Re: META: A CONLANG FAQ?

This is an "I second the motion" reply.

On Sun, 16 Jul 2006 12:54:37 -0700, Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:

>I'd like to suggestion that every month or so the list
>owner should post a CONLANG FAQ - relevant policies,
>group lingo (eg YAEPT, ANADEW, etc), suggestions for
>formatting,
Yes, I think we need these once a month.  I've said so before.

Especially the tags and the formatting, since ignorance of or misuse of
these seem to irritate some of our members a lot (perhaps more than
reasonably so in the opinions of some of the other members).

>what the group is about,
The Yahoo! group "world design", for example, posts a "what this group is
about" on the first of every month.  It includes a little about some of the
policies, as well.

>CXS vs Unicode intro, etc.
I personally would love to always be able to locate a URL that explained
the following;
IPA
Extended IPA
SAMPA
X-SAMPA
C-XSAMPA
Z-SAMPA
with equivalences between them noted, and with ways to include the
characters in my documents.

>Does such a thing already exist? If so, I've not seen
>it being posted.
Well,
1. For the most part, yes.
2. It's not posted monthly, so it's easy to lose track of, and hard to find
again.
3. The part about the IPA, Ex-IPA (my abbreviation -- don't know if it's
OK), SAMPA, X-SAMPA, C-X-SAMPA, and Z-SAMPA, are definitely hard to
locate.  I don't think they've ever been posted on-list; or at least not
all of them have.  I have to look around for C-X-SAMPA all over again
whenever I need it; sometimes, unsuccessfully. (I can't use ordinary
bookmarks because I don't own the computer(s) my internet connection is
on.  There's probably some way of bookmarking anyway, but I haven't figured
it out.)

> - Sai
-----
Thanks for writing.

======================================================

On Sun, 16 Jul 2006 14:48:18 -0700, Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
>On 7/16/06, taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...> wrote:
>>Many attempts have been made, so far all attempts
>>have failed. One possible reason is that "conlang
>>faq" is construed to mean "a faq about conlanging,
>>how to conlang and all things linguistic",
Henceforth "a conlanging FAQ".

>>instead of "a faq about the weirdities and in-jokes
>>of the conlang-l mailing list as currently served on
>>listserv.brown.edu, with historical footnotes
>>for when it was hosted elsewhere."
Henceforth "a CONLANG-L FAQ".

>>The latter is potentially a finite document, the
>>former is certainly not.
>
>I was only suggesting the latter - a CONLANG FAQ,
(a CONLANG-L FAQ) -- eldin

>not a conlang FAQ.
(not a conlanging FAQ) -- eldin

>:-P It should probably refer out to other sources
>for "how to", linguistic theory, etc., and stay
>purely meta.
>
> - Sai
BTW as far as the "conlanging FAQ" (the one about conlanging), as opposed
to the "CONLANG-L FAQ" (the one about CONLANG-L on Listserv.Brown.Edu),
goes; it should be limited by the "F".  For example it should just answer
the N most-frequently-asked-by-newbies questions, where N=10 or 20 or 30 or
100.

Actually a monthly document should just answer the 10 and refer to a URL
for the 100, or allow the user to request that the 100-question version be
sent to him/her.

Probably the same could be done with (or for or about) the "CONLANG-L FAQ"
as well.

Indeed perhaps the monthly document should only include the top 10 "CONLANG-
L FAQ" and refer to the URL or to the requestable document not only for the
top 100 but also for _all_ of the "conlanging FAQ" top 100.

-----
eldin

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