Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Official Statement- LLG Board approves new baseline policy

From: "Logical Language Group, Inc." <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 23:14:48 -0500

At 07:31 PM 11/30/02 -0600, Steven Belknap wrote:
>I am not upset at the historical fact that Loglan is moribund. I
>accepted this long ago and began learning the new language. I have read
>about 3/4 of John Cowan's book. I have donated multiple copies of the
>grammer to libraries, and filled out requests for the book in many
>other libraries. There are 5 former Loglan fans who I've managed to
>interest in lojban. Another dozen or so newbies that I've convinced to
>buy the grammer or study the online materials. Whenever I meet somebody
>who I think might be interested, I tell them about lojban.

I have no question as to your support for Lojban.

>The toggle cmavo is not documented in Loglan, to my knowledge. So it
>"exists" only in lojban.

It does not officially exist in Lojban either, documented or undocumented, 
since it would be a change to the baseline. The byfy could add it, and I 
suggested this as the sort of thing that the byfy might indeed consider.

>If that is not a problem, than why not discuss
>it in the baseline documentation?

That is up to the byfy to decide, by consensus of the people working on 
it. The Board decided that its role is to run the organization, not to 
decide the details of the language. The role of the Board and the 
membership will be merely to grant sanction to some particular community 
procedure for deciding the final details, and ultimately to 
declare support for a baseline and freeze which would be an organizational 
commitment not to make changes in what has been decided for some number of 
years.

>I subscribe to the Loglan
>publications and listserv as well as the lojban listserv. Perhaps I've
>missed it, but I haven't seen any discussion in the Loglan community
>about transitioning to lojban.

It is not a decision granted to the Loglan community. In the TLI 
community, all decisions are made by their Board of Directors and Board of 
Trustees. The TLI split started (in 1984 before I was seriously involved) 
because there was no mechanism at all for community input into decisions; 
JCB had removed that from the community after granting it and finding out 
that it wanted to decide things differently than he would.

>My understanding is that many, but not all, of the refinements
>introduced into lojban have also been incorporated into Loglan.

"Many", but not all, and not always done in the same way.

>I have posted to the lojban list many times in both English and lojban,
>although less often since the birth of my children. I read the listserv
>everyday. I visit Robin's lojban website everyday. I am teaching my
>children lojban, although I have been frustrated at the lack of a
>dictionary and better learning tools, particularly for children.
>
>There are many people who bought the original JCB Loglan books, but
>were uninvolved in the political intrigues that led to the split
>between lojban and Loglan. I believe it would be politically wise to
>acknowledge Loglan in the baseline. Loglan is part of the history of
>lojban.

I agree with this. The explicit, albeit informal invitation to Bob McIvor 
to participate in the byfy is some recognition of this. But the members 
voted in 1992 that "Lojban is Loglan", and I think only the members can 
vote to officially retract that sentiment.

>I am not suggesting that any changes be made to lojban, only that the
>lojban-Loglan relationship be addressed in the baseline. Why
>unnecessarily alienate people who are very likely to be interested in
>joining the lojban community?

I don't think that anything has been done to explicitly alienate the TLI 
community, and much that is not reportable has gone on behind the scenes 
towards the contrary. But legally, we can do nothing with JCB's language 
without explicit permission from TLI; I remain under a threat from their 
lawyer merely because I prepared a list of corresponding cmavo from the two 
versions with the intent of putting that list in an appendix to the 
dictionary. I believe that the current TLI management would not pursue 
that hostile approach to us, but we are extremely constrained between the 
community's commitment to the Lojban baseline and the copyright claims 
dispute that originally engendered Lojban.

>JCB was a flawed human being, at times prone to petulance,
>mean-spiritedness, and poor judgment. So am I. Judging by your post, so
>are you.

I'd like to think that the community had risen above mean-spiritedness and 
petulance.

What I am seeing in the few hostile postings on this discussion (only 
Jordan that I have seen has publicly been supportive), is that people are 
willing to put their small concerns over details ahead of their willingness 
to grant some slack in the spirit of consensus. Everyone wants guarantees 
in advance that their particular concern will be respected in the final 
baseline (or in the case of And's argument, that the final baseline not be 
a baseline at all). The policy that the Board settled on with much 
wrangling was to leave the details to a consensus of the byfy, and I made 
it a point to make sure that the byfy will exclude no one who is willing to 
work within Nick's procedures, so the byfy is potentially more 
representative of the community than even the LLG voting membership (which 
is self-promulgating); no one including you or And is excluded.

But we must be able AND WILLING to give up on details in order to achieve 
consensus. The policy as adopted is an attempt at a consensus reflecting 
known concerns of many different interest groups. No one including me is 
satisfied with all the details, but at some point we have to be willing to 
grant consensus support rather than hassling the details.

The vote on the policy will tell me whether the Lojban community is willing 
to back a consensus position without arguing everything to death. If it 
cannot do so, I am less than confident that the language will remain a 
cohesive unity, something that we have been more successful at doing than 
most artificial language efforts.

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