[conlang_learners] Conlang Learners Vote list

[Jim Henry]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 8:44 PM, Padraic Brown<elemtilas at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- On Sun, 8/30/09, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973 at gmail.com> wrote:

>> counters can
>> try again to contact the creator, and revert to the
>> runner-up if they
>> can't contact them reasonably quickly (say, by 17
>> September).  Does that make sense?
>
> I would still prefer a firm list before the voting starts. Make life easy for all concerned! If a conlanger hasn't responded by now, they're probably not going to.

That's likely -- the longer we wait for a response, the less likely it
is we're going to get one.  But with the way instant-runoff voting
works, I don't think it actually matters whether Foolang whose creator
is unwilling to let us use her conlang but hasn't responded and said
so yet is eliminated before or after the voting.  The end result
should be essentially the same whether it's eliminated beforehand
(because we haven't heard from her) and nobody lists it on their
ballot, or if it's eliminated later (when she finally responds saying
no, we can't use it, or the vote-counters try a second time to contact
her and fail) and we go to the runner-up (which would have been the
first-place winner if nobody had listed Foolang on their ballot
because it was pre-disqualified).

But the result *might* be different if it's a case of a conlanger who
just doesn't check email very often or reply to it promptly; in that
case, letting people vote for the conlang if they want to while we
wait another week or so to hear back from the creator, and maybe
prodding them a second time in the event their conlang is chosen by
the vote, could result in a different winner, and one that's more
congenial to a larger number of voters.


> That way, everyone involved -- learners as well as creators, knows in advance what is involved and is ready to get started without the hassle of not really knowing if the chosen language's creator is up to the task of facilitating everyone else's learning it!

If some voters are only willing to vote for conlangs whose creators
have already given permission, or only for those whose creators sound
positively enthusiastic about helping us learn their conlang, they're
free to only list conlangs of that sort on their ballot.  The apparent
availability of conlangs' creators is certainly going to influence my
own rankings, though probably some very interesting conlangs whose
availability is not yet certain will rank higher than some less
interesting ones whose creator is definitely available.

-- 
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/