GENERAL/POLICY IMPORTANT - Proposed change in Lojban Pub. Policy 1/2

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>]

Lojban Policy change 1/2

Abstract:  The following (broken into 2 messages) proposes a major shift
in LLG publication policy regarding what goes into Ju'i Lobypli (JL),
and addressing what I see as being a critical issue raised by those
proposing a newsletter associated with the ckafybarja (coffeehouse)
writing project.  That is the need to see more Lojban text reach final
publication stage more quickly, while also removing me, from being the
bottleneck behind which such text is backed up.  Thus, instead of the
ckafybarja newsletter, I am counterproposing a change in JL editorial
policy, such that much more text will appear in print, with a much
shorter review process (and less perfection in the result and fewer
English trasnslations and other crutches for the learner).  This would
be done by using the community of people who have demonstrated some
skill in the language as editors-de-jour of individual pieces, who will
negotiate an acceptable level of Lojban quality with the authors either
through Lojban List postings or private correspondence - email or snail
mail as appropriate).  My own limited effort would be in coordinating to
make sure that all text gets reviewed (and I might delegate the
coordinating task as well), and to make sure that as much finished text
as possible sees print, while ensuring that all text makes it into the
Lojban text archive.  My subsidiary goals will be to set some guidelines
for the editors to maximize text quality and consistency.  I want to
reduce the amount of time I spend preparing the non-news portion of JL,
to little more than standardized formatting, so I can spend more
productive time on technical issues, writing books, and actually using
Lojban myself once in a while.

If those of you reading this agree in principle (and please respond
quickly), there will be some immediate changes, that will affect what
goes into the issue of JL I'm now working on.  Specifically, I will be
trying to get current revisions of all Lojban text written for the
ckafybarja project, Ivan's story of the stairs, and possibly Nick and
Iain's MEX efforts, all into the current issue.  There will be no
translations provided beyond what is already written, unless I take one
or two short pieces and give a literal English and colloquial English
translation in order to show people what they may want do for
themselves.  Except for news, the Sapir-Whorf discussions long-promised
for this issue, and the edited ckafybarja project summary and papers,
there will no other technical material in JL17 (I may include the draft
MEX paper as an enclosure, but will not let it be a delaying or
budget-busting factor).  I will need the best possible revised texts
within a few days, a week at most, or I will go with what I have.  I
intend to have JL17 out by Christmas, and that won't be easy unless I
change tactics fast.

JL will eventually contain much more Lojban text, probably eventually
more than 50%, and without the padding of translation.  There will be
added technical material and news, but not as much.  The bulk of
pedagogical writing will go into the grammar summary, textbook, and
dictionary writing, and not into JL (though if space, time, and money
permits, we will continue to publish pieces of those works as
supplements.)

I am of course especially interested in the views both of those who
proposed the ckafybarja newsletter, to see whether this proposal
supplants most of the needs semu'i the proposal, and of those people who
have not written much Lojban text, as to whether you would find this
policy change motivating to you in learning the language and in trying
to write Lojban text yourself.


DISCUSSION:

I have been reviewing the mass of discussion and text for the ckafybarja
project in preparing Ju'i Lobypli (JL) #17 (thanks, Veijo for assembling
things together - it made things go MUCH faster, even though I'm adding
back in some stuff you deleted.)

I am jumping to some conclusions, reading between the lines, etc., on
some of things that were proposed - especially in conjunction with the
"newsletter" proposal.  And I am making a counter-proposal that may not
quite be what people were thinking of, but which is more likely to be
successful in the short run and perhaps long-term as well.

I first of all need to make it clear that LLG/Lojban Central/Nora and
Bob think it is great that people are thinking about doing things
separately from the 'official' way.  Lojban got started because we
wanted people to feel that they could make the language 'their own', and
this newsletter proposal, as well as the ckafybarja project as a whole,
is a sign of a certain maturity of this sort in the community.  I don't
want to be seen as pre-empting an independent effort, if the
independence of the effort is the essential feature.  I don't think it
is in this case.  Meanwhile, I think this approach maximizes my ability
to delegate my editorial job to others, and if other people are doing
that job as I envision it, they may not have time to separately edit the
newsletter and write their own Lojban texts.

My success at leading LLG, has been in recognizing trends in the
community, and adapting the 'official organization' to these trends, to
keep the organization pushing in the direction the community as a whole
seems to be moving.  The organization ends up encompassing all the
multitudinous indpendent efforts of individuals and groups, supporting
them, while hopefully not stifling them.  Meanwhile, none of them should
become so exclusionary as to splinter the effort.  This is what JCB
never learned to do; I've thus far been doing better.  It is time for me
to tyr to recognize a trend and adapt to it.

Thus we have subgroups by interest type (computer applications,
Sapir-Whorf, the international language movement), Lojban List for the
netters, a couple of local conversation/study groups, the JL and LK
communities, and now, what seems to be an emerging need for a sub-community
of...

Well, what is the sub-community this proposal addresses.  Ostensibly, it
seems to be (1) the people who want to write creatively in Lojban, using
the ckafybarja as a common basis for such writing.  But there is a
considerable overlap between this community and a couple of related, but
different, sub-communities.  If these related interests are addressed at
the same time, the effort stands a better chance of success and growth,
and also of remaining well integrated with the rest of the community.

These other subcommunities I see are:

2 the Jimbobs who have reached a level of competence in the language
where they can learn from each other by using the language, but not so
much by talking about the language to others of less skill; (this group
parallels Nora and my and Sylvia's situation in the spoken Lojban
community - we cannot improve our spoken Lojban until we can get enough
people at our level of speech, and then pull them aside and interact
with them; the Jimbobs are at this level, but working in written rather
than spoken Lojban).

3 the netters who are used to interacting at a message traffic rate
which is more conversation-like than letter-like, leading to Lojban List
threads of messages that quote each other in limited context that are
mystifying to people who haven't been following the thread.  The
ckafybarja papers summary, as assembled by Veijo, is so much more
coherent to me than it seemed in passing.  The individual trees merged
together revealing a lush and beautiful forest (I didn't realize until
now that Veijo actually posted two etudes, rather than repeated
revisions of the same one.)

4 the less active Lojbanists who want to learn the language, are
probably going to concentrate on the written language at first from lack
of access to other speakers (or from lack of time to do more than read).
They probably want to see completed text reflecting the way the language
IS, without the debate of the creation and review process.  The threads
that are involved in creating texts include much discussion about what
is right and what is wrong, much of which is good feedback to the people
actually communicating, but distracting for the person trying to learn
that wants to know the right answer.

5 the community of people who want to see Lojban a success, and who
recognize that the mark of success is to have text in and about Lojban
in print, in volume.  The more text in the language, the better.


JL has been focussed on the less active Lojbanist of group 4. The Lojban
List readership has been a mixture of all of these groups, but most are
closely associated with group 4 as well.  But the people who write
material for Lojban List (and ultimately for JL) are primarily people
oriented towards the other groups, especially group 3 (which among the
people on Lojban List is essentially the same as those on the List in
group 2).

I've felt the need to set a high standard for Lojban text in JL to set a
pedagogical example for the community.  People expect us to produce GOOD
Lojban.  Unfortunately, I've learned in the past few years that I cannot
manage the organization and teach the language, and write books, and
also edit a lot of Lojban text and write and translate as well.
Schedules have slipped, and JL publication has reached a sorry state of
irregularity, and even with delays the amount of Lojban text remains
small and far from the current forefront (slated for JL17 has been
Ivan's translation of the story of the stairs from Bulgarian - excellent
Lojban but written over a year ago; I would hope Ivan, and the rest of
the Jimbobs are writing better Lojban than they did back then.)

To meet the needs of the non-netters of group 2, we need to see much
more Lojban text in print.  More publication might also inspire more
Lojbanists to write in the language.  But Bob and Nora cannot review and
produce JLs at the current standard of text quality with a greater
volume of text than present.  Indeed, adding kids to our family has cut
my Lojban time, and the automated tools that we've been developing are
incomplete and not nearly enough to do the job.

(Interestingly, The Loglan Institute hit the problem once before, and
failed to solve it.  In 1984, when their publication The Loglanist (TL)
ceased production, text was taking more than a year to reach
publication, by which time it was semi-obsolete because of language
evolution, and the people producing TL were spending so much time
producing it that they couldn't get any real work done.  Sound
familiar???)

I thus believe that the ckafybarja newsletter proposal is as much a cry
of dissatisfaction from those of those of the community who want to see
more text in print, with the slowness and unresponsiveness of the JL
review and production process, as it is a need for a specific organ for the
creative writers of the community.  If so, a solution that addresses the
problem from the point of view of all of the sub-communities mentioned above
may be better.

The answer has been provided by my experiences in learning Russian.
Simply put, you learn languages from a high volume of usage and input
and eventually expression in the language.  Quality is nice, but my
Russian has improved tremendously by dealing with the daily
communicating within the needs of my 5 and a 6 year old native
Russian-speaking children, who have a rather limited set of interests,
an idiosyncratic and age-limited vocabulary in Russian, and their own
severe imperfections in their use of their native tongue.  That daily
give and take is very high-volume, and both the kids and I make
countless grammatical errors.  But every once in a while, I realize that
I'm doing it wrong because my error results in miscommunication or a
failure to communicate, AND I LEARN.  (And so do the kids; Avgust in
particular speaks much more clearly than when he left the orphanage.)

The Lojban learning process needs to better emulate this natural
language learning process.  As JL is the primary mass organ of
communicating in the Lojban community, I need to find a way to make JL
meet that need.  That means removing my own text-reviewing productivity
as the roadblock to JL text-publication.  It also means lowering the
pedagogical 'perfection' of the writings, providing fewer English
translations, so that people will actually use the language to read the
text.  It also means co-opting the people who were interested in
editor-de-jour-ing the new newsletter and getting them to instead
perform a similar process for JL.

----
lojbab                                                      lojbab@grebyn.com
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273