the future of Lojban's leadership

[Alex Burka]

coi lo jbopre

My name is Dustin and you might know me as ldlework or mokau or cadgu'a.  I'm

writing to announce the current motion to nominate selpa'i as the current warden

for the language in a provisionally official capacity contingent on the general

attitudes professed by the community's response to the motion. selpa'i would be

replacing Robin Lee Powell in this position.

Currently, the IRC and Facebook communities have been approached. The response so

far has been extremely positive with a current count of 20 to 1 in favor of the

motion. Broca of the BPFK has given his provisional support of the motion and Ali

Sajid Imami of the LLG has given positive approval.

Robin Lee Powell has declared that he will abstain from voting explicitly, citing

personal reasons but has offered the following words (edited for clarity):

rlpowell:   I confirm [that] I'd [just] as soon someone else took my Lojbanic authority.

rlpowell:   I'm ever so slightly mildly skeptical about selpa'i specifically because

            he's not well known throughout the community the way I was.

rlpowell: I'm mildly worried that his lack of presence there will lead to schism or something.

rlpowell: Having said that, I certainly don't know of anybody *better* suited for the job.

rlpowell: and I, personally, like him and his attitude towards Lojban.

So what will this actually mean for the community and the language?

As it stands Lojban is a vibrant community of speakers of a wide range of fluency.

At the tail end, some extremely active and hard-working jbopre have, over the

years, contributed many efforts to the language such as translations, music but

also proposals of enhancements or refinements of various aspects of the language

including its grammar, cmavo and general lexicon. However without an active

leadership many of these modifications remain in conversational limbo where they

are discussed for years in vain since there is no explicit mechanism for

integration into the language or lexicon. New speakers get confused at the

apparent lack of consensus.

selpa'i would be the figurehead for the re-activation of this explicit mechanism for

integration. If you are familiar with software development, this responsibility is

synonymous with that of a repository maintainer. In that sense, he will have the

authority to merge pull requests back into the repository thereby making the change

"official". The authority to perform the "last-step" approval or disapproval of any

of the number of outstanding or future proposals that may take place is what allows

the language to continue to evolve and adapt to the creativity and usage of its

userbase.

I ask that everyone refrain from accusations of dictatorship and other similarly

colored arguments. Lojban has always had an acting leadership for all of the

utilities mentioned above. The motion should not in anyway be interpreted that

selpa'i is solely responsible for engineering proposals and that all our own

responsibilities to partake in the creative process have been revoked. On the

contrary, with an actually active leadership we hope that the motion will encourage

those who tend to think very deeply about the nuance of Lojban's various systems to

feel more confident that they have a venue through which their ideas may actually

one day be realized.

Furthermore, if selpa'i is indeed found to be an acceptable leader for our lovely

language a major effort will be made to "open source" the language. We have a PEG

grammar, reference material, and a lexicon all of which are data that can be

managed with principles and procedures that more resemble the management of a

software development. The intention is to make the entire process extremely more

visible and open with actual mechanisms for structured review and integration just

like in the software world. I hope it is readily apparent how this could be an

incredible boon for the direct democracy that so many desire.

Lastly, I will speak a bit about selpa'i himself. As I have known him, he has

demonstrated a prowess of the language that I have yet to see matched in a

demonstrated way. His deep familiarity with not only the various grammatical

systems but their nuance, their great qualities and their systemic inefficiencies

is really inspiring. As one of the most active jbopre, he continuously emits

high-quality literary translations, and even music. He is an active Lojban

teacher with a number of current students that he lectures and gives formal

training to. The guy can *rap* in Lojban :) I invite you to read his active blog

which is where most of his published thinking on Lojban resides:

http://selpahi.weebly.com/ *

and also many of his Lojban writings are available at:

http://selpahi.de/

* NB: The blog posts are proposals only! I think they show a depth of thinking

about the language. But the intended work is completely community-driven and

no-one intends to implement proposals without wide support.

Here is a current log of everyone who has given a direct response to the motion

(which will be updated as the motion is on-going):

https://gist.github.com/durka/cdf733d1ec95333fb9e7

Here is log of the discussion that has taken place on facebook as of this

writing: https://gist.github.com/dustinlacewell/115350f17f09efc9aa3f

Please, use this thread to voice your approval or disapproval for this motion. If

you disapprove it is enough to say so and give a bit of reasoning behind why you

think so. Long digressions will make it difficult to ascertain an accurate

distilling of everyone's approval or disapproval. Nays will be counted regardless

of their length! :)

Thank you for reading! If you'd like to participate in a more real-time discourse,

I highly encourage you to visit #lojban on Freenode IRC. If you're

unfamiliar with that, you can use http://webchat.freenode.net/ to join.

.i finti fa la'o gy Dustin Lacewell gy no'u la'o irci ldlework irci no'u la mokau

.i cusku'i fa la'o gy Alex Burka gy no'u la'o irci durka42 irci

.i mu'o

[Jonathan Jones]

Is this for the position of BDFL, which encompasses all of Robin's current powers/responsibilities/etc., or some subset of them?

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mu'o mi'e .aionys.

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[dlac...@gmail.com]

I think understand your question and I the answer is that at this time questions about the upper-end of Robin's current responsibilities related to the direct management of assets is still up in the air. What's certain are the responsibilities related to the prescription of lojban and the management regarding the integration of changes to that prescription. This has a lot to do with a mutual agreement between selpahi and camgusmis. A conversation I'm sure which will advance pending the overall character of this campaign.  

[CosmicRay]

Re the wider proposal you might want to (but might not have to) seek consensus from the other LLG members: http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+Members

kozmikreis

On 15 May 2014, at 07:45, dlac...@gmail.com wrote:

I think understand your question and I the answer is that at this time questions about the upper-end of Robin's current responsibilities related to the direct management of assets is still up in the air. What's certain are the responsibilities related to the prescription of lojban and the management regarding the integration of changes to that prescription. This has a lot to do with a mutual agreement between selpahi and camgusmis. A conversation I'm sure which will advance pending the overall character of this campaign.  

--

[Dustin Lacewell]

Fortunately, Ali Sajid Imami and Lindar have already given their support! I think Lindar's response has yet to be added to the vote log but I'm sure Alex will at some point soon. But yeah, it'd be great for that trend to continue.

[Dustin Lacewell]

Sorry to double post, but I just wanted to add John Cowan has deferred voting for now.

[Jorge Llambías]

Excellent news! I wholeheartedly approve. .i'e ui

mu'o mi'e xorxes

[Remo Dentato]

I'm ok with selpa'i taking a more formal role.

mu'o mi'e .remod.

[Wuzzy]

The actual question to me is weather Lojban *needs* some kind of
leadership.

To give the leadership as you described to a single person also has

I disagree with the voting in itself and I think it’s nonsense.
It is completely meaningless to me. Even if selpa'i gets elected to
… well … the leader of Lojban xD … I won’t neccessarily recognize
his authority. Simply because nobody can tell me how to use any
language! :P
(But I try hard to stick to standards, so I can be understood.)
Accepting the voting process
in itself would mean I first recognize YOUR authority to cast out
a vote and to claim success or failure of that vote afterwards.
When do you think is the vote successful, anyways? Over 50%?
Over 66.666%? When does the vote even end? Which votes do even count?
Etc. etc. etc.
Hey, even I could start a vote today and get major support, but
that does not neccessarily mean the voting result is reasonable.
Any kind of democracy is based on a logical fallacy. Just because
many people are in favor of X, it does not mean X actually makes sense.

And before you ask, no, I also never recognized R.L.Powell as a leader.

Maybe selpa'i will flesh out some good proposals or improve existing
ones. Maybe I will support them or not. I don’t know, I haven’t looked
into many of them. Maybe I shoulod change that?
But no matter the proposals, I accept selpa'i as a Lojbanist, but
I don’t accept him as a leader.

I value proposals on how good they are, not solely on where they come
from. It is true that selpa'i has a long history in Lojban, but this
alone does not justify as him or anyone else being a leader.
In my eyes leadership is irrational. You suggest that way to go to
resolve dispute is to install a leader. But in reality, a leader
would be simply just another party, possibly arguing for another
position. But the leadership position is somehow accepted as “more
valuable” as the other positions. Sorry, but if you want to convince
ME that <INSERT PROPOSAL HERE> is good, you’d have to bring better
arguments than “<INSERT LEADER HERE> said it!”. This is the reason
why I think it is irrational.
And even if that leader has a long commitment to a topic, that does not
necessarily mean that leader would continue that way. Humans make
mistakes, that’s normal. But if a leader makes a mistake, the impact
is large.

[Dustin Lacewell]

Wuzzy, thanks for giving us a good amount of information to understand your position. Would I be interpreting your tone correctly, if I put down as a Nay? I only ask because some people have deferred from voting and your views about the invalidity of voting and leadership in general could indicate perhaps if you felt more along that line. Anyway, if you could just clarify for our sake that would help.

Regarding where authority, such as mine to send out such a nomination and hold a vote comes directly from those who vote. Similarly, any authority granted to selpa'i to manage integrations comes directly from those that support him in doing so. 

And that comes back on what exactly is the consequence of such an appointment. Your words expose a fear to me that selpahi will some how be solely responsible for the creation of proposals let alone their integration. This just isn't the intention. Lojban will still be accessible to everyone who wishes to think deeply and creatively with the aim of improving the language. Furthermore such proposals do not go straight from their author to selpa'i's approval. That would be impractical for sure. I hope that I can clearly convey that what is going on here is giving all the people who have an opinion on things that should change, a venue for advertising and seeking consensus on changes and mostly important a generally agreed upon mechanism for finalizing that consensus into the language. This is the role selpahi will be taking on. Its so very important for us to be able to distinguish between selpahi having the responsibility of merging changes into the language, and selpahi having the sole responsibility of managing the languages creative process.

Finally, to respond to the question of just what percent of respondents much vote positively for this motion to be actualized I would to say a couple things. Let's consider the situation now. We don't have any means through which to fix cludges in the grammar or lexicon. We do have many people thinking about how to improve these cludges. Some say that we should orchestrate a massive formalized tome detailing how to implement a direct democracy, explicitly delineating protocols and how hearings and so on should be carried out. I applaud those people for thinking so grandly. However, I and a number who already agree with this motion that the reality is that such a clinical simply is not practical in the modern community of lojban. Those who have the fortitude and strength to spend large amount of their time thinking creatively and critically about lojban do so because they are passionate about the thing itself. Lojban. To ask them to gate their efforts behind the willingness to architect, orchestrate and carry out a large bureaucracy just isn't realistic as far as one can tell. This is synonymous to the nature of this poll. We are polling for a general attitude of the community. Contingent upon a momentum in either direction of self-evident magnitudes the motion will either be carried out naturally or not. Nothing will be done if this completely divides the community. Who could desire such a result after all? I know that I am safe speaking for all who are helping to organize this campaign and those who have already spoken in favor of it, the intention to help Lojban directly. It has nothing to do with selpa'i's ego, anyone else's ego, power, authority or anything. I hope I have framed this appropriately and respectably. 

[Craig Daniel]

This seems like LLG business to me. (But as an LLG member my vote on more leadership by active dedicated people will always be yes.)

- mi'e .kreig.daniyl.

[And Rosta]

I wish this proposal well and think it would be beneficial for Lojban.

(One small thing: possibly delusorily I find it more comfortable to know the name and identity of folk I interact with; if a nontrivial number of others feel likewise then perhaps we might be told the name and identity of our indubitably amiable and deservedly esteemed Selpahi.)

--And.

[selpa'i]

la .and. cu cusku di'e

> I wish this proposal well and think it would be beneficial for Lojban.
>
> (One small thing: possibly delusorily I find it more comfortable to know
> the name and identity of folk I interact with; if a nontrivial number of
> others feel likewise then perhaps we might be told the name and identity
> of our indubitably amiable and deservedly esteemed Selpahi.)

(respectful greetings to you, And!)

That's absolutely no problem: My name is Miles Forster. I live in
Berlin, Germany. I am 23 years old.

I don't consider my identity a secret (I've publically made my name
known in some previous threads), I just seem to prefer the name selpa'i.
However, I won't protest at all if I get referred to by my real name.

io mi'e la selpa'i mu'o

[Álvaro Vallejo]

Hi,

I'm just a suburban citizen of Lojbanistan but I vote for yes. And my thanks to Robin, too.

Álvaro

[Wuzzy]

Now that I know what this is *not* about, I would like to know what
this poll/vote/proposal/whatever is *really* about.

It seems I have missed the point.

What position and functions exactly *do* you propose for selpa'i?
You response confused me slightly.
Maybe this whole thing makes more sense to discuss if we know what
we’re actually talking about. ;-)

Besides: Does selpa'i even *want* such a position? I think this point
is especially important. If not, this discussion would be really
senseless. xD

[Dustin Lacewell]

On Thursday, May 15, 2014 4:50:36 PM UTC-7, Wuzzy wrote:

Now that I know what this is *not* about, I would like to know what
this poll/vote/proposal/whatever is *really* about. 

It seems I have missed the point.

What position and functions exactly *do* you propose for selpa'i?
You response confused me slightly.
Maybe this whole thing makes more sense to discuss if we know what
we’re actually talking about. ;-)

I'm sorry. I tried to not only explain what selpa'i would not be doing, but also what he would be responsible for. Here are a couple messages from my response:

"I hope that I can clearly convey that what is going on here is giving all the people who have an opinion on things that should change, a venue for advertising and seeking consensus on changes and mostly important a generally agreed upon mechanism for finalizing that consensus into the language. This is the role selpahi will be taking on."

"Its so very important for us to be able to distinguish between selpahi having the responsibility of merging changes into the language, and selpahi having the sole responsibility of managing the languages creative process."

And from the original message:

"However without an active leadership many of these modifications remain in conversational limbo where they are discussed for years in vain since there is no explicit mechanism for integration into the language or lexicon."

"selpa'i would be the figurehead for the re-activation of this explicit mechanism for integration. If you are familiar with software development, this responsibility is synonymous with that of a repository maintainer. In that sense, he will have the authority to merge pull requests back into the repository thereby making the change "official"."

To summarize, if the above is not illuminating, selpahi will be replacing Robin in the role of approving and making official any changes to the language.

 

Besides: Does selpa'i even *want* such a position? I think this point
is especially important. If not, this discussion would be really
senseless. xD

I agree it would be senseless, so I can assure you that everything I have said is only by the full approval of selpahi. If for some reason that can't be trusted, I have no doubt that selaphi will confirm since we've been in direct communication throughout this entire process.

All of that said, I personally hope we (including everyone who has approved this measure) can eventually help you see the positive pragmatism of the motion. We really believe this is what Lojban needs, not what selpahi deserves. The aim isn't to tell anyone in particular how they should use lojban, but to make lojban reflective of the ideals and usage of its modern userbase.

If anyone else has any questions, concerns, or would like to demonstrate their positive or negative disposition on this matter please feel invited to do so. 

[Jonathan Jones]

This is completely off-topic, but it's bothered me enough to make me need to bring it up: Why do you keep spelling it "selpahi"? That's not how it's spelled, Lojban doesn't /have/ an "h". It's {selpa'i}.

[Dustin Lacewell]

Hehe, I know. Its a habit from IRC where his nick really is "selpahi". Forgive me :)

[Craig Daniel]

It really seems to me that official leadership positions are a question for the LLG membership and board. Unofficial leadership, which does come from the whole of the Lojban-speaking community, isn't something you vote on by saying aye or nay, but by letting the person lead and then following or not. Selpa'i leads, and we mostly do follow; in a sense, then, the true vote concluded long ago, and the community said yes.

[Dustin Lacewell]

(now there's an endorsement :)

If selpa'i were awake I know that he would agree with one point and disagree with the other. He's certainly of the opinion, that we have shared together, that leadership comes from the communal support you refer to. However, I think selpa'i would describe to you some of his experience in trying to lead, before, in which he received some extremely loud backlash.

Both of these things come together to form the motion we're now proposing. While I could only reasonably interpret your message as incredibly supportive; its also absolutely important that we do this thread. We're doing this thread because we too are perceptive the support you mention. By holding this motion explicitly in front of the community, we are asking all those who do indeed support selpa'i to manifest that support here so that the strong influence he has in the community today can be demonstrated and give weight to the ensuing change in leadership.

As for the commentary regarding the LLG; we're definitely aware of it and the BPFK's missions, history and status. I'll just say that a few LLG members and the chair of the BPFK have already given mixed support, both fully and provisionally.

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 5:31 PM, Craig Daniel <craigb...@gmail.com> wrote:

It really seems to me that official leadership positions are a question for the LLG membership and board. Unofficial leadership, which does come from the whole of the Lojban-speaking community, isn't something you vote on by saying aye or nay, but by letting the person lead and then following or not. Selpa'i leads, and we mostly do follow; in a sense, then, the true vote concluded long ago, and the community said yes.

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[Jonathan Jones]

First of all, this seems like an entirely pointless endeavor for the simple reason that, by mandate of the LLG, no change proposals are allowed until the baseline as is has finished being fully documented. Obviously there have been a very very few exceptions to this, most notably xorlo (, actually that's the only one I can think of other than (possibly) dotside), but I contend that any such changes are of a "bugfix" type of change. There are some proposals I am aware of that I have no doubt would be approved, such as changing to using PEG instead of YACC, .camxes. instead of jbofi'e, etc., but of utmost importance to any proposal, past, present, and future, is getting that baseline finished documented so the freeze is removed. With that freeze in effect, it really doesn't matter /what/ the proposal process is, or who the arbiter is.

Secondly, to the best of my knowledge, the current proposal process is to create and submit a specification on the proposal to the BPFK, who would then review it, assess how it would affect the corpus, affect any changes deemed necessary, and then vote on it for approval, while Robin holds the role of, basically, "Super Veto Man", in a very similar vein to the way Congress and the President operate RE: the passing of laws in the U.S. It sounds to me as if you're suggesting giving the role the BPFK plays in the process to selpa'i, not the role Robin plays, which I don't approve of. If, on the other hand, what you are suggesting is that selpa'i be the intermediary between the proposer and the approval committee, then I see nothing wrong with that. (And before anyone says anything about the BPFK being dead, may I just point out again that the role of the BPFK is that of maintaining the language- i.e., documenting the language as is as well as approving and recording any changes to it. Since there can not be changes with the freeze-until-baseline thing is over with, that kind of leaves the BPFK with nothing to do. All I can say on the subject is, there's a well-documented process for finishing the baseline, and anyone that wants to can easily go about helping to finish it, and it is about 9x% finished as of this writing, so it's not like there's a lot left to do.)

With all that said, I don't really have any problems with a competent jbopre taking on more responsibilities in jbogu'e, whether it be selpa'i or anyone else. Seeing as this is a mostly volunteer community (, I honestly don't know if anyone gets paid for what they do for Lojban, but I'm not going to assume no one does), it seems a bit counter-productive to deny anyone who is volunteering.

[Craig Daniel]

I'm an LLG member. If the notion of giving selpa'i an official leadership role of some kind comes up for a vote at our annual meeting, I will vote in favor.

Until then, my support counts for very little; I'm not an active part of the language's user base these days. But to the extent that my support matters, it's there.

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[Dustin Lacewell]

Jonathan,

I think you're on key, by bringing up the actual policies that currently exist on paper. While I'm mindfully not going to try to argue anyone here about what those policies say (they are available for anyone to read) I think even this aspect of the motion can be discussed by re-raising the perspective regarding Lojban's practical reality when it comes to political efforts, councils, procedures, hearings and so forth. Do I gain any points here by pointing out the incoherence between the intentions of those policies and their non-implementation? In the same way that we're nominating selpa'i to 'last-step' integration of changes to the language over some idealized formal direct democracy, I think we can apply similar admissions to the effectiveness of leaning on long standing but unrealized intentions.

I want to also reply to your statements about finishing a baseline, unfreezing the language, and then the thing you said about how it wouldn't matter at that point how the leadership goes since the official capacities are 'finished' and everything becomes volunteer at that point, but I have to run for a while. I will say something like, we agree, and we're simply merging all of those exactly true facts under a more direct and achievable (by achievable I mean, as per the willing to do this work) means. This has not only to do with selpa'i gaining some say in what is committed to the language, but also things I have alluded to regarding putting the language in a more collaborative format and using patterns from software development to manage on going progress - the kind I imagine you envision after such 'unfreezing'.

Thanks for that very good reply.

--

[Jonathan Jones]

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 7:01 PM, Dustin Lacewell <dlac...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jonathan,

I think you're on key, by bringing up the actual policies that currently exist on paper. While I'm mindfully not going to try to argue anyone here about what those policies say (they are available for anyone to read) I think even this aspect of the motion can be discussed by re-raising the perspective regarding Lojban's practical reality when it comes to political efforts, councils, procedures, hearings and so forth. Do I gain any points here by pointing out the incoherence between the intentions of those policies and their non-implementation? In the same way that we're nominating selpa'i to 'last-step' integration of changes to the language over some idealized formal direct democracy, I think we can apply similar admissions to the effectiveness of leaning on long standing but unrealized intentions.

I want to also reply to your statements about finishing a baseline, unfreezing the language, and then the thing you said about how it wouldn't matter at that point how the leadership goes since the official capacities are 'finished' and everything becomes volunteer at that point, but I have to run for a while.

No, you misunderstand. I didn't say it won't matter once the baseline is finished "because everything is done", I said it doesn't matter /now/ because it isn't. No changes are allowed as long as the freeze is in effect, and the freeze is in effect until the baseline (, the baseline being the language as it officially is /now/,) is 100% finished being documented. As far as the volunteer thing, again, I'm referring to the /current/ state, not any possible future one. As far as the official capacities are concerned, especially RE: the BPFK, I don't think they will ever be "finished". Lojban is not intended to be a static, unchanging language, and the BPFK's role is to maintain and update the documentation of the official status of the language, as in, what the words mean, how they can or can not be used, etc. etc.

 

I will say something like, we agree, and we're simply merging all of those exactly true facts under a more direct and achievable (by achievable I mean, as per the willing to do this work) means. This has not only to do with selpa'i gaining some say in what is committed to the language, but also things I have alluded to regarding putting the language in a more collaborative format and using patterns from software development to manage on going progress - the kind I imagine you envision after such 'unfreezing'.

Thanks for that very good reply.

[Jonathan Jones]

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 7:37 PM, Jonathan Jones <eye...@gmail.com> wrote:

...[T]he BPFK's role is to maintain and update the documentation of the official status of the language, as in, what the words mean, how they can or can not be used, etc. etc.

Which includes reviewing and approving any change proposals, as well as updating any relevant documentation accordingly.

 

[Dustin Lacewell]

Hmm, I definitely don't understand this response very well. It sounds like you're
saying that the baseline is complete yet undocumented. Reminding us that the
language is intended to be "frozen" until the documentation is indeed
complete. Furthermore, that you don't believe the BPFK will ever be "finished"
completing that documentation. You then state that lojban is a non-static
evolving language.
 
So if I at least read you correctly, I'm unsure how to interpret the content.
 
Are you suggesting that BPFK will never complete the documentation of the
baseline (and hence reach an unfreeze) *because* lojban is ever changing? (If
not, why do you believe the BPFK will never finish - we agree that its unlikely
but if lojban's dynamic nature is not the reason, I'm interested as to why you
think so)
 
What is the overall aim of your reply? If you indeed believe that lojban is an
evolving language then I don't actually see the source of fervor. Maybe you are
just emphasizing the supposed machinations of policy that are supposed to address
the goals that we're trying to accomplish by nominating selpa'i to this position?
Maybe you are emphasizing the supposed freeze and trying to encourage us to not
endeavor to change it until this happens, especially by nominating someone with
the specific purpose of having the right to do so?
 
Maybe I've missed you completely. Which I definitely don't want because I'd like
to address your actual concern.

[Jonathan Jones]

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 9:59 PM, Dustin Lacewell <dlac...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hmm, I definitely don't understand this response very well. It sounds like you're saying that the baseline is complete yet undocumented.

No. The baseline is the state of the language, it is not something that can be "complete" or not. The /documentation/ of the baseline is what is not complete, and will not be until the things on the BPFK Sections page have been finished. (Because that's the documentation I refer to.)

Reminding us that the language is intended to be "frozen" until the documentation is indeed complete.

It's not "intended" to be frozen. It /is/ frozen. No changes to the languages can be made, no proposals will be looked at, nothing can be changed until the baseline is completely documented, per the standing orders of the LLG, who created the BPFK for that specific purpose, as well as the eventual purpose of reviewing and (dis)approving any changes after such documentation is finished.

Furthermore, that you don't believe the BPFK will ever be "finished" completing that documentation. You then state that lojban is a non-static evolving language.

 No again. I most definitely believe that the documentation can and will be finished. What I said was that I don't think the duties of the BPFK will, as the duties of the BPFK, other than completing the baseline documentation, are to review and (dis)approve any change proposals, and the only reason I know of for such proposals to stop happening is for people to stop using the language, because only /dead/ languages don't change.

So if I at least read you correctly, I'm unsure how to interpret the content.

Then it's a good thing you didn't.

Are you suggesting that BPFK will never complete the documentation of the baseline (and hence reach an unfreeze) *because* lojban is ever changing?

No, I'm saying that no official changes can be made to Lojban until the documentation of the language /as it is right now/ (A.K.A., the baseline) is completed. The /freeze/ is /on/ /the/ /language/. The freeze means that /no changes can be officially made to the language, and anyone who uses unofficial changes is *not* speaking Lojban, they are speaking an unofficial dialect/.

(If not, why do you believe the BPFK will never finish - we agree that its unlikely but if lojban's dynamic nature is not the reason, I'm interested as to why you think so)

 Because the duties of the BPFK beyond completing documentation of the baseline are to review and (dis)approve any proposed changes to the language, and only languages that aren't used (dead languages) don't change.

What is the overall aim of your reply?

My aim is to point out that because there is a freeze in effect on the language, which means that /no changes/ can be officially made, it doesn't /currently/ matter what the proposal process is, and that the only way to lift said freeze is to finish said documentation. If you're interested in getting that freeze lifted, instructions for how to complete the documentation, which /anyone/ is allowed to do, can be found on this page. All it requires is some volunteers.

If you indeed believe that lojban is an evolving language then I don't actually see the source of fervor. Maybe you are just emphasizing the supposed machinations of policy that are supposed to address the goals that we're trying to accomplish by nominating selpa'i to this position?

Nope. I'm saying that it doesn't currently matter if selpa'i is made the officiator of language change proposals, because no changes are currently allowed, and that when the baseline documentation is complete and change proposals are allowed, I don't like the idea of one person taking over the duties of the BPFK.

Maybe you are emphasizing the supposed freeze and trying to encourage us to not endeavor to change it until this happens, especially by nominating someone with the specific purpose of having the right to do so?

Nope. I'm saying that change can not and will not happen until the freeze is lifted, regardless of endeavors, and that I don't like the idea of one person being the decider of what changes do or do not occur to the language once such freeze has been lifted. That said, I see no problem with selpa'i getting Robin's veto power, or being in charge of other things wrt Lojban, such as being the arbiter of our resources (instructions, the CLL, what-have-you).

Maybe I've missed you completely. Which I definitely don't want because I'd like to address your actual concern.

Yeah, I'd say so.

 

On Thursday, May 15, 2014 6:39:52 PM UTC-7, aionys wrote:

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 7:37 PM, Jonathan Jones <eye...@gmail.com> wrote:

...[T]he BPFK's role is to maintain and update the documentation of the official status of the language, as in, what the words mean, how they can or can not be used, etc. etc.

Which includes reviewing and approving any change proposals, as well as updating any relevant documentation accordingly.

 

--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

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[v4hn]

coi rodo

First of all, I don't have a problem with selpa'i
doing administrational work, but I'm still not sure what
is actually proposed here - and I believe it's partly unclear
to the proposer as well.

I believe Jonathan points out the more basic
problem behind this "election": When you talk about
"merging changes officially", do you want to lift the syntax freeze?
Here, I agree with Jonathan. Neither Robin nor selpa'i would be allowed
to do that to the best of my knowledge.

The freeze is undone the moment it's clear what every cmavo available
in the language _as is_ means in current usage - which has to be accepted
by "standard" camxes at least. Yes, I mean _current_ usage - selpa'i himself
seemed to misunderstand this when I met him last year.
This is not about documenting something outdated for ages.
It's about documenting the language in official syntax,
as used by todays community.

However, I do see a problem to decide whether the documentation is complete.
I believe lorxus raised this question months ago:
It looks like only "Contact Spatial FAhA3" (locked for ages by Arnt Johansen?)
and "Termsets CEhE NUhI NUhU PEhE" have not been checkpointed.
What does "TOC - Impact" mean in the section "Logical Connectives"?
Are all the other sections considered to be complete? Do they have to be
"checkpointed" again?
Neither of these are my area of expertise, so I can't really contribute.
But given that there are people around who can "rap in lojban", I still don't
understand why they propose lots of changes in syntax, but are unable to raise
guided discussions on what these last few words mean.

Back to the problem: After writing documentation for words to the byfy pages,
when/how/by whom will they be accepted officially?


mi'e la .van. mu'o

[Jonathan Jones]

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 3:19 AM, v4hn <m...@v4hn.de> wrote:

<snip>

Back to the problem: After writing documentation for words to the byfy pages,
when/how/by whom will they be accepted officially?

The instructions for what needs to be done are on the BPFK Community Work page. Basically, anything that isn't colored either blue or green on the BPFK Sections page is what needs to be worked on. Red ones are the ones that most desperately need work. Once everything is done, as per the instructions on the Works page, the BPFK will vote on the whole shebang- I'm not currently aware if this is one vote for the whole thing, one vote for each section, or one vote for each valsi, but I expect the second. The vote will be whether or not <relevant thing> has been documented accurately enough or whether it still needs work. Anything that has been marked green has already passed a vote, anything in blue is ready for a vote. Once everything is green, the baseline documentation will be complete and the freeze will be lifted.

As for why those things which are currently marked ready for a vote have not been voted on, I would expect it is because it would be better to vote on all the things at once, rather than piecemeal.

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 5/15/2014 2:09 AM, Alex Burka wrote:
> My name is Dustin and you might know me as ldlework or mokau or cadgu'a.
> I'm
> writing to announce the current motion to nominate selpa'i as the
> current warden
> for the language in a provisionally official capacity contingent on the
> general
> attitudes professed by the community's response to the motion. selpa'i
> would be
> replacing Robin Lee Powell in this position.

There is no motion, and no provision for a motion at this time. The LLG
annual meeting was 3 months ago. Furthermore, neither you nor selpa'i
has ever expressed any interest in being a formal/voting member of LLG,
nor participated in an LLG meeting as a nonvoting capacity.

Neither Facebook nor IRC are relevant to the matter, since neither is an
official group.

LLG is a legal entity and has to operate in a formal manner in
accordance with its bylaws.

As to the specifics, I have absolutely no reason at this time to support
selpa'i in any formal role in managing the language.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

What is really important is to get the stuff done. Sorry for repeating banalities over and over again.

If this is just voting (and this is indeed only voting) then I say "nay".

If something is done in future then I might say "yes" but in future.

In both cases my opinion will change nothing.

So now I'm saying {na'isai}.

What are the problems? Writing a better refgram, a better tutorial, a better dictionary, a better chrestomathy.

I don't see any serious tech problems. All of that can be done using existing tools.

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[la durka]

coi la lojbab io

Not a motion as in an official LLG motion, surely not. Didn't mean to imply
that, if that's the meaning you took.

I have a problem with dismissing Facebook and IRC out of hand, because that's a
large portion of the Lojban-speaking community. And if nothing else, the
present "unofficial community motion" (or whatever it should be called), and
the amount of support it's seen, including from some LLG members, has shown
that there is a lot of will among Lojbanists for things to move forward.

I admit to not really knowing what's been going on in the LLG recently (in fact
I can't be the only one who wasn't even aware the meeting was going on). Part
of this is the minutes not being published of course.

Anyway a few things are clear. Everyone wants a bright future for Lojban, and
agrees that there is work to do to make the language specification adequate.
That is the BPFK's responsibility, but the BPFK has been stalled for a long
time (and some have pointed to the existing mechanisms, but they are
demonstrably not working). Maybe it is time to change the structure, not in
order to change the ideals, but in order to get things moving faster towards
those ideals.

Some people have said, what exactly are we proposing here? It's a good
question. To put it one way, we're simply trying to coalesce around selpa'i and
unstick the development of Lojban from the current gridlock. But that raises
the question of how? Obviously, it's not completely settled. Dustin mentioned
the open source software model before. So here's an outline, in broad strokes,
of what could be:

- A new committee takes on the task of finishing the language documentation,
  and discussing + approving/rejecting (by vote or consensus) any further
  change proposals. Presumably, the active members of the BPFK would join this
  committee.
- We put selpa'i at the head of this committee. Someone needs to have the power
  to resolve disputes and selpa'i/Miles has the will and skill to do it (oops,
  didn't mean to rhyme there). Of course, someone chosen by the community can
  always be removed by the same community in the unlikely event that they fail
  to do a good job.
- The language development is organized as much as possible like a software
  project. There's an issue tracker so that discussions can be had about
  multiple issues at the same time, yet in an organized fashion, and the
  important bits (definitions, grammar rules, etc) are in a repository. Using
  some kind of source control (Github? eh?) will give us a lot of advantages
  including easily viewable history, and ways to branch off separate work items
  and merge them back later. (Of course we can argue about specific
  technologies and bikesheds later.)
- Everyone is encouraged to contribute to the language documentation and
  development. Contributions have to be approved by the aforementioned committee.
  Membership on the committee would be decided by the committee (ultimately by
  selpa'i, I guess) based on the strength of one's contributions and
  demonstrated skill in Lojban.

The idea is to keep bureaucracy to an absolute minimum, but to provide a
platform and organizational process that will work (better than the BPFK has
worked thus far) to move Lojban forward. Details are up for discussion, but I
wanted to get an idea out there (an idea that I think would work really well!).


So, to conclude, there seem to be plenty of people who want progress and some
inertia behind it. I've presented one possible model. What's the best way to
work with the LLG so that such a thing can be considered?

mi'e la durka mu'o

[kozmikreis]

I'm in favour of a new process model for the formalisation of the language, in particular using a Git repository hosted through Github, Bitbucket or similar, and having a hierarchical structure of contributors arranged by speciality making pull requests and merges.  Someone of selpa'i-level of language intimacy/mastery if not selpa'i himself being sat atop is fine with me too.  There would always need to be some kind of final arbiter at the top of the merge cascade, though it could be devolved to a small BPFK-style group implementing majority voting.

kozmikreis

(Paul Swift, LLG Member)

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[Pierre Abbat]

On Friday, May 16, 2014 03:34:09 Jonathan Jones wrote:
> The instructions for what needs to be done are on the BPFK Community

> Work<http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Community+Work>page. Basically,

> anything that isn't colored either blue or green on the BPFK

> Sections <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Sections> page is what needs to

> be worked on. Red ones are the ones that most desperately need work.

I was reading the section "Causation sumtcita" and noticed an example where
the Lojban and English disagree:

i ko spuda mrilu mi po'o fau lenu do tcidu je jimpe ti
Reply-mail to me only when you read and understand this.

In my dialect (but I've heard usage of "only" that makes me wince), the Lojban
means "Reply-mail only to me when...", and the English means "ko spuda mrilu
mi fau po'o...". If I find an apparent error in an example, or something that
should be clarified, should I ask the shepherd of the section, discuss it on
the wiki, or what?

Pierre

--
lo ponse be lo mruli ku po'o cu ga'ezga roda lo ka dinko

[Jonathan Jones]

Depending on how you look at it, the disagreement you mention isn't actually there:

"Reply to me, only when you understand..."

"Reply to me only, when you understand..."

So, I'd say the problem isn't that the English and Lojban disagree, but that the English can be misinterpreted.

If there's an example which has an error, I would most likely recommend just fixing the error- with a note in the wiki edit as to what was changed, of course- but I don't think anything more than that would need to be done.

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[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 5/17/2014 3:35 AM, la durka wrote:
> I have a problem with dismissing Facebook and IRC out of hand, because
> that's a large portion of the Lojban-speaking community.

I'm not sure how you know that. I've not seen any useful measures of
the size of the community of late. When I visit the IRC channel, I see
several dozen tags supposedly logged in, but at most a couple of people
respond when I say something, so I'm not sure those tags are real
people. There are several groups that come up when I search for Lojban
on Facebook. The largest in terms of members seems to be run by gleki -
there are 1353 members but a large percentage of those were added by
gleki or someone else, so we really have no way of knowing if those
people are all participating (I am not, since my limited Facebook
activity is strictly for my family; I've intended to set up a separate
Lojban-related account, but I simply don't have time for it, even if I
had a clue how to make good use of social media).

There is a Lojban language page which says that 1071 "like" the topic
and 2400 "speak" the language, and that is apparently those who have
actually said that they speak Lojban, and another Lojban "product" page
that 310 like. And a lojban community page with 78 who "like" it. I
also see Swedish and Brazilian groups, and have heard that there are
several other such groups.

And how many of those 1353 actually have said that they support this
proposal? Your github summary says 21 to 1. 22 people is NOT a large
portion of the community.

>And if nothing else, the
> present "unofficial community motion" (or whatever it should be called), and
> the amount of support it's seen, including from some LLG members, has shown
> that there is a lot of will among Lojbanists for things to move forward.

Of course there is will for things to move forward. That has been true
for years. What there isn't are workers willing to work as part of a
team to move forward on the tasks that team leaders need them to do.
Everyone wants to do their own thing in their own way, and as a result
the usefulness of any particular effort is accidental.

selpa'i has NOT shown any particular willingness to be a team worker in
the past, and has been rather quick to make and/or adopt proposals based
on his/her own standards. Anyone who is leading the standardization
among other things has to NOT be someone who is pushing their own
proposals to change the existing standard. Standards necessarily are
conservative or they aren't really standards.

> I admit to not really knowing what's been going on in the LLG recently
> (in fact
> I can't be the only one who wasn't even aware the meeting was going on).

If you were a voting member, you would have known. There is a members
mailing-list and all members are subscribed to it as a matter of
requirement.

Non-members can also participate, but they need to ask, in order to be
added to the list. Anyone who reads the Bylaws, so that they know the
responsibilities thereof, and who decides that they want to serve can
ask to become a formal member. Rarely is someone who asks, and then
shows up at the next meeting (i.e indicates their presence when asked in
the mailing list) gets turned away.

The last (2013) meeting was not well-publicized because it had been
delayed beyond reason (i.e it hadn't started before 2014), in part by my
own distractions. The next annual meeting should be late this summer,
and I'll try to better publicize it among the general community - which
generally means the Lojban and Lojban-beginners mailing list, since I
have no idea how to use other means.

> Part of this is the minutes not being published of course.

Another problem we have is that no one wants to take the time to write
up minutes. Robin considers the mailing list archive to itself be the
"minutes"

> Anyway a few things are clear. Everyone wants a bright future for
> Lojban, and
> agrees that there is work to do to make the language specification adequate.
> That is the BPFK's responsibility, but the BPFK has been stalled for a long
> time (and some have pointed to the existing mechanisms, but they are
> demonstrably not working).

There is almost no one actually doing any work on BPFK stuff. Everybody
is doing their own thing, so nothing gets done on the group effort.

> Maybe it is time to change the structure, not in
> order to change the ideals, but in order to get things moving faster towards
> those ideals.

The structure has changed several times, to no avail.

No structure will improve anything unless people start doing the
required work, and completing it.

Right now, the highest priority is getting a revised CLL including NO
changes to the language, only typos and errata that have been discovered
since the 1997 publication. After that is done (and formatted for
possible publication, since we are down to fewer than 150 copies of the
1st edition), xorlo will be the first modification to that baseline CLL,
since it is the only approved language change so far.

dotside would likely be the second change considered, due to wide
support and a relative lack of interaction with other features. Someone
would need to write change pages for CLL to reflect that proposal for it
to actually be added to the book before 2nd edition.

Then there are the raft of BPFK sections that need to be completed, as
others have pointed out. They have to be provisionally voted on once
completed.

When ALL BPFK sections are completed, the whole needs to be voted on as
a new language baseline. Since the baseline document for the grammar
and cmavo is CLL (absent a published dictionary), anything in the
approved BPFK pages that requires a change to CLL needs to be turned
into change pages. No sense in doing that until the BPFK pages are
themselves approved in isolation.

Call this CLL 2.5 edition, and will constitute adequate documentation of
the current language baseline.

Either CLL 2 or CLL 2.5 will presumably see print as the next edition
before the current print stock runs out, probably before the end of
2015, and perhaps much sooner.

This then will form a new CLL baseline standard. Only then can formal
changes to the baseline properly be considered, and they should be
written in both BPFK page format and as CLL change pages in order to be
properly considered. But that cannot be done until 2.5 is done, because
you don't know what you are trying to change.

> Some people have said, what exactly are we proposing here? It's a good
> question. To put it one way, we're simply trying to coalesce around
> selpa'i and unstick the development of Lojban from the current gridlock.

The gridlock is stuck solely because the community has proven unwilling
to do the work necessary to properly document the baseline, and has left
the job in the hands of Robin or whichever other individual has been
willing to put his name in (and demonstrate their commitment by actually
working on said baseline - which so far as I know, selpa'i has not).

We don't need a "caretaker" who isn't willing to do the work.

> - A new committee takes on the task of finishing the language documentation,

Do it, and then we'll talk.

> and discussing + approving/rejecting (by vote or consensus) any further
> change proposals.

Not on the agenda until the existing language is documented.

>Presumably, the active members of the BPFK would join this committee.

There are no "active members", per se. If there were, there would be
activity.

> - We put selpa'i at the head of this committee.

Why selpa'i? I have seen no demonstrated qualifications comparable to
Robin, and Nick Nicholas before him. (I haven't taken the BPFK jatna
job myself because I haven't consistently put in the time actually
working. If all that were needed were an adjudicator or caretaker, I
would claim that I myself am as qualified as anyone.)

>Someone needs to have the power to resolve disputes

Robin has that power currently, and is far more qualified than anyone
else, both on the basis of demonstrated language skill and commitment to
the baseline process.

But there should be no disputes. (He hasn't hardly had to resolve any
in several years). Just do the work.

and selpa'i/Miles has the will and skill to do it

He hasn't done the work, and whether you think he has the will or the
skill, he has demonstrated neither to the people who have been
responsible for the language up until now.

> (oops,
> didn't mean to rhyme there). Of course, someone chosen by the
> community can
> always be removed by the same community in the unlikely event that
> they fail
> to do a good job.

"The community" has no basis to choose except through LLG; there is no
other entity that purports to represent the community. Someone could
form a splinter organization, but they would have trouble proving that
they represent "the community". The various official Lojban mailing
lists are at this point the means whereby LLG communicates with the rest
of the community, though the IRC channel has served as an informal
means- but there are too few actually participating in IRC discussions
at any one time.

> - The language development is organized as much as possible like a software
> project.

Been there, done that. We're in the software documentation phase, the
part that the programmers never like to do, and try to get out of doing
as much as possible. The whole concept of "baselines" used with Lojban
comes from the configuration management aspect of formal software
development (from the pre-Internet era, which is when I did my 15 years
in the field - my wife still programs, doing maintenance of production
applications, and their configuration management is even tighter than I
worked under).

And while it is sometimes possible to work on the next phase of a
software development before this one is finished, it generally is
wasteful if not fruitless to do so when the specification is incomplete,
which it necessarily is for Lojban until we have the current situation
documented.

> There's an issue tracker so that discussions can be had about
> multiple issues at the same time,

Discussions other than as needed to get the existing language documented
are not part of the job. We can't and won't stop people from talking
about their pet language proposals, but only the commitment to consider
none of them before the language is documented offers even the
possibility of the latter occurring.

> yet in an organized fashion, and the
> important bits (definitions, grammar rules, etc) are in a repository.

The byfy pages serve that now.

> some kind of source control (Github? eh?)

Some people have a clue what github is. I don't. I think Robin has
used it for configuration management of group translation efforts. But
I work offline, usually in face-to-face discussion with my wife, and
find web-based work incomprehensible (editing a tiki page is my limit in
online skill)

> - Everyone is encouraged to contribute to the language documentation and
> development.

That is the case now. Look how much is NOT being done. Start doing it,
and your voice will carry more weight as to HOW to be doing it.

Contributions have to be approved by the aforementioned
> committee.
> Membership on the committee would be decided by the committee
> (ultimately by
> selpa'i, I guess)

What makes him/her qualified, as opposed to the people currently on the
BPFK (which selpa'i could also be on if s/he were doing some work).

And why are you speaking for selpa'i rather than selpa'i?

>based on the strength of one's contributions and demonstrated skill in Lojban.\

We're waiting to see the contributions.

From what little I know, selpa'i has been more involved in TLI Loglan
(which named selpa'i a member of their "Loglan academy") than in Lojban
during the last year.

> The idea is to keep bureaucracy to an absolute minimum, but to provide a
> platform and organizational process that will work (better than the BPFK has
> worked thus far) to move Lojban forward.

The only failing with the existing BPFK is that no one is willing to do
the work, and stick with a task until completion.

> So, to conclude, there seem to be plenty of people who want progress and
> some
> inertia behind it. I've presented one possible model. What's the best way to
> work with the LLG so that such a thing can be considered?

Work on the existing documentation tasks, completing one of which de
facto makes one an "active member of the BPFK". If a few people were to
do this, the process would become unstuck and people would find that
there is no need for any new group.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-05-20 21:51 GMT+04:00 Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG <loj...@lojban.org>:

I'm not sure how you know that.  I've not seen any useful measures of the size of the community of late.  When I visit the IRC channel, I see several dozen tags supposedly logged in, but at most a couple of people respond when I say something, so I'm not sure those tags are real people.  There are several groups that come up when I search for Lojban on Facebook.  The largest in terms of members seems to be run by gleki - there are 1353 members but a large percentage of those were added by gleki or someone else, so we really have no way of knowing if those people are all participating (I am not, since my limited Facebook activity is strictly for my family; I've intended to set up a separate Lojban-related account, but I simply don't have time for it, even if I had a clue how to make good use of social media).

This is true. Lojban activity can be measured e.g. by the number of sentences in Lojban produced there. The largest activity  in this regard is definitely in IRC. There is almost nothing to archive from Facebook logs (apart from threads not in Lojban). The main purpose of Facebook group is: here are the links for learning Lojban and one of the links is our IRC chat.

Strangely enough, IRC proved to be the most stable Lojbanic island for so many years.

I wish we had better Facebook-like features there like e.g. reading the logs (note that many people can't use irssi or similar products and can't be connected to the internet 24/7).

Otherwise I again agree with Lojbab that first we need the stuff done.

I'm not sure the current BPFK Sections in the wiki are a good place for finishing the baseline. I'd prefer one single document, e.g. "CLL, service edition, alpha version, only for BPFK and with lots of mistypes" rather than a bunch of mostly not-connected pages in the wiki.

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 5/20/2014 2:05 PM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> Otherwise I again agree with Lojbab that first we need the stuff done.
> I'm not sure the current BPFK Sections in the wiki are a good place for
> finishing the baseline. I'd prefer one single document, e.g. "CLL,
> service edition, alpha version, only for BPFK and with lots of mistypes"
> rather than a bunch of mostly not-connected pages in the wiki.

The concept of the BPFK sections is to have a standard
specification-type format, ideally supported with references to text
and/or discussions of anything controversial. CLL is not written as a
specification - rather it was an explanatory document. One chapter, the
selma'o catalog near the end is a pared down version of the originally
intended specification, but John Cowan couldn't figure out how to write
such a document absent a dictionary, and an overview of the grammar.

Once CLL was done, the questions seemed to be of the sort that could
only be answered by a document such as the BPFK sections (though various
other intermediate products were envisioned to document the discussions
and controversies - search the archives for the "elephant" which was
John's version of such an intermediate.

I believe that most of what hasn't been documented at all, are the
sections which have little controversy, as to what the status quo ante
actually is (or which had seen little usage ante-BPFK, so no one knew
whether there was controversy).

Having the language documented as a specification, makes it much easier
to revise CLL as an explanation of the key elements of the specification
(there is no need for CLL to have examples of every kind of sumti used
as a termset, while arguably such would appear in the BPFK sections for
termset cmavo showing the interaction of various elements.)

The other thing to bear in mind is that CLL is a book currently in
publication. If we don't have an agreed-upon replacement when we run
out of copies, we will return to the state that existed a few months ago
when Amazon.com ran out of copies. The book is considered
"out-of-print" (and many will therefore think that the language is as
"dead" as Volapuk no matter how large the online community), and various
profit-seekers advertise copies of the book for hundreds of dollars.

Thus CLL needs to be updated as a book to be published independently and
possibly asynchronously of the formal language
specification/configuration management process (which need not be
concerned with issues like formatting, pagination, and indexing that are
important in a book rather than a set of web pages)


lojbab

[John E Clifford]

This discussion reminds me of the obscurity or paradoxicality of the whole baseline project. The obscurity is:What is it to do?  The paradox comes from the usual answer: to determine the present state of the language.  But, of course, the present state of the language is -- by definition -- just that specified in CLL (after typos are corrected, discovered inaccurate statements clarified, and the definitive version of xorlo added).  So, where is the research?  The escape from the paradox is to say that what is sought is a report on what is currently accepted as Lojban (by whom is left somewhat open -- perhaps the committee or Robin?).  But this goes against the whole point, since it involves a constantly shifting target and standard: what goes uncriticized nowadays was once rejected or at least suspected, so both the language as used and the tastes of the referees are in flux (and not guaranteed in agreement if there is more than one).  While no changes can be suggested, let alone approved, until the baseline is done, countless changes might be (and surely have been) made since the process began, almost all without discussion or approval by any body.  So, in what sense is what is to be described the Lojban(s since some changes have gone equally in several directions)?  In retrospect, it might have been better to allow changes through a careful process from the get-go, building up a cumulative description as we went along.  There would then at least have been some control (beyond the annoying scolding that we can't suggest that yet, when the end of yet was clearly nowhere in sight and changes were going on all the time anyhow).  But we didn't do that. 

Lojbab has presented a different scenario, in effect.  CLL was not a specification, he says, and what the baseline is is a specification (it is not perfectly clear what that all means in the light of several -- unfortunately non-equivalent -- grammars). That is, apparently, that the baseline is to fill out -- with examples and other commentary -- all the details that CLL merely sketched in broad strokes (not a description that applies to CLL very handily).  that is, the baseline project is to find out what CLL meant -- or, rather, has come to mean -- to people who claim to using Lojban.  The problem is one of control again: if CLL was not specific, then there are a range of possible meanings and how are we to decide which one is right?  That is, establishing the baseline is already doing what the baseline was to serve as basis for: establishing changes in the language.  And so the circle goes on. The most we can actually do is report on what users actually do (somehow skipping mistakes of various sorts) and come up with a description of a  Lojban (or several), but not of Lojban.  Until someone declares that one of the things come up with is the real thing, which will ot be a unanimous decision, of course, since it will not be either CLL Lojban (which it turns out did not exist as such) or a new version arrived at in an approved way.

All that being the case, some body, consisting of people who actually do the work, needs to do something along the lines laid out over the decades -- or along some other effective lines.  Or we can go on as a squabbling group, boasting about a language we don't have, with properties what we do have doesn't have, recruiting (under somewhat false pretences) ever more people who deviate ever further from a nonexistent norm.  Well, that is a language, after all, though not quite what anyone seems to have in mind.

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[v4hn]

On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 10:05:33PM +0400, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> Otherwise I again agree with Lojbab that first we need the stuff done.
> I'm not sure the current BPFK Sections in the wiki are a good place for
> finishing the baseline. I'd prefer one single document, e.g. "CLL, service
> edition, alpha version, only for BPFK and with lots of mistypes" rather
> than a bunch of mostly not-connected pages in the wiki.

This "I would prefer it that way" attitude is a pretty good example
for the problem lojbab just explained:

On 2014-05-20 21:51 at GMT+04:00, Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:
> Of course there is will for things to move forward. That has been true for
> years. What there isn't are workers willing to work as part of a team to move
> forward on the tasks that team leaders need them to do. Everyone wants to do
> their own thing in their own way, and as a result the usefulness of any
> particular effort is accidental.

There are _always_ tons of ways to move forward.
What's important is that one is decided upon and actually pursued.
This was done years ago.


v4hn

[John E Clifford]

Well. aside from the "actually pursued " part -- which might be taken as meaning that the way decided upon was ill-chosen.

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 5/20/2014 5:49 PM, 'John E Clifford' via lojban wrote:
> This discussion reminds me of the obscurity or paradoxicality of the
> whole baseline project. The obscurity is:What is it to do? The paradox
> comes from the usual answer: to determine the present state of the
> language. But, of course, the present state of the language is -- by
> definition -- just that specified in CLL (after typos are corrected,
> discovered inaccurate statements clarified, and the definitive version
> of xorlo added). So, where is the research?

I'm not sure "research" is needed, per se. If it is, then it consists of:
Finding the typos, discovering the inaccurate statements, and figuring
out how to clarify them in ways that don't muddy some other point, and
coming up with a definitive statement of xorlo (which despite being
supposedly well-defined, keeps coming up as a topic of highly technical
questions).

Others might call this "simple editorial work".

> The escape from the
> paradox is to say that what is sought is a report on what is currently
> accepted as Lojban (by whom is left somewhat open -- perhaps the
> committee or Robin?). But this goes against the whole point, since it
> involves a constantly shifting target and standard: what goes
> uncriticized nowadays was once rejected or at least suspected, so both
> the language as used and the tastes of the referees are in flux (and not
> guaranteed in agreement if there is more than one).

Not guaranteed, which is why we did not require unanimity in voting.

> While no changes
> can be suggested, let alone approved, until the baseline is done,
> countless changes might be (and surely have been) made since the process
> began, almost all without discussion or approval by any body.

And all of them are unofficial, though a few might sneak in if they are
close to consistent with the wording so far, or if they apply to byfy
sections as yet unanalyzed.

> So, in
> what sense is what is to be described the Lojban(s since some changes
> have gone equally in several directions)?

If several directions, then one must be chosen. Otherwise, we have
schism, which most find unacceptable.

> In retrospect, it might have
> been better to allow changes through a careful process from the get-go,
> building up a cumulative description as we went along.

That is what was happening up until 1997 or so. But we couldn't produce
a dictionary or even a good selma'o catalog, because we couldn't come up
with dictionary-quality definitions of the cmavo. While I worked on the
gismu/lujvo portion of the dictionary, Cowan started to work on the
selma'o catalog which in turn would hopefully lead to the cmavo
definitions. He started with my tense and negation papers, which each
covered a small number of selma'o, and went on from there From
1994-1997 he wrote corresponding essays on all the chunks of the
language, incidentally generating 20-odd formal change proposals to the
grammar to respond to ambiguities and limitations (a couple of these
were changes actually proposed by others, but codified by Cowan). Those
change proposals, as they were accepted/approved by the community of
Lojban-List readers, were incorporated into the formal YACC grammar as
well as into his textual essays. Then the essays were collected into
CLL, with a cross-indexing "selma'o catalog" added as the last chapter.

But this still did not lead to definitions of each cmavo suitable for a
dictionary. And a couple of years after CLL was published, once the
community of users who had studied it grew to critical mass, people
started finding typos and undefined holes in what was described. But no
one followed Cowan's demonstrated procedures for formally proposing
changes, and no one wrote cmavo definitions. When I realized we had
passed 5 years of so-called baseline without even finalizing the cmavo
definitions, I got the Board (with membership approval) to pass the buck
to the BPFK. It's been more than 10 years now, I think.

Under Nick, the BPFK got the job partly done, but there was too much
pressure to finalize certain things before all the other sections were
done, and no one volunteered to shepherd the boring parts of the
language, which never did get done. Robin moved things much further
along, but still couldn't get people to tackle the most boring stuff.
We seem to be lacking the compulsive completists that Cowan, Nora,
Athelstan, Nick and myself were (and I should probably include you among
those, since in many ways this whole project - of completely codifying
the language - got started with your attempt to codify all of the Loglan
cmavo and selma'o on a set of pages that still graces my historical files).

> There would then
> at least have been some control (beyond the annoying scolding that we
> can't suggest that yet,

People can suggest anything they want, but they cannot be formally
decided without a formal change proposal which of necessity has to
include a statement of what the status quo is, which in turn requires
the status quo specification to be complete.

(People have made reference to software development in this discussion,
and the concept I am describing is taken from procedures that were
standard in most parts of the industry when I was working in it, and so
far as I know are still standard, albeit more automated.)

> when the end of yet was clearly nowhere in sight

The end has been in sight for a long time. The will to cover the
intervening distance hasn't been there since Cowan and I stopped leading
the effort. It seems to take a completist attitude.

I had the rather extreme ideal of Sir James Murray of OED fame, and a
couple of books on lexicography to give me guidance, but I simply
couldn't do that kind of job while doing all the rest of the Lojban,
jobs I was trying to do, especially while also parenting two young kids
(something Robin has similar discovered %^). Cowan did a splendid job
on CLL but has seemed to suffer burnout since then. Lots of others have
taken up the slack, but no one seems to have the drive to get it all done.

> Lojbab has presented a different scenario, in effect. CLL was not a
> specification, he says, and what the baseline is is a specification (it
> is not perfectly clear what that all means in the light of several --
> unfortunately non-equivalent -- grammars).

The baseline requires a specification defining ALL of the cmavo, because
that is what was still missing in 1997. The YACC grammar as published
in the appendix to CLL remains the standard for resolving any
non-equivalencies.

>That is, apparently, that the
> baseline is to fill out -- with examples and other commentary -- all the
> details that CLL merely sketched in broad strokes (not a description
> that applies to CLL very handily).

And in particular, to come up with dictionary-quality cmavo definitions,
so that we can combine cmavo and gismu and lujvo definitions along with
a formal grammar into a well-defined set of what people understood
originally as the "baseline" of words and grammar (with any many
questions about ambiguities resolved as possible).

> that is, the baseline project is to
> find out what CLL meant -- or, rather, has come to mean -- to people who
> claim to using Lojban.

Perhaps, but more limited than that. Dictionary-quality definitions
(that are "definitive" %^) is the key. The BPFK sections were the
method of writing those definitive definitions.

> The problem is one of control again: if CLL was
> not specific, then there are a range of possible meanings and how are we
> to decide which one is right?

That was the job of the BPFK, and the "how" was basically "whatever was
needed to achieve consensus".

> That is, establishing the baseline is
> already doing what the baseline was to serve as basis for: establishing
> changes in the language. And so the circle goes on. The most we can
> actually do is report on what users actually do (somehow skipping
> mistakes of various sorts) and come up with a description of a Lojban
> (or several), but not of Lojban.

A single "Standard" Lojban, whether anyone actually bothered to follow
that standard. (It was envisioned that the BPFK would evolve into a
group that would certify the degree of compliance with the standard of
submitted works)

> Until someone declares that one of the
> things come up with is the real thing, which will ot be a unanimous
> decision, of course,

It must be a consensus of whoever constitutes the BPFK at the time.
(Consensus being defined so as to not allow individual vetoes).

> since it will not be either CLL Lojban (which it
> turns out did not exist as such) or a new version arrived at in an
> approved way.

I think it did and does exist, because people are capable of deciding
whether something is consistent with CLL for the most part. We know
what things people are proposing as "changes" to CLL, such as xorlo, and
which are "corrections" and "clarifications".

> All that being the case, some body, consisting of people who actually do
> the work, needs to do something along the lines laid out over the
> decades -- or along some other effective lines. Or we can go on as a
> squabbling group, boasting about a language we don't have, with
> properties what we do have doesn't have, recruiting (under somewhat
> false pretences) ever more people who deviate ever further from a
> nonexistent norm. Well, that is a language, after all, though not quite
> what anyone seems to have in mind.

The standard in most lay people's minds is that a language isn't really
a language until it has a dictionary (and for most that means a physical
book, because until we commit to fixed print, it remains a nebulosity).
We never produced one; jbovlaste is a data base, and not a dictionary.
And the baseline was originally defined as a dictionary and a grammar
(CLL can fulfill the latter, even if it is not a
"specification" sufficient to produce dictionary definitions of cmavo).

lojbab

[John E Clifford]

Nice to know that the project, despite all that has been said about it, is just writing adequate definitions for cmavo -- excluding, for now, I suppose, all the experimental ones, but keeping all the established highly superfluous ones (cultural neutrality does NOT require that we can do anything any language can do) and not changing the grammar to get rid of the redundant ones.  The joker here seems to be the notion of an adequate definition, since all these words have definitions and even some commentary, not to mention reams of discussion if there is anything controversial about them.  Surely the boring one just need a write-up and the non-boring ones a summary.

Everybody take a word and spend a few minutes, then the whole thing will be done and we can get on with changing everything.  [sarcasm]

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 5/22/2014 10:26 AM, 'John E Clifford' via lojban wrote:
> Nice to know that the project, despite all that has been said about it,
> is just writing adequate definitions for cmavo

That was how we started. Of course, some have added their own goals to
that basic one, including a switch from YACC to some other kind of
grammar specification that I do not understand (YACC was hard enough for
me to grasp).

> -- excluding, for now, I
> suppose, all the experimental ones,

Correct. If some of the experimental ones were worth adding, that would
be a later phase, and should including assigning them to
non-experimental cmavo.

> but keeping all the established
> highly superfluous ones (cultural neutrality does NOT require that we
> can do anything any language can do)

It doesn't require it, but that is one possible way to achieve it, and
probably one of the less problematic ones when the work is being done
mostly by monolingual English speakers (as was the case for the first
few years). It also can make translation easier, and offered some
possibility at increasing the use of the language for other academic
linguistic applications (At one time, I had the interest of Alexis
Manaster-Ramer in possibly using Lojban as an interlingual glossing
language (rather than English) for linguistics papers. The Nootka
lujvo-sentence I created is one example of this.)

> and not changing the grammar to get rid of the redundant ones.

Likewise. Redundancy will not truly be recognizable until we have
numerous fluent speakers from multiple native language backgrounds, and
using (or trying to use) the parts of the language that have potentially
redundant features. (for example, very little has been done with Mex
which undoubtedly has redundancies because we were trying to encompass
anything that anyone ever expresses in some kind of formula, including
the adaptation of non-numerical terminology (how many are in an
exaltation of doves)

> The joker here seems to be the notion of an
> adequate definition, since all these words have definitions and even
> some commentary,

They may have that now, but they did not have it in 2000, and it isn't
even close to existing in the current CLL. The BPFK format was devised
as a way to assemble the information needed to form an adequate
definition, including usage examples (Cowan at one point wanted to have
an example of each cmavo as used in every Yacc rule that invoked its
selma'o, but we've eased that goal), The bottom line is that we have
adequate definitions when no one asks questions that require further
refinement, and enough coined and actual usage examples that no one asks
for more when the section is discussed.

We also need a period of looking at interactions between the hopefully
well-defined cmavo before we can be sure that there are no integration
problems (we don't need Lojban to become like the Obamacare website -
individual pieces that somehow fail to integrate). But I think that
would be achieved in just a few months once all the pieces of the
language were approved (I asked for 6 months of integrated review after
all the sections were approved, during which time, change pages for CLL
could also be generated to reflect any changes implied by the new
definitions).

> not to mention reams of discussion if there is anything
> controversial about them. Surely the boring one just need a write-up
> and the non-boring ones a summary.
> Everybody take a word and spend a few minutes, then the whole thing will
> be done and we can get on with changing everything. [sarcasm]

We actually made such a claim years ago. I think one person who knows
the corpus tools could probably do an excellent job on a BPFK section
(which has several cmavo) in a week of spare time of there is little
actual usage and the selma'o are only used in one way in the grammar.

But there were few takers, because at the bottom line I don't think we
have ever had a half dozen people at any one time who were willing to
shepherd a section to completion. And many like me got bogged down
every time they tried to start.

(It didn't help that people felt compelled to participate in the
discussions of sections that were completed and up for a vote within a
week or two - following and participating in controversial discussions
usually chewed up everyone's available Lojban time, leaving no time or
energy for writing new sections. I certainly gave up long ago trying to
follow Lojban List and doing useful work. And BPFK work was even more
intense because of imposed time limits for discussion.)

lojbab

[And Rosta]

Am I mistaken, or has nothing come of this proposal? Or is something coming of it, but after only four months not yet visibly?

It would be interesting & welcome to see documented in one place a vision (e.g. a consensus of Selpa'i and his interlocutors) of what Lojban would potentially look like were the BPFK's work finished.

--And.

Alex Burka, On 15/05/2014 07:09:
> coi lo jbopre

>
> My name is Dustin and you might know me as ldlework or mokau or cadgu'a. I'm
> writing to announce the current motion to nominate selpa'i as the current warden
> for the language in a provisionally official capacity contingent on the general
> attitudes professed by the community's response to the motion. selpa'i would be
> replacing Robin Lee Powell in this position.
>

> Currently, the IRC and Facebook communities have been approached. The response so
> far has been extremely positive with a current count of 20 to 1 in favor of the
> motion. Broca of the BPFK has given his provisional support of the motion and Ali
> Sajid Imami of the LLG has given positive approval.
>
> Robin Lee Powell has declared that he will abstain from voting explicitly, citing
> personal reasons but has offered the following words (edited for clarity):
>
> rlpowell: I confirm [that] I'd [just] as soon someone else took my Lojbanic authority.
> rlpowell: I'm ever so slightly mildly skeptical about selpa'i specifically because
> he's not well known throughout the community the way I was.
> rlpowell:I'm mildly worried that his lack of presence there will lead to schism or something.
> rlpowell:Having said that, I certainly don't know of anybody *better* suited for the job.
> rlpowell:and I, personally, like him and his attitude towards Lojban.
>
>
> So what will this actually mean for the community and the language?
>
> As it stands Lojban is a vibrant community of speakers of a wide range of fluency.
> At the tail end, some extremely active and hard-working jbopre have, over the
> years, contributed many efforts to the language such as translations, music but
> also proposals of enhancements or refinements of various aspects of the language
> including its grammar, cmavo and general lexicon. However without an active
> leadership many of these modifications remain in conversational limbo where they
> are discussed for years in vain since there is no explicit mechanism for
> integration into the language or lexicon. New speakers get confused at the
> apparent lack of consensus.
>
> selpa'i would be the figurehead for the re-activation of this explicit mechanism for
> integration. If you are familiar with software development, this responsibility is
> synonymous with that of a repository maintainer. In that sense, he will have the
> authority to merge pull requests back into the repository thereby making the change
> "official". The authority to perform the "last-step" approval or disapproval of any
> of the number of outstanding or future proposals that may take place is what allows
> the language to continue to evolve and adapt to the creativity and usage of its
> userbase.
>
> I ask that everyone refrain from accusations of dictatorship and other similarly
> colored arguments. Lojban has always had an acting leadership for all of the
> utilities mentioned above. The motion should not in anyway be interpreted that
> selpa'i is solely responsible for engineering proposals and that all our own
> responsibilities to partake in the creative process have been revoked. On the
> contrary, with an actually active leadership we hope that the motion will encourage
> those who tend to think very deeply about the nuance of Lojban's various systems to
> feel more confident that they have a venue through which their ideas may actually
> one day be realized.
>
> Furthermore, if selpa'i is indeed found to be an acceptable leader for our lovely
> language a major effort will be made to "open source" the language. We have a PEG
> grammar, reference material, and a lexicon all of which are data that can be
> managed with principles and procedures that more resemble the management of a
> software development. The intention is to make the entire process extremely more
> visible and open with actual mechanisms for structured review and integration just
> like in the software world. I hope it is readily apparent how this could be an
> incredible boon for the direct democracy that so many desire.
>
> Lastly, I will speak a bit about selpa'i himself. As I have known him, he has
> demonstrated a prowess of the language that I have yet to see matched in a
> demonstrated way. His deep familiarity with not only the various grammatical
> systems but their nuance, their great qualities and their systemic inefficiencies
> is really inspiring. As one of the most active jbopre, he continuously emits
> high-quality literary translations, and even music. He is an active Lojban
> teacher with a number of current students that he lectures and gives formal
> training to. The guy can *rap* in Lojban :) I invite you to read his active blog
> which is where most of his published thinking on Lojban resides:
> http://selpahi.weebly.com/ *
> and also many of his Lojban writings are available at:
> http://selpahi.de/
>
> * NB: The blog posts are proposals only! I think they show a depth of thinking
> about the language. But the intended work is completely community-driven and
> no-one intends to implement proposals without wide support.
>
> Here is a current log of everyone who has given a direct response to the motion
> (which will be updated as the motion is on-going):
>
> https://gist.github.com/durka/cdf733d1ec95333fb9e7
>
> Here is log of the discussion that has taken place on facebook as of this
> writing: https://gist.github.com/dustinlacewell/115350f17f09efc9aa3f
>
> Please, use this thread to voice your approval or disapproval for this motion. If
> you disapprove it is enough to say so and give a bit of reasoning behind why you
> think so. Long digressions will make it difficult to ascertain an accurate
> distilling of everyone's approval or disapproval. Nays will be counted regardless
> of their length! :)
>
> Thank you for reading! If you'd like to participate in a more real-time discourse,
> I highly encourage you to visit #lojban on Freenode IRC. If you're
> unfamiliar with that, you can use http://webchat.freenode.net/ to join.
>
> .i finti fa la'o gy Dustin Lacewell gy no'u la'o irci ldlework irci no'u la mokau
> .i cusku'i fa la'o gy Alex Burka gy no'u la'o irci durka42 irci
> .i mu'o

>
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[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 9/5/2014 9:48 PM, And Rosta wrote:
> Am I mistaken, or has nothing come of this proposal?

Correct.

> Or is something coming of it, but after only four months not yet visibly?

I would not be surprised if the topic came up in the annual meeting,
which I will be calling in the near future. But what was posted is both
more and less than would be needed to seriously discuss such a proposal.

My suggestion would be, if the proponents of this proposal are still
interested, that they draft a revised policy statement to replace the
2002 baseline statement.

> It would be interesting & welcome to see documented in one place a
> vision (e.g. a consensus of Selpa'i and his interlocutors) of what
> Lojban would potentially look like were the BPFK's work finished.

It is not clear to what extent selpa'i and his allies even accept the
charter of BPFK. If they did, then Robin could accomplish much merely
by informally delegating considerable authority to selpa'i, while
retaining final authority on matters of policy.

Following is my current thinking on the matter.

>> some extremely active and hard-working jbopre have,
>> over the
>> years, contributed many efforts to the language such as translations,
>> music but
>> also proposals of enhancements or refinements of various aspects of
>> the language
>> including its grammar, cmavo and general lexicon. However without an
>> active
>> leadership many of these modifications remain in conversational limbo
>> where they
>> are discussed for years in vain since there is no explicit mechanism for
>> integration into the language or lexicon. New speakers get confused at
>> the
>> apparent lack of consensus.

The above is probably the main factor under dispute - whether a bunch of
unspecified "enhancements or refinements" are integrated into the
language, more or less imposed by fiat, before the original byfy effort
has been completed (and with some doubt as to whether it would be
completed or not).

This in turn hinges on the question of whether Lojban is considered
essentially DONE as an engineering effort, or whether the intent is to
continue changing the language prescription indefinitely. We started
Lojban in part as a rejection of JCB's plan to open-endedly continue
language engineering, because every time a change is made, some number
of people give up and turn away from learning and using the language.
The language of the poster suggested an intent to continually evolve the
language prescription (i.e impose evolutionary change by fiat into the
indefinite future), rather than switching the effort to a descriptive
one reflecting and somewhat lagging actual usage changes.

This of course is more or less the same "conservatives vs modifiers"
debate that caused the original byfy effort to start to break down about
the time xorlo was being discussed.

I should note, by contrast, if the issue were the formal approval of a
specific set of modifications that are already agreed upon and in use by
actual users of the language, and documented to the same level as the
status quo language (ideally as a set of changes to CLL, while
completing the existing baseline documentation), then I would expect
some sort of consensus to be possible, probably along the same lines
under which xorlo was made official (see Craig Daniel's post of 26 Aug,
which I think pertains to this approach).

Otherwise, any substantial change would indeed be schismatic, in part
because a lot of people like myself have absolutely no idea what changes
they are talking about, and no real way to find out; a lot of people
presume that the language is that which is described in CLL.

(The need for a new edition of CLL in about a year, when we expect to
run out of the existing edition, is also a factor in all this. If
changes are adopted and no new CLL edition is produced pretty much right
away, then schism is inherent. Similarly, if a new CLL is produced, and
yet additional changes continue to be made, schism still results. Only
by having the language thoroughly and accurately described by CLL can we
keep everyone "on the same page".)

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

Not only turning away from the language. Some don't even want to use xorlo because they bought CLL, paid their own money for it. CLL says that it contains almost ultimate specification of the language. And they are not going to throw this book away. Or they will throw it away together with the language.

The language of the poster suggested an intent to continually evolve the language prescription (i.e impose evolutionary change by fiat into the indefinite future), rather than switching the effort to a descriptive one reflecting and somewhat lagging actual usage changes.

This of course is more or less the same "conservatives vs modifiers" debate that caused the original byfy effort to start to break down about the time xorlo was being discussed.

I should note, by contrast, if the issue were the formal approval of a specific set of modifications that are already agreed upon and in use by actual users of the language, and documented to the same level as the status quo language (ideally as a set of changes to CLL, while completing the existing baseline documentation), then I would expect some sort of consensus to be possible, probably along the same lines under which xorlo was made official (see Craig Daniel's post of 26 Aug, which I think pertains to this approach).

Otherwise, any substantial change would indeed be schismatic, in part because a lot of people like myself have absolutely no idea what changes they are talking about, and no real way to find out; a lot of people presume that the language is that which is described in CLL.

(The need for a new edition of CLL in about a year, when we expect to run out of the existing edition, is also a factor in all this.  If changes are adopted and no new CLL edition is produced pretty much right away, then schism is inherent.  Similarly, if a new CLL is produced, and yet additional changes continue to be made, schism still results.  Only by having the language thoroughly and accurately described by CLL can we keep everyone "on the same page".)

lojbab

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[Dustin Lacewell]

And,

I lost faith in the endeavor. Here we are four months later still talking about schism and the CLL and lojbab still grand-standing his ultimate wisdom even though nothing has been done in the intern on his or anyone else's part. Tragically, most everyone who supported the original proposal here, to move the maintenance of the language to a more software-development format have all crumbled under the rhetoric of councils, bylaws, hearings and whatever needless muck that serves only to strain people's already volunteer interest and contribution.

That said, all those guys appear to be suuuuuuuper excited to join the LLG when the next meeting takes place (whenever that is) and try to work within the constraints laid out subsequently in this thread by existing 'leaders'. Good luck to them.

I'm not speaking for them, just relaying my impressions of their adjusted dispositions and what they've said.

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[And Rosta]

Dustin Lacewell, On 06/09/2014 20:00:

> And,
>
> I lost faith in the endeavor. Here we are four months later still
> talking about schism and the CLL and lojbab still grand-standing his
> ultimate wisdom even though nothing has been done in the intern on
> his or anyone else's part. Tragically, most everyone who supported
> the original proposal here, to move the maintenance of the language
> to a more software-development format have all crumbled under the
> rhetoric of councils, bylaws, hearings and whatever needless muck
> that serves only to strain people's already volunteer interest and
> contribution.

Come the next members' meeting, I will certainly vote for these new kids to join LLG and, if it comes up at the meeting, for Selpa'i to be tasked with leading the bpfk, but I think that rather than focusing on legalistic and political stuff it would just be better for interested folk to discuss and document their vision of a completed Lojban. Xorlo came about by xorxes, through some discussion with others and much solitary cerebration, coming up with a gadri system different from CLL's, and the community, realizing that xorlo solved so many intractable problems with the CLL version, eventually embraced it. It prevailed not because xorxes bothered with legalistic or political stuff but because open-minded Lojbanists overwhelmingly recognized its superiority.

I suppose each new generation builds on, and so seems brighter than, its precursors, but the latest generation of Lojbanists strikes me as brimming with lojbo talent that in previous generations is not to be found outside a small area of ketco tumla. Therefore this new generation, the selpa'is, the guskants, et al should IMO just get on with sorting out the linguistic stuff, trusting that in due course the political stuff will take care of itself.

--And.

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 9/6/2014 3:00 PM, Dustin Lacewell wrote:
> I lost faith in the endeavor. Here we are four months later still
> talking about schism and the CLL and lojbab still grand-standing his
> ultimate wisdom

I certainly claim no ultimate wisdom. I have some influence as one of
the Founders, and can speak for the organization as president at this
point. But Robin and others set a precedent more than 10 years ago by
replacing me as president (I only have it now because no one wanted the
job as it is defined in the Bylaws; the President's responsibilities are
primarily organizational and legal).

> even though nothing has been done in the intern on his
> or anyone else's part.

Anything that would be done officially, would involve the voting members
at an annual meeting, which has not been held in the last 4 months (but
will be held soon).

>Tragically, most everyone who supported the
> original proposal here, to move the maintenance of the language to a
> more software-development format have all crumbled under the rhetoric of
> councils, bylaws, hearings and whatever needless muck that serves only
> to strain people's already volunteer interest and contribution.

That "needless muck" is what gave the byfy authority. Before that, it
was the LLG voting membership that held the authority, which they
largely delegated to the LLG Board, since the members only met one day a
year.

If people cannot sustain their interest for a mere 4 months of not
getting immediate gratification, I doubt that I would trust them for the
long haul of making Lojban successful. I've been doing this for 30
years now; 4 months is a trivial amount of time when we spent over 3
years producing the first edition of CLL.

> That said, all those guys appear to be suuuuuuuper excited to join the
> LLG when the next meeting takes place (whenever that is) and try to work
> within the constraints laid out subsequently in this thread by existing
> 'leaders'. Good luck to them.

A few have expressed interest (around half a dozen, hardly a mass
movement). Perhaps more will speak up after the meeting call. They
will likely be welcomed.

> I'm not speaking for them, just relaying my impressions of their
> adjusted dispositions and what they've said.

Of course, they could always speak for themselves. The fact that YOU
feel a need to speak for anyone but yourself (or relay any opinions
beside your own) is suspicious.

lojbab

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 9/6/2014 6:39 PM, And Rosta wrote:
> I suppose each new generation builds on, and so seems brighter than, its
> precursors, but the latest generation of Lojbanists strikes me as
> brimming with lojbo talent that in previous generations is not to be
> found outside a small area of ketco tumla. Therefore this new
> generation, the selpa'is, the guskants, et al should IMO just get on
> with sorting out the linguistic stuff, trusting that in due course the
> political stuff will take care of itself.

Which it no doubt will. But Dustin seems to want the politics to work
instantaneously at his beck and call. That hasn't really ever happened
in this community; xorlo took a long while to get agreement even though
backed by xorxes who was acknowledged as being one of the most skilled
Lojbanists.

lojbab

[Alex Burka]

coi,

I haven’t lost faith in the endeavor, though I certainly can’t blame Dustin for doing so. I do think it will take rather longer than we perhaps thought when this thread began.

I still think that the software-development model is the way to go. Among other things, it lets wild experimentation coexist safely with the carefully curated “master branch” — I mean, this is already happening in the community, but it’s a mess and a hodgepodge of projects, exactly because there’s no accepted process, and it doesn’t help that people who propose one tend to get shouted down.

Languages change when they are actively used. It’s a fact. For Lojban, it’s a fact that threatens to conflict with some of its good features — monosemy, syntactic unambiguity, parseability, etc. One “solution” to this conundrum is to freeze the vocabulary and grammar, forever. I think this will just result in everyone leaving (which seems to put me in fundamental disagreement with those who think that if we change anything, then everyone will leave). But I also think there’s a middle ground. We can allow some changes (with strict review, li’a sai), without destroying the language.

To one of Lojbab’s points (which are well taken, by the way, especially the one about documentation of experimental grammar being hard to find): in my mind, there is no way Lojban can be "considered DONE as an engineering effort”. Certainly the publication of the CLL and everything leading up to that was an impressive achievement, and maybe it can be considered “almost done”, but the mere existence of the BPFK and the ZG are confirmation that the final word (whatever that means when applied to a living language, see above) has not been said. Moreover, it’s hard to deny that changes have happened and become accepted by large portions of the community since the publication of the CLL: the BPFK morphology. xorlo was adopted into the ZG. Nearly everyone uses dotside for names. Modern {ka} with {ce’u}. The experimental gismu {kibro} and cmavo {di’ai}. vu’o po’onai.

To be honest, I am most interested in using Lojban to create things and converse with people. Secondary to that, I have my opinions on different parts of the experimental grammar and other banske issues (I’m not at all a linguistics expert). I am least interested in getting bogged down in legalese and bylaws if such things turn out to obstruct the use of Lojban and encourage it to stagnate (which is what’s arguably happened in the last decade). That’s a good way to lose contributors.

That being said, yes, I’d like to join the LLG. I recognize its importance. I don’t want to spend more time on politics than on other things, and I don’t know if it’s too mired under bylaws etc to make meaningful progress. But if it can, it seems like the best hope for moving forward without splitting the community.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. I feel strongly that progress is needed and that there’s a way to get there, but I don’t claim to have all the answers of course. I am glad that there will be a meeting soon, because that’s at least potential progress.

mu’o mi’e la durka

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 9/7/2014 5:45 PM, Alex Burka wrote:
> I haven’t lost faith in the endeavor, though I certainly can’t blame
> Dustin for doing so. I do think it will take rather longer than we
> perhaps thought when this thread began.
>
> I still think that the software-development model is the way to go.

We already used a software development model. That is where the
"baseline" concept came from. The problem is that software needs to be
properly documented, and normally you don't go changing it without
documenting what you already have. The other problem is that the
"development" is supposed to already be done. Long done. And for a lot
of people, the idea that they might have to go to Microsoft Lojban 8.0
from 7.0 is enough to make them throw up their hands in disgust and turn
away from the language. They might accept small tweaks to fix bugs in
"Lojban XP", but they don't want to relearn anything.

> Among other things, it lets wild experimentation coexist safely with the
> carefully curated “master branch” — I mean, this is already happening in
> the community, but it’s a mess and a hodgepodge of projects,

That is what experimental language is like, and should be like. Someone
else posted today on Buckminster Fuller's usages which are a form of
experimental English. For anyone who did not know about those usages,
they would be "a mess and a hodgepodge"

> exactly
> because there’s no accepted process, and it doesn’t help that people who
> propose one tend to get shouted down.

Because we still haven't documented the baseline "languageware".

> Languages change when they are actively used.

Not generally by fiat. Look how many approaches exist for English third
person pronouns which are gender-neutral. All are "changes" to English,
but none have really caught on.

> For Lojban,
> it’s a fact that threatens to conflict with some of its good features —
> monosemy, syntactic unambiguity, parseability, etc. One “solution” to
> this conundrum is to freeze the vocabulary and grammar, forever. I think
> this will just result in everyone leaving (which seems to put me in
> fundamental disagreement with those who think that if we change
> anything, then everyone will leave).

This project is some 60 years old and we have a lot of history of people
explicitly leaving because of changes imposed from on-high. More
importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of conlangs
whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop fiddling with
the language design. Those that have survived and spread have stopped
being developed, and are simply USED. Adding computer terminology to
Esperanto as it becomes needed isn't a "language change".
Systematically changing the endings of gismu to fit some new schema is a
drastic change that would likely cause many to leave or schism.

People might have tolerated running across some new word on an IRC
channel and looking it up; we deal with learning new vocabulary all the
time in natural language. But they don't like someone telling them that
the old way to do something is wrong, and there is a new and better way.

> But I also think there’s a middle
> ground. We can allow some changes (with strict review, li’a sai),
> without destroying the language.

At some point, you have to stop allowing changes EXCEPT by *natural*
language processes (which aren't so much "reviewed" as "documented after
the fact".

> To one of Lojbab’s points (which are well taken, by the way, especially
> the one about documentation of experimental grammar being hard to find):
> in my mind, there is no way Lojban can be "considered DONE as an
> engineering effort”.

Then we are fundamentally at odds. It MUST be "done" at some point.
Engineering must stop, and we move to usage.

Certainly the publication of the CLL and everything
> leading up to that was an impressive achievement, and maybe it can be
> considered “almost done”, but the mere existence of the BPFK and the ZG
> are confirmation that the final word (whatever that means when applied
> to a living language, see above) has not been said.

The intent of the BPFK was to finish the documentation of the language,
making corrections to CLL as necessary. The ZG acceptance of xorlo as a
major bug-fix because the community felt that the original design COULD
NOT be properly documented.

> Moreover, it’s hard
> to deny that changes have happened and become accepted by large portions
> of the community since the publication of the CLL: the BPFK morphology.
> xorlo was adopted into the ZG. Nearly everyone uses dotside for names.

"Dotside" is not really an engineering change, but rather using one rule
(the dot-pause, which is allowed between any two words) to allow another
rule to be ignored. Indeed it has been accepted because the listener
likely won't even notice that it is being used. And likely a dotside
user will not have a problem with the speech of a non-dotside speaker,
provided that the latter follows the pre-dotside rules.

xorlo was proposed and discussed within the BPFK as a solution to
problems in documenting the gadri. If the documentation had been
finished earlier, there would have been no need for the ZG. (Probably
true for dotside as well.)

> Modern {ka} with {ce’u}.

should be documented as part of the baseline. ce'u predates said baseline.

The experimental gismu {kibro}

never heard of it.

and cmavo
> {di’ai}. vu’o po’onai.

vu'o and po'onai should both be part of the baseline (not that I
remember what the latter means; I am sure it was discussed back in the
90s). I have no idea what di'ai is. That is the problem with
experimental usages. They aren't documented, and people like me would
have no idea what to do with the word if we run across it in text. Some
might try to figure it out like Jabberwocky (but the coinages in
Jabberwocky pretty much all correspond to brivla and not cmavo).

I am least interested in getting bogged down
> in legalese and bylaws if such things turn out to obstruct the use of
> Lojban and encourage it to stagnate (which is what’s arguably happened
> in the last decade).

It hasn't prevented anyone from using the language as they see fit so
far. You won't hear me complaining because you use "di'ai". I just
won't understand you. If we're on IRC I can ask you what it means, but
if it is in text, I will have no clue.

The "stagnation" seems to me that people want to document and approve
new stuff without documenting the older stuff. I don't see any easy way
to resolve this impasse, but if there is, it would require someone to
write CLL sections covering new material to replace or add to the
existing text. If someone were doing this and collecting it somewhere,
AND the original baseline documentation was being finished, we could
deal with it. We do need a new edition of CLL, probably next year, and
the argument becomes what to put into it. Likely the decision will
effectively be made by those that do the writing.

> That being said, yes, I’d like to join the LLG.

Noted.

> Anyway, that’s my two cents. I feel strongly that progress is needed and
> that there’s a way to get there, but I don’t claim to have all the
> answers of course. I am glad that there will be a meeting soon, because
> that’s at least potential progress.

There is a meeting every year. But there hasn't been progress every
year because most years, no one has any issues to bring up. The coming
meeting looks like it will resemble those of 2002-2003 when Robin and
others stepped in and took over. I stepped down as president, only
resuming the job when Matt resigned in 2010 (and I'll probably step down
again gladly if I get the feeling that someone is capable and willing to
fulfill the organizational responsibilities of the President. And some
day someone will have to take over the Virginia representative spot,
which exists solely for legal reasons).

lojbab

[And Rosta]

Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG, On 09/09/2014 18:30:

> The other problem is that the "development" is supposed to already be
> done. Long done. And for a lot of people, the idea that they might
> have to go to Microsoft Lojban 8.0 from 7.0 is enough to make them
> throw up their hands in disgust and turn away from the language. They
> might accept small tweaks to fix bugs in "Lojban XP", but they don't
> want to relearn anything.

It seems to me you're setting up a largely false dichotomy. Most of what remains to be done is to complete the design where it is incomplete. So the choice is whether to do that explicitly or leave it to usage. Not much relearning entailed by that. There is the additional choice of whether to make simplifications that require a handful of individuals to do some relearning now, for the benefit of making the task for all future learners much simpler, but that is a separate debate.

> People might have tolerated running across some new word on an IRC
> channel and looking it up; we deal with learning new vocabulary all
> the time in natural language. But they don't like someone telling
> them that the old way to do something is wrong, and there is a new
> and better way.

Are there still many that feel thus? I wonder if it's a myth that gets perpetuated because you propagate it so insistently.

In old usage, "le" was standardly not used in a baseline-compliant way; cf how "le nu", "le ka", "le du'u" used to be default in usage. In old and new usage (for new usage, I'm relying on Selpa'i's observation), logical scope of syntactic clausemates is generally ambiguous. How many people are going to want to preserve old ways that aren't baseline-compliant or are rampantly logically ambiguous?

> This project is some 60 years old and we have a lot of history of
> people explicitly leaving because of changes imposed from on-high.

Not in the history of Lojban proper, of course, because changes haven't been imposed from on-high. So all the folk leaving for the last 27 years have been leaving for other reasons; disgruntlement at the unfinished design and the political sclerosis that prevents its completion must be the major reason why people leave Lojban, out of all reasons that have to do with some sort of disaffection with Lojban.

> More importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of
> conlangs whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop
> fiddling with the language design.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had stopped fiddling with the language design.

> At some point, you have to stop allowing changes EXCEPT by *natural*
> language processes (which aren't so much "reviewed" as "documented
> after the fact".
>

>> in my mind, there is no way Lojban can be "considered DONE as an
>> engineering effort”.
>
> Then we are fundamentally at odds. It MUST be "done" at some point.
> Engineering must stop, and we move to usage.

Especially in the case of a language like Lojban, one expects that there will always be a strong strand of prescriptivism, in areas where usage deviates from the official design or from logic. Prescriptivism is a form of engineering. It has a bad name in the domain of natlangs, mostly because actual prescriptivists tend to be foolish, but to people attracted to Lojban by its explicit definition and ostensible logical basis, rational prescriptivism is likely to be welcome.

> The experimental gismu {kibro}
>
> never heard of it.
>
> and cmavo
>> {di’ai}. vu’o po’onai.
>
> vu'o and po'onai should both be part of the baseline (not that I
> remember what the latter means; I am sure it was discussed back in
> the 90s).

It was discussed back in the 90s, but is it in CLL? I can't find a way to search CLL online (-- there must be one, but googling doesn't bring it up). It's not in CLL Ch 13 where po'o is introduced.

> I have no idea what di'ai is. That is the problem with
> experimental usages. They aren't documented, and people like me would
> have no idea what to do with the word if we run across it in text.

I went to the humungous effort of looking kibro and di'ai up in jbovlaste. To find jbovlaste, one googles "jbovlaste". Or, even quicker, google "jbovlaste kibro" and you get the answer in one step. For users of handheld devices, Gleki has made an android jbovlaste app -- it's excellent! And it's dead easy to use even for those of us who are weary at having to learn new technology.

--And.

[Alex Burka]

Thanks, And, I agree with nearly all of what you said, though I may write more later. One quick clarification, I really didn’t mean {vu’o po’onai} as another example of experimentalism — just meant to say “etc”. Sorry for the sloppy jboglish.

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-09-10 0:50 GMT+04:00 And Rosta <and....@gmail.com>:

Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG, On 09/09/2014 18:30:

The other problem is that the "development" is supposed to already be
done. Long done. And for a lot of people, the idea that they might
have to go to Microsoft Lojban 8.0 from 7.0 is enough to make them
throw up their hands in disgust and turn away from the language. They
might accept small tweaks to fix bugs in "Lojban XP", but they don't
want to relearn anything.

It seems to me you're setting up a largely false dichotomy. Most of what remains to be done is to complete the design where it is incomplete. So the choice is whether to do that explicitly or leave it to usage. Not much relearning entailed by that. There is the additional choice of whether to make simplifications that require a handful of individuals to do some relearning now, for the benefit of making the task for all future learners much simpler, but that is a separate debate.

People might have tolerated running across some new word on an IRC
channel and looking it up; we deal with learning new vocabulary all
the time in natural language. But they don't like someone telling
them that the old way to do something is wrong, and there is a new
and better way.

Are there still many that feel thus? I wonder if it's a myth that gets perpetuated because you propagate it so insistently.

No, this is true.

 

In old usage, "le" was standardly not used in a baseline-compliant way; cf how "le nu", "le ka", "le du'u" used to be default in usage. In old and new usage (for new usage, I'm relying on Selpa'i's observation), logical scope of syntactic clausemates is generally ambiguous. How many people are going to want to preserve old ways that aren't baseline-compliant or are rampantly logically ambiguous?

The task is to adapt theory to facts, i.e. usage, not adapt reality to facts provided this doesn't lead to syntactic ambiguity which is a defining feature of lojban.

This project is some 60 years old and we have a lot of history of
people explicitly leaving because of changes imposed from on-high.

Not in the history of Lojban proper, of course, because changes haven't been imposed from on-high. So all the folk leaving for the last 27 years have been leaving for other reasons; disgruntlement at the unfinished design and the political sclerosis that prevents its completion must be the major reason why people leave Lojban, out of all reasons that have to do with some sort of disaffection with Lojban.

More importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of
conlangs whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop
fiddling with the language design.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had stopped fiddling with the language design.

He won't. I can confirm his words.

I've got a lot of people from Russian group who immediately stopped learning Lojban when they learnt that CLL was no longer valid.

With regret I have to acknowledge that Lojbab's task of creating a stable language failed when the not well thought out change called "xorlo" invalidated the refgram. May be it's still not too late to go back to pre-xorlo

and formalize quantification problems so that they match CLL example as close as possible.

Another example is Quenya. When new Tolkien's stuff was published the community shrinked fivefold.

Yet another example is Loglan.

That's why any changes to basic gismu, to common usage is a way to the final destruction of the language as it happened to other conlangs.

At some point, you have to stop allowing changes EXCEPT by *natural*
language processes (which aren't so much "reviewed" as "documented
after the fact".

in my mind, there is no way Lojban can be "considered DONE as an
engineering effort".

Then we are fundamentally at odds. It MUST be "done" at some point.
Engineering must stop, and we move to usage.

Especially in the case of a language like Lojban, one expects that there will always be a strong strand of prescriptivism, in areas where usage deviates from the official design or from logic. Prescriptivism is a form of engineering. It has a bad name in the domain of natlangs, mostly because actual prescriptivists tend to be foolish, but to people attracted to Lojban by its explicit definition and ostensible logical basis, rational prescriptivism is likely to be welcome.

  The experimental gismu {kibro}

never heard of it.

  and cmavo

{di'ai}. vu'o po'onai.

vu'o and po'onai should both be part of the baseline (not that I
remember what the latter means; I am sure it was discussed back in
the 90s).

It was discussed back in the 90s, but is it in CLL? I can't find a way to search CLL online (-- there must be one, but googling doesn't bring it up). It's not in CLL Ch 13 where po'o is introduced.

I have no idea what di'ai is. That is the problem with
experimental usages. They aren't documented, and people like me would
have no idea what to do with the word if we run across it in text.

I went to the humungous effort of looking kibro and di'ai up in jbovlaste. To find jbovlaste, one googles "jbovlaste". Or, even quicker, google "jbovlaste kibro" and you get the answer in one step. For users of handheld devices, Gleki has made an android jbovlaste app -- it's excellent!

Huh?

 

And it's dead easy to use even for those of us who are weary at having to learn new technology.

--And.

[And Rosta]

Gleki Arxokuna, On 10/09/2014 06:51:
> 2014-09-10 0:50 GMT+04:00 And Rosta <and....@gmail.com <mailto:and....@gmail.com>>:

> In old usage, "le" was standardly not used in a baseline-compliant way; cf how "le nu", "le ka", "le du'u" used to be default in usage. In old and new usage (for new usage, I'm relying on Selpa'i's observation), logical scope of syntactic clausemates is generally ambiguous. How many people are going to want to preserve old ways that aren't baseline-compliant or are rampantly logically ambiguous?
>
> The task is to adapt theory to facts, i.e. usage, not adapt reality
> to facts provided this doesn't lead to syntactic ambiguity which is a
> defining feature of lojban.

There are three forces that potentially shape and define what is to be deemed correct:

1. usage
2. official codification
3. logic (mapping between phonological and logical forms), consistency, regularity, unambiguity, integrity

& possibly a fourth:

4. unofficial consensus of opinion (or of influential opinion)

(4) is important for English, maybe not for Lojban.

All can conflict. Which trumps which? For me it's 3>2>1. For Bob I hope (because it's a position I can respect) it's 1>2>3. What do you think it is?

At the time I ceased active involvement with Lojban I had come to the view that that the community was wedded to 1>2>3 or 2>1>3 with immutable 2, but now I see that there are currents of opinion -- much stronger than ever in my time -- unwilling to accept either of those. Surely the only foreseeable outcomes are that the ultraconservative camp withers or that there is schism.

> More importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of
> conlangs whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop
> fiddling with the language design.
>
> I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had stopped fiddling with the language design.
>
> He won't. I can confirm his words. I've got a lot of people from
> Russian group who immediately stopped learning Lojban when they
> learnt that CLL was no longer valid.

Bob was talking about conlangs not conlangers.

I suppose your Russian drop-outs must have been fervent devotees of {1|immutable2} > 3. What was it attracted them to Lojban in the first place, such deviation from that ranking quenched their interest?

> That's why any changes to basic gismu, to common usage is a way to
> the final destruction of the language as it happened to other
> conlangs.

You seem to have a strange notion of what language destruction is. You seem to think that a language exists if and only if it has speakers in our world. I accept that that's not a nonsensical view, tho I do think it's utterly wrong, but it's hard to have rational discussion if we use the same set of terms with such fundamentally different and incompatible senses.

> For users of handheld devices, Gleki has made an android jbovlaste app -- it's excellent!
>
> Huh?

There is a Google Play app maker called Vorgoron who made the app and gave it a description that says "Author - Gleki Arxokuna", which had misled me into thinking you were Vorgoron. Looking at Vorgoron's other apps, it seems likely that Vorgoron is Russian, so likely somebody you know.

--And.

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-09-10 17:16 GMT+04:00 And Rosta <and....@gmail.com>:

Gleki Arxokuna, On 10/09/2014 06:51:

2014-09-10 0:50 GMT+04:00 And Rosta <and....@gmail.com <mailto:and....@gmail.com>>:
    In old usage, "le" was standardly not used in a baseline-compliant way; cf how "le nu", "le ka", "le du'u" used to be default in usage. In old and new usage (for new usage, I'm relying on Selpa'i's observation), logical scope of syntactic clausemates is generally ambiguous. How many people are going to want to preserve old ways that aren't baseline-compliant or are rampantly logically ambiguous?

The task is to adapt theory to facts, i.e. usage, not adapt reality
to facts provided this doesn't lead to syntactic ambiguity which is a
defining feature of lojban.

There are three forces that potentially shape and define what is to be deemed correct:

1. usage
2. official codification
3. logic (mapping between phonological and logical forms), consistency, regularity, unambiguity, integrity

& possibly a fourth:

4. unofficial consensus of opinion (or of influential opinion)

(4) is important for English, maybe not for Lojban.

All can conflict. Which trumps which? For me it's 3>2>1. For Bob I hope (because it's a position I can respect) it's 1>2>3. What do you think it is?

For me it's 2. codification > 3. logic > 4. consensus > 1. usage

although 4. defines 1. and partially 3.

At the time I ceased active involvement with Lojban I had come to the view that that the community was wedded to 1>2>3 or 2>1>3 with immutable 2, but now I see that there are currents of opinion -- much stronger than ever in my time -- unwilling to accept either of those. Surely the only foreseeable outcomes are that the ultraconservative camp withers or that there is schism.

        More importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of
        conlangs whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop
        fiddling with the language design.

    I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had stopped fiddling with the language design.

He won't. I can confirm his words. I've got a lot of people from
Russian group who immediately stopped learning Lojban when they
learnt that CLL was no longer valid.

Bob was talking about conlangs not conlangers.

Usage of conlangs depends on users i.e. conlanger  (although i preferred to use "conlanger" for the term "inventor of conlang")

I suppose your Russian drop-outs must have been fervent devotees of {1|immutable2} > 3. What was it attracted them to Lojban in the first place, such deviation from that ranking quenched their interest?

There is CLL which is the reference grammar.

When someone says (and proves) that the refgram is no longer valid the language stops to exist.

This way Lojban loses one of its selling points: the most complete/described human language ever.

CLL is the first (and the best imo) book teaching Lojban.

What others offer instead of CLL? Nothing. Just waiting for Robin to do something instead of them.

That's why any changes to basic gismu, to common usage is a way to
the final destruction of the language as it happened to other
conlangs.

You seem to have a strange notion of what language destruction is.

Destruction is exactly when you ignore or invalidate one thing and not providing alternatives.

Those tinkerers (including xorlofiers back in 2003) threw CLL away and thus imo destroyed the original plan of a stable language and doomed the language to the fate of Loglan. Only the lack of the third alternative (a new loglang) prevented this community from complete dying.

 

You seem to think that a language exists if and only if it has speakers in our world. I accept that that's not a nonsensical view, tho I do think it's utterly wrong, but it's hard to have rational discussion if we use the same set of terms with such fundamentally different and incompatible senses.

The existence of speakers doesn't matter. If you have selling points you will get speakers.

The second selling point is monoparsing.

But they removed the first selling point.

 

    For users of handheld devices, Gleki has made an android jbovlaste app -- it's excellent!

Huh?

There is a Google Play app maker called Vorgoron who made the app and gave it a description that says "Author - Gleki Arxokuna", which had misled me into thinking you were Vorgoron. Looking at Vorgoron's other apps, it seems likely that Vorgoron is Russian, so likely somebody you know.

Oh, I see. I just offered him to include a dictionary into their distributions. I don't even remember who is the original author of that dictionary.

[Alex Burka]

Gleki, you’re not making any sense. In one breath we’re holding a bonfire and torching CLLs, while in the next we’re sitting twiddling our thumbs “waiting for Robin to do something”. Obviously, neither is true. And Lojban is still here, in contradiction to what you keep saying, though we disagree on the reasons why it languishes. I wish we could have this argument without hurling insults.

mu’o mi’e la durka

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[Alex Burka]

I think it’s 3>1>2 for me, although I’m not exactly sure of the distinction you’re drawing between “usage” and “consensus”. And to keep 3 above 1, you need 2 to be able to slowly adapt to 1/4… so it’s intertwined.

mu’o mi’e la durka

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[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-09-10 18:31 GMT+04:00 Alex Burka <dur...@gmail.com>:

Gleki, you’re not making any sense. In one breath we’re holding a bonfire and torching CLLs, while in the next we’re sitting twiddling our thumbs “waiting for Robin to do something”. Obviously, neither is true. And Lojban is still here, in contradiction to what you keep saying, though we disagree on the reasons why it languishes. I wish we could have this argument without hurling insults.

1. You don't provide any alternative. Where is your amended CLL? There isn't one. Thus you are waiting for someone, what else can I assume?

Yes, torching CLLs and doing nothing constructive.

2. In what form does Lojban exist? It exists despite these invalidations of CLL and continues to avert other people from contributing just because of xorlo and other changes.

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[Robert LeChevalier]

On 9/9/2014 4:50 PM, And Rosta wrote:
> Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG, On 09/09/2014 18:30:

>> The other problem is that the "development" is supposed to already be
>> done. Long done. And for a lot of people, the idea that they might
>> have to go to Microsoft Lojban 8.0 from 7.0 is enough to make them
>> throw up their hands in disgust and turn away from the language. They
>> might accept small tweaks to fix bugs in "Lojban XP", but they don't
>> want to relearn anything.
>

> It seems to me you're setting up a largely false dichotomy. Most of what
> remains to be done is to complete the design where it is incomplete.

If incompleteness is what it is, then I can likely be convinced. But I
believe that the discussion was about change/evolution.

>> People might have tolerated running across some new word on an IRC
>> channel and looking it up; we deal with learning new vocabulary all
>> the time in natural language. But they don't like someone telling
>> them that the old way to do something is wrong, and there is a new
>> and better way.
>

> Are there still many that feel thus? I wonder if it's a myth that gets
> perpetuated because you propagate it so insistently.

It has been the bugaboo of pretty near every conlang project in history
- the inability of the developers to stop tweaking it just a little
more. Thus it is not a matter of "still that many". I'd have to be
convinced that there is something distinctive about Lojban as to exclude
it from the norm for conlangs in history.

> In old usage, "le" was standardly not used in a baseline-compliant way;
> cf how "le nu", "le ka", "le du'u" used to be default in usage.

That is still my default. I don't know why it is not baseline-compliant
(indeed, Xorxes has told me that the old usage is not incorrect under
xorlo)

> In old
> and new usage (for new usage, I'm relying on Selpa'i's observation),
> logical scope of syntactic clausemates is generally ambiguous. How many
> people are going to want to preserve old ways that aren't
> baseline-compliant or are rampantly logically ambiguous?

Maybe a lot of people aren't too worried about being "logically
ambiguous" as you call it.

>> This project is some 60 years old and we have a lot of history of
>> people explicitly leaving because of changes imposed from on-high.
>

> Not in the history of Lojban proper,

Most certainly yes.

> of course, because changes haven't been imposed from on-high.

Not since 1997 (except for xorlo).

>So all the folk leaving for the last 27 years
> have been leaving for other reasons; disgruntlement at the unfinished
> design

Unfinished documentation is the larger criticism. We still need a real
dictionary. And probably several published books in-language, to show
that people have invested the time in the language to produce such books
knowing that they won't be obsolete with the next ad-hoc change proposal.

> and the political sclerosis that prevents its completion must be
> the major reason why people leave Lojban, out of all reasons that have
> to do with some sort of disaffection with Lojban.

I haven't seen evidence of politics being a significant factor. Most
people are undoubtedly oblivious to the politics.

The largest reason is still lack of time, coupled with a sense from
discussion and product that we are done fiddling.

>>> in my mind, there is no way Lojban can be "considered DONE as an
>>> engineering effort".
>>
>> Then we are fundamentally at odds. It MUST be "done" at some point.
>> Engineering must stop, and we move to usage.
>

> Especially in the case of a language like Lojban, one expects that there
> will always be a strong strand of prescriptivism, in areas where usage
> deviates from the official design or from logic. Prescriptivism is a
> form of engineering.

Maybe, in a sense. But I doubt that it will seem that way so long as
the prescription doesn't change.

>> I have no idea what di'ai is. That is the problem with
>> experimental usages. They aren't documented, and people like me would
>> have no idea what to do with the word if we run across it in text.
>

> I went to the humungous effort of looking kibro and di'ai up in
> jbovlaste. To find jbovlaste, one googles "jbovlaste". Or, even quicker,

> google "jbovlaste kibro" and you get the answer in one step. For users

> of handheld devices, Gleki has made an android jbovlaste app -- it's

> excellent! And it's dead easy to use even for those of us who are weary

> at having to learn new technology.

I am before weary. %^) I don't even own a cell phone, much less
something with a data plan (for one thing I have trouble reading the
tiny buttons and screens, and would need a stylus because my fingers are
too large for the keys - dialing a simple telephone number is a
challenge for me). "apps" are alien to me. And I hate web-based
software in general. I avoid downloading software on my pc for fear of
malware. So learning new technology is something I rarely deal with.

lojbab

[Jorge Llambías]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 5:13 PM, Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:

On 9/9/2014 4:50 PM, And Rosta wrote:

In old usage, "le" was standardly not used in a baseline-compliant way;
cf how "le nu", "le ka", "le du'u" used to be default in usage.

That is still my default.  I don't know why it is not baseline-compliant (indeed, Xorxes has told me that the old usage is not incorrect under xorlo)

I hope I didn't say that. What I probably did say is that most of the stuff that was correct pre-xorlo is still correct with xorlo, and much of the stuff that was incorrect becomes correct. But if something was wrong pre-xorlo, it might still be wrong.

I believe And may be thinking of something like "mi nelci le nu limna" for "I like swimming". The problem with "le" here is that when you say "I like swimming" you don't have a particular event of swimming in mind, so why would you use "le"? "le nu limna" is supposed to be a particular event of swimming that the speaker has in mind.

(Nowadays many people would probably rather say "mi nelci lo ka limna", but the change from "nu" to "ka" is not from xorlo.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 9/10/2014 1:51 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not
> hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had
> stopped fiddling with the language design.
>

> He won't. I can confirm his words.
> I've got a lot of people from Russian group who immediately stopped
> learning Lojban when they learnt that CLL was no longer valid.
>

> With regret I have to acknowledge that Lojbab's task of creating a
> stable language failed when the not well thought out change called
> "xorlo" invalidated the refgram. May be it's still not too late to go
> back to pre-xorlo

If xorxes is correct then the refgram was not invalidated so much as
made incomplete. But I can't say, since I never really understood xorlo.

Still, you are the first person I have seen to call "xorlo" "not well
thought out". xorlo was by far the most thought about and discussed
change proposal ever made to the language. If it was "not well thought
out" it speaks poorly for the *possibility* of there being a
well-thought-out change

> Yet another example is Loglan.

Which of course is the primary language effort that I know about. My
knowledge of the impact of changes on other languages came second hand
from people commenting on their reaction to changes in TLI Loglan and in
Lojban.

> That's why any changes to basic gismu, to common usage is a way to the
> final destruction of the language as it happened to other conlangs.

Changes to gismu damn near killed Loglan in the early 1980s, and merely
tweaking something like 100 rafsi in 1994 when they were not yet
officially baselined and no one to my knowledge had systematically tried
to memorize them (other than myself) caused an enormously strong protest
such that only a fraction of the proposals were accepted MERELY on
account of usage.

> It was discussed back in the 90s, but is it in CLL? I can't find a
> way to search CLL online (-- there must be one, but googling doesn't
> bring it up). It's not in CLL Ch 13 where po'o is introduced.

I found And himself discussing it with xorxes in Feb 1996.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!searchin/lojban/po$27onai/lojban/4quvrqL8Ops/J_8GPjzhr3YJ

That may have been too late to get into CLL, especially since the
discussion seems to have been about translating the idiosyncrasies of
the English word(s) "only" and "except", rather than a discussion of
what was needed in Lojban on its own.

> I went to the humungous effort of looking kibro and di'ai up in
> jbovlaste. To find jbovlaste, one googles "jbovlaste". Or, even
> quicker, google "jbovlaste kibro" and you get the answer in one
> step. For users of handheld devices, Gleki has made an android
> jbovlaste app -- it's excellent!
>

> Huh?

%^)

lojbab

[Jorge Llambías]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:

If xorxes is correct then the refgram was not invalidated so much as made incomplete. 

CLL, despite its name, was never a complete description of the language, so xorlo could not have made it something it already was.

 

But I can't say, since I never really understood xorlo.

That may be true, but you never really understood CLL gadri either. Your understanding of gadri is actually closer to xorlo than to CLL. Look at the (pre-xorlo, pre-CLL) ma'oste definition of "lo": "veridical descriptor: the one(s) that really is(are) ..." That's basically xorlo, not CLL. There's no trace of a hidden quantifier there.

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 9/10/2014 9:16 AM, And Rosta wrote:
> Gleki Arxokuna, On 10/09/2014 06:51:

>> 2014-09-10 0:50 GMT+04:00 And Rosta <and....@gmail.com

>> <mailto:and....@gmail.com>>:

>> In old usage, "le" was standardly not used in a baseline-compliant
>> way; cf how "le nu", "le ka", "le du'u" used to be default in usage.
>> In old and new usage (for new usage, I'm relying on Selpa'i's
>> observation), logical scope of syntactic clausemates is generally
>> ambiguous. How many people are going to want to preserve old ways that
>> aren't baseline-compliant or are rampantly logically ambiguous?
>>
>> The task is to adapt theory to facts, i.e. usage, not adapt reality
>> to facts provided this doesn't lead to syntactic ambiguity which is a
>> defining feature of lojban.
>

> There are three forces that potentially shape and define what is to be
> deemed correct:
>
> 1. usage
> 2. official codification
> 3. logic (mapping between phonological and logical forms), consistency,
> regularity, unambiguity, integrity
>
> & possibly a fourth:
>
> 4. unofficial consensus of opinion (or of influential opinion)
>
> (4) is important for English, maybe not for Lojban.
>
> All can conflict. Which trumps which? For me it's 3>2>1. For Bob I hope
> (because it's a position I can respect) it's 1>2>3. What do you think it
> is?

Actually, for me it is probably 2,4,1,3, mostly because we don't have
any consistent standard for "usage" to say when it should trump either
codification or consensus. There is undoubtedly a lot of bad usage out
there as well as good usage.

The voted-upon byfy output constitutes unofficial consensus of type (4)
until such time as its output is incorporated in the new baseline (2).

> At the time I ceased active involvement with Lojban I had come to the
> view that that the community was wedded to 1>2>3 or 2>1>3 with immutable
> 2, but now I see that there are currents of opinion -- much stronger
> than ever in my time -- unwilling to accept either of those. Surely the
> only foreseeable outcomes are that the ultraconservative camp withers or
> that there is schism.

While I qualify as ultraconservative, you would be surprised by how much
I will be willing to tolerate change approved by byfy consensus in a new
baseline. I stopped fighting xorlo as soon as the community felt it
appropriate per the ZG, even if I have no clue how I should use it.

>> More importantly, we have the history of dozens if not
>> hundreds of
>> conlangs whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop
>> fiddling with the language design.
>>
>> I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not
>> hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had
>> stopped fiddling with the language design.
>>
>> He won't. I can confirm his words. I've got a lot of people from
>> Russian group who immediately stopped learning Lojban when they
>> learnt that CLL was no longer valid.
>

> Bob was talking about conlangs not conlangers.

The conlangers changing the conlangs was what I was talking about. It
is arguable whether any given conlang failed for any particular reason,
but everything I have read indicates that people move on either because
a conlang had changed, or because they wanted it to change (and many
conlangs (especially the Euroclones) that failed are little more than
modifications to prior conlangs that never attracted more than a small
fraction of the predecessor.

> I suppose your Russian drop-outs must have been fervent devotees of
> {1|immutable2} > 3. What was it attracted them to Lojban in the first
> place, such deviation from that ranking quenched their interest?

The "deviation" is clearly the lack of a trustworthy standard that they
can learn from.

> You seem to have a strange notion of what language destruction is. You

> seem to think that a language exists if and only if it has speakers in
> our world.

That is certainly a requirement according to linguists. Indeed native
speakers is a commonly understood requirement.

> I accept that that's not a nonsensical view, tho I do think it's utterly wrong,

When you convince the academic linguistics community, let me know. I
fought that battle back before 1992 (and we were getting there very
slowly by having some academic linguists, including Nick Nicholas, get
papers about Lojban published.)

> There is a Google Play app maker called Vorgoron who made the app and
> gave it a description that says "Author - Gleki Arxokuna", which had
> misled me into thinking you were Vorgoron. Looking at Vorgoron's other
> apps, it seems likely that Vorgoron is Russian, so likely somebody you
> know.

I won't pretend to know how you can find an app for Lojban that isn't on
the Lojban web site. But that is my own ill knowledge.

lojbab

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 9/10/2014 4:40 PM, Jorge Llambías wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 5:13 PM, Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org

> <mailto:loj...@lojban.org>> wrote:
>
> On 9/9/2014 4:50 PM, And Rosta wrote:
>
>
> In old usage, "le" was standardly not used in a
> baseline-compliant way;
> cf how "le nu", "le ka", "le du'u" used to be default in usage.
>
>
> That is still my default. I don't know why it is not
> baseline-compliant (indeed, Xorxes has told me that the old usage is
> not incorrect under xorlo)
>
>

> I hope I didn't say that. What I probably did say is that most of the
> stuff that was correct pre-xorlo is still correct with xorlo,

I can probably find the quote, but I am not sure it is really relevant.
But when someone repeatedly tells me I am wrong, I am less likely to
keep trying. I am sure that I am not the only one this holds for, and I
am pretty sure that I would misuse xorlo, if only because I don't know
when NOT to use "lo".

> I believe And may be thinking of something like "mi nelci le nu limna"
> for "I like swimming". The problem with "le" here is that when you say
> "I like swimming" you don't have a particular event of swimming in mind,
> so why would you use "le"?

le is not necessarily singular (or plural), but I certainly have some
concept of what events of swimming (that I am fond of) are, and I am,
referring to one or more of such events.

"le nu limna" is supposed to be a particular
> event of swimming that the speaker has in mind.
>
> (Nowadays many people would probably rather say "mi nelci lo ka limna",
> but the change from "nu" to "ka" is not from xorlo.)

But of course I don't know that my concept of swimming and/or its
properties is the same as yours. Since I still associate "lo" with
veridicality, and there are likely some events of swimming that I would
not nelci, I would have trouble saying "lo".

lojbab

[Jorge Llambías]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:

 I am pretty sure that I would misuse xorlo, if only because I don't know when NOT to use "lo".

It's very easy: always use "lo", you never have to use any other gadri. 

I believe And may be thinking of something like "mi nelci le nu limna"
for "I like swimming". The problem with "le" here is that when you say
"I like swimming" you don't have a particular event of swimming in mind,
so why would you use "le"?

le is not necessarily singular (or plural), but I certainly have some concept of what events of swimming (that I am fond of) are, and I am, referring to one or more of such events.

With CLL-le you were saying that you like each one of them, right. but the point is that that's not what "I like swimming" means.

Perhaps it's even more clear in the negative: compare  "mi na nelci le nu limna" vs "I don't like swimming".  

 "le nu limna" is supposed to be a particular

event of swimming that the speaker has in mind.

(Nowadays many people would probably rather say "mi nelci lo ka limna",
but the change from "nu" to "ka" is not from xorlo.)

But of course I don't know that my concept of swimming and/or its properties is the same as yours.  Since I still associate "lo" with veridicality, and there are likely some events of swimming that I would not nelci, I would have trouble saying "lo".

You can use "le" if you think that's important. xorlo didn't touch veridicality, it just dropped the hidden quantifiers.

[Frank]

I have no strong feelings on the matter one way or another. Bluntly, Whoever is in charge, if They do a bad job, it's easy (though unfortunate) for Us to split. At the same time, from what I have read as a Lojban-Lurker over the years, I highly doubt circumstances would ever come anywhere near that point.

mi'e xuinkrbin.

On Thursday, May 15, 2014, Alex Burka <dur...@gmail.com> wrote:

coi lo jbopre

My name is Dustin and you might know me as ldlework or mokau or cadgu'a.  I'm

writing to announce the current motion to nominate selpa'i as the current warden

for the language in a provisionally official capacity contingent on the general

attitudes professed by the community's response to the motion. selpa'i would be

replacing Robin Lee Powell in this position.

Currently, the IRC and Facebook communities have been approached. The response so

far has been extremely positive with a current count of 20 to 1 in favor of the

motion. Broca of the BPFK has given his provisional support of the motion and Ali

Sajid Imami of the LLG has given positive approval.

Robin Lee Powell has declared that he will abstain from voting explicitly, citing

personal reasons but has offered the following words (edited for clarity):

rlpowell:   I confirm [that] I'd [just] as soon someone else took my Lojbanic authority.

rlpowell:   I'm ever so slightly mildly skeptical about selpa'i specifically because

            he's not well known throughout the community the way I was.

rlpowell: I'm mildly worried that his lack of presence there will lead to schism or something.

rlpowell: Having said that, I certainly don't know of anybody *better* suited for the job.

rlpowell: and I, personally, like him and his attitude towards Lojban.

So what will this actually mean for the community and the language?

As it stands Lojban is a vibrant community of speakers of a wide range of fluency.

At the tail end, some extremely active and hard-working jbopre have, over the

years, contributed many efforts to the language such as translations, music but

also proposals of enhancements or refinements of various aspects of the language

including its grammar, cmavo and general lexicon. However without an active

leadership many of these modifications remain in conversational limbo where they

are discussed for years in vain since there is no explicit mechanism for

integration into the language or lexicon. New speakers get confused at the

apparent lack of consensus.

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[TR NS]

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 1:30:07 PM UTC-4, lojbab wrote:

This project is some 60 years old and we have a lot of history of people
explicitly leaving because of changes imposed from on-high.  More
importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of conlangs
whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop fiddling with
the language design.  Those that have survived and spread have stopped
being developed, and are simply USED.  

Do you truly believe people would leave the language if a change was made form "on-high" if it were a clear improvement? Just because it is a change?

[Dustin Lacewell]

TR NS,

This is the unifying reason the FAR MAJORITY of conlangs die! Accept this at face value!

[John E Clifford]

A modest proposal for a way forward together.

Some say Lojban just needs a bit more description, some say it needs a number of changes, so say it needs scraping and a fresh start. Needs for what, pray?  Though some seem unhappy (I can't think why) with this characterization, the reason for Lojban is orthoparsing.   Does Lojban have this property?  There is scarcely a demonstration of monoparsing, let alone that the resulting structure maps to a unique formula of logic, and far from that it is the right unique structure.  So, let's get together and prove.  In the process, we will find whatpartsof the current definition need filling in, because they will be points where the sought algorithm lacks input.  Further, the development of the algorithm will guide what form the additions should take.  The same will be true if there are parts that are just wrong, don't fit in with the program.  In the end, we will have a complete description of a Lojban pretty close (I assume, but then, ...) to the present one which will demonstrably do what it claims to do and will differ from the present one only in filling in what was left out (or had not yet gotten in) and in corecting what was wrong before.  Wrong in a fairly objective way -- not just inelegant or some aesthetic of political consideration but because it got in the way of the project.  This seems to be a project to satisfy everyone (well, there is probably a perfectionist somewhere who will not accept a finished functioning language while he can still dream a"perfect" but unbegun one).  As a side result, the work on the algorithm will probably produce a G&T grammar for Lojban as well, giving a complete description in yet another linguistic theory.

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[Alex Burka]

First, we should stop pretending that everyone thinks they are just filling in holes in the language. Change proposals do exist. And not all of the "holes" are necessarily going to pertain to the logical underpinning, it sends to me. That said, this sounds like a noble quest -- it'd be great to have a proof that Lojban actually is a logical language. Based on the number of terms I understood in your email, I'm unfortunately not going to have the time or skill to contribute, so I'll focus my efforts in other parts of Lojbanistan, but I wish you well.

mu'o mi'e la durka

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-09-11 0:42 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org>:

On 9/10/2014 1:51 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

    I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not
    hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had
    stopped fiddling with the language design.

He won't. I can confirm his words.
I've got a lot of people from Russian group who immediately stopped
learning Lojban when they learnt that CLL was no longer valid.

With regret I have to acknowledge that Lojbab's task of creating a
stable language failed when the not well thought out change called
"xorlo" invalidated the refgram. May be it's still not too late to go
back to pre-xorlo

If xorxes is correct then the refgram was not invalidated so much as made incomplete.  But I can't say, since I never really understood xorlo.

Still, you are the first person I have seen to call "xorlo" "not well thought out".  xorlo was by far the most thought about and discussed change proposal ever made to the language.  If it was "not well thought out" it speaks poorly for the *possibility* of there being a well-thought-out change

It's not well thought out in the sense that nowadays most people use {lo} and use {le} quite less. The well thought out change would be clearly understanding what is wanted and then adapting it to what is already described in CLL.

Thus e.g. {le} could be redefined as what is {lo} in post-xorlo. Thus most examples in CLL would be preserved.

Some use {le} in referential sense today (which is needed more seldom). However, for that a better reform would just suggest a new cmavo rather than damaging the usage of existing cmavo.

All these change to the basic and mostly used cmavo in the language invalidated CLL and diverted a lot of people from Lojban when they wanted to delve into it deeper.

In fact their first phrases like {mi nelci le nu limna} are always corrected by "experts" which confuses newbies.

If there was a new corrected CLL (that you can download and buy in paper form) there would be no such problems.

But nobody provided a corrected refgram, a corrected tutorial (there is a new one but nitcion's is still online and  continues to confuse people).

That's why the fears of ruining the language because of changes are now confirmed after just one single change.

I don't know how many people already bought CLL but probably the new one will be ready soon so that most pressing changes can be quickly introduced and side issues can be ignored letting the usage and logic decide afterwards.

Yet another example is Loglan.

Which of course is the primary language effort that I know about.  My knowledge of the impact of changes on other languages came second hand from people commenting on their reaction to changes in TLI Loglan and in Lojban.

The history repeats itself.

That's why any changes to basic gismu, to common usage is a way to the
final destruction of the language as it happened to other conlangs.

Changes to gismu damn near killed Loglan in the early 1980s, and merely tweaking something like 100 rafsi in 1994 when they were not yet officially baselined and no one to my knowledge had systematically tried to memorize them (other than myself) caused an enormously strong protest such that only a fraction of the proposals were accepted MERELY on account of usage.

    It was discussed back in the 90s, but is it in CLL? I can't find a
    way to search CLL online (-- there must be one, but googling doesn't
    bring it up). It's not in CLL Ch 13 where po'o is introduced.

I found And himself discussing it with xorxes in Feb 1996.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!searchin/lojban/po$27onai/lojban/4quvrqL8Ops/J_8GPjzhr3YJ

That may have been too late to get into CLL, especially since the discussion seems to have been about translating the idiosyncrasies of the English word(s) "only" and "except", rather than a discussion of what was needed in Lojban on its own.

    I went to the humungous effort of looking kibro and di'ai up in
    jbovlaste. To find jbovlaste, one googles "jbovlaste". Or, even
    quicker, google "jbovlaste kibro" and you get the answer in one
    step. For users of handheld devices, Gleki has made an android
    jbovlaste app -- it's excellent!

Huh?

%^)

lojbab

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[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-09-11 3:44 GMT+04:00 'John E Clifford' via lojban <loj...@googlegroups.com>:

A modest proposal for a way forward together.

Some say Lojban just needs a bit more description, some say it needs a number of changes, so say it needs scraping and a fresh start.

For me Lojban first needs an up to date description even if this description is incomplete.

E.g. I wouldn't mind if "font switching" cmavo were removed from the new CLL.

However, outside official documentation there can be any number of super-complete unofficial refgrams, papers and tutorials. And I don't care how many of them would exist (in fact there are plenty of them in the wiki already).

Voting and usage would suggest adding those additions into future versions of CLL (CLL 3.0 and higher).

[And Rosta]

> On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 at 9:16 AM, And Rosta wrote:
>> There are three forces that potentially shape and define what is to be deemed correct:
>>
>> 1. usage
>> 2. official codification
>> 3. logic (mapping between phonological and logical forms), consistency, regularity, unambiguity, integrity
>>
>> & possibly a fourth:
>>
>> 4. unofficial consensus of opinion (or of influential opinion)
>>
>> (4) is important for English, maybe not for Lojban.
>>
>> All can conflict. Which trumps which? For me it's 3>2>1. For Bob I hope (because it's a position I can respect) it's 1>2>3. What do you think it is?

Alex Burka, On 10/09/2014 15:32:

> I think it’s 3>1>2 for me, although I’m not exactly sure of the
> distinction you’re drawing between “usage” and “consensus”. And to
> keep 3 above 1, you need 2 to be able to slowly adapt to 1/4… so it’s
> intertwined.

I meant (4) as a consensus of opinion that is independent of usage, an opinion about how people ought to say stuff but not necessarily about how they actually do say stuff. You could say 4 is an uncodified body of lore.

Gleki Arxokuna, On 10/09/2014 14:35:>

> For me it's 2. codification > 3. logic > 4. consensus > 1. usage
> although 4. defines 1. and partially 3.

Okay. I can square that with some of what you say. But you also said that what is codified should be based on usage -- which surely conflicts with 3>4>1. And you also decried changes to the codification (because it causes some people to abandon the language) yet also criticized the adoption of xorlo on the apparent grounds that it has not been codified (in a new reference grammar), implying that were it codified, you would not decry it.

> More importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of
> conlangs whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop
> fiddling with the language design.
>
> I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had stopped fiddling with the language design.
>
> He won't. I can confirm his words. I've got a lot of people from
> Russian group who immediately stopped learning Lojban when they
> learnt that CLL was no longer valid.
>
> Bob was talking about conlangs not conlangers.
>

> Usage of conlangs depends on users i.e. conlanger (although i
> preferred to use "conlanger" for the term "inventor of conlang")

Yes, I agree that is what 'conlanger means'. I thought you had meant "[Bob] won't [be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had stopped fiddling with the language design]" but because you didn't really substantiate that and instead talked about conlang users, I thought maybe you had misread "conlangers" for "conlangs".

But I think I see now what you meant. You cited a diminution in the use of Quenya in response to new information emerging about the diachrony of its invention, so I infer that you mean that many conlangs -- dozens if not hundreds -- if published and never publicly revised would attract users, regardless of whether their creator wished or intended that to happen. History proves that this is generally not the case; only exceptionally does a published conlang attract users, even when the published codification never alters. But Bob and implicitly you seem also to be saying that failure to attract users constitutes some kind of absolute failure as a language.

--And.

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-09-11 17:49 GMT+04:00 And Rosta <and....@gmail.com>:

On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 at 9:16 AM, And Rosta wrote:

There are three forces that potentially shape and define what is to be deemed correct:

1. usage
2. official codification
3. logic (mapping between phonological and logical forms), consistency, regularity, unambiguity, integrity

& possibly a fourth:

4. unofficial consensus of opinion (or of influential opinion)

(4) is important for English, maybe not for Lojban.

All can conflict. Which trumps which? For me it's 3>2>1. For Bob I hope (because it's a position I can respect) it's 1>2>3. What do you think it is?

Alex Burka, On 10/09/2014 15:32:

I think it's 3>1>2 for me, although I'm not exactly sure of the
distinction you're drawing between "usage" and "consensus". And to

keep 3 above 1, you need 2 to be able to slowly adapt to 1/4... so it's
intertwined.

I meant (4) as a consensus of opinion that is independent of usage, an opinion about how people ought to say stuff but not necessarily about how they actually do say stuff. You could say 4 is an uncodified body of lore.

Gleki Arxokuna, On 10/09/2014 14:35:>

For me it's 2. codification > 3. logic > 4. consensus > 1. usage
although 4. defines 1. and partially 3.

Okay. I can square that with some of what you say. But you also said that what is codified should be based on usage -- which surely conflicts with 3>4>1.

CLL was based on usage and logic. So this step is finished.

The ideal situation is if CLL has only additions to the language and backward compatible changes.

And you also decried changes to the codification (because it causes some people to abandon the language) yet also criticized the adoption of xorlo on the apparent grounds that it has not been codified (in a new reference grammar), implying that were it codified, you would not decry it.

People who are trying to learn Lojban are faced at "no up to date reference grammar" situation. They have nowhere to learn from.

And for sure they are not going to join IRC just to listen to somebody. Why should they trust IRC-ers? Who are they for newcomers?

 

                 More importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of
                 conlangs whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop
                 fiddling with the language design.

             I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had stopped fiddling with the language design.

        He won't. I can confirm his words. I've got a lot of people from
        Russian group who immediately stopped learning Lojban when they
        learnt that CLL was no longer valid.

    Bob was talking about conlangs not conlangers.

Usage of conlangs depends on users i.e. conlanger (although i
preferred to use "conlanger" for the term "inventor of conlang")

Yes, I agree that is what 'conlanger means'. I thought you had meant "[Bob] won't [be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had stopped fiddling with the language design]" but because you didn't really substantiate that and instead talked about conlang users, I thought maybe you had misread "conlangers" for "conlangs".

But I think I see now what you meant. You cited a diminution in the use of Quenya in response to new information emerging about the diachrony of its invention, so I infer that you mean that many conlangs -- dozens if not hundreds -- if published and never publicly revised would attract users, regardless of whether their creator wished or intended that to happen.

Not only hundreds of conlangs but even hundreds of natlangs can't get attraction.

People learning Sumerian (or similar natlangs) represent similar tiny closed communities.

History proves that this is generally not the case; only exceptionally does a published conlang attract users, even when the published codification never alters. But Bob and implicitly you seem also to be saying that failure to attract users constitutes some kind of absolute failure as a language.

The situation with Lojban is that people start saying that CLL is wrong. Nobody can say that of Sumerian inscriptions.

Of course, CLL is wrong in the light of decisions in 2003.

We have an internal conflict.

It might have been better if CLL never existed.

But the reality is that one thing contradicts another thing.

We have to face it.

Now this thread is called "the future of Lojban leadership".

I can see only one person dealing with most pressing issues of Lojban.

1. This is Robin and this is his CLL, version >1.0.

That's why he is the only person whom I respect and whom I see as a current leader doing something valuable AT THIS MOMENT (other people did valuable in past or in future).

Other pressing issues are:

2. a dictionary without cryptic definitions and with examples showing usage for every place.

3. an up to date tutorial presenting Lojban as a spoken language.

...

7. an up to date tutorial presenting Lojban as a programming/logical language.

etc.

Another thing worth mentioning are Robin's jbocifnu. Thus he is again a leader in my view but from another orthogonal viewpoint just because of the simple fact of jbocifnu's existence.

Other issues like Android dictionary apps, a better wiki, a better online live dictionary (jbovlaste 2.0) are of course important but one can learn the language even without those.

[TR NS]

On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 7:20:54 PM UTC-4, Dustin Lacewell wrote:

TR NS,

This is the unifying reason the FAR MAJORITY of conlangs die! Accept this at face value!

I'd be concerned that a language that did not achieve its stated goals might also suffer the same fate. Regardless I will take it at face value, and conclude Lojban has reached a type of impasse, perhaps inevitable.

Clearly there are two camps of thought: There are those, like yourself, who wish to see the language frozen, unassailable from all but minor adjustments, wanting to get on with *using* the language, and see the language's death in any further modification. Then there are those who see a language that has not yet reached it's fruition --still in need of work, minor or significant, and in seeing those "holes", see a dead language in one that is no longer evolving.

There is no reconciliation of these two views. The only solution is a fork. 

[Gleki Arxokuna]

I can see there are two major camps:

A. Language is frozen in what is both describes in CLL and is used + the language is at the same time open to backward compatible changes

B. IRC/mailing list usage decides. Everything else has sense only if doesn't contradict IRC/mailing list usage.

Scenario B completely ignores people who have paid their money to buy CLL to learn the most described language in the world.

As a temporary solution I can suggest that LLG sells the rest of the copies of CLL with a small handmade inset "How to use xorlo".

This should have been done in 2003 of course since xorlo is really backward non-compatible and thus damaged the spread and the development of Lojban by diverting newcomers.

There is no reconciliation of these two views. The only solution is a fork. 

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[John E Clifford]

Surely there are at least some c's (more than b's, it appears) who think that both CLL and current usage need work but that changes to all of these need to be guided by overarching goals.

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 9/10/2014 5:57 PM, Jorge Llambías wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder
> - LLG <loj...@lojban.org <mailto:loj...@lojban.org>> wrote:
>
> I am pretty sure that I would misuse xorlo, if only because I
> don't know when NOT to use "lo".
>

> It's very easy: always use "lo", you never have to use any other gadri.

Then "lo" is not veridical, and it does not mean what it used to mean.
Because sometimes, what I have in mind is NOT what I describe it to be.
"The blue house" that I have in mind is actually multicolored, with
blue merely distinguishing it from some other house that isn't as
obviously (to me) described as "blue"

> I believe And may be thinking of something like "mi nelci le nu
> limna"
> for "I like swimming". The problem with "le" here is that when
> you say
> "I like swimming" you don't have a particular event of swimming
> in mind,
> so why would you use "le"?
>
>
> le is not necessarily singular (or plural), but I certainly have
> some concept of what events of swimming (that I am fond of) are, and
> I am, referring to one or more of such events.
>

> With CLL-le you were saying that you like each one of them, right. but
> the point is that that's not what "I like swimming" means.

I like each act that I am describing to be an event of swimming, which
acts may or may not actually be acts of swimming, and are almost
certainly a tiny fraction of all possible events that someone might
describe as events of swimming.

> Perhaps it's even more clear in the negative: compare "mi na nelci le
> nu limna" vs "I don't like swimming".

Not more clear for the same reason. The events are those that I don't
like but am describing as events of swimming.

lojbab

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 9/10/2014 7:02 PM, TR NS wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 1:30:07 PM UTC-4, lojbab wrote:
>
>
> This project is some 60 years old and we have a lot of history of
> people

> explicitly leaving because of changes imposed from on-high. More

> importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of conlangs
> whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop fiddling with

> the language design. Those that have survived and spread have stopped
> being developed, and are simply USED.
>
>
> Do you truly believe people would leave the language if a change was
> made form "on-high" if it were a clear improvement? Just because it is a
> change?

Yes, because they would not see it as a clear improvement BECAUSE it is
a change (and the reference grammar that they understood as a standard
is now declared to be incorrect.

Furthermore, I know this from experience, because the change to Loglan
called the "Great Morphological Revision" that remade a significant
fraction of gismu, but also made possible the assignment of unique rafsi
that enabled lujvo to be uniquely decomposed - one of the most
fundamental and successful of the Lojban design features inherited from
JCB's version of Loglan. That change caused the language community to
die for several years, and planted the seeds of schism that eventually
and indirectly resulted in creating Lojban.

xorlo, which most newer people (apparently excepting gleki) consider a
major improvement has been a significant demotivator in my using the
language. Probably I wouldn't be using the language much anyway, (I
have found that using a language even semi-fluently is extremely
difficult for me, even if I know the rules and the words well) but I had
translations that I really wanted to do, and I remain unconvinced that
anyone will be able to read them because I cannot use xorlo properly.

And again, this isn't just me. The advantage and disadvantage of being
language-engineer-in-chief, is that everyone for a couple of decades
told me their gripes as they arrived and as they gave up/left. People
gave up on Loglan because it kept changing. They came back to Lojban
because we committed not to keep changing, and to completing a set of
language documentation. They then left because we did not complete the
documents, many of them saying that they would return when "the language
is done".

It is the same mindset that has tens of millions still using Microsoft
Windows XP, even though it is 10 years out of date and no longer
supported by Microsoft. Upgrading to a new version of Windows (or to
some other operating system) would take more of a relearning curve than
they would want to bother with, and possibly make some of their old
stuff unusable. "Clear improvements" simply aren't what they want.

lojbab

lojbab

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 9/11/2014 2:16 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> I don't know how many people already bought CLL

Over 1000 but less than 1250. Probably at least that many
downloaded/printed the online version(s), or read it online.

> Which of course is the primary language effort that I know about.
> My knowledge of the impact of changes on other languages came second
> hand from people commenting on their reaction to changes in TLI
> Loglan and in Lojban.
>

> The history repeats itself.

We are doing our best to prevent that.

But we really need a new edition of CLL, and as time goes on, I am
probably willing to accept more of what people want to add/change if it
gets that edition done.

Additions (if well-documented) are a lot easier to accept than changes,
though.

lojbab

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 9/11/2014 11:48 AM, TR NS wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 7:20:54 PM UTC-4, Dustin Lacewell wrote:
>

> TR NS,
>
> This is the unifying reason the FAR MAJORITY of conlangs die! Accept
> this at face value!
>
>

> I'd be concerned that a language that did not achieve its stated goals
> might also suffer the same fate. Regardless I will take it at face
> value, and conclude Lojban has reached a type of impasse, perhaps
> inevitable.
>
> Clearly there are two camps of thought: There are those, like yourself,
> who wish to see the language frozen, unassailable from all but minor
> adjustments, wanting to get on with *using* the language,

That has been the commitment from the start.

> and see the language's death in any further modification.

Not necessarily death. But certainly prescriptive changes by fiat will
tend to drive away people, especially if it creates the sense that the
language community is being incessantly driven by "language tinkerers"

> Then there are those who
> see a language that has not yet reached it's fruition --still in need of
> work, minor or significant, and in seeing those "holes", see a dead
> language in one that is no longer evolving.

The language will certainly evolve regardless. But if the evolution
occurs because of how people use the language, it won't kill the
language. This is one way in which xorxes has been very smart. He USED
the language in the way that he wished when translating Alice in
Wonderland, and people read it and learned from his model, which was not
so strongly different from the standard language as to be unreadable.

> There is no reconciliation of these two views. The only solution is a fork.

In history, such forks have generally meant that one or both branches
fail. Esperanto is perhaps unique in having survived many attempts to
change it which became splinter languages. But Zamenhof's original work
is still essentially valid and readable, even though (so I am told by
skilled Esperantists) the usage of modern Esperantists is considerably
different from Zamenhof's.

Lojban was the dominant survivor of the split with TLI Loglan. There
are still a few people who try to use the other language, and their
community has been more tolerant of endless tweaking than ours is. But
I don't think that their community is growing much, whereas I am pretty
sure that Lojban is growing out of any possible control by LLG, even
without a finalized CLL. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this debate
more than a decade and a half after 1st edition CLL (and CLL sells many
more copies in a year now than it did a decade ago, which is why we are
running out).

lojbab

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 9/11/2014 12:02 PM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> I can see there are two major camps:
> A. Language is frozen in what is both describes in CLL and is used + the
> language is at the same time open to backward compatible changes
> B. IRC/mailing list usage decides. Everything else has sense only if
> doesn't contradict IRC/mailing list usage.
>
>
> Scenario B completely ignores people who have paid their money to buy
> CLL to learn the most described language in the world.
>
> As a temporary solution I can suggest that LLG sells the rest of the
> copies of CLL with a small handmade inset "How to use xorlo".
>
> This should have been done in 2003 of course since xorlo is really
> backward non-compatible and thus damaged the spread and the development
> of Lojban by diverting newcomers.

I think the 1.1 CLL, that Robin is apparently working on, will
accomplish a lot of what is needed. We could perhaps come up with a set
of change pages for purchasers of the original CLL, though I don't think
that anyone will be willing to do the work. Once 1.1 is done, I suspect
that many of the proposed changes and additions based on usage can be
discussed more rationally, especially if they are submitted with
proposed change pages (and we *should* be able to do change pages from
1.1 to 2.0 fairly easily assuming the markup language doesn't change;
original CLL was produced from a PDF produced by the then-version of
Microsoft Word, and one needs that old proprietary version of Word in
order to work with the original).

I suspect that Lojban can live with such a result, which will still be
"the most described language in the world", and respect both older users
as well as newer ones. If we can essentially stop the prescriptive
tweaking with 2.0, the future of the language is probably bright.

That at least is my vision of the moment %^)

lojbab

[Dustin Lacewell]

The biggest logical fallacy in this entire discourse is that the changes wanting to be made are dreamt up on a sterile whiteboard by 'language tinkerers' whatever the hell that actually means. The actual reality is that you have a substantial community (whether you want to hand wave us away as not being representitve somehow, a group of more than a handful of Lojban anything is substantial as far as I'm concerned) who is using the language daily, continuously throughout the day and have been doing so for years.

Those changes are the result of usage. Of finding what works and doesn't work for us as -users of the language-. What's happening here is that we would like to commit our findings back into the language so we can both claim to be speaking "Lojban" and so that we don't have to qualify everything as being 'official' or 'experimental' to the many and regular new comers that show up on our door.

Diminish and minimize us all you want. But understand it doesn't actually move your interlocutors to do so. We are aware of our own reality. If you're just singing to your own choir fine, but its important for the wider audience here to realize you're being offensively ignorant on this point.

No doubt - day to day - we sure spend a whole lot more time using and talking about Lojban than you characterize yourself to be doing. Please readjust your tone to acknowledge that the changes that are knocking at your door are legitimate concerns borne from -daily utilization-.

Regards.

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[Jorge Llambías]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 4:19 PM, Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:

On 9/10/2014 5:57 PM, Jorge Llambías wrote:

It's very easy: always use "lo", you never have to use any other gadri.

Then "lo" is not veridical, and it does not mean what it used to mean. Because sometimes, what I have in mind is NOT what I describe it to be.  "The blue house" that I have in mind is actually multicolored, with blue merely distinguishing it from some other house that isn't as obviously (to me) described as "blue"

Remember though that "lo blanu zdani" doesn't need to be blue even with veridical "lo".

If the thing you're describing is not even a house, you can refer to it as "lo se skicu be mi bei do bei lo ka blanu zdani".

If you find yourself repeating "lo se skicu be mi bei do bei lo ka" too much, you can always shorten it to "le", but you don't have to. This doesn't happen much in practice.

 

    le is not necessarily singular (or plural), but I certainly have
    some concept of what events of swimming (that I am fond of) are, and
    I am, referring to one or more of such events.

With CLL-le you were saying that you like each one of them, right. but
the point is that that's not what "I like swimming" means.

I like each act that I am describing to be an event of swimming, which acts may or may not actually be acts of swimming, and are almost certainly a tiny fraction of all possible events that someone might describe as events of swimming.

Fine, but the point was that that's not what "I like swimming" means, not that it's not true or that it doesn't mean what you wanted to say.

Perhaps it's even more clear in the negative: compare  "mi na nelci le
nu limna" vs "I don't like swimming".

Not more clear for the same reason.  The events are those that I don't like but am describing as events of swimming.

With CLL-le, it's at least one of them that you say you don't like. See? You are in fact using xorlo-le, not CLL-le. Your explanation of what you mean is what it means with xorlo. Remember that with CLL gadri you are in fact saying "mi na nelci _ro_ le nu limna", i.e. it's not true that you like all of them, but you may like some of them. 

[Pierre Abbat]

On Thursday, September 11, 2014 08:48:59 TR NS wrote:
> Clearly there are two camps of thought: There are those, like yourself, who
> wish to see the language frozen, unassailable from all but minor
> adjustments, wanting to get on with *using* the language, and see the
> language's death in any further modification. Then there are those who see
> a language that has not yet reached it's fruition --still in need of work,
> minor or significant, and in seeing those "holes", see a dead language in
> one that is no longer evolving.

I think the grammar is pretty much complete, though some corner cases should
be cleared up, but the vocabulary is in need of expansion.

Pierre
--
Jews use a lunisolar calendar; Muslims use a solely lunar calendar.

[MorphemeAddict]

Lojbab,

I encourage you to do those translations anyway. It's easier to update than to create, so by doing the hard work of creating the translations in the first place, you'd be enabling better translations in the future. 

stevo

lojbab

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[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-09-11 23:42 GMT+04:00 Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG <loj...@lojban.org>:

xorlo, which most newer people (apparently excepting gleki) consider a major improvement has been a significant demotivator in my using the language.  Probably I wouldn't be using the language much anyway, (I have found that using a language even semi-fluently is extremely difficult for me, even if I know the rules and the words well) but I had translations that I really wanted to do, and I remain unconvinced that anyone will be able to read them because I cannot use xorlo properly.

It's not that I oppose or approve of it. I'm only mentioning that losing a reliable up to date source is diverting people from the language.

I'm not talking about any particular solutions.

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-09-11 23:50 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org>:

On 9/11/2014 2:16 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

I don't know how many people already bought CLL

Over 1000 but less than 1250.  Probably at least that many downloaded/printed the online version(s), or read it online.

For online readers the immediate solution should be to add "How to use xorlo" amendment as a separate super-short  chapter to the book.

There is a page "Errata" in the tiki. You may say that "How to use xorlo" is kind of an erratum (when viewed from today).

I think it's no hard to implement.

The two most important versions are:

http://www.lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter1.html
and

http://lojban.github.io/cll/

Don't you think LLG should order to change them NOW?

This would at least stop xorlo schism for online learners who haven't bought a paperback edition.

    Which of course is the primary language effort that I know about.
    My knowledge of the impact of changes on other languages came second
    hand from people commenting on their reaction to changes in TLI
    Loglan and in Lojban.

The history repeats itself.

We are doing our best to prevent that.

But we really need a new edition of CLL, and as time goes on, I am probably willing to accept more of what people want to add/change if it gets that edition done.

Additions (if well-documented) are a lot easier to accept than changes, though.

lojbab

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 9/11/2014 5:15 PM, Dustin Lacewell wrote:
> The biggest logical fallacy in this entire discourse is that the changes
> wanting to be made are dreamt up on a sterile whiteboard by 'language
> tinkerers' whatever the hell that actually means. The actual reality is
> that you have a substantial community (whether you want to hand wave us
> away as not being representitve somehow, a group of more than a handful
> of Lojban anything is substantial as far as I'm concerned)

It is true that "substantial" doesn't mean "representative". Those who
aren't in your group have no exposure to your usages, and hence the
changes that you wish to impose on the rest of us generally seems
arbitrary, and in any case requires extra learning (and possibly
unlearning, which is the real bugaboo)

> who is using
> the language daily, continuously throughout the day and have been doing
> so for years.

Anyone who considers the variety of dialects even within smallish
Britain, much less the larger USA can understand that different
communities have different usages.

We cannot prevent such dialectization, and I wouldn't want to try. But
we also shouldn't allow one particular group/dialect dictate changes to
everyone else, especially since the rest of us didn't experience
whatever motivated your change.

The original intent was that after the baseline was documented, and then
after some period of usage, a group - probably the rump byfy in the
current situation, but hopefully more formalized - would accept
proposals for changes in the language description based on actual usage.
People in a formal software community would probably expect actual
proposed change pages to the documentation as part of such proposals, as
well as examples from actual usage.

> Those changes are the result of usage.

Your usage. Not that of others.

> Of finding what works and doesn't work for us as -users of the language-. What's happening here is that we
> would like to commit our findings back into the language so we can both
> claim to be speaking "Lojban" and so that we don't have to qualify
> everything as being 'official' or 'experimental' to the many and regular
> new comers that show up on our door.

It's experimental until such time as it is official. If it isn't yet
documented, and it is new, then it is experimental (or jargon or cant).
I'm not even sure how it could possibly change, unless one decides to
ignore the whole issue of documentation, in which case the language is
whatever any given speaker actually uses.

> Diminish and minimize us all you want.

I don't "want". I just have the responsibility to consider those 1000+
others who bought CLL and have no idea who you are or what you are
using. And I have to consider that any given change (as opposed to
addition) potentially invalidates all the ever-growing corpus of text
that is recorded before.

> But understand it doesn't
> actually move your interlocutors to do so.

Do you really think I am trying, much less expecting, to actually move you?

> We are aware of our own reality.

That's nice. But your reality isn't everyone's.

> If you're just singing to your own choir fine, but its
> important for the wider audience here to realize you're being

> offensively ignorant on this point.

Just consider that someone who has been working on this project for
30-odd years just might know something that you haven't yet experienced.
You are the one who offends me (and more importantly the rest of the
community), by saying that my/our experience isn't valid while yours is.

And your argument isn't especially new. It was made a dozen years ago,
by a group of whom Robin Powell is by far the best known. He was given
the BPFK chair and became a Board member and officer, and I stepped down
as President. I've been satisfied with his decisions since then.

> No doubt - day to day - we sure spend a whole lot more time using and
> talking about Lojban than you characterize yourself to be doing.

That's very nice. But you still aren't the entirety of the language
community, and you don't have the right to dictate to the rest of us
(any more than I have the right to dictate to you).

> Please
> readjust your tone to acknowledge that the changes that are knocking at

> your door are legitimate concerns borne from -daily utilization.

I have no idea how legitimate your concerns are, and I am not the one
who is going to decide (I may have a voice and a vote, but no more than
anyone else has).

But, regarding tone, if you don't want to learn how to work with the
rest of us, don't expect a lot of respect. Expecting tact from me is
probably a bit unreasonable. I'm not a politician, and I've never been
very tactful; but people know what I think, and they can be sure it
represents my honest beliefs. I've put a lot into this language and
this community; probably only John Clifford and maybe Robin can claim
comparable time, effort, and sacrifice. And I find YOUR tone utterly
dismissive of MY experience and commitment.

lojbab

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 9/11/2014 6:15 PM, MorphemeAddict wrote:
> Lojbab,
> I encourage you to do those translations anyway. It's easier to update
> than to create, so by doing the hard work of creating the translations
> in the first place, you'd be enabling better translations in the future.

That has been my philosophy. But the drumbeat for change plays havoc
with my motivation. And I'm getting old, and unhealthy, so exercising
leadership conflicts with actually doing things more and more.

lojbab

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 9/12/2014 1:57 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> 2014-09-11 23:50 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org

> <mailto:loj...@lojban.org>>:

>
> On 9/11/2014 2:16 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
>
> I don't know how many people already bought CLL
>
>
> Over 1000 but less than 1250. Probably at least that many
> downloaded/printed the online version(s), or read it online.
>

> For online readers the immediate solution should be to add "How to use
> xorlo" amendment as a separate super-short chapter to the book.
> There is a page "Errata" in the tiki. You may say that "How to use
> xorlo" is kind of an erratum (when viewed from today).
>
> I think it's no hard to implement.
> The two most important versions are:
> http://www.lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter1.html
> and
> http://lojban.github.io/cll/
>

> *Don't you think LLG should order to change them NOW?*

> This would at least stop xorlo schism for online learners who haven't
> bought a paperback edition.

I don't have a strong opinion. xorlo was adopted provisionally, and
therefore should be added to the baseline documentation, but Robin is
the one to decide how it is added. If the old stuff is invalidated, it
probably needs to be documented just what is invalid, which is why I
have long argued for a complete set of change pages.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

This page if freed from external links and mentions of "bear goo" and other not directly relevant concepts can be included as The First Amendment at least to online versions of CLL:

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/How+to+use+xorlo

[Dustin Lacewell]

"impose on the rest of us generally seems arbitrary"

Yes, because it is 'us' and then everyone else who you represent. Sure. Mmhmm.

"and in any case requires extra learning (and possibly unlearning, which is the real bugaboo)"

Which is the exact result that happens with changes borne through 'usage' as you say. But relearning or 'extra learning' is fine, as long as its not done by 'language tinkerers' which label you arbitrarily assign. Great. Makes perfect sense.

"We cannot prevent such dialectization, and I wouldn't want to try.  But we also shouldn't allow one particular group/dialect dictate changes to everyone else, especially since the rest of us didn't experience whatever motivated your change."

You're just arbitrarily deciding that changes borne from a single community simply shouldn't be considered regardless of the nature of the change. Yeah this is so completely agreeable. I mean especially since we're dictating these changes on everyone else and this thread didn't start with a public announcement of intention and an invitation for the entire community to remark and participate. But I guess we didn't need the voice of the entire community because we have you.

"The original intent was that after the baseline"

Yeah great. By reiterating unfulfilled 'intention's' we can just avoid the entire issue completely, right? I mean -you're- not going to make good on those intentions are you? I didn't think so. So has your involvement in the project been reduced to just gridlocking the project with this tactic? I mean, why am I asking. Look at the pudding. Its made of proof.

"Your usage.  Not that of others."

What others? Where is this mystical group of lojbanists that actually matter? Where are they either finishing your baseline, or prompting the community for progress like we are? They don't exist. You just keep referring to these mythical CLL holders as if owning a CLL somehow trumps other people in the community. I own a CLL. Who cares? It literally has nothing to do with what happens to the language after its release. As if, every non-fiction book I bought, I decided to lambast the related fields for progressing and outmoding my book. I could see you raising this point a year or few after the CLL was released but now this argument is insane.

"And I have to consider that any given change (as opposed to addition) potentially invalidates all the ever-growing corpus of text that is recorded before."

Usage exists to be eventually invalidated. Look at, gee, I don't know, the entire corpus of any language historically?

"That's nice. But your reality isn't everyone's."

You're responding to me describing our community. I wasn't extrapolating the work and daily utilization of lojban to any other community. I was describing our's. But this statement is just exemplary to expose just how disparaging you are to those you're not familiar with who's opinion's you disagree with. What is YOUR lojban reality Lojbab? Do you even have one? Is it more or less relevant to ours or literally any community using lojban today? But you can discount entire communities because you're the maladjusted leader. Get over yourself and stop acting like you have some relevancy that can dictate who's usage of Lojban is legitimate enough for the considerations of the usage to be useful in contemplating where the language goes.

"Just consider that someone who has been working on this project for 30-odd years just might know something that you haven't yet experienced.  You are the one who offends me (and more importantly the rest of the community), by saying that my/our experience isn't valid while yours is."

Your'e replying to me admonishing you for being so distastefully shrugging off our community. This isn't a response to some objective statement about the language or grammar or some view requiring expertise. So because you're our president and and have existing experience with the language means that you can arrogantly and pompously disregard any part of the community you'd like and diminish others to justify your own position? Wow, that's a great argument. Let me be diminished because you have a history. What was I thinking?

"And your argument isn't especially new."

What exactly is our 'argument'? That we've been using the language for a long time consistently, translating works and teaching new comers and we have some retrospective on how to improve things and make things slightly easier or more natural? What the hell are you talking about? My position is basically this from the beginning: 1) "Hey guys, we have a substantial backlog of observed experiments in the language and since no one is leading the language, we propose this system for reviewing and making public a process for incremental mutation to the reference. 2) "Holy shit lojbab is an arrogant disconnected prick."

I wonder which argument here isn't new.

"That's very nice.  But you still aren't the entirety of the language community, and you don't have the right to dictate to the rest of us (any more than I have the right to dictate to you)."

Again who does? Which part of the community has valid experience useful for contemplating and making considerations for what works and doesn't? Is it just you? Is it just your friends? Is there some other secret cove of language speakers that you can explicitly name that has this authority? Oh what about that non-sequitur about us 'dictating' changes to people? How about you not squlech an open movement to bring progress and activity back to the language where literally anyone can participate in those processes?

When the hell did we announce we were going to change the language without anyone else's considerations behind closed doors?

WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES THIS OBVIOUS NON-SEQUITUR?

"I have no idea how legitimate your concerns are"

Of course you don't! Because instead of responding to the original prompt to the community to move things into a new active process for review and integration you simply waved your hands about pointing to plans you made years ago but never finished but you're going to stand here today, not even speaking a dialect of Lojban a nintadni would understand making up crap about how we're trying to dictate to everyone what should be instead of trying to go out of our way to establish an open and permissive collaborative system for managing the language.

You're insane and you're wrong. You're hurting the language more than anyone. Thank GOD the CLL wont be invalidated though!

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[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-09-14 10:52 GMT+04:00 Dustin Lacewell <dlac...@gmail.com>:

"impose on the rest of us generally seems arbitrary"

Yes, because it is 'us' and then everyone else who you represent. Sure. Mmhmm.

"and in any case requires extra learning (and possibly unlearning, which is the real bugaboo)"

Which is the exact result that happens with changes borne through 'usage' as you say. But relearning or 'extra learning' is fine, as long as its not done by 'language tinkerers' which label you arbitrarily assign. Great. Makes perfect sense.

"We cannot prevent such dialectization, and I wouldn't want to try.  But we also shouldn't allow one particular group/dialect dictate changes to everyone else, especially since the rest of us didn't experience whatever motivated your change."

You're just arbitrarily deciding that changes borne from a single community simply shouldn't be considered regardless of the nature of the change. Yeah this is so completely agreeable. I mean especially since we're dictating these changes on everyone else and this thread didn't start with a public announcement of intention and an invitation for the entire community to remark and participate. But I guess we didn't need the voice of the entire community because we have you.

"The original intent was that after the baseline"

Yeah great. By reiterating unfulfilled 'intention's' we can just avoid the entire issue completely, right? I mean -you're- not going to make good on those intentions are you? I didn't think so. So has your involvement in the project been reduced to just gridlocking the project with this tactic? I mean, why am I asking. Look at the pudding. Its made of proof.

"Your usage.  Not that of others."

What others? Where is this mystical group of lojbanists that actually matter? Where are they either finishing your baseline, or prompting the community for progress like we are? They don't exist. You just keep referring to these mythical CLL holders as if owning a CLL somehow trumps other people in the community.

They are not mythical. I can't name them because it won't be polite to name them without their consent. However, you can see their online blogs, their tweets, their sentences in Tatoeba.

I own a CLL. Who cares?

They do.

[snip]

"That's nice. But your reality isn't everyone's."

You're responding to me describing our community. I wasn't extrapolating the work and daily utilization of lojban to any other community. I was describing our's. But this statement is just exemplary to expose just how disparaging you are to those you're not familiar with who's opinion's you disagree with. What is YOUR lojban reality Lojbab? Do you even have one? Is it more or less relevant to ours or literally any community using lojban today? But you can discount entire communities because you're the maladjusted leader. Get over yourself and stop acting like you have some relevancy that can dictate who's usage of Lojban is legitimate enough for the considerations of the usage to be useful in contemplating where the language goes.

zo'onai, I think you should stop insulting people. It's not the first time that you are diverting people from Lojban.

This happened before when you diverted at least two people from IRC chat and from Facebook.

Why should I continue advertising Lojban in social networks when other people divert people from it by just insulting them and telling them what they can do and what they cannot?

It's hard to attract people towards a delicate logical language, it's easy to just insult them with bad language.

You are not polite towards others and now including even LLG members.

Please, change your attitude.

[snip]

Again who does? Which part of the community has valid experience useful for contemplating and making considerations for what works and doesn't? Is it just you? Is it just your friends? Is there some other secret cove of language speakers that you can explicitly name that has this authority? Oh what about that non-sequitur about us 'dictating' changes to people? How about you not squlech an open movement to bring progress and activity back to the language where literally anyone can participate in those processes?

Such an "open movement" is a step to breaking even what is left of Lojban (it's not a secret that the intensity of community work has dropped since 2003 which was shown earlier by la mukti's historical studies).

You're insane and you're wrong.

.oi

[And Rosta]

On 14 Sep 2014 09:16, "Gleki Arxokuna" <gleki.is...@gmail.com> wrote:
> (it's not a secret that the intensity of community work has dropped since 2003 which was shown earlier by la mukti's historical studies).

What and where are these historical studies? Was 2003 the historical peak?

--And.

[Dustin Lacewell]

Gleki,

If all you have left is the tried and wearied approach of accusing others of destroying the langauge and driving out speakers then ... wait that's what essentially every argument you put forth is founded on. You can wave your hands and talk about some unnamed people I've 'driven out' at the same time I point to the speakers I've brought to the language.

"Please, change your attitude."

My attitude is a direct response to being diminished and dismissed. I'll change it when that changes.

--

[Dustin Lacewell]

"My attitude is a direct response to being diminished and dismissed. I'll change it when that changes."

I don't mean me, personally. I mean entire groups of people, dismissed out right, out of hand.