[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[lojban] Re: ISO 639-2 request



At 02:47 PM 5/31/03 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
> Yeah, same here. But I think there are probably interested people who aren't
> regular posters. Probably.

I find disingenuous the claim that there are people who are interested but
aren't on the mailing list, unless they are in undeveloped regions where
computer access is prohibitive. Yahoo offers digest format, and if that's
too much of a Lojban overload, I daresay the interest level is rather
slight.

The interest level could be high, but the time could be low. Even a lot of people who are subscribed can't read the messages in that volume. Most of the time Nora reads messages only on weekends, so in high volume times, most of the stuff gets skipped. Others will simply decide they can't bother, and will work by themselves on translations, or read stuff on the wiki. Nora did this for over a year before she started reading the list at all.

Digest doesn't cut the volume to be read, just the number of messages (and it makes it harder to read a single thread).

A lot of people use hotmail and other sucb accounts that have very low space limits. With current spam volumes, a couple of 20 per day mailing lists can kill you allowed space over a weekend.

Meanwhile, there are some notables that have specifically chosen to avoid the mailing list (I believe that Jay is one).

I go by this: post a Lojban message to the main or members lists and see
how many people bother reading it. Compare the results to an Esperanto
list. As for students, fine: repeat it in 6 months' time.

The list membership is some 270. How many are actually reading of those 270 in unknown. But since the number has been 250-270 for the last 2 years, I wouldn't expect that there would be a much higher percentage that would respond to your Lojban message than a year or two ago. I don't think that the percentage that read the traffic is going to grow much - thus if one assumes that new people are learning the language as is evident from the beginners list, there are (at one time interested) people dropping off the Lojban List as fast as new ones sign on.

At-one-time people could be quite skilled in the language. Nick was off-list for years, but whether fluent or not he was quite competent. Goran equally so, and he's barely popped in once in the last half dozen years.

But anything to inflate the numbers, right? I mean, those mabla
Klingon upstarts are embarrassing us in the PR arena!!!!!

I try to be consistent. I figure that anyone who spends $40 for the book has at least some interest, for one thing.

lojbab

--
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                    703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org