Re: Fire Hydrant for the Flames

At 05:59 PM 3/12/2002 -0600, Achelle Pedyr:
><snip>
>         You may be protesting, "But I don't have time to go through all the
>languages that fly by on the list!" And neither do I. As a solution, let me
>propose the following: everyone who wants a peer review of the language sign
>up on a list. It would be nice if this were a web site, as then the order
>(first come, first serve?) would be visible to all. Then as your turn comes,
>you post your language to the list, preferably with something like [PEER] in
>the subject line so that those of us with itchy delete keys spot it. If we
>had a regular system (say one post on Monday, one post Thursday) that would
>mean two peer reviews a week. Much more managable, in my opinion. It would
>also give three days for comments and exchanges. If more comments are
>necesary, the threads could be easily taken off-list. But I believe that it
>is important to have the threads on-list for a couple of days, so that others
>can comment on the comments. We want open peer review.

    I think this is a wonderful idea. I know that I have been frustrated in
the past by lack of comments ("Everyone has oodles of time to disscuss
their regional pronunciation of 'X'. Why won't anyone critique my
presentation of my lang?") And at the same time, I have been frustrated
that I have little time to comment on other langs, and less knowledge about
what would be helpful or interesting to comment - the only thing I'm sure
of most of the time is that I like the lang, or not, and this feature is
neat. What _does_ a good critique look like? What are people looking for?
I'm not even sure I know what I'm looking for!. And of course, commenting
on other langs depends on noticing them among the 3, 247 posts about how
mean/nice those Luxembourgians are.
   I wonder what the best way to provide the list would be? Personally, I
would prefer something a little more flexible than you have it, as I may
discover, as time is coming close for my lang to be reviewed, that the
verbal system is all wrong, or that I don't like the way genitive
constructions work, or any of a number of things that will send me back to
the drawing board for a rehaul. And if I'm in rehaul, I'm  not terribly
inclined to present everything right then!
   I would think that doing a lang a week might be sufficient (well, maybe
after a week or two of people already prepared for a review). Another idea
would be to take things just the opposite of what you have here.
    People would sign up for a chunk of time (a week), and for any given
chunk of time, there would be 3 (or some other suitable number) people who
would be responsible for providing careful critiques of any language
presented during that week. This way, people who aren't quite ready
wouldn't have to wait 6 months to get comments. If we did things this way,
I'd say that the first month or so be "staffed" by more people, so that we
could handle the expected rush of people clamoring for comments.
   Or maybe we just need a good critique or two to be posted to get an idea
of just what constitutes a good critique. I know that would help my
commenting greatly.

   Aidan