Re: [lojban] the future of Lojban's leadership

I haven’t lost faith in the endeavor, though I certainly can’t blame Dustin for doing so. I do think it will take rather longer than we perhaps thought when this thread began.

I still think that the software-development model is the way to go. Among other things, it lets wild experimentation coexist safely with the carefully curated “master branch” — I mean, this is already happening in the community, but it’s a mess and a hodgepodge of projects, exactly because there’s no accepted process, and it doesn’t help that people who propose one tend to get shouted down.

Languages change when they are actively used. It’s a fact. For Lojban, it’s a fact that threatens to conflict with some of its good features — monosemy, syntactic unambiguity, parseability, etc. One “solution” to this conundrum is to freeze the vocabulary and grammar, forever. I think this will just result in everyone leaving (which seems to put me in fundamental disagreement with those who think that if we change anything, then everyone will leave). But I also think there’s a middle ground. We can allow some changes (with strict review, li’a sai), without destroying the language.

To one of Lojbab’s points (which are well taken, by the way, especially the one about documentation of experimental grammar being hard to find): in my mind, there is no way Lojban can be "considered DONE as an engineering effort”. Certainly the publication of the CLL and everything leading up to that was an impressive achievement, and maybe it can be considered “almost done”, but the mere existence of the BPFK and the ZG are confirmation that the final word (whatever that means when applied to a living language, see above) has not been said. Moreover, it’s hard to deny that changes have happened and become accepted by large portions of the community since the publication of the CLL: the BPFK morphology. xorlo was adopted into the ZG. Nearly everyone uses dotside for names. Modern {ka} with {ce’u}. The experimental gismu {kibro} and cmavo {di’ai}. vu’o po’onai.

To be honest, I am most interested in using Lojban to create things and converse with people. Secondary to that, I have my opinions on different parts of the experimental grammar and other banske issues (I’m not at all a linguistics expert). I am least interested in getting bogged down in legalese and bylaws if such things turn out to obstruct the use of Lojban and encourage it to stagnate (which is what’s arguably happened in the last decade). That’s a good way to lose contributors.

That being said, yes, I’d like to join the LLG. I recognize its importance. I don’t want to spend more time on politics than on other things, and I don’t know if it’s too mired under bylaws etc to make meaningful progress. But if it can, it seems like the best hope for moving forward without splitting the community.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. I feel strongly that progress is needed and that there’s a way to get there, but I don’t claim to have all the answers of course. I am glad that there will be a meeting soon, because that’s at least potential progress.

mu’o mi’e la durka

Dustin Lacewell, On 06/09/2014 20:00:

And,

I lost faith in the endeavor. Here we are four months later still
talking about schism and the CLL and lojbab still grand-standing his
ultimate wisdom even though nothing has been done in the intern on
his or anyone else's part. Tragically, most everyone who supported
the original proposal here, to move the maintenance of the language
to a more software-development format have all crumbled under the
rhetoric of councils, bylaws, hearings and whatever needless muck
that serves only to strain people's already volunteer interest and
contribution.

Come the next members' meeting, I will certainly vote for these new kids to join LLG and, if it comes up at the meeting, for Selpa'i to be tasked with leading the bpfk, but I think that rather than focusing on legalistic and political stuff it would just be better for interested folk to discuss and document their vision of a completed Lojban. Xorlo came about by xorxes, through some discussion with others and much solitary cerebration, coming up with a gadri system different from CLL's, and the community, realizing that xorlo solved so many intractable problems with the CLL version, eventually embraced it. It prevailed not because xorxes bothered with legalistic or political stuff but because open-minded Lojbanists overwhelmingly recognized its superiority.

I suppose each new generation builds on, and so seems brighter than, its precursors, but the latest generation of Lojbanists strikes me as brimming with lojbo talent that in previous generations is not to be found outside a small area of ketco tumla. Therefore this new generation, the selpa'is, the guskants, et al should IMO just get on with sorting out the linguistic stuff, trusting that in due course the political stuff will take care of itself.

--And.

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "lojban" group.

To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/lojban/_juGorRhWtI/unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.