Subject: Re: [lojban] Lojban Portal (was: presentation of lojban

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 04:15:42 -0500

At 03:52 AM 11/24/01 -0500, you wrote:
>On Sat, 24 Nov 2001, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:
> > Unfortunately, my coming from the pre-Internet generation, I have not
> > had the creativity nor even the understanding to fathom why the main page
> > would be expected to change frequently when the language is now baselined
> > and not changing, and when we have few new products.
>
>If the "main page" is the front door to a cache of important reference
>materials, then I can see why you would be mystified at the directive that
>it should change constantly.

Not exactly mystified. I just don't know what there is worth noting on the 
front page or even of interest to beginners and casual drop-ins.

>However, it is important that the first, or central Lojban website that
>newcomers see, be one that reflects the vivacity of the community. It
>should not give a stale appearance, but show not only that there is a lot
>of material in and about Lojban, but also that there are a lot of people
>working on things right now.

A lot of people are working on things, but very little is getting 
DONE. The major things of the last year that might interest a newcomer are 
CVS (everything is in progress), the wiki (inherently never done), Nick's 
two books (nearly done), the Elephant (not visible), the moving IRC channel 
(which was being argued between 2 different servers last I heard, but I 
have never looked myself) and the beginners list. All these are the sorts 
of things that I think should be key links somewhere on the web page when 
they are done and/or stable. But on the beginners list, the wiki, and the 
lessons that I did not plan to link to until Nick gave the web-publish 
go-ahead, are really for beginners.

> > Instead, I put the link to Evguenie Sklyanin's links page, which DOES
> > change often and which points to the variety of other pages that also
> > change, and the link to the Web ring that also links to key sites that
> > change, and hoped that this would do. Alas it hasn't been enough, and
> > I am happy to turn over the job of making the pages interesting, while
> > preserving their primary archival function, to Robin.
>
>Sklyanin's page used to be "The Bomb", but he hasn't updated it since
>June.

Alas, I haven't even looked since June, so I never noticed.

>And it will be updated roughly bi-weekly; whenever something
>occurs worth noting.

That is also supposed to be the purpose of the Lojban announce list, but we 
have yet to have decided anything is worth such an announcement. If you 
can come up with one item every 2 weeks, that would be a reasonably nice 
rate I think.

>If Robin Powell wants to use this as the front page of lojban.org, that's
>fine. If he doesn't, that's fine too. Two portals are not worse than one!

It will be on the web ring, I assume? I would think that you would want 
the web ring to not have two pages look the same. (I think I have relied 
too much on the web ring and Sklyanin to between them convey the dynamism 
of the community).

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org