Revitalizing LLG: Suggestions for the 2014 annual meeting

[mukti]

At the 2013 annual meeting, lojbab called attention to a distance that has grown up between LLG as an organization and the lojban-using community. He noted, for example, that no new members have been added for several years. He asked members to consider, for discussion at the 2014 annual meeting, what steps might be taken to promote the future of the organization.

In the course of studying lojban and reading up on its history, I've come up with some ideas for rebuilding and reinforcing the bonds between LLG and the community it serves, thereby improving its prospects. There are a few broad themes:

1. Restoring transparency to LLG as a institution
2. Revising LLG's commitments to better correspond with its resources
3. Removing the obstacles to officially documenting lojban as it is used today

Before I present my proposals, I'd like to define the problems they are intended to address.

Members of LLG may not be aware of the extent to which the organization has become opaque, especially in recent years and especially to non-members.

Non-members haven't been advised of the dates of annual meetings since 2010. Since that time, the date of the annual meeting has only been announced on the members-only "llg-members" mailing list. (During this period, there was actually an announcement on the "lojban" list that the 2012 annual meeting would soon be announced. But the announcement of the meeting itself, appeared exclusively on "llg-members".)

The announcement of the annual meeting is traditionally accompanied by a call for new members. Since for the last few years that call has only been received by those already confirmed as members, and since the annual meeting is traditionally where new members are confirmed, the fact that there have been few recruits should not surprise.

Aside from being unannounced, the proceedings of recent meetings have been invisible outside of the membership. Prior to a few months ago, no summaries or minutes had been published since the 2009 meeting.

Sometime prior to 2010, a decision was taken to recognize the email list archives as satisfying the legal requirement for minutes. As a result, members could consult the archives for unsummarized meetings and reports which may not have been included in minutes. But at some point the archives were truncated such that they only go back to 2011. As a result, there is currently no accessible record for members or non-members of important proceedings such as the 2008 and 2010 annual meetings, and documents such as the first BPFK report, as provided to the 2003 annual meeting, have fallen into obscurity. 

According to the bylaws, the minutes of Board meetings are also are to be kept in "appropriate books". Minutes were published for Board meetings in 2001 and 2002 (first and second meeting), but for no other meetings. While a public record of proceedings may not be strictly required, I'd like to submit that the general membership as well as the lojban-using community at large has an interest in the proceedings of the Board, and that this interest is not well served by the lack of transparency.

As an example of how the lack of visibility of Board proceedings has affected activities outside of the Board, a 2003 rumor of pending Board intervention into the work of the BPFK brought the business of that committee to a standstill only months after the BPFK had been called to order. Some members of the committee were able to read the discussion on the "llg-board" mailing list, while others could not, and Board members refrained for several months from making a public statement of their objections and intentions.

Now I'd like to turn from discussing the records and communications of LLG, to a review of its official activities and productions.

Many of LLG's enduring accomplishments were achieved long before a policy defining "official projects" was adopted at the 2002 annual meeting. But the record of completed official projects since that time is short indeed. Of the forty-something projects officially adopted at the 2003 annual meeting, few are recognizable as either continuing efforts or as having reached some kind of conclusion. Only a fraction seem to have ever met their quarterly reporting requirements, and none appear to have issued any reports since 2006. It's not clear whether any new projects have been commissioned or decommissioned since that time.

There are success stories, particularly among software-related efforts. The "Lojban parser" project yielded camxes, which is now implemented in multiple programming languages. The "jbovlaste" project sealed the recognition of that institution. And the "lojban.org maintenance group" and "lojban wiki" projects continue to provide Internet hubs to the lojban-using community. Robin Lee Powell has been a central figure in each of these efforts.

Among non-software projects, xorxes' translation of "Alice in Wonderland" is a standout as an official project that hit its target.

But the decline of LLG's official productions owes less to the 2002 policy on projects than to a series of missteps which complicated the follow-up to LLG's most ambitious and successful project: The landmark publication of "The Complete Lojban Language" by John Cowan. The completion of the long-awaited reference grammar was accompanied by the declaration of the baseline, announced January 10, 1997, and headlined, "THE LOGLAN/LOJBAN LANGUAGE DESIGN is considered COMPLETE".

Unfortunately, this triumph was soon undone. The fine print made a subtle but enormously consequential distinction between the "design" of the language and what was called the "definition". The design was said to be complete, but without a "baseline description document" for the lexicon -- the gismu, cmavo and lujvo lists were disqualified as "preliminary forms" of the dictionary -- recognition of the baseline "language definition" was suspended for six months. At the 1997 annual meeting, the suspension was extended for an additional four months, "or a date deemed reasonable by the Board of Directors". No announcement was made following the October 31, 1997 deadline. If the Board took action at that time, it was not publicized.

In the years that followed, it proved difficult to define or describe a design which had been deemed complete despite the absence of a complete definition or description. The terms of the "design freeze", whereby the incompletely described design could not be amended, compounded this difficulty. Finding the community "unwilling or unable to work on completing the documentation of a baseline lexicon under freeze conditions", the Board drafted the "Official Baseline Statement" of 2002 and submitted it to the community for an up-or-down vote.

The 2002 "Baseline Statement", once approved, rolled back the 1997 declarations of the baseline and the completion of the language design. It formed the BPFK under Nick Nicholas, providing it with a limited mandate to complete the language design under strict conditions. 

It was projected that BPFK work would be completed by the time of annual meeting in 2003, at which point the resulting "final baseline" would be submitted to membership for ratification. The deadline was missed, and Nick soon resigned as chair in the midst of disagreements over the interpretation of the committee's order of business and the requirement for consensus-minus-one on all decisions. The Board appointed Robin Lee Powell as chair. 

Despite initial progress in 2003-2004, reports of the BPFK over the following years were consistently grim: "near total lack of activity" (2005), "currently stuck" (2006), "lack of progress" (2007), "[nothing] of significance to report" (2009), "chair … not receiving any help" (2012), "nothing to report" (2013).

By way of comparison, the annual meeting minutes for both 2000 and 2001 -- before the introduction of the "Baseline Statement" -- had posted a similar report: "Production of dictionary: not advanced". The policy changed, but the results remained constant.

In his seventh year as chair of BPFK, Robin wrote an essay, "Lojban: You're Doing It Wrong," (2010) in which he opined that the 2002 baseline policy had done "incalculable damage" to lojban. The constraints of scope and process placed upon the BPFK made it unlikely to ever finish the job it was commissioned to do. He proposed divesting LLG of its authority to define the language, and investing that authority wholly in BPFK. [ Note: The essay may not reflect Robin's current opinion, and the use I make of it in this message should not be understood to express his opinions, past or present. ]

The essay and its proposals were met with wide approval. Matt Arnold, who was serving at the time as president of LLG, wrote "I agree with your essay in its entirety." But Matt resigned in the midst of the debate that followed, and the proposals were never formalized or voted upon.

Ironically, and in the absence of public records of annual meetings after 2009, the impression of one of the proposals took root without the proposal itself ever receiving actionable consideration. It became widely rumored that LLG had no business regarding the language itself, and was concerned only with legal and financial bookkeeping, to the extent that numerous lojbanists were dissuaded from applying for membership.

Little has changed since the 2010 essay. One can read it as if it were written yesterday: Only the optimism seems anachronistic. Robin stopped short of formalizing his proposals. I'd like to ask if there are volunteers to pick up where he left off: To formally eliminate the obstacles that are holding back LLG from effectively executing on its mission to promote and preserve lojban. To amend or replace policies which have long failed to live up to expectations. To reconnect LLG with the vibrant community that continues to build around this extraordinary language, lojban, and to set the institution on a new trajectory: One that will take us together into the future.

To this end, I submit the following outline of proposals, in anticipation of bringing those that receive support to the actionable consideration of the annual meeting of the membership. I hope that those who object to these suggestions, as well as those who find them agreeable, will make their thoughts known.

Thanks for your attention,

Riley Martinez-Lynch
mi'e la mukti mu'o

Outline of Proposals

1. Return to the former practice of announcing the annual meeting in general interest forums, including the web site and the "lojban" and "lojban-announcement" mailing lists.
2. Open the "llg-members" archives to the public. If there is a need for confidential members-only communication, create a separate list for that rather than defaulting to that level of privacy.
3. If possible, restore the pre-2011 "llg-members" archive, which presumably includes important proceedings not recorded elsewhere such as the 2008 and 2010 annual meetings.
4. Consider also opening the "llg-board" archives. If that is not practical, adopt the practice of reporting minutes of Board proceedings to the general membership.
5. Reinforce the relationship of LLG to the lojban-using community by instituting an annual honor for lojbanic achievement. Nominees could be submitted by members and non-members in the weeks following the announcement of the annual meeting, and then voted upon by the membership at the annual meeting.
6. Either enforce the "official project" policy, amend it so that it better reflects the available resources of project leaders and the webmaster, or scrap it entirely. Revise the list of official projects such that LLG only makes commitments that it has the resources to honor.
7. Restore recognition to the 1997 baseline per the 1997 annual meeting, including the lexicon documents as of October 31, 1997. These documents, however imperfect, represent a palpable achievement that should be celebrated and built upon.
8. Acknowledge that the lojban community has superfluously observed the requirement for a five-year design freeze on the 1997 baseline. The CLL, and gismu, cmavo and rafsi lists have now served for nearly twenty years as the practical baseline of the language, whether or not they were administratively entitled to that designation.
9. Start a conversation about the baseline-and-freeze approach. To what extent has stability or the perception of stability of the baseline affected the popularity or learnability of lojban? Have the benefits of that approach outweighed the drawbacks? Is five years too long, or not long enough? Is an absolute freeze necessary, or might a less rigid approach work as well or better?
10. Empower the BPFK to manage its own business, including the election of committee members and officers, the order in which committee business is considered, and the manner in which it is considered. 
11. Either invest unqualified design authority in the BPFK, or delegate it in such a way that the BPFK can complete its work without undue interference: Upon receiving a report from the BPFK, LLG membership could vote on whether to accept its recommendations in whole or in part, or to refer them back to the committee with comments.

[v4hn]

coi la mukti

On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 03:07:27PM -0700, mukti wrote:
> [looong overview]
>
> Thanks for your attention,

Thank you a lot for this survey!
It's by far the most complete explanation of this mess I read so far.

> *Outline of Proposals*
>
> [...]

This sounds like an overdue overall administrative cleanup.
It would be great to see these proposals implemented!


mi'e la .van. mu'o

[Gleki Arxokuna]

IMO the main drawback is not any committees but the lack of CMS.

The tiki had a page "ongoing projects". However, it wasn't said how you contribute. There was no algorithm of how you can help with those projects.

1. I partially fixed this problem for gimste providing a gimste (in Google Spreadsheet) ready for translation into other languages.

This list has a clear instruction of what to do.

That's how we got Chinese gimste because one of our readers successfully used that list.

2. There is no platforum for translations to Lojban.

The corpus is not in an editable form.

Currently I'm trying to create a copy of the corpus in another wiki and collect all texts there. The wiki format will allow to edit texts and to monitor diffs.

3. Another succesfull project is Masato Hagiwara's camxes.js

That it was placed on github allowed us to start developing it further.

Github is another nice platform for completing projects.

4. Many people don't even know that they can add words to jbovlaste. Yes, it's not a joke. They don't know cuz nobody tells them! 

5. Few know about the IRC channel #lojban which is the main place of activity.

I'm trying to address issues 4 and 5 in another wiki.

The link to IRC chat is shown as the first link in the Facebook group now.

I understand that LLG policy can impede users' desire to contribute but since most of active Lojbanists are not members of LLG I don't understand how LLG policy can affect them.

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[Robert LeChevalier]

On 8/18/2014 7:00 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> IMO the main drawback is not any committees but the lack of CMS.

CMS ki'a?

> The tiki had a page "ongoing projects". However, it wasn't said how you
> contribute.

If you mean updating the status of said projects, by editing the page.
If you mean contributing to the project work, that is up to whoever is
responsible for the project. All that LLG does is provide recognition
to said projects.

>There was no algorithm of how you can help with those projects.

There isn't one. It is entirely up to whoever is organizing the project.

> 2. There is no platforum for translations to Lojban.

In general, if something isn't found on the lojban web pages, it is up
to the community to create it. If no one does so, it doesn't get done.
If a software tool is needed, you need to provide it or (if it already
exists) ask Robin if it can be made available.

> 3. Another succesfull project is Masato Hagiwara's camxes.js
>
> That it was placed on github allowed us to start developing it further.
> Github is another nice platform for completing projects.

And yet that bears the same problem you describe above. Many people
(including myself) have no idea what github is or how to use it or which
if any projects may be found on it.

> 4. Many people don't even know that they can add words to jbovlaste.
> Yes, it's not a joke. They don't know cuz nobody tells them!

I know they can be added, but I never learned how. But jbovlaste is the
first listed of official projects and the link takes you to a page that
identifies a "How you can help" which talks about adding words.

> 5. Few know about the IRC channel #lojban which is the main place of
> activity.

It's on the main menu shown on the Lojban home page. I don't know why
people don't know of it given that prominent location.

> I'm trying to address issues 4 and 5 in another wiki.

What good will that do. The information is there. The main problem is
that no one looks at it. Maybe they don't know how to find things, but
it seems that this call for a revision of the home page index.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-08-19 20:07 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org>:

On 8/18/2014 7:00 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

IMO the main drawback is not any committees but the lack of CMS.

CMS ki'a?

content management system. E.g. many people say that tiki isnt fine. So other solutions have to be considered

The tiki had a page "ongoing projects". However, it wasn't said how you
contribute.

If you mean updating the status of said projects, by editing the page. If you mean contributing to the project work, that is up to whoever is responsible for the project.  All that LLG does is provide recognition to said projects.

There was no algorithm of how you can help with those projects.

There isn't one.  It is entirely up to whoever is organizing the project.

2. There is no platforum for translations to Lojban.

In general, if something isn't found on the lojban web pages, it is up to the community to create it.  If no one does so, it doesn't get done.  If a software tool is needed, you need to provide it or (if it already exists) ask Robin if it can be made available.

As I said I know what tools are fine for me. So personally I have no problems with that.

 

3. Another succesfull project is Masato Hagiwara's camxes.js

That it was placed on github allowed us to start developing it further.
Github is another nice platform for completing projects.

And yet that bears the same problem you describe above.  Many people (including myself) have no idea what github is or how to use it or which if any projects may be found on it.

For IT-related projects it's fine. For those who are not programmers it has no value.

 

4. Many people don't even know that they can add words to jbovlaste.
Yes, it's not a joke. They don't know cuz nobody tells them!

I know they can be added, but I never learned how.  But jbovlaste is the first listed of official projects and the link takes you to a page that identifies a "How you can help" which talks about adding words.

Since people still have no idea it only means that this link is not enough. People appear to be dumber than previously thought. Always blame the teacher, not students.

 

5. Few know about the IRC channel #lojban which is the main place of
activity.

It's on the main menu shown on the Lojban home page.  I don't know why people don't know of it given that prominent location.

This question has been recently asked in the Facebook group.

I'm trying to address issues 4 and 5 in another wiki.

What good will that do.  The information is there.  The main problem is that no one looks at it.  Maybe they don't know how to find things, but it seems that this call for a revision of the home page index.

Another wiki is mw.lojban.org 

lojbab

In general I'm surprised that you replied to my post, not to the main post of this thread.

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 8/19/2014 12:15 PM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> content management system. E.g. many people say that tiki isnt fine. So
> other solutions have to be considered

I'll stay out of that issue, since I don't know the alternatives, nor
their pros and cons.

> 2. There is no platforum for translations to Lojban.
>
>
> In general, if something isn't found on the lojban web pages, it is
> up to the community to create it. If no one does so, it doesn't get
> done. If a software tool is needed, you need to provide it or (if
> it already exists) ask Robin if it can be made available.
>
>

> As I said I know what tools are fine for me. So personally I have no
> problems with that.

But apparently others need something more. So someone needs to create
more/better links and explanations. Robin doesn't have time, so it is
up to the rest of the community.

> 4. Many people don't even know that they can add words to jbovlaste.
> Yes, it's not a joke. They don't know cuz nobody tells them!
>
>
> I know they can be added, but I never learned how. But jbovlaste is
> the first listed of official projects and the link takes you to a
> page that identifies a "How you can help" which talks about adding
> words.
>
>

> Since people still have no idea it only means that this link is not
> enough. People appear to be dumber than previously thought. Always blame
> the teacher, not students.

There is no teacher. Only the user community

So someone needs to write a better explanation.

> 5. Few know about the IRC channel #lojban which is the main place of
> activity.
>
>
> It's on the main menu shown on the Lojban home page. I don't know
> why people don't know of it given that prominent location.
>
>

> This question has been recently asked in the Facebook group.

Then I would suggest that the Facebook group replicate all the links on
the home page menu.

> In general I'm surprised that you replied to my post, not to the main
> post of this thread.

I will be replying to it. Yours was easier to reply to quickly, and I
had (yet another) medical appointment before I could consider the other
post.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-08-19 21:24 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org>:

On 8/19/2014 12:15 PM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

content management system. E.g. many people say that tiki isnt fine. So
other solutions have to be considered

I'll stay out of that issue, since I don't know the alternatives, nor their pros and cons.

OK. What is the procedure of examining new alternatives by LLG?

What do I need to provide and to whom so that my project gets review?

Also note that e.g. my project (with the alternative wiki) can be improved based on feedback from the reviewers. So I wish they don't say "nay" immediately but instead say "these points need to be improved so that this project passes".

So what is the procedure?

        5. Few know about the IRC channel #lojban which is the main place of
        activity.


    It's on the main menu shown on the Lojban home page.  I don't know
    why people don't know of it given that prominent location.

This question has been recently asked in the Facebook group.

Then I would suggest that the Facebook group replicate all the links on the home page menu.

I just pinned two links there: to the IRC chat that allows entering without installing any software. The second link is to learning resources.

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 8/17/2014 6:07 PM, mukti wrote:
> In the course of studying lojban and reading up on its history, I've
> come up with some ideas for rebuilding and reinforcing the bonds between
> LLG and the community it serves, thereby improving its prospects. There
> are a few broad themes:
>

> 1. Restoring transparency to LLG as a institution
> 2. Revising LLG's commitments to better correspond with its resources
> 3. Removing the obstacles to officially documenting lojban as it is

> used today
>
> Before I present my proposals, I'd like to define the problems they are
> intended to address.
>
> Members of LLG may not be aware of the extent to which the organization
> has become opaque, especially in recent years and especially to non-members.

Actually, I think it is just as opaque to the members, because most of
them only think about organization matters when we have a meeting. We
used to have a much more active discussion when the meetings were held
live (or later when they were on IRC). But the time differential (and
travel costs) Have made those options difficult.

> Non-members haven't been advised of the dates of annual meetings since

> 2010 <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Archived+News#9AUGUST2010>. Since that

> time, the date of the annual meeting has only been announced on the
> members-only "llg-members" mailing list.

This has been the fault of the President (which right now is me so mea
culpa; I'll try to do better this year). The real problem has been that
we've repeatedly delayed the meetings to the point where I just need to
get them started, so we can get the mandatory elections out of the way,
and notifying people has gone by the wayside.

> The announcement of the annual meeting is traditionally accompanied by a
> call for new members. Since for the last few years that call has only
> been received by those already confirmed as members, and since the
> annual meeting is traditionally where new members are confirmed, the
> fact that there have been few recruits should not surprise.

We had expected that the existing membership would be aware of anyone
who wanted to join, but that apparently is not the case.

> Aside from being unannounced, the proceedings of recent meetings have
> been invisible outside of the membership. Prior to a few months ago, no
> summaries or minutes had been published since the 2009 meeting

> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2009+Annual+Meeting+Minutes>.

>
> Sometime prior to 2010, a decision was taken to recognize the email list

> archives <http://mail.lojban.org/mailman/private/llg-members/> as

> satisfying the legal requirement for minutes. As a result, members could
> consult the archives for unsummarized meetings and reports which may not
> have been included in minutes. But at some point the archives were
> truncated such that they only go back to 2011. As a result, there is
> currently no accessible record for members or non-members of important
> proceedings such as the 2008 and 2010 annual meetings, and documents
> such as the first BPFK report, as provided to the 2003 annual meeting,
> have fallen into obscurity.

I can't help with most of this. Robin has made the decision to use the
list as minutes because he doesn't have time to do more. If someone is
willing to prepare a summary, they are encouraged to do so. But I do
have said report in my personal archives and it is appended to this message

> According to the bylaws
> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Bylaws+of+The+Logical+Language+Group%2C+Inc.>,

> the minutes of Board meetings are also are to be kept in "appropriate
> books".

They are supposed to be, but that item of the bylaws has more or less
been superseded with online meetings by the non-publication of minutes.

Minutes were published for Board meetings in 2001

> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2001+Board+Meeting+Minutes> and 2002
> (first <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2002+Board+Meeting+Minutes> and
> second meeting
> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2002+Second+Board+Meeting+Minutes>), but

> for no other meetings. While a public record of proceedings may not be
> strictly required,

The "Board Meeting" per se is an ongoing thing that never ends. The
"minutes" as with the member's meeting consists of the mailing list
archive. Since the meeting never ends, there is no "set of minutes" for
the meeting that are approved and thus none to be published. We have
had to discuss issues that needed to be kept private, which is why the
list archive isn't open. I don't think that there is any easy way to
solve this, unless we get someone who wants to actually prepare minutes.
Robin again doesn't have time.

I'd like to submit that the general membership as
> well as the lojban-using community at large has an interest in the
> proceedings of the Board, and that this interest is not well served by
> the lack of transparency.

Probably you are correct. But the Board for the most part hasn't been
doing much that is worth reporting. I'll try to see if I can include
something in the President's report next annual meeting.

> As an example of how the lack of visibility of Board proceedings has
> affected activities outside of the Board, a 2003 rumor of pending Board
> intervention into the work of the BPFK

> <http://mw.lojban.org/index.php?title=BPFK:_Old_Meta-BPFK_Forum> brought

> the business of that committee to a standstill only months after the
> BPFK had been called to order. Some members of the committee were able
> to read the discussion on the "llg-board" mailing list, while others
> could not, and Board members refrained for several months from making a
> public statement of their objections and intentions.

Probably because they didn't have any. I just looked through all of the
2003 board messages and find nothing that fits this topic. Nick was
making all the decisions until at the end of the year he found he did
not have enough time to continue. Having discussed various issues with
Robin, he resigned in Robin's favor. The board accepted the resignation
and appointed Robin, but the substance of Nick and Robin's changes were
not discussed by the Board. At no time did the Board question the
authority of the byfy jatna to decide how to run things. I think most
such discussion occurred in the referenced meta forum.

> Now I'd like to turn from discussing the records and communications of
> LLG, to a review of its official activities and productions.
>
> Many of LLG's enduring accomplishments were achieved long before a
> policy defining "official projects" was adopted at the 2002 annual

> meeting <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2002+Annual+Meeting+Minutes>.

> But the record of completed official projects since that time is short
> indeed. Of the forty-something projects officially adopted at the 2003
> annual meeting

> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2003+Annual+Meeting+Minutes>, few are

> recognizable as either continuing efforts or as having reached some kind
> of conclusion.

The bottom line problem is that very few people stick with a project
until it is completed, and few projects ever get more than 1-2 people
working on them. When I was actively working, I got things done myself,
and John Cowan also got a lot done, but if we weren't working on it, it
usually remained incomplete (Nick also completed things in the years
when he was active.)

We now have many more activities going on, but if they are ever
completed, no one tells me, and no one edits the project page to report
changes in status, and no one asks to be recognized as an official
project. LLG has become a much more decentralized organization. The
board decides very little, and the members' meetings not much more.

> Only a fraction seem to have ever met their quarterly
> reporting requirements, and none appear to have issued any reports since
> 2006. It's not clear whether any new projects have been commissioned or
> decommissioned since that time.

If not listed, they haven't been. The bottom line is that the community
hasn't taken on the responsibility, and nothing will be reported unless
they do.

> There are success stories, particularly among software-related efforts.
> The "Lojban parser" project yielded camxes

> <http://users.digitalkingdom.org/%7Erlpowell/hobbies/lojban/grammar/>,

> which is now implemented in multiple programming languages. The

> "jbovlaste <http://jbovlaste.lojban.org/>" project sealed the

> recognition of that institution. And the "lojban.org maintenance group"
> and "lojban wiki" projects continue to provide Internet hubs to the
> lojban-using community. Robin Lee Powell has been a central figure in
> each of these efforts.

Since he is the Secretary, as well as the web site manager, he
necessarily has to be. But you-all who participate in those efforts
know more of what he does in those arenas than the Board does.

> Among non-software projects, xorxes' translation of "Alice in

> Wonderland" <http://alis.lojban.org/> is a standout as an official

> project that hit its target.

The original project was a group effort, but xorxes did most of it, and
I think afterwards went over the whole to ensure consistency.

> But the decline of LLG's official productions owes less to the 2002
> policy on projects than to a series of missteps which complicated the
> follow-up to LLG's most ambitious and successful project: The landmark
> publication of "The Complete Lojban Language" by John Cowan. The
> completion of the long-awaited reference grammar was accompanied by the
> declaration of the baseline

> <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/lojban/vMQ-GQsAJEA/Lbxj4agFykcJ>,

> announced January 10, 1997, and headlined, "THE LOGLAN/LOJBAN LANGUAGE
> DESIGN is considered COMPLETE".
>
> Unfortunately, this triumph was soon undone.

Not really. I think that statement is still official policy.

The fine print made a
> subtle but enormously consequential distinction between the "design" of
> the language and what was called the "definition". The design was said
> to be complete, but without a "baseline description document" for the
> lexicon -- the gismu, cmavo and lujvo lists were disqualified as
> "preliminary forms" of the dictionary -- recognition of the baseline
> "language definition" was suspended for six months. At the 1997 annual

> meeting <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+1997+Annual+Meeting+Minutes>,

> the suspension was extended for an additional four months, "or a date
> deemed reasonable by the Board of Directors". No announcement was made
> following the October 31, 1997 deadline. If the Board took action at
> that time, it was not publicized.

There was in fact no action. Both Cowan and I were "burnt out" by the
effort to publish CLL, and lost our productivity in technical matters.
I got bogged down in order fulfillment, complicated by the discovery
that some 20% of the printed books were defective. Nora and I and a
couple others spent many days (weeks?) paging through many of the 1500
copies looking for further defects, until finally we got the printer to
take responsibility. Nick was inactive at that point, so basically
nothing technical got done for many months. (Cowan and I worked on an
automated method to generate a dictionary file, and eventually I
published the result. But that was still a couple steps short of being
a printed dictionary, because we had no good idea how to handle the cmavo.

> In the years that followed, it proved difficult to define or describe a
> design which had been deemed complete despite the absence of a complete
> definition or description. The terms of the "design freeze", whereby the
> incompletely described design could not be amended, compounded this
> difficulty. Finding the community "unwilling or unable to work on
> completing the documentation of a baseline lexicon under freeze
> conditions", the Board drafted the "Official Baseline Statement" of 2002

> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement> and submitted

> it to the community for an up-or-down vote.

More or less accurate.

> The 2002 "Baseline Statement", once approved, rolled back the 1997
> declarations of the baseline and the completion of the language design.

No, it did not.

> It formed the BPFK under Nick Nicholas, providing it with a limited
> mandate to complete the language design under strict conditions.

The byfy was supposed to complete the language definition; the design
baseline still held. It was recognized that there were some errors in
CLL, and some questions unanswered. The byfy was empowered to answer
them. Following completions of the baseline definition (documenting the
existing baseline), the byfy would be empowered to consider some
changes. Eventually, after xorlo was documented and used by a subset of
the community, the membership voted to accept xorlo as documented as a
provisional change to the 1997 baseline. No other changes to the
baseline have yet been considered, much less approved, by the byfy or
the membership. (to the extent that the byfy documents include changes
to what is stated in CLL they may merely be proposals at this point).

> It was projected that BPFK work would be completed by the time of annual
> meeting in 2003,

We were eternally optimistic.

at which point the resulting "final baseline" would be
> submitted to membership for ratification. The deadline was missed, and
> Nick soon resigned as chair in the midst of disagreements over the
> interpretation of the committee's order of business and the requirement
> for consensus-minus-one on all decisions.

Actually he officially resigned from lack of time because of his
academic commitments. But he was indeed frustrated because I and some
others refused to commit to consensus on things that were "changes"
until the whole was done. Still, he and Robin seemed pretty much in
agreement with what needed to be done. The problem was that few people
actually worked on getting the remaining sections done.

The Board appointed Robin Lee
> Powell as chair

> <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/lojban/KG-NXZbgmas/HjaYJ5njs58J>.

>
> Despite initial progress in 2003-2004, reports of the BPFK over the
> following years were consistently grim: "near total lack of activity

> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2005+Annual+Meeting+Minutes>" (2005),
> "currently stuck
> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2006+Annual+Meeting+Minutes>" (2006),
> "lack of progress
> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2007+Annual+Meeting+Minutes>" (2007),

> "[nothing] of significance to report

> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2009+Annual+Meeting+Minutes>" (2009),

> "chair … not receiving any help

> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+Meeting+Summary+2012>" (2012), "nothing
> to report <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+Meeting+Summary+2013>" (2013).

>
> By way of comparison, the annual meeting minutes for both 2000

> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2000+Annual+Meeting+Minutes> and 2001
> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2001+Annual+Meeting+Minutes> -- before

> the introduction of the "Baseline Statement" -- had posted a similar
> report: "Production of dictionary: not advanced". The policy changed,
> but the results remained constant.

No workers ==> no work done

> In his seventh year as chair of BPFK, Robin wrote an essay, "Lojban:
> You're Doing It Wrong

> <http://teddyb.org/robin/tiki-index.php?page=Lojban%3A+You%27re+Doing+It+Wrong>,"

> (2010) in which he opined that the 2002 baseline policy had done
> "incalculable damage" to lojban. The constraints of scope and process
> placed upon the BPFK made it unlikely to ever finish the job it was
> commissioned to do. He proposed divesting LLG of its authority to define

> the language, and investing that authority wholly in BPFK. /[ Note: The

> essay may not reflect Robin's current opinion, and the use I make of it
> in this message should not be understood to express his opinions, past

> or present. ]/

I'm not sure if that is correct, but it has been de facto reality all
along. LLG has the official authority to approve what BPFK comes up
with, (as well as the power to replace Robin), but there is zero
likelihood that the membership will reject what Robin comes up with. To
what extent BPFK will consider the consensus minus 1 standard to be
relevant is up to Robin.

It is possible that we will end up considering the CLL version 1.1 (with
corrections) and some set of words embedded in jbovlaste to be the
fulfillment of the 1997 baseline documentation, and then certain changes
will be accepted as baseline modifications in short order and a CLL 2.0
will be produced.

> and the proposals were never formalized or voted upon.

I think that is correct, but it still amounts to Robin doing what he
decides, and the organization going along.

> Ironically, and in the absence of public records of annual meetings
> after 2009, the impression of one of the proposals took root without the
> proposal itself ever receiving actionable consideration. It became
> widely rumored that LLG had no business regarding the language itself,
> and was concerned only with legal and financial bookkeeping, to the
> extent that numerous lojbanists were dissuaded from applying for membership.

Almost correct. LLG has assigned all business regarding the language
documentation to the byfy, and it is expected that the rump byfy will
retain that authority once the documentation is done, regarding any
future change proposals.

> I'd like to ask if there are
> volunteers to pick up where he left off: To formally eliminate the
> obstacles that are holding back LLG from effectively executing on its
> mission to promote and preserve lojban.

A few people have actually been working on byfy sections in the last
couple of months, especially Ilmen and selpa'i. I don't know how much
remains to be done.

There is a time limit priority to finish some sort of update to CLL,
because we will likely run out of copies within the next year or so.

> *Outline of Proposals*
>
> 1. Return to the former practice of announcing the annual meeting in

> general interest forums, including the web site and the "lojban" and
> "lojban-announcement" mailing lists.

This I intend to do, though I'm not sure who has authority to use the
announcement list.

> 2. Open the "llg-members" archives to the public.

That is up to Robin.

> 3. If possible, restore the pre-2011 "llg-members" archive, which

> presumably includes important proceedings not recorded elsewhere
> such as the 2008 and 2010 annual meetings.

Again, up to Robin.

> 4. Consider also opening the "llg-board" archives. If that is not

> practical, adopt the practice of reporting minutes of Board
> proceedings to the general membership.

There are no minutes. I will see if I can include some of this in my
President's report.

> 5. Reinforce the relationship of LLG to the lojban-using community by

> instituting an annual honor for lojbanic achievement. Nominees could
> be submitted by members and non-members in the weeks following the
> announcement of the annual meeting, and then voted upon by the
> membership at the annual meeting.

Sounds reasonable.

> 6. Either enforce the "official project" policy, amend it so that it

> better reflects the available resources of project leaders and the
> webmaster, or scrap it entirely. Revise the list of official
> projects such that LLG only makes commitments that it has the
> resources to honor.

LLG has no resources (other than a few thousand dollars in proceeds from
book sales that will likely go to publishing the next iteration). The
community has to decide which projects it wants to support, and then do
them.

> 7. Restore recognition to the 1997 baseline per the 1997 annual

> meeting, including the lexicon documents as of October 31, 1997.

I think that recognition is the status quo. But the lexicon documents
are not considered sufficient.

> 8. Acknowledge that the lojban community has superfluously observed the

> requirement for a five-year design freeze on the 1997 baseline. The
> CLL, and gismu, cmavo and rafsi lists have now served for nearly
> twenty years as the practical baseline of the language, whether or
> not they were administratively entitled to that designation.

> 9. Start a conversation about the baseline-and-freeze approach. To what

> extent has stability or the perception of stability of the baseline
> affected the popularity or learnability of lojban? Have the benefits
> of that approach outweighed the drawbacks? Is five years too long,
> or not long enough? Is an absolute freeze necessary, or might a less
> rigid approach work as well or better?

Once a new CLL version is done reflecting 1997 plus xorlo, BPFK will
decide on the changes to be incorporated into CLL 2.0 as well as what
will be a sufficient documentation of the lexicon.

> 10. Empower the BPFK to manage its own business, including the election

> of committee members and officers, the order in which committee
> business is considered, and the manner in which it is considered.

BPFK has this already, but with dictatorial power on such matters
vesting in the jatna. The Board/members have the power to replace the
jatna, (and possibly to modify what BPFK is intended to accomplish), but
realistically can only take what Robin passes to us, lacking anyone else
willing to undertake the commitment

> 11. Either invest unqualified design authority in the BPFK, or delegate

> it in such a way that the BPFK can complete its work without undue
> interference: Upon receiving a report from the BPFK, LLG membership
> could vote on whether to accept its recommendations in whole or in
> part, or to refer them back to the committee with comments.

That is how as I understand things are now, with the provision that some
sort of document of the status quo language will be approved before new
proposals will be considered.

If that is not what Robin intends, I'll probably be unhappy, but doubt
that my arguments will result in any official objection to his policies.

-------------

Here is Nick's 2003 report


> Well. What to say about the BPFK.
>
> The proposal for a baupla fuzykamni, a body to bring to completion the Lojban prescription and to fill in such gaps of definition of the language as are necessary for a dictionary to be written, arose out of discussions on the LLG board on how best to author such a dictionary, and on how to deal with ongoing disputes and uncertainties as to the language definition. The official announcement bringing it into being was November: http://www.lojban.org/llg/baseline.html .
>
> I started work on the BPFK in February (after being distracted between November and January by a major discussion on jboske about Lojban gadri, which highlighted what the participants at least now believe to be a major weakness in the language.) In February, while I was in the States, I finalised with Robin Powell arrangements for the infrastructure of the BPFK, namely the Twiki (http://www.lojban.org/twiki/bin/view/BPFK/WebHome) and the phpbb discussion board (http://www.lojban.org/phpbb). I envisioned the phpbb as being the repository of formal discussion, and the Twiki as being the repository of record, and the venue for votes, with more openended discussion being diverted to jboske or the main wiki.
>
> The other task that took me a while to complete (March) was a formal statement of guidelines as to how the BPFK should operate: http://www.lojban.org/twiki/bin/view/BPFK/GuidelinesForUsing . My concern throughout has been to place institutional safeguards in place to ensure the success of the BPFK mission as I see it: to allow efficient yet comprehensive review of existing identified problems in Lojban, with fair representation of all views, no compulsion of inordinate attention on the part of commissioners (a frequent problem with freer discussion, as amply demonstrated on jboske), and respect for the proclaimed backwards-compatibility and fulfilment of design criteria the BPFK has undertaken.
>
> The BPFK started working through phpbb mid-April. As part of the division of labour, I have divided Lojban cmavo up into around 70 paradigms. Six paradigms have had commissioners volunteer as shepherds --- people who will coordinate discussion, keep records of findings, undertake authoring the summary of existing views and prescription, and make new proposals they see fit. In my opinion substantive matters for consideration have been raised for all six paradigms; two have essentially already seen descriptive records (including of past prescription and the status quo of usage). No formal votes have been posted on the twiki yet; see LeChevalier criticism below.
>
> It was decided by the board that an ancillary to the BPFK, the vlatapla fuzykamni (VTPFK) be convened to resolve issues of Lojban morphology; this step was taken because morphology was not explicitly mentioned in the board statement. Nora Tansky LeChevalier is to chair the commission once she is released from her administrative duties. Pierre Abbat and Lionel Vidal have been continuing research into morphological issues.
>
> There have been a number of criticisms of the setup and the functioning of the BPFK; some I accept, some I don't, though this is not the venue for me to make detailed comment on them. The issues worth bringing to the membership's attention are:
>
> 1. The guidelines are needlessly complex, and the split between twiki and phpbb is unnecessary but for the technical requirements of voting. (Powell). There are some grounds to this, and the role of the twiki seems to be limited to the (future) formal votes. Commissioners have appealed to the guidelines to police discussion; since the guidelines were intended to steer the BPFK in a specific direction following the board's statement, I regard that as positive.
>
> 2. Polls of a reformist bent on phpbb, even if of an informal nature, are counterproductive (Kominek vs. Rosta). My ruling (for now, anyway) is that polls on phpbb, being informal and with no binding consequence, are harmless. My big picture view, which may well be at variance from others and need to be curbed, is that my conservatism has nothing to fear from a vote, particularly given the current strenuous requirement of consensus-1.
>
> That said, consensus-1 is a lot easier said than done:
>
> 3. The consensus-1 requirement makes it impossible for any change to happen, of whatever nature, and does not only exclude frivolous change (Daniel).
>
> Conversely,
>
> 4. The BPFK has no business discussing any change until it first completes the task of documenting the entirety of the language; indeed, change as opposed to interpretation of the baseline is not the BPFK's task. Time must be spent to allow consensus to develop and trust to be established. As a result, votes should not be administered by shepherds, but only by the BPFKJ (baupla fuzykamni jatna -- me), and a time of my choosing --- much later than now. The shepherds should be preparing full diffs to CLL and other baseline documents, and a fully explicit formal proposal. Until the BPFK shows it does real work, it is becoming unproductive, and biassed towards railroading through changes. The current BPFK does not show indications that it is willing to reach consensus, and the BPFK needs to be more proactive in this regard. (R. LeChevalier).
>
> These objections have arisen in the past week, and LeChevalier has not yet presented his criticisms on a public forum (although there was a sneak preview on jboske); they may significantly affect how the BPFK runs. (Then again, they may not.) So I'm afraid this report comes too early for a resolution to be reported.
>
> The arguments between reformists and conservatives, both on and off the BPFK forum, have at times been as acrimonious as one would expect, and it is clear to me that much of my time will be spent, so to speak, channelling commissioners' energies into more productive outlets; I've been doing so already. I believe that I still have the confidence of commissioners that I will run the BPFK fairly and in the best interests of Lojban, as understood by the current disposition (see guidelines, board statement, etc.; best summarised, probably, as conservative formalist).
>
> And I wish to emphasise that, although this disposition is biassed against reformists, the shepherds I think it is fair to characterise as reformist (Llambias and Daniel) have done a commendable job of documenting existing usage and highlighting issues for consideration in their paradigms. The shepherds have scrupulously been playing by the rules, and they have my full confidence; so does the composition of the commission and the guidelines, which I believe adequate to the task of keeping the BPFK on the track the board and membership have set for it.
>
> Yes I'm being stuffy and high-falutin'. That's a reaction to the difficulties of the position. This is a hard job to carry through, and my metaphor of herding cats was not spoken idly. The next couple of weeks in particular will be rough, because I will be asking commissioners to consider whether the BPFK is going the right way, and how its operation might need to change.
>
> .i ku'i le gugdrpolska punaijecanai ca'o te jinga
>
> -------------------- =================================----------------------
> Dr Nick Nicholas. Unimelb, Aus. ni...@unimelb.edu.au; www.opoudjis.net
> "Electronic editors have to live in hope: hope that the long-awaited
> standards for encoding texts for the computer will arrive; hope that they
> will be workable; hope that software will appear to handle these texts;
> hope that all the scholars of the world will have computers which can
> drive the software (which does not yet exist) to handle the texts (which
> have not yet been made) encoded in standard computer markup (which has not
> yet been devised). To hope for all this requires a considerable belief in
> the inevitability of progress and in the essential goodness of mankind."
> (Peter M.W. Robinson)
>

And here is Nick's resignation, as submitted to the Board on 20 Oct
2003. It was officially accepted on the 27th, with Robin appointed to
replace him.
> Dear Board,
>
> as you'll have noticed, my Lojban time has been squeezed out in recent months, which means I am not currently able to perform my duties as BPFK chair. Compounded with this is of course the persistent sense of BPFK rudderlessness, that the duties expected of shepherds are too onerous, and that there is no clear sense of incremental direction for what the BPFK does. I have conferred with Robin on this, and we are in agreement that I should step down and Robin take over in the role of BPFK chair, which is to be regarded primarily as an administrative/gettings-things-done -- something Robin has demonstrably excelled at --- rather than linguistic/decision-making role.
>
> I have discussed with Robin his ideas for getting the BPFK moving, including a notion of checkpoints, so that people can sense that concrete deliverables are emerging, and of a tiki-based, more flexible and open voting scheme, which allows votes to be revisited and not to be regarded as finally binding without general consent --- but binding enough that something is seen to be done. These have my approval, and are in the spirit of what I either wrote or should have written.
>
> So. Discussion.
>
> [ Nick Nicholas. French & Italian, Rm 637 Arts Centre, Univ. of Melbourne ]
> [ ni...@unimelb.edu.au x44917 http://www.opoudjis.net ]
> [ "There is no theory of language structure so ill-founded that it cannot ]
> [ be the basis for some successful Machine Translation." --- Yorick Wilks ]

Neither the Board nor the membership, so far as I know, have questioned
any of Robin's positions as jatna.

I've argued with him at times on Lojban List, mostly because I didn't
understand his position clearly. But he has always satisfied me,
sufficiently that neither I nor others has felt the need to have the
membership or the Board amend any policy/.

lojbab

[TR NS]

What is BPFK?

All this is a little hard to understand as someone new to the community. Also, seems like you guys have things ahh... well made things a little bit complicated ?

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

It is an acronym for the lojban phrase for
language-plan-responsible-committee. The chairman has the title "jatna"
meaning "captain, leader, chief".

Things aren't that complicated, but are to some extent constrained by
history, and an extensive knowledge of what hasn't worked so far
(remembering that Loglan originally started almost 60 years ago, and its
redesign Lojban almost 30 years ago).

Originally, I, as Founder of the project, pretty much made all decisions
about the language design, advised by others who were participating at
the moment. By 1994, it had been clearly demonstrated that I no longer
could aspire to do everything - I had too much on my plate as well as a
couple of kids newly adopted from Russia. Others informally took up
various tasks, with John Cowan taking over as "chief grammarian" among
other things. He wrote a bunch of essays on language design and revised
some that I had written (as well as one from Nick Nicolas and one from
my wife Nora), and by 1997 assembled them into what is now the Lojban
reference grammar _The Complete Lojban Language_ (CLL).

One of my remaining projects was to produce a Lojban dictionary based on
the gismu, cmavo, and rafsi lists along with some number of well-defined
lujvo. I started to do so, but became severely hung up on how to
produce dictionary quality definitions of the cmavo. Partly this
depended on the essays that Cowan was writing (a project that was
originally called "the selma'o catalog").

The bottom line is that CLL got done, and we still had no dictionary.
The members were tried of waiting for me, and the result was that we
declared a baseline (stating that the language development was DONE and
not going to change). This was vital to many people because
historically many had held back from learning Loglan/Lojban because it
was perpetually changing - not naturally, but by decree.

So I agreed that I/we would no longer change anything in the language,
and that we would finish the dictionary, which with CLL and the parser
would constitute a formal set of documentation for the language. The
design was to freeze for a minimum of 5 years (hopefully longer).

But by 2002, after 5 years from the original baseline, we still had no
dictionary definitions for the cmavo, and hence no complete
documentation. John Cowan and I were unable to keep up the time and
energy needed to do it ourselves, so LLG as an organization delegated
the job to the BPFK, with Nick Nicolas as jatna.

As the discussion of this thread has described, it is now 12 years later
and we still have no cmavo dictionary. One significant change from CLL
(called "xorlo") has been widely accepted by language users, and other
usages are deviating somewhat from the CLL description. So there is
much pressure to finally get something done, especially since we are
about a year away from selling out of the original edition of CLL.

Meanwhile, the Internet has completely changed the way most people do
this sort of activity, and the organization hasn't really kept up with
the times (and I more than most, since I don't even use a cell phone,
and only minimally use FB and no other social networking.)

The issue came up at least in part because I've had a series of serious
health problems over the last year, and I have to consider the future of
the organization when I no longer am able to participate even to the
minimal extent that I have. That affects primarily the organizational
aspect of the Logical Language Group more than the language itself,
though finally completing my promises of a couple decades ago is rather
important to me.

[mat...@igregoire.com]

I'm fairly new to the Lojban community, and one of the main things I struggle with is how complicated and diasporic the community is. The LLG and BPFK and what each does is confusing enough, let alone digging up a list of all the updates to Lojban since the CLL. It seems as if nothing is unified, and to truly understand Lojban I would have to read through decades of mailing list archives. I think this is definitely something worth solving, and a new CLL and full dictionary would be immensely helpful.

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 8/19/2014 5:42 PM, mat...@igregoire.com wrote:
> I'm fairly new to the Lojban community, and one of the main things I
> struggle with is how complicated and diasporic the community is. The LLG
> and BPFK and what each does is confusing enough, let alone digging up a
> list of all the updates to Lojban since the CLL.

The ONLY change that is officially approved since CLL is "xorlo", but
"xorlo" is more or less optional from the standpoint of a learner, since
it reportedly doesn't invalidate any CLL usage. (But many learners
apparently find it easier to understand than the CLL version of the same
words).

It seems as if nothing
> is unified, and to truly understand Lojban I would have to read through
> decades of mailing list archives.

Nobody else has, so you don't need to. Use what you do understand and
try things you think you might understand, learning from any errors that
are pointed out to you.

I think this is definitely something
> worth solving, and a new CLL and full dictionary would be immensely helpful.

We'd all love for those to exist, but it takes time to write and edit
and proofread and index, etc, when everyone is a volunteer and the most
knowledgeable seem to be most short of time.

lojbab

[Spacenut]

The ONLY change that is officially approved since CLL is "xorlo", but
"xorlo" is more or less optional from the standpoint of a learner, since
it reportedly doesn't invalidate any CLL usage.  (But many learners
apparently find it easier to understand than the CLL version of the same
words).

I guess that would be the only official change, but I think the way people use certain things has changed slightly. For instance, in lo mi jufra, when "lo me lo drata ku moi" was used, I looked up "moi" in the CLL. My understanding is that it can now attach to any sumti, meaning "something of a set related to <sumti>. Just little stuff like that.

  It seems as if nothing
> is unified, and to truly understand Lojban I would have to read through
> decades of mailing list archives.

Nobody else has, so you don't need to.  Use what you do understand and
try things you think you might understand, learning from any errors that
are pointed out to you.

Phew, that's a relief. :) And the tiki feels like a maze to me, which I guess is part of the seemingly overwhelming amount of community content out there.

We'd all love for those to exist, but it takes time to write and edit
and proofread and index, etc, when everyone is a volunteer and the most
knowledgeable seem to be most short of time.

 Of course. I'll be patient, and I wish you the best of luck in it.

[Jacob Errington]

On 19 August 2014 21:50, Spacenut <mat...@igregoire.com> wrote:

I  think the way people use certain things has changed slightly. For instance, in lo mi jufra, when "lo me lo drata ku moi" was used, I looked up "moi" in the CLL. My understanding is that it can now attach to any sumti, meaning "something of a set related to <sumti>. Just little stuff like that.

It's not that {moi} attaches to sumti; {moi} can attach to a preceding {me}-clause.
The CLL *does* discuss this in the chapter on mekso, as a way to allow mekso before a MOI, which is otherwise not possible: https://lojban.github.io/cll/18/11/
This has since been generalized, at least in the case of {moi}, to allow for arbitrary sumti in the preceing {me}-clause.
That generalization is documented in a BPFK section: http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Numeric+selbri

You're right that the way people use things has changed though. Just look at how we use {ka}-abstractions in IRC some day.

It's because of this divergeance between the CLL and usage that we need some way to update the CLL, which is not possible until the publication of CLL1.1.

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

[Pierre Abbat]

On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 18:50:33 Spacenut wrote:
> I guess that would be the only official change, but I think the way people
> use certain things has changed slightly. For instance, in lo mi jufra, when
> "lo me lo drata ku moi" was used, I looked up "moi" in the CLL. My
> understanding is that it can now attach to any sumti, meaning "something of
> a set related to <sumti>. Just little stuff like that.

Syntactically, the consruct is "me <sumti> MOI" and appears in the CLL with an
example of a snowball's chance. Someone noticed that "memimoi medomoi li'o" is
grammatical and thought it's a good way to make a predicate possessive.

Pierre
--
La sal en el mar es más que en la sangre.
Le sel dans la mer est plus que dans le sang.

[TR NS]

Very helpful. Thanks lojbab.

[mukti]

Thank you, lojbab, for your informative response, and for excavating the 2003 BPFK report. I'm encouraged to learn that the archives are intact. (And I'm still hoping to hear back from you about the original gismu evaluation source code!)

I got the impression reading lojbab's responses to the outline of proposals, that the documentation of LLG, as implemented in publications such as the 2002 baseline statement, has fallen behind the policies that are actually in practice. This comes up, for example, in his description of the expanded de facto authority of BPFK and the "dictatorial" powers of the BPFK jatna, and in the notion that the 1997 declaration of the completeness of lojban's design might still be officially valid.

Each of these policies seems to diverge from what was described in the 2002 baseline statement. Minutes of subsequent proceedings offer little in the way of explanation -- although, to be thorough, there is no record of the 2008 or 2010 annual meetings of the membership, nor any regular public record of Board decisions since 2002.

At the 2013 meeting, lojbab asked for members to consider the future of LLG at a time when he is not able to play as active a role as he does today. Here's a concrete example of something that should be done: Policies of record that depart from either practice or intention should be brought up to date so that the organization is less dependent on his particular knowledge of institutional history and on his powers of interpretation.

In my last message, I proposed measures for increasing transparency of LLG, clarifying its commitments, and removing the obstacles to officially documenting contemporary lojban. I'd like to add another goal: Bringing official policy up to date with practice and the intentions of the community.

To these ends, I'd like to work with others, particularly LLG members or prospective members, on continuing the development of actionable proposals to be presented for consideration at the 2014 annual meeting.

.i mi ckire do lo nu jundi .i .a'o ma'a ca'o casnu

[selpa'i]

In the 2003 annual meeting there was a movement to make Lojban the
language used during LLG meetings. It failed, but maybe something
similar could be considered again. Perhaps a certain percentage of the
discussions should be in Lojban, if 100% is not feasible yet. A "Lojban
Quota" so to speak. Opinions?

mi'e la selpa'i mu'o

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 8/19/2014 9:50 PM, Spacenut wrote:
> The ONLY change that is officially approved since CLL is "xorlo", but
> "xorlo" is more or less optional from the standpoint of a learner,
> since
> it reportedly doesn't invalidate any CLL usage. (But many learners
> apparently find it easier to understand than the CLL version of the
> same
> words).
>

> I guess that would be the only official change, but I think the way
> people use certain things has changed slightly. For instance, in lo mi
> jufra, when "lo me lo drata ku moi" was used, I looked up "moi" in the
> CLL. My understanding is that it can now attach to any sumti, meaning
> "something of a set related to <sumti>. Just little stuff like that.

I've never seen this before. If someone uses that with me, I simply
won't be able to parse it (and then the question becomes whether I will
care enough to ask further).

> Phew, that's a relief. :) And the tiki feels like a maze to me,

It has for me too, and has ever since it was created. I've never been
especially good at crawling a wiki, and I almost never write something
using any kind of web-editor.

> Of course. I'll be patient, and I wish you the best of luck in it.

In my case it will need better health and twice as much time as I seem
to have %^)

lojbab

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 8/19/2014 10:45 PM, Jacob Errington wrote:
> On 19 August 2014 21:50, Spacenut <mat...@igregoire.com

> <mailto:mat...@igregoire.com>> wrote:
>
> I think the way people use certain things has changed slightly. For
> instance, in lo mi jufra, when "lo me lo drata ku moi" was used, I
> looked up "moi" in the CLL. My understanding is that it can now
> attach to any sumti, meaning "something of a set related to <sumti>.
> Just little stuff like that.
>
>

> It's not that {moi} attaches to sumti; {moi} can attach to a preceding
> {me}-clause.
> The CLL *does* discuss this in the chapter on mekso, as a way to allow
> mekso before a MOI, which is otherwise not possible:
> https://lojban.github.io/cll/18/11/
> This has since been generalized, at least in the case of {moi}, to allow
> for arbitrary sumti in the preceing {me}-clause.
> That generalization is documented in a BPFK section:
> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Numeric+selbri

Ah... And that was exactly what we had in mind for much of the mekso
design that doesn't make sense - enabling conversions that otherwise
cannot be expressed. (Someone said that mekso wasn't well thought out.
I think it was very well thought out (maybe too well though out) but
far too poorly documented and explained. Cowan tried in CLL, but there
wasn't enough attempted usage at that point to make it evident what
wasn't clearly enough described.

> You're right that the way people use things has changed though. Just
> look at how we use {ka}-abstractions in IRC some day.

Someday, I'd like to go on IRC and see someone using the language at
all. Usually (and I don't try too often any more) I see several dozen
bots logged in perpetually and no one actually saying anything.

> It's because of this divergeance between the CLL and usage that we need
> some way to update the CLL, which is not possible until the publication
> of CLL1.1.

My suggestion would be to have a section of the tiki that has proposed
rewrites of CLL sections that would reflect such actual usage. They are
what is really needed to evaluate the proposals anyway, and if the text
is written, then it is easy for Robin or whoever to apply the change
once it is approved. Just make sure that the section is marked as a
proposal based on a deviation in actual usage from the existing
specification, ideally including some actual corpus examples supporting
that it is actual usage.

It won't be part of CLL until after CLL1.1 is done, but at least the
documentation gets done.

lojbab

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 8/22/2014 6:54 AM, mukti wrote:
> In my last message, I proposed measures for increasing transparency of
> LLG, clarifying its commitments, and removing the obstacles to
> officially documenting contemporary lojban. I'd like to add another
> goal: Bringing official policy up to date with practice and the
> intentions of the community.
>
> To these ends, I'd like to work with others, particularly LLG members or
> prospective members, on continuing the development of actionable
> proposals to be presented for consideration at the 2014 annual meeting.

If the proposal requires a bylaw amendment, have the actual text of the
proposed amendment ready when I call for agenda items for the meeting.
Otherwise, the procedure for making bylaw amendments is itself difficult.

I don't think that the 2002 document is outdated or that it really
changed the 1997 statement significantly. Robin's later pronouncements
really amount to his current policy as jatna, and thus is on a lower
level than the 2002 policy.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-08-22 22:33 GMT+04:00 Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG <loj...@lojban.org>:

Someday, I'd like to go on IRC and see someone using the language at all.  Usually (and I don't try too often any more) I see several dozen bots logged in perpetually and no one actually saying anything.

IRC is active but only in certain hours. This is the nature of IRC as a real time tool without built in logging of messages.

In some days IRC can be inactive at all but in some days I have to spend an hour to read and analyse what was discussed.

Anyway you could ask Robin or someone else to give you an opportunity to read backlogs of #lojban channel.

[Robert LeChevalier]

A couple years ago, I started the meeting with a Lojban sentence, and
was basically told that people no longer wanted to do this.

The original idea was when we were holding meetings on IRC, and the plan
was to have people on a back channel translating and explaining things
in real time. the actual meeting would be in Lojban, but the process of
getting things into Lojban would have been greatly assisted, for those
with insufficient real time skill.

That type of language learning, where a group of learners is attempting
to communicate in-language, each assisted by a coach that would help
them find the words and modes of expression they need, has been used to
achieve rapid fluency in other languages, but it is very intense, and
hence hard to imagine working over the several weeks of the current
meetings.

I'd love to see it tried sometime on IRC to have a large group
discussion with coaching.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

If we are talking about the LLG meetings in a mailing list then using Lojban and only Lojban is a must. Is this a huge problem for anyone of using Lojban? If yes then may be this person should go to lojban-beginners or lojban mailing list first?

So I suggest using only Lojban for any official documents.

I also suggest translating existing documents into a code with members of the LLG (or at least by le jatna) signing them as official ones.

Official documents initially written in Lojban can be translated to English later.

The only exclusion can be done when explaining the translation of particular features of Lojban grammar in other languages but this is more about teaching Lojban or about comparative linguistics.

 

lojbab

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[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 8/22/2014 3:03 PM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> If we are talking about the LLG meetings in a mailing list then using

> Lojban and only Lojban is a *must*.

Only if we wish the participation in meetings to drop even further (and
as it is most members are silent after the initial indication of presence).

> Is this a huge problem for anyone of using Lojban?

Probably. I'm not sure that I could do it, and actually be able to
communicate.

>If yes then may be this person should go to
> lojban-beginners or lojban mailing list first?

A lot of members may have left those lists because the discussions are
more arcane than they would wish, and/or they don't know the language
sufficiently well.

Remember that the qualifications for membership have always been an
interest in and commitment to the organization, rather than to the language.

> So I suggest using only Lojban for any official documents.

We aren't getting a set of meeting minutes in English. Do you think
Robin will be able to more easily produce them in Lojban? And he is
presumably as fluent a Lojbanist as we have.

We would have to start by having a translation of the Bylaws into Lojban
(and agreeing on that translation). I would then suggest translating
whichever book of parliamentary procedure that John Cowan specifies into
Lojban. Otherwise we lack the terminology for a parliamentary meeting.

> I also suggest translating existing documents into a code with members
> of the LLG (or at least by le jatna) signing them as official ones.

Not sure what this means. Code kia? Which existing documents? Any
translation of the Bylaws that was going to supplant the current English
ones would probably have to be approved as a Bylaw amendment in order to
be treated as "official".

Of course, given that CLL is one of the baseline documents, you may be
calling for a translation of CLL into Lojban. That would be an
interesting challenge, and a rather voluminous one. We'd need
all-Lojban dictionary-quality gismu and cmavo lists too, and I never did
accomplish the dictionary-quality cmavo list in English.

> Official documents initially written in Lojban can be translated to
> English later.

Which ones are those?

I'm not trying to say that the idea isn't laudable - in the (very) long
term. But we aren't anywhere near that capability now, and the members
would almost certainly reject such a proposal if forced to consider it.
After all, they didn't think much of my including even one sentence in
Lojban the last time I tried.

lojbab

[TR NS]

Given this assessment, maybe just starting meetings with an invocation (of sorts) in Lojban would be a good compromise.

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-08-23 4:00 GMT+04:00 Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG <loj...@lojban.org>:

On 8/22/2014 3:03 PM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

If we are talking about the LLG meetings in a mailing list then using

Lojban and only Lojban is a *must*.

Only if we wish the participation in meetings to drop even further (and as it is most members are silent after the initial indication of presence).

Is this a huge problem for anyone of using Lojban?

Probably.  I'm not sure that I could do it, and actually be able to communicate.

There are enough speakers in IRC who can at least produce Lojban sentences if not in real time but at least with the help of a dictionary.

You response surprises me.

Non-Lojbanists might conclude that Lojban is not even a working language.

However, is it culturally neutral to continue using non-Lojban for that?

If yes then may be this person should go to
lojban-beginners or lojban mailing list first?

A lot of members may have left those lists because the discussions are more arcane than they would wish, and/or they don't know the language sufficiently well.

Remember that the qualifications for membership have always been an interest in and commitment to the organization, rather than to the language.

So I suggest using only Lojban for any official documents.

We aren't getting a set of meeting minutes in English.  Do you think Robin will be able to more easily produce them in Lojban?  And he is presumably as fluent a Lojbanist as we have.

I didn't know he couldn't. I thought only a lack of his time could prevent him from doing so.

But even then assign other people for that. E.g. I can do initial translation and you can check them afterwards (since not I will be signing them anyway).

We would have to start by having a translation of the Bylaws into Lojban (and agreeing on that translation).  I would then suggest translating whichever book of parliamentary procedure that John Cowan specifies into Lojban.  Otherwise we lack the terminology for a parliamentary meeting.

Terminology can be made on the flow during translations with adding them to jbovlaste.

I also suggest translating existing documents into a code with members
of the LLG (or at least by le jatna) signing them as official ones.

Not sure what this means.  Code kia?  Which existing documents?  Any translation of the Bylaws that was going to supplant the current English ones would probably have to be approved as a Bylaw amendment in order to be treated as "official".

Your replies showed that the Bylaws can be superseded by other bylaws that weren't even published. This hampers the development of the existing and new projects.

If there was an official list of bylaws that are not superseded then we would be able to translate them to Lojban.

People would be able to rely on them knowing that those bylaws are not superseded.

If any bylaw can be ignored/superseded at any time and no one in the world (except members of the LLG) knows about them then

why do we have those bylaws?

Of course, given that CLL is one of the baseline documents, you may be calling for a translation of CLL into Lojban.  That would be an interesting challenge, and a rather voluminous one.  We'd need all-Lojban dictionary-quality gismu and cmavo lists too, and I never did accomplish the dictionary-quality cmavo list in English.

This project is

1. time-consuming 

2. we don't have a working platform for doing CLL 1.1 even in English

My personal view is that linking to examples using numbers is a bad practice in CLL but since it is the official refgram and not a tutorial I can only suggest to myself reformatting and only then translating to Lojban.

Anyway CLL partially works as a good tutorial too (as others are criticized by many people coming to IRC channel). This means that translating CLL into Lojban itself is partially useless since many concepts and parts of grammar in Lojban explain themselves.

Official documents initially written in Lojban can be translated to
English later.

Which ones are those?

 

You decide. I imagine the full code including all documents that describe how LLG and BPFK works.

If anyone wants to change some laws then he/she must follow the existing procedures described in the code. New laws are added to the code so the code is always complete.

I'm not trying to say that the idea isn't laudable - in the (very) long term.  But we aren't anywhere near that capability now, and the members would almost certainly reject such a proposal if forced to consider it.  After all, they didn't think much of my including even one sentence in Lojban the last time I tried.

This all looks strange. It sound like all members say "Yeah, I support Lojban but I'm not going to learn it".

Why so?

Why not add people to LLG and BPFK that can produce correct Lojban sentences at least in written form?

[And Rosta]

Robert LeChevalier, On 22/08/2014 19:48:

> On 8/22/2014 12:47 PM, selpa'i wrote:
>> In the 2003 annual meeting there was a movement to make Lojban the
>> language used during LLG meetings. It failed, but maybe something
>> similar could be considered again. Perhaps a certain percentage of the
>> discussions should be in Lojban, if 100% is not feasible yet. A "Lojban
>> Quota" so to speak. Opinions?

It would be an impediment to getting the work of the LLG done. It would make participation more onerous or impossible, for those with inadequate knowledge of grammar or lexis. (For me, now, it would be too onerous.) It would make communication less effectual, with people less sure what others meant; though things may have improved nowadays, it was my experience, 10--20 years ago I found that allegedly fluent speakers tended both to unwittingly produce sentences that did not mean was the speaker wanted to say (-- xorlo will have fixed some of this) and be unable to understand grammatical text that did not conform to prevailing stylistic norms.

> A couple years ago, I started the meeting with a Lojban sentence, and
> was basically told that people no longer wanted to do this.

I haven't been able to recall these messages or find them in my archive.

I did, tho, find a pertinent message from Robin:
Robin Lee Powell, On 12/10/2011 20:32:
> As a general comment, I wish to point out that I've made a habit of
> *discouraging* people from joining the LLG.
>
> The LLG is a *business* organization. It is the money-collecting
> and money-spending arm of the Lojban community. It is *not* the
> language management arm of the Lojban community (that's a mixture of
> the BPFK, me, and public opinion, and is all very fuzzy). It
> *certainly* is not the "getting things done" arm of the Lojban
> community; historically, having a project recognized by the LLG
> before it was actually completed has been an almost perfect
> assurance that that project would never get completed.
>
> As far as I'm concerned, the only function of the LLG membership
> should be to elect the board and provide oversight for the board's
> decisions, and as a fallback voting body should the board want to do
> something obviously outside of normal monetary behaviour.
>
> Everything else is better handled in other venues.
>
> As such, the membership should be small and focused on those ends.
>
> Furthermore, I don't much care what language we have the meetings
> in; money is money.
>
> Those of you who have been around for a while may notice that this
> is a huge reversal of things I've said in the past. The stance I've
> just presented exactly matches what Bob used to say back in the day,
> when he was doing all the work. I've also been the one doing all
> the work for the past several years. There *is* a connection there.

The main requirement for LLG membership is (for the time being, at least) goodwill towards Lojban and the LLG, and a commitment to be present at the annual meetings.

--And.

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 8/23/2014 12:33 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> Probably. I'm not sure that I could do it, and actually be able to
> communicate.
>

> There are enough speakers in IRC who can at least produce Lojban
> sentences if not in real time but at least with the help of a dictionary.

But the suggestion specified meetings by email, not on IRC. I don't
even think of IRC most of the time, even when I have dead time, and
certainly not when I am actively running a meeting. (And this presumes
that one of those speakers on IRC is actually there when someone has a
question; my experience has been something like a 50% rate of even
getting a single response when I get on IRC, and usually that is merely
a greeting. Only once in many years have I found a conversation going
on at all, and it was in English.

> You response surprises me.
> Non-Lojbanists might conclude that Lojban is not even a working language.

Any conclusion about Lojban reached based on the voting membership, many
of whom date from when Lojban was NOT a working language, would be bound
to be erroneous. Then bear in mind that the primary focus of the
membership is on organizational matters rather than Lojban matters.

One might question the fact that almost all discussions of byfy matters
has been in English rather than in Lojban (even when conducted by people
who have demonstrated the ability to write voluminously in Lojban). But
of course if they were in Lojban, there would be zero chance that I
would read them, for example. I could do so, but it hasn't been my
priority given the lack of time I have been spending in recent years. I
could wish it were otherwise, but it isn't.

> However, is it culturally neutral to continue using non-Lojban for that?

No, but the purpose of LLG meetings is to get LLG business done (and do
so as quickly as possible, since business matters aren't the highest
lojban-related priority for much of anyone in the community except
possibly me), not demonstrate cultural neutrality.

> We aren't getting a set of meeting minutes in English. Do you think
> Robin will be able to more easily produce them in Lojban? And he is
> presumably as fluent a Lojbanist as we have.
>

> I didn't know he couldn't. I thought only a lack of his time could
> prevent him from doing so.

Lack of time is precisely the reason. And for most of us, dealing with
Lojban text (either writing it or reading it) takes a lot more time than
dealing with English.

> But even then assign other people for that. E.g. I can do initial
> translation and you can check them afterwards (since not I will be
> signing them anyway).

No one produces minutes in English, so you have nothing to translate.

And I personally wouldn't likely have the time to check and substantial
amount of text written in Lojban for validity, much less correctness of
translation.

But the people who originally proposed doing meetings in Lojban 10+
years ago. never even produced a set of Lojban bylaws, which would
undoubtedly be the first required official document.

Indeed I just checked and the whole effort to do meetings in Lojban
appears to have been approved in 2002 but was removed and/or tabled
indefinitely in 2003. The one remaining motion approved in 2002 and
never superseded, was that official stuff on the web be translated into
Lojban. So far as I know, absolutely nothing was ever done on this by
the people advocating it.

> We would have to start by having a translation of the Bylaws into
> Lojban (and agreeing on that translation). I would then suggest
> translating whichever book of parliamentary procedure that John
> Cowan specifies into Lojban. Otherwise we lack the terminology for
> a parliamentary meeting.
>

> Terminology can be made on the flow during translations with adding them
> to jbovlaste.

They can be, but they aren't. And it has been noted that there are
active people nowadays who don't know how to add to jbovlaste even
though there are instructions. (I don't claim to be active in this
sense, and I also do not know how because I haven't bothered to figure
it out, never having wanted to add a word.)

Remember, BTW, that jbovlaste is an official project, but its contents
are not automatically "official" merely by being added. We'd need some
sort of formally published dictionary, approved by byfy and/or LLG
(depending on the conditions specified in the 2002 statement).

There is an official project to come up with Lojban parliamentary terms,
but the one report (anonymously submitted, possibly Mark Shoulson) said
that it was "being worked on" by the submitter, who was apparently the
only one involved.

> I also suggest translating existing documents into a code with
> members
> of the LLG (or at least by le jatna) signing them as official ones.
>
>
> Not sure what this means. Code kia? Which existing documents? Any
> translation of the Bylaws that was going to supplant the current
> English ones would probably have to be approved as a Bylaw amendment
> in order to be treated as "official".
>
>

> Your replies showed that the Bylaws can be superseded by other bylaws
> that weren't even published.

So far as I know, no Bylaws have been superseded, and there are no
unpublished bylaws. So I have no idea what you are referring to.

> This hampers the development of the existing and new projects.

It shouldn't. There is absolutely no mention of "projects" in the bylaws.

If someone wants a new project, then per 2002 minutes:
> John Cowan proposed that we institute official LLG projects as follows:
>
> Leader of project presents it to President.
> President consults Board.
> If Board approves, transmit information to Webmaster to post on official project list.
> Webmaster to poll project leaders at least every 3 months.
> Project leaders must then report to Board.
> Board may decide to not continue project as official.

the following amendment was incorporated before approval (amendments a
and b from the minutes)

> That the initiators mail the request to both webmaster and president,
> and if there is no response from the Board in an agreed-upon time
> frame it will mean it's automatically added to the official project
> list as "no objection"

I haven't seen any proposed projects submitted to the Board since then.
I can accept that people may not know the above procedure, which
probably should be added to the project page. What Robin appears to
have implemented was a more informal method that hasn't gone to the
Board, but it looks like the reporting scheme completely broke down by
2006 and most projects never had a single report submitted.

It's a nice idea, but no one wants to do the necessary paperwork, as is
true for most LLG efforts.

> If there was an official list of bylaws that are not superseded then we
> would be able to translate them to Lojban.

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Bylaws+of+The+Logical+Language+Group%2C+Inc.

no changes since 2007.

The Lojban license was put up by Robin and not modified since 2005.

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+Web+Copyright+License

The 1997 and 2002 statements haven't been modified since they were produced.

> People would be able to rely on them knowing that those bylaws are not
> superseded.

Bylaws cannot be superseded without a vote that meets the criteria
specified in the Bylaws themselves.

> If any bylaw can be ignored/superseded at any time and no one in the
> world (except members of the LLG) knows about them then
> why do we have those bylaws?

If someone official ignores a bylaw, any member (and probably any
non-member as well) can object, most easily via point of order during a
meeting. It then must be dealt with under the rules for parliamentary
procedure.

I'm not sure how much non-members are likely to be affected by changes
to the Bylaws, without any specific examples.

> Of course, given that CLL is one of the baseline documents, you may
> be calling for a translation of CLL into Lojban. That would be an
> interesting challenge, and a rather voluminous one. We'd need
> all-Lojban dictionary-quality gismu and cmavo lists too, and I never
> did accomplish the dictionary-quality cmavo list in English.
>

> This project is
> 1. time-consuming
> 2. we don't have a working platform for doing CLL 1.1 even in English

Correct. Hence, nothing gets done.

> My personal view is that linking to examples using numbers is a bad
> practice in CLL but since it is the official refgram and not a tutorial

It is a book, one of those things that appears in print, and it is the
norm in such books that examples are numbered and referred to by number
in the text.

Hypertext can avoid such inconveniences, but at least so far, we are
dealing with print as well as on-line. That would likely be true of a
Lojban version as well. I certainly wouldn't ever try to read 600 pages
in Lojban on a computer screen (or on a Kindle for that matter - I
haven't read that much text yet on a Kindle in English)

> Anyway CLL partially works as a good tutorial too (as others are
> criticized by many people coming to IRC channel). This means that
> translating CLL into Lojban itself is partially useless since many
> concepts and parts of grammar in Lojban explain themselves.

Nothing explains itself. And the purpose would be to meet the standard
that all of our official documents be produced in Lojban (whether or not
they would be used much in the Lojban form isn't the primary consideration)

> Official documents initially written in Lojban can be translated to
> English later.
>
> Which ones are those?
>

> You decide. I imagine the full code including all documents that
> describe how LLG and BPFK works.

None of them were originally written in Lojban, and as yet, none have
been translated, so your response doesn't answer your original statement
about said initially written ones.

Most people knowing that the documents were initially written in English
would read them in English UNLESS a) they were seeking the experience of
reading the Lojban text or b) the Lojban text officially superseded the
English original, which would be replaced by a back-translation.

> This all looks strange. It sound like all members say "Yeah, I support
> Lojban but I'm not going to learn it".

Yep.

> Why so?

In some cases, because they got involved when there wasn't a language to
learn. In others like myself, I learned it but haven't recently spent
enough time to maintain my skill (and for me, I have never learned a
language other than English to the point of being able to think in that
language - I came close with 6-year-old Russian but couldn't understand
adults, but Lojban in my mind is always glossed to English before being
interpreted.)

> Why not add people to LLG and BPFK that can produce correct Lojban
> sentences at least in written form?

LLG pretty much takes anyone who wants to join and is committed to the
goals and responsibilities of membership (which are primarily
organizational - see the Bylaws). BPFK takes people under whatever
conditions the jatna sets. I suspect right now merely being willing to
DO something is the primary requirement. Actual skill in Lojban is
secondary to that.

Your suggestion might be ideal, but beggars can't be choosers.

At one time Pierre was leading a project to come up with a means of
certifying various sorts of Lojban skill levels. That project, like
almost all others, seems to have produced very little beyond intentions.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-08-23 17:14 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org>:

On 8/23/2014 12:33 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

    Probably.  I'm not sure that I could do it, and actually be able to
    communicate.

There are enough speakers in IRC who can at least produce Lojban
sentences if not in real time but at least with the help of a dictionary.

But the suggestion specified meetings by email, not on IRC. 

Bob, I only mean that Lojban nowadays is not a project but a fully blown USABLE and USED language. There are fluent speakers.

There are enough people who talk to each other in Lojban and understad each other.

That's why allowing people who can produce correct sentences in Lojban should be forbidden.

Speaking Lojban only is not a problem for a lot of people.

Then why are we still talking about Lojban not in Lojban?

I suggest that you allow fluent speakers + those who can produce correct discourses in written form like in email lists.

Look how many of them: http://www.lojban.org/resources/irclog/lojban/
The IRC chat is active.

From this thread I can confirm that selpa'i is a fluent speaker, even la mukti (ba'anairu'e) can produce fine sentences.

We are not discussing issues or reforming Lojban (I'm completely on rlpowell's side in this matter).

If a person can speak fluent Lojban why disallow him/her from BPFK and LLG?

I don't even think of IRC most of the time, even when I have dead time, and certainly not when I am actively running a meeting.  (And this presumes that one of those speakers on IRC is actually there when someone has a question; my experience has been something like a 50% rate of even getting a single response when I get on IRC, and usually that is merely a greeting.  Only once in many years have I found a conversation going on at all, and it was in English.

I remember you logged in only once during the last 6 months or so. .uinai at that time  was sleeping. However, this link shows that IRC covers the most important part of Lojbanic activity.

http://www.lojban.org/resources/irclog/lojban/

You response surprises me.
Non-Lojbanists might conclude that Lojban is not even a working language.

Any conclusion about Lojban reached based on the voting membership, many of whom date from when Lojban was NOT a working language, would be bound to be erroneous.  Then bear in mind that the primary focus of the membership is on organizational matters rather than Lojban matters.

Well, as for financial issues sure, LLG members might know nothing about Lojban.

But in general this situation is silly. What are we here for if not to learn Lojban and produce texts in it?

One might question the fact that almost all discussions of byfy matters has been in English rather than in Lojban (even when conducted by people who have demonstrated the ability to write voluminously in Lojban).  But of course if they were in Lojban, there would be zero chance that I would read them, for example.

When Lojban was being developed people need to somehow explain that "This construct is translated into English as..., use it in these situations: ..."

At that time English was a platform to build Lojban.

However, nowadays Lojban is mostly complete and there is no need in English.

  I could do so, but it hasn't been my priority given the lack of time I have been spending in recent years.  I could wish it were otherwise, but it isn't.

Well, of course. But do you wish other people continue the great work you've done in past? If so the number of written stuff in Lojban should increase over time.

More and more people should become fluent speakers. Nobody forbids you to use English or any other languages of course.

It just appears that English is used to the detriment of Lojban these days.

However, is it culturally neutral to continue using non-Lojban for that?

No, but the purpose of LLG meetings is to get LLG business done (and do so as quickly as possible, since business matters aren't the highest lojban-related priority for much of anyone in the community except possibly me), not demonstrate cultural neutrality.

What business? If selling books then of course (Lojbanistan is non-existent, neither The Bank of Lojban).

But the bylaws, LLG minutes were written in English which is completely crazy.

    We aren't getting a set of meeting minutes in English.  Do you think
    Robin will be able to more easily produce them in Lojban?  And he is
    presumably as fluent a Lojbanist as we have.

I didn't know he couldn't. I thought only a lack of his time could
prevent him from doing so.

Lack of time is precisely the reason.  And for most of us, dealing with Lojban text (either writing it or reading it) takes a lot more time than dealing with English.

Well, you are not going to rename this community into {ju'i glipli}, do you? ;)

But even then assign other people for that. E.g. I can do initial
translation and you can check them afterwards (since not I will be
signing them anyway).

No one produces minutes in English, so you have nothing to translate.

And I personally wouldn't likely have the time to check and substantial amount of text written in Lojban for validity, much less correctness of translation.

But the people who originally proposed doing meetings in Lojban 10+ years ago. never even produced a set of Lojban bylaws, which would undoubtedly be the first required official document.

Indeed I just checked and the whole effort to do meetings in Lojban appears to have been approved in 2002 but was removed and/or tabled indefinitely in 2003.  The one remaining motion approved in 2002 and never superseded, was that official stuff on the web be translated into Lojban.  So far as I know, absolutely nothing was ever done on this by the people advocating it.

Why not start from the beginning? Now we do have people who can not only translate existing bylaws but to produce new ones from scratch?

I want the community to go forward. Shall we continue making no headway?

    We would have to start by having a translation of the Bylaws into
    Lojban (and agreeing on that translation).  I would then suggest
    translating whichever book of parliamentary procedure that John
    Cowan specifies into Lojban.  Otherwise we lack the terminology for
    a parliamentary meeting.

Terminology can be made on the flow during translations with adding them
to jbovlaste.

They can be, but they aren't.  And it has been noted that there are active people nowadays who don't know how to add to jbovlaste even though there are instructions.

All of the active speakers I know of know how to add words to jbovlaste.

So for them this is not a problem.

(I don't claim to be active in this sense, and I also do not know how because I haven't bothered to figure it out, never having wanted to add a word.)

Remember, BTW, that jbovlaste is an official project, but its contents are not automatically "official" merely by being added.  We'd need some sort of formally published dictionary, approved by byfy and/or LLG (depending on the conditions specified in the 2002 statement).

Great.  Why not start discussing the new dictionary (discussing in Lojban ofc.)?

There is an official project to come up with Lojban parliamentary terms, but the one report (anonymously submitted, possibly Mark Shoulson) said that it was "being worked on" by the submitter, who was apparently the only one involved.

        I also suggest translating existing documents into a code with
        members
        of the LLG (or at least by le jatna) signing them as official ones.


    Not sure what this means.  Code kia?  Which existing documents?  Any
    translation of the Bylaws that was going to supplant the current
    English ones would probably have to be approved as a Bylaw amendment
    in order to be treated as "official".

Your replies showed that the Bylaws can be superseded by other bylaws
that weren't even published.

So far as I know, no Bylaws have been superseded, and there are no unpublished bylaws.  So I have no idea what you are referring to.

I'm referring to your words: "They are supposed to be, but that item of the bylaws has more or less been superseded with online meetings by the non-publication of minutes." 

If published bylaws are all still valid and we can accet them as ultimate truth then we ofc. can translate them. But by "we" I suppose only members of LLG which I'm not.

Most people knowing that the documents were initially written in English would read them in English UNLESS a) they were seeking the experience of reading the Lojban text or b) the Lojban text officially superseded the English original, which would be replaced by a back-translation.

This all looks strange. It sound like all members say "Yeah, I support
Lojban but I'm not going to learn it".

Yep.

Why so?

In some cases, because they got involved when there wasn't a language to learn.  In others like myself, I learned it but haven't recently spent enough time to maintain my skill (and for me, I have never learned a language other than English to the point of being able to think in that language - I came close with 6-year-old Russian but couldn't understand adults, but Lojban in my mind is always glossed to English before being interpreted.)

Why not add people to LLG and BPFK that can produce correct Lojban
sentences at least in written form?

LLG pretty much takes anyone who wants to join and is committed to the goals and responsibilities of membership (which are primarily organizational - see the Bylaws).

^ I will reply later to this.

 

  BPFK takes people under whatever conditions the jatna sets.

Robin  said anyone could name themselves a member of BPFK.

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 8/23/2014 9:14 AM, And Rosta wrote:
> Robert LeChevalier, On 22/08/2014 19:48:

>> On 8/22/2014 12:47 PM, selpa'i wrote:
>>> In the 2003 annual meeting there was a movement to make Lojban the
>>> language used during LLG meetings. It failed, but maybe something
>>> similar could be considered again. Perhaps a certain percentage of the
>>> discussions should be in Lojban, if 100% is not feasible yet. A "Lojban
>>> Quota" so to speak. Opinions?
>

> It would be an impediment to getting the work of the LLG done. It would
> make participation more onerous or impossible, for those with inadequate
> knowledge of grammar or lexis. (For me, now, it would be too onerous.)
> It would make communication less effectual, with people less sure what
> others meant; though things may have improved nowadays, it was my
> experience, 10--20 years ago I found that allegedly fluent speakers
> tended both to unwittingly produce sentences that did not mean was the
> speaker wanted to say (-- xorlo will have fixed some of this) and be
> unable to understand grammatical text that did not conform to prevailing
> stylistic norms.

Probably all true. It would be interesting to see if anyone could
produce quasi-live translation of a meeting into Lojban, even at email
speeds, but we would have to have some non-trivial meeting content to
make the test useful.

>> A couple years ago, I started the meeting with a Lojban sentence, and
>> was basically told that people no longer wanted to do this.
>

> I haven't been able to recall these messages or find them in my archive.

The 2002 and 2003 stuff is in the minutes on the website.

From my posting 9 Oct 2011:
> mi xusra le co'a nanca dikni nunpenmi be la lojbangirz be'o pe li renopapa

> I did, tho, find a pertinent message from Robin:
> Robin Lee Powell, On 12/10/2011 20:32:
>> As a general comment, I wish to point out that I've made a habit of
>> *discouraging* people from joining the LLG.

That was one of the responses to my post. (12 October for those not
recognizing the UK norm for dates).

> The main requirement for LLG membership is (for the time being, at
> least) goodwill towards Lojban and the LLG, and a commitment to be
> present at the annual meetings.

Agreed.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-08-23 17:43 GMT+04:00 Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG <loj...@lojban.org>:

On 8/23/2014 9:14 AM, And Rosta wrote:

Robert LeChevalier, On 22/08/2014 19:48:

On 8/22/2014 12:47 PM, selpa'i wrote:

In the 2003 annual meeting there was a movement to make Lojban the
language used during LLG meetings. It failed, but maybe something
similar could be considered again. Perhaps a certain percentage of the
discussions should be in Lojban, if 100% is not feasible yet. A "Lojban
Quota" so to speak. Opinions?

It would be an impediment to getting the work of the LLG done. It would
make participation more onerous or impossible, for those with inadequate
knowledge of grammar or lexis. (For me, now, it would be too onerous.)
It would make communication less effectual, with people less sure what
others meant; though things may have improved nowadays, it was my
experience, 10--20 years ago I found that allegedly fluent speakers
tended both to unwittingly produce sentences that did not mean was the
speaker wanted to say (-- xorlo will have fixed some of this) and be
unable to understand grammatical text that did not conform to prevailing
stylistic norms.

Probably all true.  It would be interesting to see if anyone could produce quasi-live translation of a meeting into Lojban, even at email speeds, but we would have to have some non-trivial meeting content to make the test useful.

I'm ready to make translations *from* Lojban so that future newbies could easily read logs of those meetings before they are fluent speakers.

As for translations to Lojban this is usually tiresome (as with any translator's work: the balance of precision, conciseness, beauty of the resulting text). But indeed may be others will be able to help me.

[Jorge Llambías]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 10:14 AM, Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:

On 8/23/2014 12:33 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

This all looks strange. It sound like all members say "Yeah, I support
Lojban but I'm not going to learn it".

Yep.

I don't think the "all members" part is correct. Looking at the list of members http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+Members (which seems eerily up to date) I would say perhaps a little bit less than half of the members. 

mu'o mi'e xorxes

 

[Gleki Arxokuna]

I can confirm only la .pier., la .camgusmis., la .xorxes.. As for the others I simply never seen long (more than one utterance) conversations with them in real time.

Ofc. I monitored only communication via internet, not IRL.

Outside IRC and LLG personally I also communicated with la gejyspa in private chats.

That's all I can confirm.

 

mu'o mi'e xorxes

 

--

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[Craig Daniel]

There are some old members who used to be capable of at least basic communication in Lojban in real time, but haven't kept up. I think Matt Arnold can probably still speak the language reasonably well, though I haven't communicated with him in it in a long time; Mark Shoulson and And Rosta certainly used to be good at it, also.

I include myself in that category as well; while I was never fluent, I used to be a far better speaker if Lojban than I am today. Any time I offer to withdraw from the membership, on the grounds that I feel the LLG's business should be primarily responsive to the needs of active users of the language, I'm encouraged to stay, because it is felt that there's value in a larger proportion of members who take active part in the meetings; I reliably vote based on my perception of what serves the interest of those soaking Lojban more regularly than myself, and I have recently been urging a few such people who seem concerned with the future of our community to request membership.

- mi'e .kreig.daniyl.

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 8/23/2014 9:39 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> 2014-08-23 17:14 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org

> <mailto:loj...@lojban.org>>:

>
> On 8/23/2014 12:33 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
>
> Probably. I'm not sure that I could do it, and actually be
> able to
> communicate.
>
> There are enough speakers in IRC who can at least produce Lojban
> sentences if not in real time but at least with the help of a
> dictionary.
>
> But the suggestion specified meetings by email, not on IRC.
>

> Bob, I only mean that Lojban nowadays is not a project but a fully blown
> USABLE and USED language. There are fluent speakers.

But for the most part, they haven't been especially interested in
organizational matters. Robin is one who has. He's wanted someone to
take on the Secretary/Treasurer job from him for years. Not the
slightest interest. Even the relatively Lojbanic job of keeping the
Lojban home page current with news has fallen by the wayside.

> There are enough people who talk to each other in Lojban and understad
> each other.

I'm sure there are. But I never see them; only hear about them.

For example, one would think that with all these fluent people, someone
would have produced a in-Lojban blog and gotten a link to it on the home
page. Matt and a couple of others had blogs a couple years ago that
were so-linked, but IIRC they were about Lojban rather than in the language.

If IRC Lojban is so good, as some have said, someone could be selecting
a "best of IRC" and making it easy to find.

But I admit that I myself probably wouldn't be spending a lot of time
trying to read them. Reading and writing Lojban has always been hard
work for me - worth doing but still hard.

> That's why allowing people who can produce correct sentences in Lojban
> should be forbidden.

I assume you meant "cannot".

LLG might just disappear if we made such a rule.

> Speaking Lojban only is not a problem for a lot of people.

Good for them. I approve. But I'm not one of them.

> Then why are we still talking about Lojban not in Lojban?

No one can stop us. And for the most part, not that many want to do
otherwise.

This whole thread has been posted in English. Nothing stopping any
poster from posting in Lojban.

> I suggest that you allow fluent speakers + those who can produce correct
> discourses in written form like in email lists.

I'm not stopping them.

> If a person can speak fluent Lojban why disallow him/her from BPFK and LLG?

Who is disallowing anyone?

> I remember you logged in only once during the last 6 months or so.

Probably. I don't try very often.

> Any conclusion about Lojban reached based on the voting membership,
> many of whom date from when Lojban was NOT a working language, would
> be bound to be erroneous. Then bear in mind that the primary focus
> of the membership is on organizational matters rather than Lojban
> matters.
>

> Well, as for financial issues sure, LLG members might know nothing about
> Lojban.
> But in general this situation is silly. What are we here for if not to
> learn Lojban and produce texts in it?

Since you ask, I presume you have not read the bylaws:
> Section 1. Purpose. The Logical Language Group, Inc. is established
> to promote the scientific study of the relationships between
> language, thought and human culture; to investigate the nature of
> language and to determine the requirements for an
> artificially-engineered natural language; to implement and experiment
> with such a language; to devise and promote applications for this
> language in fields including but not limited to linguistics,
> psychology, philosophy, logic, mathematics, computer science,
> anthropology, sociology, education, and human biology; to conduct and
> support experimental and scholarly research in these fields as they
> may bear upon the problems of artificial language development; to
> communicate with and to educate interested persons and organizations
> about these activities; to devise and develop means and instruments
> needed for these activities; and to accumulate and publish the
> results of such studies and developments. In the furtherance of these
> purposes, and in addition to the above activities, The Logical
> Language Group, Inc. may award grants to individuals for
> experimentation, travel, publication, study and similar activities.

Over the years, LLG has chosen to limit its activities with regards to
artificial languages to Lojban as opposed to alternatives. But there is
a lot more there than learning and using the language.

Not that I have a problem with others primarily interested in learning
and using. I was one of them for many years. I could plausibly become
one again, though I'd probably go in for translation.

I've found that part of my problem with talking Lojban, is that I have
found not much that I am interested in talking about in Lojban. I am
totally disinterested in the online social networking activities that
most people are into these days. I read a couple of blogs, but have
almost never posted a response or comment to one. (I was a lot more
active on Usenet when it was still thriving, but I rarely post there
anymore either).

But this is me; others may have different interests and priorities.

> One might question the fact that almost all discussions of byfy
> matters has been in English rather than in Lojban (even when
> conducted by people who have demonstrated the ability to write
> voluminously in Lojban). But of course if they were in Lojban,
> there would be zero chance that I would read them, for example.
>

> When Lojban was being developed people need to somehow explain that
> "This construct is translated into English as..., use it in these
> situations: ..."
>
> At that time English was a platform to build Lojban.

This doesn't seem to have changed.

> However, nowadays Lojban is mostly complete and there is no need in English.

Except for the fact that all of the postings are still in English.

> I could do so, but it hasn't been my priority given the lack of
> time I have been spending in recent years. I could wish it were
> otherwise, but it isn't.
>

> Well, of course. But do you wish other people continue the great work
> you've done in past? If so the number of written stuff in Lojban should
> increase over time.

I'm not stopping anyone.

> More and more people should become fluent speakers. Nobody forbids you
> to use English or any other languages of course.
> It just appears that English is used to the detriment of Lojban these days.

The best way to change that is to post in Lojban and get others who can
do so to also do so. If people are exposed to Lojban more, perhaps some
will bother to spend time at it. Right now, they have to go look for it.

> However, is it culturally neutral to continue using non-Lojban
> for that?
>
> No, but the purpose of LLG meetings is to get LLG business done (and
> do so as quickly as possible, since business matters aren't the
> highest lojban-related priority for much of anyone in the community
> except possibly me), not demonstrate cultural neutrality.
>

> What business? If selling books then of course (Lojbanistan is
> non-existent, neither The Bank of Lojban).

You can look at the minutes/summaries for many years and see what LLG
business is. If that isn't the sort of thing you are interested in, you
may not want to be a member. (Or maybe you can find some new business
that LLG should be interested in, and try to win support. Just don't
assume that agreement will be automatic.)

> But the bylaws, LLG minutes were written in English which is completely
> crazy.

The bylaws were written before Lojban existed. No one has bothered to
translate them, so complaining is a waste of time. Robin is probably
capable of writing minutes in Lojban, but hasn't done so, and doesn't
think it is very important. If someone wants to take over his job and
write minutes in Lojban, he might not object.

> Lack of time is precisely the reason. And for most of us, dealing
> with Lojban text (either writing it or reading it) takes a lot more
> time than dealing with English.
>

> Well, you are not going to rename this community into {ju'i glipli}, do
> you? ;)

I assume that you are referring to the periodical that I edited for
several years until 1994. A couple others took over responsibility, but
never produced an issue in any language. If you can produce an issue of
JL either partially or totally in Lojban, LLG might publish it. (Of
course our snail mail subscription list is probably worthless at this
point, but we could produce an online periodical.)

> Indeed I just checked and the whole effort to do meetings in Lojban
> appears to have been approved in 2002 but was removed and/or tabled
> indefinitely in 2003. The one remaining motion approved in 2002 and
> never superseded, was that official stuff on the web be translated
> into Lojban. So far as I know, absolutely nothing was ever done on
> this by the people advocating it.
>

> Why not start from the beginning? Now we do have people who can not only
> translate existing bylaws but to produce new ones from scratch?

Bylaws don't work that way. (Well, someone could produce a totally new
set of bylaws, and get them adopted, but that isn't commonly done unless
the organization has failed.)

> I want the community to go forward. Shall we continue making no headway?

I've seen no evidence that anyone wants to do the work.

> They can be, but they aren't. And it has been noted that there are
> active people nowadays who don't know how to add to jbovlaste even
> though there are instructions.
>

> All of the active speakers I know of know how to add words to jbovlaste.
> So for them this is not a problem.

Good for them. Yet the issue was raised in this thread, by someone I
think you consider active. And I myself don't know how to do much of
anything online on the web other than search it and read it. I still
live in the 20th century Internet, still read and edit emails off-line.

> (I don't claim to be active in this sense, and I also do not know
> how because I haven't bothered to figure it out, never having wanted
> to add a word.)
>
> Remember, BTW, that jbovlaste is an official project, but its
> contents are not automatically "official" merely by being added.
> We'd need some sort of formally published dictionary, approved by
> byfy and/or LLG (depending on the conditions specified in the 2002
> statement).
>

> Great. Why not start discussing the new dictionary (discussing in
> Lojban ofc.)?

No one is stopping you.

> Your replies showed that the Bylaws can be superseded by other
> bylaws
> that weren't even published.
>
> So far as I know, no Bylaws have been superseded, and there are no
> unpublished bylaws. So I have no idea what you are referring to.
>

> I'm referring to your words: "They are supposed to be, but that item of
> the bylaws has more or less been superseded with online meetings by the
> non-publication of minutes."

The Secretary considers that the archived mailing list is sufficient to
constitute the minutes. No one has objected. If someone did, then the
Secretary would be obliged to come up with something or resign, and no
one wants Robin to resign, since there is no one else who wants the job.

The solution is to find someone who wants to produce real minutes.
Robin has said that he is willing to submit them if someone else
produces them.

> None of them were originally written in Lojban, and as yet, none
> have been translated, so your response doesn't answer your original
> statement about said initially written ones.
>
>

> If published bylaws are all still valid and we can accet them as
> ultimate truth then we ofc. can translate them. But by "we" I suppose
> only members of LLG which I'm not.

Anyone can translate them. No one is stopping you. To get such a
translation approved so as to supersede the English version would likely
be a bit harder, since it would have to be approved as an amendment to
the existing Bylaws

> LLG pretty much takes anyone who wants to join and is committed to
> the goals and responsibilities of membership (which are primarily
> organizational - see the Bylaws).
>
>

> ^ I will reply later to this.

OK

> BPFK takes people under whatever conditions the jatna sets.
>

> Robin said anyone could name themselves a member of BPFK.

Then those are the conditions %^)

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-08-24 18:58 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org>:

On 8/23/2014 9:39 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

2014-08-23 17:14 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org

<mailto:loj...@lojban.org>>:

    On 8/23/2014 12:33 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

             Probably.  I'm not sure that I could do it, and actually be
        able to
             communicate.

        There are enough speakers in IRC who can at least produce Lojban
        sentences if not in real time but at least with the help of a
        dictionary.

    But the suggestion specified meetings by email, not on IRC.

Bob, I only mean that Lojban nowadays is not a project but a fully blown
USABLE and USED language. There are fluent speakers.

But for the most part, they haven't been especially interested in organizational matters.  Robin is one who has.  He's wanted someone to take on the Secretary/Treasurer job from him for years.  Not the slightest interest.  Even the relatively Lojbanic job of keeping the Lojban home page current with news has fallen by the wayside.

There are enough people who talk to each other in Lojban and understad
each other.

I'm sure there are.  But I never see them; only hear about them.

For example, one would think that with all these fluent people, someone would have produced a in-Lojban blog and gotten a link to it on the home page.  Matt and a couple of others had blogs a couple years ago that were so-linked, but IIRC they were about Lojban rather than in the language.

If IRC Lojban is so good, as some have said, someone could be selecting a "best of IRC" and making it easy to find.

I'm tagging sentences in tatoeba.org to improve the quality of this database. It has > 10 000 sentences in Lojban. Many of them are taken from IRC.

Otherwise, it's hard to read the logs in search of good sentences.

What is good and what is not?

But I admit that I myself probably wouldn't be spending a lot of time trying to read them.  Reading and writing Lojban has always been hard work for me - worth doing but still hard.

That's why allowing people who can produce correct sentences in Lojban
should be forbidden.

I assume you meant "cannot".

Sorry yes.

 

LLG might just disappear if we made such a rule.

First add to LLG those who can produce fine Lojban: selpa'i, tsani, mukti (if they agree), me. may be others (but i havent asked them so can never be sure.

If moving all discussions to Lojban fail then you can ban us and continue the old policy of non-proliferation of Lojban zo'oru'e.

Speaking Lojban only is not a problem for a lot of people.

Good for them.  I approve.  But I'm not one of them.

Then why are we still talking about Lojban not in Lojban?

No one can stop us.  And for the most part, not that many want to do otherwise.

This whole thread has been posted in English.  Nothing stopping any poster from posting in Lojban.

mi tugni i e'u co'u pilno lo glibau gi'e co'a pilno lo jbobau po'o

i ku'ido pu cusku losedu'u do na kakne i ku'i ma'a ka'e troci vau pei

 

I suggest that you allow fluent speakers + those who can produce correct
discourses in written form like in email lists.

I'm not stopping them.

If a person can speak fluent Lojban why disallow him/her from BPFK and LLG?

Who is disallowing anyone?

Sorry, I think I need to read those bylaws more carefully. Could you remind in two-three sentences of the procedure and requirements of applying new members? Is it too hard?

In Lojbanistan I've been doing something else than reading LLG documents. Namely, I have been working on new tutorials and on formalisation of gimste lately.

I agree. One of the recent theses on Lojban and FrameNet showed that Lojban is a powerful tool for machine translation (at least potentially).

However, where are those other applications of Lojban shown by LLG? 

I can't see any activities at all, neither in learning Lojban, nor in psychology, philosophy, logic, mathematics ...

Not that I have a problem with others primarily interested in learning and using.  I was one of them for many years.  I could plausibly become one again, though I'd probably go in for translation.

I've found that part of my problem with talking Lojban, is that I have found not much that I am interested in talking about in Lojban.  I am totally disinterested in the online social networking activities that most people are into these days.  I read a couple of blogs, but have almost never posted a response or comment to one. (I was a lot more active on Usenet when it was still thriving, but I rarely post there anymore either).

But this is me; others may have different interests and priorities.

    One might question the fact that almost all discussions of byfy
    matters has been in English rather than in Lojban (even when
    conducted by people who have demonstrated the ability to write
    voluminously in Lojban).  But of course if they were in Lojban,
    there would be zero chance that I would read them, for example.

When Lojban was being developed people need to somehow explain that
"This construct is translated into English as..., use it in these
situations: ..."

At that time English was a platform to build Lojban.

This doesn't seem to have changed.

However, nowadays Lojban is mostly complete and there is no need in English.

Except for the fact that all of the postings are still in English.

In IRC most discussions fall back to English due to three reasons:

1. Newbies come and ask questions on Lojban

2. Computer terminology doesn't exist not only in Lojban but even e.g. in Russian (for the most part ofc., Russian of course has words for "computer" and other ordinary concepts borrowed from English again).

3. People don't discuss Lojban-related things (this is discouraged in #lojban channel but nevertheless spontaneously happens sometimes)

       I could do so, but it hasn't been my priority given the lack of
    time I have been spending in recent years.  I could wish it were
    otherwise, but it isn't.

Well, of course. But do you wish other people continue the great work
you've done in past? If so the number of written stuff in Lojban should
increase over time.

I'm not stopping anyone.

More and more people should become fluent speakers. Nobody forbids you
to use English or any other languages of course.
It just appears that English is used to the detriment of Lojban these days.

The best way to change that is to post in Lojban and get others who can do so to also do so.  If people are exposed to Lojban more, perhaps some will bother to spend time at it.  Right now, they have to go look for it.

.ie vi'oru'e

by me. Well, if you take active IRCers then they all know how to add words to jbovlaste. If more people knew about this then they could become active Lojbanists too. So not knowing about jbovlaste is a problem related to non-optimal presentation of the information.

 

lojbab

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[Gleki Arxokuna]

Now replying to the question of new members. I don't know where is the latest version of the bylaws with all amendments included.

I can only rely on the page
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Bylaws+of+The+Logical+Language+Group,+Inc.

Is the procedure in Article 3 still valid?

Here is the quote:
"Qualifications of persons proposed for membership shall be (a) competence in one or more of the fields of science or scholarship listed in Article 2, above, and/or (b) high personal dedication to the purposes of The Logical Language Group, Inc. as set forth in that Article."

Who and how assesses that?

[Craig Daniel]

In practice, the existing membership votes you in after a motion to make you a member. I can't recall seeing such a motion made by a pre-existing member ever fail, if the candidate wished to join.

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[mukti]

Could you remind in two-three sentences of the procedure and requirements of applying new members?

After researching those questions a few weeks ago, I added this to the wiki:

( http://www.lojban.org/tiki/The+Logical+Language+Group#Becoming_a_member )

Becoming a member

According to the bylaws, "persons may be named members upon recommendation for membership by any member and by election by a majority of all the members of the Corporation, in person or by proxy." 

The bylaws specify the following qualifications:

• competence in fields including linguistics, psychology, philosophy, logic, mathematics, computer science, anthropology, sociology, education, and human biology
• high personal dedication to the purposes of The Logical Language Group as specified in the bylaws  

At the 2011 annual meeting, lojbab proposed the following criteria by which prospective members may be deemed eligible to join the organization as voting members:

1. Working on a project for an extended period of time, especially one requiring coordination with other lojbanists
2. Assumption of responsibility for non-language chores, such as web site maintenance
3. Activity promoting lojban or recruiting lojbanists, such as presenting or teaching the language
4. Being familiar with the bylaws, and taking the initiative to ask for membership at a meeting
5. Participating in a meeting as a non-voting member

The proposal and approval of new members is one of the items of regular business at each annual meeting.

[John E Clifford]

In summary, people are not becoming members of LLg mainly because they don't care about becoming members.  And they don't care about becoming members because LLG doesn't do anything that interests most of the people in question.  LLG doesn't use Lojban, doesn't create tools for using Lojban, occasionally refers to a set of rules that hinder the development of Lojban (in some people's eyes, at least), and seems so set up tht it is not going to change any of this.  Oh, and it keeps bugging people to get to work on projects that most people think are pointless at best and damaging at worst, rather than doing creative stuff of the applicants' own devisings.  

On the whole, these creative Lojbanists would probably be better to continue as they are, ignore LLG -- except maybe take over the website (which should be easy, since no one else seems to care) .  It would be nice, however, if someone would spontaneously choose to update the description of Lojban to account for all the changes that have actually been made, ignoring the stuff about baselines and approvals and the like.

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[Gleki Arxokuna]

John, 

the website

social networks

the dictionary

new tutorials

CLL 2.0

translating gimste into other languages

are all projects that either were mentioned on "ongoing projects" page or assumed as projects by LLG.

Those are important for me as well.

[John E Clifford]

Of course, but (the story goes) LLG does nothing to get them done but natter.

[Craig Daniel]

Yes, but the reason for the term "revitalizing" (which I chose, while participating in the back-channel discussions that I think influenced the start of this thread) is, if the LLG isn't seen as doing anything productive, that's a failure that can be remedied by the people who wish it would participating and then promoting action they see as serving the needs of the Lojban community.

If you think the LLG gets nothing done, and you think this is a problem rather than finding the organization to be irrelevant, then you can choose to be part of the solution. There's a perception by many current Lojban users that the LLG has failed; my response has been and will be to encourage those who feel that way to help it succeed again.

[John E Clifford]

Bravo!

[Gleki Arxokuna]

I was doing exactly what you are now suggesting, namely, doing what i can: adding interesting sentences to tatoeba.org, developing a new wiki, trying to advertise lojban in facebook.

However, there are things that require LLG action.

Namely, LLG is the authority. Only authorities can solve the question of issues with the tiki that many members complain of.

Not working on projects officially prevents lojban from being more popular and thus used more.

None of my projects are related to LLG since LLG probably doesn't even know about them (by the word "my" I mean "initially started by me", not that I want to own them.)

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 8/24/2014 11:52 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> I'm sure there are. But I never see them; only hear about them.
>
> For example, one would think that with all these fluent people,
> someone would have produced a in-Lojban blog and gotten a link to it
> on the home page. Matt and a couple of others had blogs a couple
> years ago that were so-linked, but IIRC they were about Lojban
> rather than in the language.
>
> If IRC Lojban is so good, as some have said, someone could be
> selecting a "best of IRC" and making it easy to find.
>

> I'm tagging sentences in tatoeba.org <http://tatoeba.org> to improve the
> quality of this database.

I'm interested in stuff that I can find on www.lojban.org, preferably
on, or linked to, on the home page. That is where the world sees what
Lojban is.

>It has > 10 000 sentences in Lojban. Many of
> them are taken from IRC.
>
> Otherwise, it's hard to read the logs in search of good sentences.
> What is good and what is not?

If you can't tell, how would you expect the average Joe
not-yet-a-Lojbanist to do so?

> If moving all discussions to Lojban fail then you can ban us and
> continue the old policy of non-proliferation of Lojban zo'oru'e.

That isn't "policy". It is de facto reality.

> mi tugni i e'u co'u pilno lo glibau gi'e co'a pilno lo jbobau po'o
> i ku'ido pu cusku losedu'u do na kakne i ku'i ma'a ka'e troci vau pei

na go'i - at least, if I want to actually read and respond to all the
messages in this thread.

> If a person can speak fluent Lojban why disallow him/her from
> BPFK and LLG?
>
> Who is disallowing anyone?
>

> Sorry, I think I need to read those bylaws more carefully. Could you

> remind in two-three sentences of the procedure and requirements of

> applying new members? Is it too hard?

People seem to be figuring it out %^)

> I agree. One of the recent theses on Lojban and FrameNet showed that
> Lojban is a powerful tool for machine translation (at least potentially).
>
> However, where are those other applications of Lojban shown by LLG?
> I can't see any activities at all, neither in learning Lojban, nor
> in psychology, philosophy, logic, mathematics ...

A lot of discussions on lojban list have tended to break down into
questions of philosophy or logic rather than language usage.

lojbab

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 8/24/2014 12:10 PM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
>
> Now replying to the question of new members. I don't know where is the
> latest version of the bylaws with all amendments included.
>

> I can only rely on the page
> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Bylaws+of+The+Logical+Language+Group,+Inc.

That's the answer to your question.

> Is the procedure in Article 3 still valid?
>
> Here is the quote:
> "Qualifications of persons proposed for membership shall be (a)
> competence in one or more of the fields of science or scholarship listed
> in Article 2, above, and/or (b) high personal dedication to the purposes
> of The Logical Language Group, Inc. as set forth in that Article."
>
> Who and how assesses that?

The existing membership that has to approve a new member's application.

That will be one of the first agenda items after the meeting starts.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-08-26 21:52 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org>:

On 8/24/2014 11:52 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

    I'm sure there are.  But I never see them; only hear about them.

    For example, one would think that with all these fluent people,
    someone would have produced a in-Lojban blog and gotten a link to it
    on the home page.  Matt and a couple of others had blogs a couple
    years ago that were so-linked, but IIRC they were about Lojban
    rather than in the language.

    If IRC Lojban is so good, as some have said, someone could be
    selecting a "best of IRC" and making it easy to find.

I'm tagging sentences in tatoeba.org <http://tatoeba.org> to improve the
quality of this database.

I'm interested in stuff that I can find on www.lojban.org, preferably on, or linked to, on the home page.  That is where the world sees what Lojban is.

It has > 10 000 sentences in Lojban. Many of
them are taken from IRC.

Otherwise, it's hard to read the logs in search of good sentences.
What is good and what is not?

If you can't tell, how would you expect the average Joe not-yet-a-Lojbanist to do so?

i add those sentences that i find interesting to lists. if you want tatoeba sentences copied to lojban.org tiki this is not a problem. Where would you like them to see and in what format? As a two-column table?

If moving all discussions to Lojban fail then you can ban us and
continue the old policy of non-proliferation of Lojban zo'oru'e.

That isn't "policy".  It is de facto reality.

There is a separate thread where people are making requests both in Lojban and in English.

mi tugni i e'u co'u pilno lo glibau gi'e co'a pilno lo jbobau po'o
i ku'ido pu cusku losedu'u do na kakne i ku'i ma'a ka'e troci vau pei

na go'i - at least, if I want to actually read and respond to all the messages in this thread.

        If a person can speak fluent Lojban why disallow him/her from
        BPFK and LLG?

    Who is disallowing anyone?

Sorry, I think I need to read those bylaws more carefully. Could you

remind in two-three sentences of the procedure and requirements of

applying new members? Is it too hard?

People seem to be figuring it out %^)

I agree. One of the recent theses on Lojban and FrameNet showed that
Lojban is a powerful tool for machine translation (at least potentially).

However, where are those other applications of Lojban shown by LLG?
I can't see any activities at all, neither in learning Lojban, nor
in psychology, philosophy, logic, mathematics ...

A lot of discussions on lojban list have tended to break down into questions of philosophy or logic rather than language usage.

lojbab

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[v4hn]

On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 07:52:57PM +0400, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> One of the recent theses on Lojban and FrameNet showed that Lojban
> is a powerful tool for machine translation (at least potentially).

.ua .i la'e di'u nuzba fo mi .i le se stidi ku ciska fi ma?
.i mi kucli sy.

mi'e la .van. mu'o

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 8/26/2014 2:20 PM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> It has > 10 000 sentences in Lojban. Many of
> them are taken from IRC.
>
> Otherwise, it's hard to read the logs in search of good sentences.
> What is good and what is not?
>
>
> If you can't tell, how would you expect the average Joe
> not-yet-a-Lojbanist to do so?
>
>

> i add those sentences that i find interesting to lists. if you want

> tatoeba sentences copied to lojban.org <http://lojban.org> tiki this is

> not a problem. Where would you like them to see and in what format? As a
> two-column table?

I am the last person to consult on website design. I'm just saying that
a chronic complaint from new people and casual strangers is that our
home page lacks current news, and that if people like you want more
people to read Lojban, you should make sure Lojban text which will
encourage discussion should be on the home page or some other place
where people will quickly page to. In the past Matt was encouraging
discussion with a blog, so it seems like a timely blog, in language,
possibly with multiple contributors, would be the sort of thing that
will encourage what you want. I would ask Matt for other ideas - he was
the one with ideas and enthusiasm for promoting Lojban. I'm of the
wrong generation to know how to appeal to youngsters (i.e. people under
50 %^)

> If moving all discussions to Lojban fail then you can ban us and
> continue the old policy of non-proliferation of Lojban zo'oru'e.
>
> That isn't "policy". It is de facto reality.
>
>

> There is a separate thread where people are making requests both in
> Lojban and in English.

What thread? "End vowel for slot" doesn't seem like that sort of thing.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-08-27 3:18 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org>:

On 8/26/2014 2:20 PM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

        It has > 10 000 sentences in Lojban. Many of
        them are taken from IRC.

        Otherwise, it's hard to read the logs in search of good sentences.
        What is good and what is not?


    If you can't tell, how would you expect the average Joe
    not-yet-a-Lojbanist to do so?

i add those sentences that i find interesting to lists. if you want

tatoeba sentences copied to lojban.org <http://lojban.org> tiki this is

not a problem. Where would you like them to see and in what format? As a
two-column table?

I am the last person to consult on website design.  I'm just saying that a chronic complaint from new people and casual strangers is that our home page lacks current news, and that if people like you want more people to read Lojban, you should make sure Lojban text which will encourage discussion should be on the home page or some other place where people will quickly page to.  In the past Matt was encouraging discussion with a blog, so it seems like a timely blog, in language, possibly with multiple contributors, would be the sort of thing that will encourage what you want.  I would ask Matt for other ideas - he was the one with ideas and enthusiasm for promoting Lojban.  I'm of the wrong generation to know how to appeal to youngsters (i.e. people under 50 %^)

For storing lengthy ideas some use blogs or pages on

lojban.org and 

mw.lojban.org

In most cases they place links to their articles (no matter where their articles reside) to the freenode #lojban channel, 
http://reddit.com/r/lojban/ or https://www.facebook.com/groups/lojban/ or to twitter.com

        If moving all discussions to Lojban fail then you can ban us and
        continue the old policy of non-proliferation of Lojban zo'oru'e.

    That isn't "policy".  It is de facto reality.

There is a separate thread where people are making requests both in
Lojban and in English.

What thread?  "End vowel for slot" doesn't seem like that sort of thing.

I don't know if you receive messages from it. Here its online copy showing that using only Lojban is not a problem:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/jiHfjZUqTjM

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 8/27/2014 2:25 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> I am the last person to consult on website design. I'm just saying
> that a chronic complaint from new people and casual strangers is
> that our home page lacks current news, and that if people like you
> want more people to read Lojban, you should make sure Lojban text
> which will encourage discussion should be on the home page or some
> other place where people will quickly page to. In the past Matt was
> encouraging discussion with a blog, so it seems like a timely blog,
> in language, possibly with multiple contributors, would be the sort
> of thing that will encourage what you want. I would ask Matt for
> other ideas - he was the one with ideas and enthusiasm for promoting
> Lojban. I'm of the wrong generation to know how to appeal to
> youngsters (i.e. people under 50 %^)
>
>

> For storing lengthy ideas some use blogs or pages on

> lojban.org <http://lojban.org> and
> mw.lojban.org <http://mw.lojban.org>

Where? Not obvious from the home page, which is where people look.

> In most cases they place links to their articles (no matter where their
> articles reside) to the freenode #lojban channel,
> http://reddit.com/r/lojban/ or https://www.facebook.com/groups/lojban/

> or to twitter.com <http://twitter.com>

I don't see how any of those is responsive to what I described.

> If moving all discussions to Lojban fail then you can
> ban us and
> continue the old policy of non-proliferation of Lojban
> zo'oru'e.
>
> That isn't "policy". It is de facto reality.
>
> There is a separate thread where people are making requests both in
> Lojban and in English.
>
> What thread? "End vowel for slot" doesn't seem like that sort of thing.
>

> I don't know if you receive messages from it. Here its online copy
> showing that using only Lojban is not a problem:
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/jiHfjZUqTjM

Actually, most or all of those posters provided a translation. But of
course, that thread isn't really a discussion, either.

Could Lojbanists carry out a discussion, say, of Craig's ZG issue,
entirely in Lojban? Probably several people could, including Craig, but
they aren't doing so. And probably half or more of the membership could
not follow such a discussion, or if they could follow it, could not then
contribute in a timely matter. (I might be able to follow it at email
speeds, but I haven't exactly figured out what the issue is from his
English description; it wouldn't be easier for me in Lojban). That is
why I called the situation "de facto reality" and not "policy".

lojbab

[Michael Turniansky]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 10:44 AM, Gleki Arxokuna <gleki.is...@gmail.com> wrote:

2014-08-23 18:18 GMT+04:00 Jorge Llambías <jjlla...@gmail.com>:

On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 10:14 AM, Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:

On 8/23/2014 12:33 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

This all looks strange. It sound like all members say "Yeah, I support
Lojban but I'm not going to learn it".

Yep.

I don't think the "all members" part is correct. Looking at the list of members http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+Members (which seems eerily up to date) I would say perhaps a little bit less than half of the members.

I can confirm only la .pier., la .camgusmis., la .xorxes.. As for the others I simply never seen long (more than one utterance) conversations with them in real time.

Ofc. I monitored only communication via internet, not IRL.

Outside IRC and LLG personally I also communicated with la gejyspa in private chats.

ri'ero'a mi pu jivni lo du'u do tolmo'i tu'a mi vau zo'o .i ji'a ra'unai mi na selbe'e lylygy 

                            -- gejyspa