From pycyn@aol.com Fri Oct 27 09:27:23 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: Pycyn@aol.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_2_1); 27 Oct 2000 16:27:22 -0000 Received: (qmail 1277 invoked from network); 27 Oct 2000 16:27:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 27 Oct 2000 16:27:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-r09.mail.aol.com) (152.163.225.9) by mta3 with SMTP; 27 Oct 2000 16:27:22 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-r09.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v28.32.) id a.61.86357de (664) for ; Fri, 27 Oct 2000 12:26:58 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <61.86357de.272b06d1@aol.com> Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 12:26:57 EDT Subject: Re re sis-boom be: literalism To: lojban@egroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Windows AOL sub 41 From: pycyn@aol.com X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 4716 lojbab: <> This is technically correct; no one has the power to forbid anything and, most especially, Lojban Central does not and has not, by and large, exercised even the appearance of such power. But practically, some people do, by what they say and how they say it, cast a chill over certain kinds of considerations. Their licenses to speak authoritatively vary, but this does not affect their effect -- nor are these licenses checked with any regularity by the bootstrappers behind them. A "no" or a "malglico" or even an "I suggest instead" from one of this groups amounts to a death sentence for whatever is being considered, even without an explanation and certainly without a careful examination. There is no rule that compels this, of course, but so far there has also been no serious effort to combat it. I suspect that the wielders of this kind of power are themselves often unaware that they have it and would be (have been, I notice) shocked at these accusations. On the other hand, they have not modified their approach to issues and are not likely to unless called to account. Consider this a call to justify attacks on (and support of, for that matter) new words in terms of effectiveness, not merely conformity to some rule or other, nor possibility to be used in another way, nor possibility of finding another form, etc. (None of these are ireelevant, obviously, but none is decisive either).