Re: [lojban] Re: [lojban-announcements] Essay on the future of Lojban, with a simple poll for the community.

[Matt Arnold <matt.mattarn@gmail.com>]

Bob,

I have been drifting out of the community for the past couple of years
through discouragement. I used to have such grand dreams for the
project, but most of those plans turned out to be dependent on the
BPFK finishing Lojban.

I thought work was proceeding apace, behind the scenes, and that the
only problem was generating enough work. It now turns out to have been
actively held back by a dispute between description of usage, and
prescription through centralized planning. In a community this size,
usage is a statistically insignificant sample. We have no known means
to measure or prove anything about usage. It is also a
self-contradicting authority. Usage in the wild has no mechanism with
which to resolve disputes with other usage. No wonder we were in a
permanent bottleneck.

We let talented people go to waste for nearly a decade. This has been
a disaster. I do not accept it.

The "let usage decide" policy was put in place to prevent a recurrance
of the James Cooke Brown failure mode-- a failure mode which is no
longer possible in the current environment. We need a policy that
mitigates the failure mode we're seeing, not the one that threatened
us decades ago. Now our failure mode is lack of decisiveness. It is
the responsibility of centralized authority to break the impasse that
happens when you let usage *totally* decide, rather than influence.

Robin's plan is now well underway and it will succeed. I have
confidence that the tide is overwhelmingly on our side. That will
prevent me going away. But I will not remain in a project that is
committed to an indefinite holding pattern.

-Eppcott


On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 4:05 AM, Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Robin Lee Powell
>> <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
>>
>>> FOLLOWUPS TO: The main list.
>>>
>>> OK, been promising it for a while; here it is.
>>>
>>>
>>> http://teddyb.org/robin/tiki-index.php?page=Lojban%3A+You're+Doing+It+Wrong
>>>
>>> There are all *sorts* of finicky details we could discuss, but right
>>> now I and others would very much just like to get a sense of where
>>> the community stands on these sorts of issues, so, if we could
>>> *please* keep the discussion for now (1) on the main list and (2)
>>> agree/disagree answer to the following question, after you've read
>>> (as much as you wish to) of the essay:
>>>
>>> I would like Lojban to remain as close as it possibly can to its
>>> current state, regardless of whether I or a group of experienced
>>> Lojbanists see that improvements could be made.
>>>
>>> Agree or disagree?
>
> Both, depending on timeframe and definitions of terms.
>
> Lojban needs to remain stable and resistant to change, especially in the
> near term.  When numbers of Lojbanists and formal documentation are both
> strong enough, then "improvements" will generally be made by usage, not by
> fiat, with skilled Lojbanists being the only ones having the capability to
> demonstrate and explain their variant usages in-language, and other skilled
> Lojbanists voting-with-their-usage to adopt the variation.
>
> That is what the phrase "let usage decide" was supposed to refer to - the
> asymptotic reduction of change-by-fiat to nil, in favor of natural evolution
> through usage.  Shakespeare introduced considerable new vocabulary and usage
> to the English language, and needed no byfy to approve his efforts.
>
> Thus in the near term, I agree.  In the longer term, I disagree, but require
> that "improvements" are introduced through usage, and explanation
> in-language when necessary, and not by fiat.
>
> Of course, by "current state", I mean the language that the byfy is
> attempting to document, and not the state of half-documented-ness that
> persists.
>
> lojbab
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "lojban" group.
> To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.
>
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.