History: Beginning Mailing List

Source of version: 2 (current)

__-> ((Beginner's Mailing List))__ ''The list is now made...'' ''Pretend that you just read the end of the ((Lojban Mailing List)) page...'' Indeed, the community would do well, IMO, to grow beyond the mailing list. The community awfully needs a place where beginners don't have to deal with endless arguments about grammatical details, and where a culture can start to flourish without people beating down and attacking attempts. (So as not to sound like I'm making anonymous attacks, you can inquire privately to me about what I'm referring to, assuming you can't figure it out.) I'd been thinking about offering publically to accept questions from beginners who were afraid of the mailing list, now I'm thinking maybe they might be better served by another mailing list, lojban-beginners or something, wherein technical argument is banned. (Why, just today we saw someone's unsubscription message they tried sending to the list. Who knows, maybe they were turned off by the arguments?) --((Jay Kominek|jay)) (p.s.- I don't think doing this would harm the main mailing list, as the traffic on it has been growing drastically this year. Why, this month we'll more than surpass 1000 messages, which will be 1/10th of all traffic the list has ever seen, in a single month!) *''It's always been Lojbab who's been opposed to splitting the list. If it were to split, though, I think it should be the technical discussions that are hived off to a Lojban-tech list. The list called "Lojban" should be the list with the broadest appeal.'' -- ((And)) **That would probably be preferable, but sufficently unlikely that I didn't really bother giving it any consideration. How do we manage it without some sort of official decree from the moderator of the list (((John Cowan)) I think?) or from ((Bob LeChevalier))? --((Jay Kominek|jay)) ---- Jay, I know who you mean :-) , and truly, I'm not offended. (''you were the furthest person from my mind...'') Until now, the contention has been that the list cannot survive the split, because there's too few participants. This may well no longer be the case. The Klingon list resolves this by distinct headers in email; that's been tried on Lojban list many a time, and failed. I don't think a separate list is a bad idea. OTOH, jbosnu __does__ exist, and tends not to get much traffic; on the rare occasions we do Lojban chat, it's terribly convenient to do it on the list you're already on. Just food for thought... -- nitcion One more question, though? In my day, I benefitted a __lot__ from people offering corrections to my text. In fact, I wish people would do so to me more often. I understand this would also not be licit on a a beginners' list, so I'm wondering how, if beginners get things wrong (and I mean uncontroversially wrong, like dropping ''cu'') they __do__ learn better? Encourage them to go into the main list when they're confident enough? Offlist corrections, like Robin's suggested for the story game? The point of the beginner's list would be for a beginner to be able to get an answer to a question which they can understand (and to do anything else related to Lojban they want, as long as it doesn't devolve into arguing in English). And for the answer(s) to be written by people who are willing to tolerate mistakes (as at least one party has made clear he isn't willing to do). If the answerers have a disagreement, and can't decide on the semantics of something, they take it to the main list, and the beginner is given him the best answer that can be given at that point, with a note saying that they just started a raging debate on the other list about how it works, and that they might want to ask the question again in a month to see how the argument turned out. Further, some benevolent moderator (I'm volunteering, FWIW), will forward developments to the beginners which they might be interested in. (Like the creation of Nick's lessons) I'm not entirely sure of the mechanics of how I want the list to work, beyond making it a place where beginners can ask questions without many of the worries I had when I first subscribed to the Lojban list and had all kinds of questions about every other page of ((The Book)). --((Jay Kominek|jay)) Sooooo... uncontroversial corrections OK, as long as you're not an arsehole about it (i.e., perhaps, only offer them when someone solicits them, or don't harangue people at length but do something clean like: "You should probably say XYZ instead. For reasons why, see Refgram, p. n, or Lessons, page blah, or [[Insert no more than a paragraph of expanation here.]") (If I've misunderstood 'tolerate', please tell me; the alternative, discussion without correction, is __I think__ the niche served by jbosnu.) And the minute controversy arises, it goes to the main list. Do I have it right? I know I'm jumping the gun on mechanics, so you don't have to answer right away... -- nitcion. ''This is a great idea. do you have a philosophical problem with using Yahoo, which hosts the other four Lojban mailing lists? I would love to see newer blood. We have had a few names pop in, like that woman doing Bible xlations, but none stuck around .uinai --xod'' None. Yahoo is sort of lame, but it is convinent, and convinence for beginners is the goal here. --((Jay Kominek|jay)) ''Furthermore if people are searching the directory of mailing lists on Yahoo and discover Lojban, they may be more comfortable joining one for beginnners. --xod'' Impossible to manipulate the archives of, I understand, but the 'list of record' remains the main list, so that's not adding to our woes... -- nitcion. I can arrange for another archive to be maintained, theoretically. I don't see a need, though... The Beginning list wouldn't really be in competition with jbosnu. It would be an appropriate forum for English questions. (And, in fact, I'd anticipate that most questions would be formulated in English, with just tidbits of Lojban. Requests for commentary or "is this right?") --jay