From lojban+bncCN673cmqFBCI1oveBBoEQpmboQ@googlegroups.com Mon Apr 12 02:42:57 2010 Received: from mail-vw0-f61.google.com ([209.85.212.61]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1O1GAK-0004Dt-UK; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:42:56 -0700 Received: by vws6 with SMTP id 6sf422078vws.16 for ; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:42:42 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:x-beenthere:received:received:received :received:received-spf:received:received:x-vr-score :x-authority-analysis:x-cm-score:message-id:date:from:user-agent :x-accept-language:mime-version:to:subject:references:in-reply-to :x-original-authentication-results:x-original-sender:reply-to :precedence:mailing-list:list-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive :x-thread-url:x-message-url:sender:list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe :content-type; bh=WAepGw8Z40RfBiRO/Vs+rdAjMwv1suQvCWz42OxoDKI=; b=Gzmn5PdCT+l6rdNeBUNQEi9cW+f52FyTxYf6+mhyvYWfPaZv0YRIYvhZ7PRG9z+JRB nH6gOXUI8dBMpjwbq9GJErPB8TPnHo6bKSJsEyHa6eBR3kkpUYy640E79qC6BYVrPpIb w99189jbjj3VeygNf0yHBjLSBVMmSIhCZfmPY= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:x-vr-score:x-authority-analysis:x-cm-score :message-id:date:from:user-agent:x-accept-language:mime-version:to :subject:references:in-reply-to:x-original-authentication-results :x-original-sender:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list:list-id :list-post:list-help:list-archive:x-thread-url:x-message-url:sender :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; b=gYnqk4YI960eDMt4/zzerPhcKYAa8jcg08GP5KteHMLbF8dJnBrQvSh6U+Hw45IXnR UA0lqkIakshci++BoBFRZX06DWRkhtpjIAXHZ6/D6VLKU+d5TlSepBhV7/JTSKR0gJs+ 9Dmys2MNrLaPgi9V4b6DrQt5juTSnLA6A3cNQ= Received: by 10.220.127.15 with SMTP id e15mr287256vcs.23.1271065352342; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:42:32 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.220.79.85 with SMTP id o21ls688124vck.0.p; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:42:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.220.168.83 with SMTP id t19mr851853vcy.10.1271065350626; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:42:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.220.168.83 with SMTP id t19mr851852vcy.10.1271065350598; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:42:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eastrmmtao104.cox.net (eastrmmtao104.cox.net [68.230.240.46]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTP id 29si10970769vws.2.2010.04.12.02.42.30; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:42:30 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 68.230.240.46 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lojbab@lojban.org) client-ip=68.230.240.46; Received: from eastrmimpo02.cox.net ([68.1.16.120]) by eastrmmtao104.cox.net (InterMail vM.8.00.01.00 201-2244-105-20090324) with ESMTP id <20100412094231.IYHI18026.eastrmmtao104.cox.net@eastrmimpo02.cox.net> for ; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 05:42:31 -0400 Received: from [192.168.0.100] ([70.187.225.124]) by eastrmimpo02.cox.net with bizsmtp id 4ZiV1e0052hfrC602ZiVqA; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 05:42:29 -0400 X-VR-Score: -100.00 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.1 cv=lL4dQe6A0XfTYzqIbzpq/h+TkgPEjAvcHnuEPneVQrQ= c=1 sm=1 a=DIPdann0B3IA:10 a=8nJEP1OIZ-IA:10 a=lsg66w07okjF3vGJL2g+Jw==:17 a=-0lD4IoWVl3zwY_kuqEA:9 a=hVkT-kqx1XEWbcOc25cA:7 a=8UblZ8JJunHQCJjs7ioF1CIkqDkA:4 a=wPNLvfGTeEIA:10 a=0gt5A4l9GiRch35z:21 a=Wdi2mYRLCZUQRU6H:21 a=lsg66w07okjF3vGJL2g+Jw==:117 X-CM-Score: 0.00 Message-ID: <4BC2EB76.3090605@lojban.org> Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 05:44:22 -0400 From: Robert LeChevalier User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Response to Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban" References: <4BBE188B.8070807@lojban.org> <20100409014708.GB11541@digitalkingdom.org> <4BBF197D.6080601@lojban.org> <20100409222518.GN11541@digitalkingdom.org> <4BC02ABC.8000300@lojban.org> <4BC1D15A.5030409@lojban.org> In-Reply-To: X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 68.230.240.46 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lojbab@lojban.org) smtp.mail=lojbab@lojban.org X-Original-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: X-Thread-Url: http://groups.google.com/group/lojban/t/33d26e8385fed297 X-Message-Url: http://groups.google.com/group/lojban/msg/5852d1d61af4b445 Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Stela Selckiku wrote: > It does not entirely matter though exactly what "skicu" means, if that > worries you, because there is no circumstance at all where you NEED to > implicitly assert that you skicu by saying "le". You can simply go > ahead and use "lo" all the time-- it's never ever wrong. Which is completely alien to the way Nora and I have used Loglan and later Lojban, alas. It was "le" that was always right, and lo meant something a lot more restricted, though we argued over whether that something could be defined consistently. But most importantly, it had to actually BE the thing described and therefore wasn't "always right". lo blabi zdani would never issue a political statement. le blabi zdani might, though la'ele blabi zdani would be more clear. But I'm not going to reargue xorlo. I will use the language the way I know it, and if people correct me when what I say is incomprehensible, then I may someday manage to speak the same language as them. > And that is > indeed what every Lojban teacher that I know of tells their students > to do, and that is also what I recommend to you. The fact that every Lojban teacher does so means that I am no longer a Lojban teacher. It is the fact that Nora and I no longer seem to know the language that we used to be the main teachers of, that has kept me silent for so long. > I feel safe in saying that I speak for almost everyone here when I say > that we would much rather hear Lojban with funny articles from you > than silence! We don't even pay any attention to what articles people > use anymore. :) We didn't much back then, either. That was the whole thing about "letting usage decide". No matter how much we prescribed, the language was whatever people actually used. >>I dunno if it exists or even is possible, but a constantly available and >>updating IRC log, where one would log in and see the last couple of pages of >>discussion, regardless of how-long-ago it took place, would help, > > This is exactly how IRC works. It's a beautiful, harmoniously > balanced, elegant model. Unfortunately it is also deeply geeky, so > the elegance is not immediately apparent, hidden as it is behind an > entirely mysterious interface-- a geek's idea of elegance, after all, > almost never includes visible, clearly-labeled controls. :) The real problem, as showed up yesterday, is that it is too chaotic. Get more than a couple people there and there are suddenly 15 conversations going on at once, and you are trying to follow all of them (or at least I do, instinctively). It feels like being at a large noisy party, even with relatively few people actively participating, and for me becomes rather too draining. The culture of IRC is one that welcomes the multi-conversation, whereas Nora and I prefer a conversation about one topic at a time (though the conversation may wander). That is hard to do in real time with typing (and typing in Lojban with my typo rate is even worse). What an intermittent Lojbanist needs is closer to the ideal of Usenet threads, in Usenet groups, so they can look at an area of the language and see what is going on, and if something is interesting, dive in more deeply. But it also needs to be persistent and less focused on what is going on right now, because the things being talked about today may not be of interest, but last week's discussion might be. I've seen some webforums that come close to that, but I've never been comfortable with web-based interfaces. It feels too much like filling out forms rather than conversation. The other problem for the intermittent Lojbanist is the level of detail, volume, and technicalese. While a webforum, threaded email, or Usenet thread can be easier to follow as a long-lasting conversation on more or less one topic, if too many people are interested, or if a couple are very intensely interested, the volume quickly gets too much to actually read. Someone coming in now and seeing this thread will find a hundred plus messages and considerable fragmentation of subject matter. But if they have an hour or two for Lojban, reading through 100 messages is an impossible chore. So you need people willing to be digesters and editors of the activity going on, that can turn the buzz of the multitudinous activities in the community, into a Reader's Digest aimed at their level. That was what I used to try to do with ju'i lobypli and with le lojbo karni. Aimed for the serious but intermittent reader, and for the uninvolved who still want to be informed as to what's going on. I think I was doing pretty well, but it was quite all consuming to put out an issue, since I also had to manage the mailing lists, do the printing, etc. Just as Robin has just reached the point where managing the lists was keeping him from actually doing something himself, in 1994 I was forced to choose between being a magazine editor and helping get what became CLL done. I made the right choice, but I think the intermittent Lojbanist has been largely ignored since then, and that community was and probably still is perhaps 10-20 times the size of the active community. > Unfortunately IRC is also such a geeky idea that to use it properly > requires you have a computer always running-- to some I suppose that > seems only as onerous a requirement as that you have electricity or > running water. :) Even while you're not there, your computer is > always "idling" in the IRC channel, receiving all of the messages for > you. At any time you can come to the computer and check the channel, > and the most recent messages will be ready for you, regardless of how > long ago they were. It's not expected that you'll read all of the > "backlog", as it's called, That's the problem, I want to read it all. And for someone with limited time, "too much information" is the worst problem. > but it is expected that you'll skim it for > mentions of your own name, I have never been a good skimmer. I *read*, fairly fast and voluminously, but if there is too much for my available reading time, I just tune out completely. And of course with interactive media, I have to resist the temptation to respond and get involved, or that starts chewing up my time. Some sort of digesting service that makes the volume less, and reduces the temptation to respond is helpful. You can write letters to your newspaper and thus respond, but most don't - they just read. But with online news-articles with commenting, you can find news-articles with hundreds of responses. Who has time to read them? I've been tempted many times to respond, but I'm glad that there is a registration requirement, because that bit of bureaucracy is sufficient to keep me from wasting time in the commenting, so I can read much more. (On Usenet however, I can waste much more time, since I don't need to register to respond to someone). > which your IRC client will helpfully highlight for you. That is fine if you are an active participant and your name will therefore crop up. But for someone like me, who as president will feel a need to keep abreast on what everyone is doing (just as Robin does), while still choosing only a small number of things to work on himself, we need more than to look for our name. The "most-recently-updated" on the wiki used to tell me what people have been talking about there, though there was still no filter short of actually reading the full pages to get any detail, once I chose a topic. > Anyway IRC totally isn't for everything or everyone. Especially these > days, there's a lot of other options. For instance Twitter is another > chatty medium, and everything said there is immediately on the web, so > that's useful in some ways. I don't want "chat", and one-liners are sometimes entertaining but seldom really informative. Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging drive me up the wall just watching my kids doing it. Perpetual interrupt mode, never spending an hour actually following through on something because there is too much new stuff coming in. I want news with enough length that I can feel informed. A well-hyperlinked blog might fill the role for intermittent Lojbanists, but it would become a job to produce it often enough, because the person who does it has to have a mainstream blogger's mentality and read all the stuff others don't have time for, while getting involved in relatively little so that they have time to produce the blog more than once in a blue moon. Could a shared digestive blog work? I dunno. I am as unaware of the blogging world as of many other online things. lojbab -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. 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