On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 12:30 PM, selpa'i
<seladwa@gmx.de> wrote:
Am 18.11.2012 19:48, schrieb Robin Lee Powell:
There are probably 20 people on this list with most or all of the
requisite skills. No idea which if them would take money for it;
I've offered, and gotten no reply.
Is anyone currently working on it?
No. the last commit was on Aug 12. I haven't personally been working on it, with the excuse that I've got school stuff right now.
I can understand gleki's frustration, and I can also understand yours. I don't really understand how so many people just prefer to watch passively what happens. The BPFK has done a lot of great work already, it's a shame it completely ran out of steam.
I don't think the BPFK has run out of steam per se. I'll note that the BPFK mailing list is apparently dead, and it's members as a whole don't do much, but the /job/ of the BPFK is still getting done, by those of us that care about whatever issue we're bringing up to discuss. Problems are being found, opinions are being floated, decisions are being made. Granted, this is all being done by people that aren't in the BPFK, but it is what the job of the BPFK is, as far as I am aware, at any rate.
At some point in the past, not long after Robin became the BDFL, a message was sent out on the BPFK list which basically stated, "If you're reading this you /are/ the BPFK". Before that time, being on the list only meant you were privy to the discussions on it, not necessarily that you were a member. After that message, it was clear- to me, at any rate- that being a member of the BPFK required exactly one thing- wanting to do the job.
Speaking of, I think that anyone who wants to get issues solved and changes made, should apply to join the BPFK list and start talking on it. The entire reason for the existence of that list is to discuss issues and make decisions.
Going off on a rant for a second here, I've noticed that pretty much /none/ of the lojban lists is being used according to its purpose, with the exception of the newbie list and possibly the non-English ones to which I am not a member.
To whit: The groups I am a member of and their intended purpose:
Lojban Beginners : The list for nintadni to ask questions and get help.
xedbig : A list for talking about anything, in Lojban /only/. (Haven't seen anything from here in a long time.)
lojban : A list for talking about Lojbanic stuff (in English or preferably Lojban), specifically culturally related, such as Lojbanic idioms for an example.
jbofanva : The list for translation projects. I.e.: If you want to translate something (like, say, something in a theatre project) from language X to Lojban, this is place to do it.
BPFK : The list for discussing issues of the Lojban language, as in poorly defined words, missing concepts, and anything else specific to the language itself. (This includes things like the CLL and jbovlaste)
It seems to me that all of these things, with the exception of beginner questions, have all been mashed into the main Lojban list, which pretty much defeats the purpose of having any of the others and clutters up this one with things that really belong somewhere else.
Just my two cents. I'd like to see these lists actually being used for their intended purposes, and nothing more.
I don't think a single person alone can get much done, and I also doubt that anyone would want a single person to make all their decisions for them, especially in a language as Lojban, where we still have a considerable amount of things that must be discussed before they can become official. Don't people want to have a say in it? If yes, then they must speak up, offer their help, get involved or else they must accept that they can't complain about any decisions that are being made without them.
What is the community's general opinion about the current state of affairs? Are people generally happy to wait and stay in this gray area between old and new Lojban?
If I were to guess, I'd say most people are to busy learning and using Lojban to spend any time on the decision making, issue discussion bits. I doubt anyone is "happy" with the current state of affairs, but I think most people don't care enough to do anything about it, and it falls to those of us that do to, well, do it.
We get lots of newbies on IRC and each one of them reminds us of the fact that we don't have a single up-do-date, official description of our language. We have to tell each time that they can learn from the CLL or Lojban for Beginners, but that there are several outdated things in those materials. Is it not in everyone's interest that people new to the language get welcomed by proper learning materials?
Of course it is. That's why it's so important that the CLL1.1 is finished. The big thing about CLL1.1 is that one of its design parameters is making it easier to maintain and update than the original CLL, so that keeping it up to date with any changes to the language is simple and relatively painless. The other major point is that it be easy to deliver in a variety of formats, so that the same source can be used to automagically generate a web site, pdf, print book, etc. etc.
There are countless cases of dicussions, both on this list and on IRC about issues that some people believe are already solved but which others believe are unsettled. There is lots of mutual disagreement and even more confusion and obscurity because there is such a huge contrast between old and new cmavo definitions, for instance.
This is just a report of the current situation the way I experience it. Mainly, I'm confused about people's motivations.
I know that some years ago, some people agreed to make you (rlpowell) the Benevolent Dictator, but what were they thinking? Did they just want to free themselves of any responsibilities? A single person can in no way do all of this without getting overwhelmed, and it seems that is exactly what has happened.
We didn't so much as agree to it as he decided to do it and we let him. I remember his reasoning behind it being that the then-current state wherein the completely inactive BPFK wasn't doing it's job, and so he decided to take over their job just so that /something/ would get done. We let him do it mainly because the vast majority of us felt the same way- the stuff needs done, someone needs to do it, this guy's willing to, so let him.
What do people think about this now?
I'm still in total support of this. It's very much like the U.S.A. system of government in some respects, where those of us who give a crap about one issue or another discuss it, debate it, argue about it, and so on until we've figured out what we think is the best solution for it, and then Robin decides whether or not to veto our solution. More often than not he agrees, and to the best of my knowledge he never exercises his decision-making power without being fully informed.
I'm not sure what the best solution is, or what step must be taken next. All I'm seeing is that we're stuck. In my opinion, we (and by "we" I mean everyone who wants to participate) should make sure that the docbook project gets finished as soon as possible and then we must immediately reactivate the BPFK.
If there are, as you say, 20 people on this list that could help with the docbook project, then those people are urged to speak up. We need you! If you haven't yet noticed, some of us are desperate enough to pay you for this job.
For what it's worth, gleki is talking about CLL2.0 because he's doubting that there will ever be a completed CLL1.1 at this rate and he considers the CLL1.1 relatively useless because it would still be outdated, which is true, of course. xorlo and dotside are by far not the only changes.
My understanding of CLL1.1 isn't merely an update of the CLL to include dotside and xorlo- although obviously it is supposed to do that- but an upgrade from 1.0 to a rolling distrubution style, thus making any future changes much easier to make, meaning that there will never be a need for a "CLL2.0", since once 1.1 is finished, any needed changes to the content of the CLL will be git-style revisions, rather than a whole re-write of the entire book.
He and I were merely wondering how to move Lojban forward. One idea was to give up on CLL1.1 and get straight to the actual CLL2.0 that incorporates *every* change, not just xorlo and dotside. I told him that this is not an easy thing to do because we must discuss these changes together as a community, no single person has the right to make changes without the approval of at least some notable Lojbanists.
When I told you about this idea some time ago, you made it very clear to me that it would be a terrible idea to start already so I did nothing about it. The only way for this to be a useful idea is to have enough people of the old BPFK team coming together and finishing off the remaining issues (of which there are of course quite a few). Then, to create the actual CLL, all we need to do is get the old CLL on a wiki and make changes to it accordingly. Everyone who understands what they're doing can help at that point. Then once all the changes have been worked in, a team will read over everything and double and triple check. And probably some final dicussions will ensue, but the goal will be near by then. That's my vision anyway.
I don't think a wiki is the appropriate format for the CLL. For one thing, changes should only be made to the CLL when they have officially been decided on, which means only select few people should have write access, not everyone and their dog. For another, a wiki isn't easily converted into other delivery modes, AFAIK, and the deisre is for the CLL to be available as /at least/ a web site, a pdf, and a print book, which is why CLL1.1 is being encoded in LaTeX and hosted in a git repository: being in LaTeX makes it easy to print the same material in a large variety of formats, including but not limited to the ones I've mentioned, and being in a git repo makes it very easy to submit changes to the CLL on an as needed basis.
I've probably written enough now; those are my spontaneously-written-down but for-some-time-had thoughts, no more and no less. If anyone has anything useful to say, please do so.
mu'o mi'e la selpa'i
--
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.