re: Lingua Franca

[WFreitag@aol.com]

Hi Folks,

I regret that I couldn't make it to Phrontisterion. Deadlines and financial 
stress utterly ruled out any possibility. This annoyed and depressed me and 
made me not want to talk about it in advance.

I'd appreciate it if someone were to briefly summarize the vital statistics 
-- number of attendees, general emergent theme, weather, impressions of 
successfulness, and future plans decided upon. Todd's comments suggest that a 
report is being compiled. I look forward to seeing it.

As for a glossary -- I've come to the conclusion that throwing a glossary out 
there doesn't actually help, it just creates arguments over the definitions. 
This would be OK if there were a way to resolve such arguments, but in a 
highly egalitarian mailing list it doesn't happen. What is needed, I've come 
to believe, is a forum with a benevolent but dictatorial moderating voice, 
who gets to say, "OK, this has been discussed and everyone has had their say, 
and the working definition we're going to carry forward is..." Even if the 
moderator's decision isn't the best possible one, the correspondents are 
better off for beging able to communicate at all.

(This belief didn't just come to me in a dream one night. I've been 
participating in a bulletin board forum that actually works this way. I'll 
tell y'all about it next post.)

The available resources make it relatively simple nowadays to set up online 
bulletin boards. It occurs to me that I _might_ be temperamentally suited for 
the moderator's role. It's something I might want to try in a few month's 
time. But getting people to show up is an ego-bruising challenge that I just 
might not be able to face.

Best regards,
Walt