Subject: Re: [lojban] Marketing lojban

From: Jay Kominek <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 11:19:58 -0700 (MST)

On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:

> The problem with any sort of advertising that generates orders, especially
> if they are not orders for the one product (the book) that we are able to
> relatively easily prepare and ship from stock in hand, is in my time to
> fill the orders.

Wouldn't, then, it save a lot of effort to not make it appear as though
you're selling anything besides the book? Like, the brochure from 1991,
is still pretty easy to find and it lists all kinds of stuff for sale that
isn't the book.

> >Then let _those_ people deal with the random
> >information inquiries. Sure you'd have to sort of quiz them to make sure
> >they'd all read the FAQ and they were familiar with the web page to find
> >all the easy answers, but thats a one-time investment.
>
> The problem is how to feed snail mail inquiries into such a list.

I suppose the effort to scan them would be comparable to responding.

Hm, maybe bundle mail up as you get it and then mail it off to somebody
who claims to have enough time to respond to inquiries?

> >Where is the better list at?
>
> It's there. Question 18 on projects. (Anyone who wants to write an update
> or addition to this list of projects is welcome to submit same to me, since
> I need to update it.)

Ah.

> >On the part of the web page I'm looking at, it says "Volunteers are sought
> >to aid in preparing these lists for use as dictionary files. Contact
> >[us]." I want to help, but I've try to make it a point to never volunteer
> >for something without knowing what it is. Maybe if you expanded on what is
> >involved in preparation?
>
> I've done this several times. I need to dig in the archives to see if I
> can find what I've written without having to recreate it.

Okay. I must admit I've only been on the list for 6-7 months or so, and
reading the archives is not something I've had time for yet.

> >the web
> >page would feel a lot more alive and people would be more motivated to
> >look at it. (Oh, and date stuff better,
>
> Explain, please?

The motivating? Or the dating? The motivating is just an observation I've
made. Pages which have things change on them get visited a lot, even if
there aren't changes for awhile. As far as the dating, I just find it
difficult to figure out which documents are the right versions of things.
(In how many places is the gismu list linked to?)

> >and get rid of copies of things
> >which are out of date so people aren't worried they're downloading a
> >worthless copy of the gismu list or something.)
>
> That which is out of date is marked as such, usually by putting it in the
> "historical" section. If something has a date that is 10 years old, that
> is because it hasn't changed in 10 years.

Well, there are for instance, a couple of lujvo files floating around, I
think. NORALUJ.TXT? and just lujvo and something else. Which one is the
one people are supposed to get? All? Do they duplicate each other? I don't
really see any dates on them so I don't know which one is the most recent.

> >I suspect it sounds like I'm being very pushy.
>
> Not in the least. You'll have to do much worse before I get offended %^)

Ah good. :)

> > [my news site stuff, clipped.]
> Post a URL. xod will be interested, at the very least.

I showed it to some people and got some feedback, so after I make a few
corrections (mechanical and grammatical) I'll post it publically.

> Those of us in the Windoze world don't know what to do with TeX and its
> relatives. The master of the draft textbook is in Microsoft Word, which is
> on the website.

Ask your friendly *NIX running neighbor to run it through pdflatex to
produce a nice PDF? :) (Or postscript, or HTML, or things appropriate for
sending to a publisher.)

I chose LaTeX because I wanted to print it out, but I believe I'm going to
continue my work, and I'm going to continue using LaTeX because the
textbook is something meant to be printed out and look good, and in my
opinion, nothing looks better and classier than the output of TeX.
(Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" is the most attractive texts
I've seen.) And until a printed version needs to be prepared, lovely PDF
output and acceptable HTML output is easily produced.

> >(I was also correcting errors and bringing it up to date) Would it be
> >worthwhile to
> >finish, or is it too out of date?
>
> What do you mean by "out of date"? There is no newer version, nor is
> anyone working on one.

Well, has the language (vocabulary or grammar) changed since the textbook
was written?

> If you complete such a thing, we could add it to the Web site. Whether
> anyone wants such a thing, I can't say. The textbook has minor errors, but
> its primary flaws are incompleteness and an aborted concept of Lojban
> pedagogy.

Well, it doesn't sound like its totally flawed, so all that can be fixed.

> The incompleteness is partly in lack of coverage of the whole
> language, but much more severe in its lack of copious examples, exercises
> and practice readings and writings of the sort that language education
> requires.

All sounds fixable with a bit of help.

- Jay Kominek <[email-masked]>
Don't worry,
Things have an annoying tendancy to work out.