[conlang_learners] where do we begin?

[Padraic Brown]

--- On Sun, 8/30/09, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973 at gmail.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".

I mean "now" == "before much language discussion begins to take place". In my opinion, "now" being "a year after everyone's been using this list to learn language x and discussions about what language might follow has begun" is probably a wee bit late!

>  For one thing, the
> name of the new mailing list or forum, if needed, is going
> to depend
> on what conlang we're learning. 

Of course. That can be done very quickly, though. After all, you guys got the vote counting list set up and tested vèry quickly indeed! There's no reason "conlang_learners_foolang" can't be set up within a couple days of the election's end.

> For another, several of the nominated
> conlangs already have a mailing list.  

In such a case, I don't think there would be any reason to set up a list specific for this project.

> 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; 

To be quite honest, I think as a matter of pragmatism, some kind of simple mailing list and/or wiki combination would be required, regardless of the language creator's preference. After all, it's a community of users, and everyone who expects to participate should be allowed to do so without them having to set up special software or learning how to use some special software apart from their regular email system.

> 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.

Sensible.

> > 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

Sure. The nice thing about wikis is the ease with which people can create articles and sub-articles. I would suggest the above be "categories" rather than actual pages. As Foolang users create literature, the corpus will probably become unwieldy if 20 or 30 separate pieces of original writing are placed in one article. If 20 or 30 individual articles / pages are created by various authors and each of those pieces is marked with an appropriate category, that makes it easy to find items in those categories. Articles can have one or more category attached (like, "original writing", "poetry", "metric", "fantasy", "mythology"; or "
original writing", "prose", "historical")

> etc., avoiding namespace pollution.

Indeed.

> 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).

Indeed. I'm not saying create the list and wiki tonight! I do think the process should be finalised early so that whatever media are deemed most appropriate can be set up quickly and people can start making the most of them, without logistical discussions running into weeks and months after they should already be learning the language!

> 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.

We have lots of pictures on the IB wiki, so I don't think that should be a problem. We also have (a few) sound files. Pictures, other files and websites can also be externally linked. Other file types (like .exe, etc) probably can not be stored or used within a wiki.

Padraic

> Jim Henry