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[Hey, don't you enjoy the luxury of this list being set to Reply-to-list? I had forgotten about that bonus of switching discussion to this list.] Xorxes: > >I joined Lojban list in 1991, and design issues were hardly ever > >discussed, and when they were, they were initiated by the rank > >and file and generally deprecated by Lojban Central. The list > >itself dates back only to 1989, so it seems unlikely that all > >issues were thrashed out in the two years before I joined. So > >was it the case that they were not actually ever thrashed out? > > That's my impression too, I joined in 1994. I would hazard that > many things went like this: Some issue came up which was not > obvious how to solve, so lojbab asked pc about it. Then pc > gave lojbab a most likely correct but hard to decipher answer. > Lojbab interpreted, and then John Cowan tried to make whatever > sense could be rescued out of that interpretation. Somewhat > like the Broken Phone game. The results are still pretty > impressive, which shows the high quality of participants > and the Loglan starting point, in spite of the method. That is my assessment too, with half-understood Loglan as a further ur-source. It never ceases to amaze me that Loglan/Lojban ever got created -- a changing cast of so many clever people involved, and somehow the collaboration worked. I find it hard to think of any analogues in the rest of our culture. The weird situation is that there are loads of good ideas and Right Solutions buried under a film of crud. When we manage to scrape off the crud, as with le vs. lo, there's a sense of triumph. When we don't, as with CAhA (though Adam is currently having a go with this one), it's frustrating. I wish I could get into Lojbab's head, though, to understand the mindset that cares enough to develop a language based on a load of fundamentally good ideas, but doesn't care if they are then buried by incomprehending specification or incomprehending usage. And he's not alone, of course, in thinking that way. --And.