Subject: RE: [lojban] openprojects IRC whining.

From: Jay Kominek <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 10:18:43 -0700 (MST)

On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Craig wrote:

> 1. Had they all heard the name Lojban before?
>
> If openprojects doesn't give us any exposure with people who havent been
> exposed to us before, what's the point?

Lots of people have heard of Lojban. (I meet randoms in real life
occasionally, who have. Not to mention in assorted places on the Internet
where you wouldn't expect it.) Many of them have questions, and odd
misconceptions which need to be fixed. I think making it easy to fix those
is important. (It is possibly more important to fix people with wrong
ideas, than it is to introduce a slightly larger number of people to the
right ideas. )

> 2. Have any of them become active Lojbanists?
>
> If openprojects makes people have heard of us, that's good, but not as good
> as targeted recruiting toward people who might actually want to learn
> lojban. A reasonable number of IRC people are not as geeky as most of us
> are.

The OpenProjects network was originally intended solely for the
UNIX/Programming/Free software crowd. It was later opened up to any sort
of 'open' project (though it never made anyone leave unless they were up
to something blatantly illegal). So the average geekiness is quite above
the average Lojbanist geekiness, even with all the UNIX users in the
community.

I'd be willing to bet that unless there is a conlang IRC server out there,
you're not going to find a more concentrated population of potential
victims.. er, students anywhere else on IRC.

(As a little side note, the person who runs OpenProjects is actually
interested in Lojban, and apparently had interactions with the Loglan
community ages ago. He has dropped in once or twice. So we're quite
welcome there.)

- Jay Kominek <[email-masked]>
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose