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

On 9/11/2014 5:15 PM, Dustin Lacewell wrote:

The biggest logical fallacy in this entire discourse is that the changes
wanting to be made are dreamt up on a sterile whiteboard by 'language
tinkerers' whatever the hell that actually means. The actual reality is
that you have a substantial community (whether you want to hand wave us
away as not being representitve somehow, a group of more than a handful
of Lojban anything is substantial as far as I'm concerned)
It is true that "substantial" doesn't mean "representative". Those who aren't in your group have no exposure to your usages, and hence the changes that you wish to impose on the rest of us generally seems arbitrary, and in any case requires extra learning (and possibly unlearning, which is the real bugaboo) 


who is using
the language daily, continuously throughout the day and have been doing
so for years.
Anyone who considers the variety of dialects even within smallish Britain, much less the larger USA can understand that different communities have different usages.
We cannot prevent such dialectization, and I wouldn't want to try. But we also shouldn't allow one particular group/dialect dictate changes to everyone else, especially since the rest of us didn't experience whatever motivated your change.
The original intent was that after the baseline was documented, and then after some period of usage, a group - probably the rump byfy in the current situation, but hopefully more formalized - would accept proposals for changes in the language description based on actual usage. People in a formal software community would probably expect actual proposed change pages to the documentation as part of such proposals, as well as examples from actual usage. 


Those changes are the result of usage.


Your usage.  Not that of others.


Of finding what works and doesn't work for us as -users of the language-. What's happening here is that we
would like to commit our findings back into the language so we can both
claim to be speaking "Lojban" and so that we don't have to qualify
everything as being 'official' or 'experimental' to the many and regular
new comers that show up on our door.
It's experimental until such time as it is official. If it isn't yet documented, and it is new, then it is experimental (or jargon or cant). I'm not even sure how it could possibly change, unless one decides to ignore the whole issue of documentation, in which case the language is whatever any given speaker actually uses. 


Diminish and minimize us all you want.
I don't "want". I just have the responsibility to consider those 1000+ others who bought CLL and have no idea who you are or what you are using. And I have to consider that any given change (as opposed to addition) potentially invalidates all the ever-growing corpus of text that is recorded before. 


But understand it doesn't
actually move your interlocutors to do so.


Do you really think I am trying, much less expecting, to actually move you?


We are aware of our own reality.


That's nice. But your reality isn't everyone's.


If you're just singing to your own choir fine, but its
important for the wider audience here to realize you're being
offensively ignorant on this point.
Just consider that someone who has been working on this project for 30-odd years just might know something that you haven't yet experienced. You are the one who offends me (and more importantly the rest of the community), by saying that my/our experience isn't valid while yours is.
And your argument isn't especially new. It was made a dozen years ago, by a group of whom Robin Powell is by far the best known. He was given the BPFK chair and became a Board member and officer, and I stepped down as President. I've been satisfied with his decisions since then. 


No doubt - day to day - we sure spend a whole lot more time using and
talking about Lojban than you characterize yourself to be doing.
That's very nice. But you still aren't the entirety of the language community, and you don't have the right to dictate to the rest of us (any more than I have the right to dictate to you). 


Please
readjust your tone to acknowledge that the changes that are knocking at
your door are legitimate concerns borne from -daily utilization.
I have no idea how legitimate your concerns are, and I am not the one who is going to decide (I may have a voice and a vote, but no more than anyone else has).
But, regarding tone, if you don't want to learn how to work with the rest of us, don't expect a lot of respect. Expecting tact from me is probably a bit unreasonable. I'm not a politician, and I've never been very tactful; but people know what I think, and they can be sure it represents my honest beliefs. I've put a lot into this language and this community; probably only John Clifford and maybe Robin can claim comparable time, effort, and sacrifice. And I find YOUR tone utterly dismissive of MY experience and commitment. 

lojbab


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