And, continued

[Nick Nicholas <opoudjis@optushome.com.au>]

Not responding to Bob, and I do insist that And is being misconstrued  
here. But as to BPFK policy making (as distinct from baseline policy):

> > Nick
> > felt that we needed the community to buy into the byfy process  
> > explicitly
> > in order that it be kicked off with serious intent to get it done, as
> > opposed to the 10+ years that I've let the existing dictionary effort  
> > drag,
> > so we ASKED for a mandate I think Nick is quite right to do this.  
> > Leading the BP will be a hard
> enough job without the added hassle of being accused of bulldozing
> the community against its wishes. And the work of the BP will be much
> smoother when everybody knows it's what everybody wants. Nick has
> indicated that the BP's terms of reference are negotiable; I take it
> that if in the process of carrying out the BP's tasks it turns out
> that his initial principles are more of a hindrance than a help, they
> can be revised. This satisfiers me, personally.

I insisted, because as I've said elsewhere, this is too important an  
issue to be left to board fiat. I would be cool with a general meeting  
(as long as it was strictly time-limited), but this may or may not  
happen.

There are many things I'm prepared to negotiate and compromise on in  
the BP. There are some gradient conditions where, beyond a certain  
point, I decide I can no longer work. That includes routine lack of  
consensus, excess revisionism, demonisation of opponents, ignoring  
logical criteria completely, treating prior usage cavalierly, and talk  
of cabals. This doesn't mean the BPFK cannot continue past that point;  
it means I can't.

I am prepared to compromise lots. Not all, but lots. I believe the same  
of you. And if the procedures turn out not to work, then yes, we  
revisit them. The point is not the procedures, but their goal:  
expeditious completion of the task.

And did the right thing in posting a consensus document; he rushed the  
consensusiness of it (John clearly did not accept it), but it's the  
kind of thing that needs to happen from now on. Even with minority  
reports. Let's not cast aspersions on how jboske debates drag on, and  
whose fault it is, and people's bona fides. Let's just try and make  
sure that the debates from now on don't drag on more than they need to,  
and that they have discernible ends.

(Which means I should have piped up on the outstanding issues in  
jboske. But I am overcommitted right now, even with just Lojban things.  
And the four days it took me to beat the pdf of the Level0 booklet into  
submission did not help... Sometimes, one needs to let the others  
decide, and lump it, whatever they come up with. Sometimes, one needs  
to stand one's ground too, even if belatedly; but clearly things will  
get done if the former is the default, rather than the latter.)

-------------------- 
=================================----------------------
Dr Nick Nicholas. Unimelb, Aus.  nickn@unimelb.edu.au;    
www.opoudjis.net
"Electronic editors have to live in hope: hope that the long-awaited
standards for encoding texts for the computer will arrive; hope that  
they
will be workable; hope that software will appear to handle these texts;
hope that all the scholars of the world will have computers which can
drive the software (which does not yet exist) to handle the texts (which
have not yet been made) encoded in standard computer markup (which has  
not
yet been devised). To hope for all this requires a considerable belief  
in
the inevitability of progress and in the essential goodness of mankind."
                                                    (Peter M.W.  
Robinson)