This message is an announcement and an invitation.
An effort will begin shortly by a number of jbopre, for which this announcement
speaks, that pertains to the systematic review and, where deemed necessary,
revision of the entire gimste.
We expect a lot of varied responses to this effort.
The response we expect to receive the loudest is the one that denies the very
legitimacy of the endeavor. We have considered how to approach the community
regarding this agenda and the conclusion was to formally approach the
mailing-list, Facebook and IRC communities regarding the status-quo regarding
the policies related to lojban's maintenance.
You can view the result of this approach in this thread:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/_juGorRhWtI
We implore you to carefully review the progression of discourse and consider for
yourself what may be concluded from the positions put forth there. The outcome
is not much different than what we expected when we submitted the original
message, at least in terms of pushback. The amount of explicit support and
advocacy was incredibly encouraging and reaffirming.
The conclusion, as far as we are concerned, can essentially be characterized as
a mix between a simplistic resolve that "somebody 'just' needs to pick up where
we left off!" and long historical digressions about why things are gridlocked in
the first place. The suggestions provided for removing that gridlock have been,
to be clear, deemed unreasonable and not worth their weight in practical value.
Consider the character in proposing that those with the will to work on the language
first carry out the lengthy agendas gone unfinished for more than 10 years,
including puzzling suggestions to do things like finish a CLL reflective of
decade old Lojban, only to subsequently replace it with a modern one.
Be certain that we have *heard* these outlines for how we should be spending our
efforts, considered them, and decided we have no intention of carrying out such
tautological efforts as prerequisites to our own. To speak plainly, we simply
are not interested. We have far more practical things to do that are directly
related to dealing with making the lojbanic prescription more immediately
reflective of modern lojban for the benefit of its current speakers and the
sensibilities of those finding the language for the first time, every day.
ta'onai
The first of those efforts is the aforementioned revision of the gimste. We, and
those who decide to participate, will be systematically visiting each gismu in
the gimste and applying modern sensibilities and usage to their place
structures. This includes changing the order, removing or adding places as it is
deemed valuable and sensible to do so. We intend to use the software model for
this process, specifically for the use of change proposals, review, and
potential integrational merging of individual changes back into the gimste.
The current repository where this work will take place can be found here:
https://github.com/balningau/gimste
We are currently working to organize this repository with the data of the gimste
so that work can begin. We will be authoring a number of documents outlining the
procedure and process for this effort explicitly so that it can be referenced
later. We will also include good information about how to interact with github's
interface to participate in the effort, using easy to understand language and
pictures outlining the steps to perform things like, submitting your own change
proposal, and commenting on the proposal's of others.
If you think you too would like to participate directly in this process we
HIGHLY encourage you to come visit us in the #balningau channel on Freenode IRC.
There is still some time before we actually begin as the aforementioned
documentation needs to be authored and we need to further discuss the process
and ordering of that process before anything happens. However, we are getting
fairly close to feeling ready to begin so please come and join us in direct
discourse.
We expect this thread will devolve into the philosophy about the mere
integrity or legitimacy of the effort or specific revisions to the gismu that
this person or that person agrees or disagrees with. As for the former, we'll be
listening to that discussion but no longer feel strongly compelled by it. As for
the latter, we again highly encourage you to come to #balningau where such
specific discussions are happening all the time. Furthermore, when we move to
begin having those conversations in a more formal context on github, utilizing
the issue system, you will be more contextualized when that happens.
Thanks for reading this far.
Regards,
Dustin