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Re: [lojban] Michael Everson, What Do You Want From Us?

Remo Dentato wrote:
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 12:16 AM, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org <mailto:rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>> wrote: 

    What he was *asking* was whether there was a reason that he, as LLG
    President, needs to keep up with a *huge* email thread (I myself
    stopped reading it about two days ago; I simply have too many other
    demands on my time).
But you previously said it was *not* speaking as the LLG president. My English can be seriously broken but in his first email the tone was personal.
The tone WAS personal. He was *not* speaking "as LLG president", in that his posting was not on behalf of the organization.
But he IS in fact LLG president, whether speaking officially or not, and this may weigh upon how someone interprets what he says.
That said, the only reason I might have over-reacted is that I really like the language and I'm sorry to see one of the longest and debated discussions on this list for a long time ended with a "tell us what you want and go away" argument.
I believe his email was rather of a "tell him what you want, so that *HE* can go away". He doesn't want to read anymore (spend time), and wants some sense of a bottom line. 

>That's the best way to kill a community.


    I routinely have to choose between fixing Lojban problems and doing
    the work I'm actually paid for and eating a meal, because I don't
    have time for all three.
I fully understand as this is common for everyone involved in non-profit activities. Nobody is expecting that things get changed overnight and nobody asked anything to LLG or made any unreasonable request. That's what I meant with "nobody forces you", if any formal request would have generated, it would have been sent to llg-board@lojban.org <mailto:llg-board@lojban.org> (if I remember the address correctly).
Please don't. Anything to the organization is supposed to go to lojban@lojban.org, which the official communication address, and is read by the President and the Secretary, and those that they authorize. If it needs to be decided by the Board, they will handle it.
The llg-board mailing list was set-up for the internal discussions of the board and the formal conducting of Board meetings. There is a similar llg-members list for voting members of the organization, primarily for stuff relating to the member meeting.
You (collectively) may decided that I'm just a rude troll out of nowhere
I don't think that anyone in the "official" community takes you to be either rude or a troll. Possibly unaware of "official" policy, but we cannot hold that against you %^)
or may take this reaction as coming from somebody who cares and would like to see the language moving forward.
What means "moving forward"? People learning and using the language more is moving it forward.
Making changes to the language is simply changing the language, with every change potentially losing those who are familiar with the status quo. I planned from the beginning that formal change to the language be difficult, and ideally, rare, but that LLG would not constrain actual usage and experimentation. In the long term, any formal change should follow, and reflect, actual usage, and not precede it.
I just felt the need of point out that the community would need *more* proposals about the language not less.
The community needs NO *proposals* about the language, because there is no mechanism for dealing with such things until the byfy baseline is completed.
What we need is for those interested in moving the language forward to help in completing the documentation of the baseline, through the work on the byfy language definition. That is necessary for it to even be possible to consider changes to that baseline.
I suspect that at this point, pretty much anyone who feels up to it can write a section on one of the areas of the language that hasn't been written up, and the byfy will manage it from there. (The people on the byfy itself don't seem to have time or energy to write more, and I for one feel guilty about that.) That is the only way for the language to formally "move forward".
While saying "The community needs NO proposals about the language", there is nothing stopping anyone from DOING things WITH the language. No one needs to write a proposal to translate something into Lojban (such as la .alis.), or to do original writing in the language.
Making use of what others have done may be more tricky, because those others legally and morally have a say in what can be done with their work. (LLG, being international, potentially can run afoul of the copyright law of any nation, and thus has to be a little more careful of what it does officially.)
It is also possible for a group of people to create a project to accomplish something involving the language, and to seek some sort of official recognition that the project exists. That is generally uncontroversial, so long as the project keeps LLG informed of what it is up to. 

lojbab

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