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Re: BPFK
I have recently accepted the job of jatna for the baupla fuzykamni
(Language Definition Committee). I've been interviewing BPFK members a
lot in the past few days. The problems of BPFK are not at all that the
commissioners are lazy! They care about it. The lack of work stems
largely from disincentives.
#1 Few of them are willing to be thorough on a document that won't
pass, because that work is seen as going to waste. They don't know the
likelihood that this will happen because they can't predict the
political will of the community.
#2 Several of them don't want to participate in a debate that will be
meaningless because the process is weighted in favor of yes votes.
They are weighted in favor of yes votes in order to have momentum and
move out of doldrums. But a lot of the doldrum is due to these two
disincentives!
The solution is to know the overall political will of the community,
and to have a browsable, accessible map of the various positions so
that one's effort at debate won't vanish uselessly into the mists of
history. That system has been called an Elephant. For those who are
not familiar, please go here for a description:
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Elephant
I believe BPFK work needs to be building a Document of Record on the
range of expert positions on the issues and the pro and con arguments.
Most Lojban enthusiasts will agree a well-defined language (or
"debugging", if you will) should be the single most urgent step in the
Lojban language project so that all other projects can go forward with
confidence of having a firmer foundation. Toward that end, the
completion and implementation of the Elephant is the Manhattan
Project, the most single urgently-needed tool.
I will be happy to take people's positions, sign up on the Elephant
with their identity on their behalf, and copy and paste their
contributions if they don't want to learn a new system.
Please step forward if you have software skills.
-Eppcott