an FAQ, though one that few read unless they need to
since ti is way to long for casual use by a non-linguist.  Also the sci.lang
FAQ(s) are so rarely posted that they hardly serve the purpose - the people
remember to post it onlyu when a few people ask an FAQ when traffic is otherwise
light, and the questiosn stand out as being not-interesting to the FAQ
maintainer.

If you are gpoing to have an FAQ, it needs to be better maintained, and 
it needs to be posted frequently, and in any case, we need to find questions
AND answers that are answerable in less than a lojbab tome.  (Face it, I just
do NOT write with brevity).

We will NEED that FAQ eventually, since some people are (supposedly)
investigating seting up an alt.lojban mirror of Lojban List (they are 
supposed to be looking at the mechnaics of doing so, and the best resolution
for cross-posting and/or mirrorring the traffic - but as of yet, no one has done
anything since the people volunteered at LogFest.)

It might be an interesting Lojban List topic to see what people think the FAQs
are, and how much they are or are not covered by our intro documentation.
Then indexing the List traffic will give us more data points on what the
questions are.

lojbab