Subject: Re: [lojban] how can i help lojban? what can $ do?

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 08:19:34 -0400

At 11:38 PM 07/21/2001 -0600, Jay Kominek wrote:
>On Sat, 21 Jul 2001, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:
> > At 07:48 PM 07/20/2001 -0600, you wrote:
> > >Where would you submit such a proposal to? NSF?
> >
> > But JCB sought 3 different NSF grants in the late 70s and we know what
> > feedback he got, and thus we know a lot of errors to avoid.
>
>I'm curious, what are the major errors to avoid?

Not easy to answer, but JCB made them all %^)

The research has to be well-defined and succinctly stated. JCB's proposals 
were nebulous and basically sought money to support TLI as a research 
institution rather than pay for specific research tasks. Then he didn't 
actually say what kinds of tasks would be undertaken, much less how they 
would be undertaken. Instead he enclosed a copy of each of the books, and 
all the issues of The Loglanist that had appeared to show they kinds of 
things he wanted to do. Unfortunately the rules specified a page limit, 
and he was supposed to send copies for all of the reviewers (he only sent 
1) so reviewers had to judge his proposal without all the supporting 
material. On later proposals he tried to reference the previously 
submitted material so he wouldn't have to sacrifice more of the limited 
copies, and again the reviewers did not see the material. In any event, 
reviewers were not going to read several hundred pages of stuff that was 
somewhat lower quality than the typical Lojban List discussion in order to 
find out what the project was.

Even with all this, he still got two strongly favorable ratings and one 
strongly negative one. This should have told him that he needed to write a 
different kind of proposal to target the concerns that led to the 
negatives. But the later proposals, while more limited in scope, were 
still nebulosities that depended on someone reading all the material that 
they did not even get.

Finally, JCB committed the cardinal sin of challenging the rejection and 
protesting through channels to the highest level of NSF. Since he had not 
followed the rules for proposals, he had no chance to win this protest, but 
did so anyway. But formal protests are a surefire way to irritate the 
people who you will be submitting your proposals to. When we started 
Lojban, I was told that the head of the linguistics section at NSF had a 
long memory and Loglan proposals were dead letters. This in turn led to my 
strategy over the years to make sure that Lojban work met the standards of, 
and was oriented towards the concerns of, research linguists, in order to 
work up enough goodwill so that when we eventually sought our own grants we 
would be fairly considered.

> > >I could print out smallish
> > >information packets at no cost to myself, and wouldn't mind absorbing the
> > >cost of mailing them out, assuming they're not too big, and not too often.
> > >(50 pages a week or so would be no problem.) I could even get them mailed
> > >in a timely fashion. Just have to tell me what file to send to who.
> >
> > We were considering something like this last LogFest. But the problems
> > always return back to the paperwork issues. Keeping books. Paying sales
> > tax on things we sell as opposed to hand out. Making sure that no orders
> > get lost. Making sure that credit cards get charged, but only when we
> > actually fill the order, rather than when we get the order.
>
>So, is that, "No, no interest in having others print out and mail simple
>literature, at no monetary cost to LLG, and for only as much time as it
>takes to email snail mail addresses to willing parties"? :)

Not what I said. Our official policy is that anyone and everyone who 
wishes can make copies of our materials for the promotion of the 
language. Even the refgrammar has a form of copyleft.

On the other hand, LLG's long term viability depends on us managing to 
operate as a business in order to get the income needed to continue to 
operate at all. Donations have never covered all of our costs, and all of 
our pubs prior to the refgrammar were sold at cost (except for software, 
which we made trivial shareware sales).

>It seems as though the concerns are two-fold.
>
>1, The people sending out the papers will violate the confidentiality of
>those receiving the papers. Valid, but not a terribly huge deal it seems.
>I mean, what would someone do? Tell others "Hah! Jim on Oak street is
>interested in that crazy Lojban stuff!"?

That may be an issue to the recipients, but isn't a biggie for me.

>2, The people sending out the stuff don't do it. I don't see why someone
>would volunteer and then not send the stuff out, or at least tell you they
>hadn't sent it.

(/start gripe/)

Well, the history of volunteer efforts in the Lojban community is fairly 
simple. If people promise to do it, and their names is not Nicholas, they 
probably won't get it done in time (note that I do not include Lojbab on 
that list), and those two have extremely limited time. A few people have 
done things without promising in advance, such as yourself. You, Jay, and 
some others, have won a lot of credibility for just going out and doing 
your thing, which is a plus for the future of the language and the 
community, but it isn't easy to predict who will come through with what or 
when, and managing this project has been a bear as a result.

But we have set up numerous committees at LogFest, including the most 
active people in the community who volunteer over and over, in order to 
tackle the tasks set forth as priorities by the members, and only one of 
those committees ever even MET. Similarly individuals including myself 
have let the membership down. We were supposed to participate at the World 
Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia next month. We know people on 
the organizing committee and they almost certainly would welcome us. but 
the volunteers never did anything. People know how long it took for the 
lojban.org website to be redesigned even with xod pushing hard, and I 
haven't had time to properly maintain it.

In general these volunteers have done precisely what you say they wouldn't 
do - they did not do the job and they did not tell me that they weren't 
doing it. As such, tasks which I was explicitly supposed to stay out of, 
so as to keep my overcommitment level down, have gone from one LogFest to 
the next with no action taken. (And sometimes I've had stuff to do that I 
haven't done - it isn't everyone-except-Lojbab at fault; Nick has been 
bugging me for several weeks to write a couple of paragraphs for the 
Overview section of the brochure book.)

When I had not gotten to the level 0 books, John Cowan took over the 
job. When John had not done anything by last December, Nick took 
over. One book turned into two, and it now seems like the lesson book 
which was originally intended to be introductory material aimed at the 
level 0 novice who had not yet decided to study the language seriously, is 
apparently an excellent book but not the sort of thing you send to someone 
seeking a casual introduction to the language. And people seem now to want 
the book to be a gap filler for what they see as under-specification in the 
refgrammar, which seems to me not the sort of thing that a textbook is 
designed to do. So now at LogFest we will have to decide how to publish 
Nick's book while meanwhile seeking a way to complete the level 0 package 
that I thought he was writing it for.

(/end gripe/)

>They're valid concerns, and there aren't really solutions besides trust.

It is hard in my position not to be a little cynical. What you guys have 
been doing the last year is slowly overcoming my cynicism. But our 
financial position hasn't improved and I am less able to loan money for 
publishing than I was a few years ago, in part because LLG hasn't yet made 
enough to pay back the last loan.

>Of course, I could be missing some more concerns.

%^)

The ultimate one is that if I take money from someone, I feel I am 
responsible to make sure that they are getting what they ordered before I 
deposit their check. I treat money matters very seriously, perhaps too 
seriously because my reputation for integrity is on the line. As a result, 
orders are the area I find hardest to trust people in, especially when 
things of less importance have fallen short of what is needed.

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