Conlang posts (Was: Re: gooey as a fruitbat, etc. & a semi-paranoid question)

-----Original Message-----
From: H. S. Teoh [mailto:hsteoh@quickfur.yi.org]
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2000 10:46 AM
To: The Gray Wizard
Subject: Conlang posts (Was: Re: gooey as a fruitbat, etc. & a
semi-paranoid question)


On Mon, Sep 18, 2000 at 09:21:29AM -0400, The Gray Wizard wrote:
[long rant snipped]
> topic than the others are.  I know that natlang and general linguistics
> discussions are important to conlanging and to some extent so are the
> concultural discussions, but I bemoan the fact that these have come to
> outnumber discussions of conlangs themselves.  Most here seem to feel that
> this lends to a sense of community,
Well, I'm one of those who like something more than reading just formal
grammars all the time, but I agree that the ratio of conlang posts vs.
non-conlang posts is getting a little too low. (For one, I find the
current thread on English interesting, but it's getting to the point that
I'm wondering if this is a conlang list or an English criticism list :-P)

> but I miss the early days when almost
> all posts contained sketches of conlangs and critiques of those sketches.
I
> for one find them the most fascinating and I know that I learned a lot
more
> about the art of conlanging in those days and I think my conlanging skills
> benefited significantly.
Hmm. That's something *I* know I'd enjoy, which doesn't seem to be what's
happening a lot lately.

>  I read only a small percentage of the threads
> posted these day which is why I probably missed yours.
Same here. I'm not trying to imply that people should stop participating
or should take things off-list, but I do find it strange when I've to
continually hit the thread-delete button on my mailer just so I can read
on-topic conlang posts, esp. given that this list *is* the CONLANG list!
:-)

>  Perhaps we need a CONLANG tag?
IMNSHO, it'll be a sad day when we have to do that, 'cos it'll mean that
this list isn't really a CONLANG list anymore...

I hope I didn't offend anyone here... let me repeat that I *am* one of
those who think that this list should be more than just exchanging formal
grammars; I like the sense of community here with the occasional off-topic
post. Plus, IMHO conculturing and general linguistics is an indispensible
part of conlanging. But, when the number of non-conlang-specific posts
starts overwhelming conlang-specific posts, I think something isn't quite
right.

I don't know the solution, maybe somebody else can suggest...


T