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Lojbab referred in a recent message to my despair at the mess that is SL. There are two reasons for the despair. The first is that until recently, the prescription was deemed complete, even though the language was far from complete. The second reason is that if the text of prescription is the only source of authority, then it becomes possible to cast doubt on every aspect of the prescription, greatly diminishing its value. But there are also reasons for hope. It is now generally recognized that the prescription needs to be extended by the BF. And the BF is led by a dynamo who believes Lojban should realize the guiding logical principles of Loglan. But in the medium term, which I define as beginning when the BF's current mission is discharged, and ending when all fluent Lojbanists agree with one another on all points of Lojban grammar, the problems will persist. The prescription may still be incomplete, sometimes in crucial ways, and if the prescription is solely textual it will always be susceptible to sophistry. The solution would be to keep the BF in session in the medium term. Issues unresolved by the prescription and issues of how to interpret the prescription could be referred to the BF. The BF could propose answers and put them forward to the community for ratification. As time went on, the workload of the BF would drastically diminish (because unsettled isses breed unsettled issues and settled issues breed settled issues). In that scenario the outcome at the worst would be that due to backwards compatibility Lojban would be somewhat kludgey, somewhat ugly, and somewhat unergonomic. But it would at least not be a mess. It might still be Microsoft Lojban, but at least it wouldn't be McLojban. --And.