[conlang_learners] where do we begin?

[Jim Henry]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 8:30 PM, Padraic Brown<elemtilas at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Actually, I'd suggest that the issue of where to discuss the language should be sorted out now. By next summer, a whole new project could be under way, and if the present language is still being discussed here, folks trying to get a new project underway will be competing with those already learning.

I agree, if you mean by "now" == "within a week or two after the
voting results are announced" and not "now" == in the next few days,
before we know what conlang we'll be learning".  For one thing, the
name of the new mailing list or forum, if needed, is going to depend
on what conlang we're learning.  For another, several of the nominated
conlangs already have a mailing list.  For another, the preferences of
the conlang creator might factor in our decision to use a mailing list
or phpBB or something else, or whether to use conlang.org or Google
Groups or Yahoo Groups or something else; we'd want to make the
conlang creator one of the moderators of the group, as a courtesy if
nothing else, unless they don't want that technical responsibility.


> One other consideration, since this is supposed to be an ongoing project, is that of archives. The fewer places a project's archives are stored, the better it is for future research.

Two places, a mailing list for ongoing discussions and a wiki for
registering the results of discusions,  storing translations and
original writing in the conlang, translations of the lessons and
grammar etc. into more languages, etc., would probably make sense.

We could make a new wiki for the language, if someone is willing to
host it and set it up, but at the moment I don't see a strong reason
not to use FrathWiki.  We could create a main

wiki.frath.net/Foolang

and then subpages like

wiki.frath.net/Foolang/Original_writing
wiki.frath.net/Foolang/Translations
wiki.frath.net/Foolang/Lessons

etc., avoiding namespace pollution.

Or, depending on the language chosen and its creator's available time
and technical skills, there may already be a wiki or the creator may
prefer to host such a wiki on their own site -- all reasons to wait
and finalize this after we know what langauge we've chosen and have
talked to the creator (if they're interested in getting involved in
the project and not just giving us permission to use their language as
we see fit, like Ms. Elgin or Mr. Harrison or Mr. Gilson).

I think earlier we mentioned possibly creating images for the language
(pictures illustrating words from the lexicon or sample sentences, for
instance) and code (e.g., entry methods for SCIM or XIM or Microsoft
Keyboard Creator or whatever, custom flashcard programs or data files
for off-the-shelf flashcard software, fonts, etc.).  Would a wiki be a
good place for those as well?  pics.conlang.org can store the images
if FrathWiki can't, but ideally we'd want a single site to keep all
the stuff organized.

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