Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id IAA01657 for ; Thu, 23 Nov 1995 08:58:06 -0500 Message-Id: <199511231358.IAA01657@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 4D189664 ; Thu, 23 Nov 1995 9:48:27 -0400 Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 13:50:35 GMT Reply-To: Matthew Faupel Sender: Lojban list From: Matthew Faupel Subject: Re: serving the needs of Lojban learners X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199511231150.NAA29394@axl01it.ntc.nokia.com> (message from Logical Language Group on Thu, 23 Nov 1995 06:45:33 -0500) Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Thu Nov 23 08:58:12 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU > I jst posted a long and rambling message. For those who got bogged down on > my rambling, I REALLT want to hear from the inactive subcribers to Lojban > List as to what you would like to see done tro serve your needs better. As a definitely inactive but nevertheless long-term subscriber, I think that I'm a prime candidate for responding to this :-) My inactivity is simply because I don't have enough time to learn Lojban properly (I'm learning Spanish and Finnish at the moment, and that combined with a lively social life doesn't leave sufficient time to do Lojban justice). I still subscribe because Lojban is both an interesting project in itself and also the most "professional" attempt I've seen at developing a conlang. Some of the side discussions raised such as the recent one about degrees of truth and falsity have been illuminating too. My comments on the solutions mentioned by lojbab: A newsgroup: I'm neutral on this as far as advantages and disadvantages go, but tend to go against it as our newsfeed seems to be very conservative on its uptake of new newsgroups, and so I might not be able to receive it. A lojban announce list/A lojban text only list: I'm not sure that this solves very much - I for one would subscribe to all of them just to make sure I didn't miss anything important :-) A lojban web page: As proposed, it sounds like a nice way of setting up penfriend type relationships for beginners, but it loses the ability to raise comments on texts i.e. to branch off from an original lojban text to discuss grammatical issues that it highlighted. The thing that gives me the biggest problem with the list as it stands at the moment is not the throughput per se, but the [dis]organisation of that throughput. With my mail reader at least, there is no threading of the articles, there is an awful lot of quoting of previous posts and there is almost never a summary once a thread has run its course. And there is the usual problem of threads' topic changing without the title changing. I guess my ideal solution would be some sort of web page that allowed the creation of articles and then provided attributed editing of those articles. The home page would look something like: Title Last edited by ------------------------------------------------------------------- ni, jei, barely, almost 17 Nov 1995 Jorge Llambias Purple Lojban 16 Nov 1995 lojbab .... reverse sorted by date and possibly subdivided into folders related to Lojban text, grammar, newbie questions (thus forming a sort of auto-FAQ) etc. The articles themselves would be editable so that you could insert attributed text at the end or (more technically challenging) at any point, e.g.: LB= Logical Language Group AR= And Rosta LB: Poet and semi-Lojbanist Michael Helsem created the work zirjbo AR: Why "semi-Lojbanist"? I believe he's the author of the only AR: published book written in Lojban. LB: Because almost nothing that he wrote would pass for even very bad LB: Lojban. Michael is a poet who believes in poetic license, and he LB: ...etc. The advantages of this (for me) would be: - Threads would be clearly defined. - No wasted space through quoting. - I could wait until a thread "settled down" before reading it, without having to worry about losing some of it. - It would be possible to see when a thread had died and thus some kind soul could then write a short summary of the salient points (perhaps for inclusion in ju'i lobypli). This is sort of an extension of the archiving web page idea proposed by lojbab. The problem is, software to support this probably doesn't exist :-( If we do stick with a mailing list, I would ask: please keep quoting to a minimum and please post a summary at the end of long threads if possible. Cheers, Matthew