On 10/7/08, Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:
I would like to respond (and to do so accurately). Can people summarize the various opportunities for Lojban conversation on line, via text and/or voice. And specifically what is the status of using Second Life for Lojban conversation among the various options. How many are involved, and how often?
The active forums now that I know of are IRC, these mailing lists, Wikipedia and Jbotcan. Everything else is ignored at the moment, as far as I know. Jbopre seem to have a collective feeling that it's better to concentrate the community in as few places as possible, leading to a conservative attitude to any new forum. New IRC channels often arouse criticism for spreading the IRC conversation too thin, and even Jbotcan faced a lot of skepticism at first. So the negative side of that is that you won't find Lojban active in a huge variety of different places around the net, but the positive side is that you can visit IRC and encounter a Lojbanist at any time of the day or night because that's where everyone goes.
One idea I had for how to spread Lojban conversation to more places at once is to start forums focused on particular topics. Lojban seems to me like it's at the point where we can use it to communicate actual information about various subjects, instead of just gathering around the language and poking at it. I bet it would be more effective inviting Lojbanists to a chat on Second Life (for example) if it was a meeting for some particular purpose. People are already fulfilling their generic desire to speak with other people in Lojban, so they're probably not going to bother with exploring somewhere they're less familiar with, just to have conversations in Lojban with other Lojbanists they already know!