conlang.org

I applied for this domain, as I wanted us to have it available, and I was
starting to worry once I saw that conlang.com is now taken (but the Italian
Consulate General of Los Angeles).
Don't waste time going to the conlang.org web server: it's currently got no
content, _and_ it's sittin on a machine at my house. the Cable company
doesn't want me to run servers from there, so accessing it a lot could even
get me in trouble.

I have had a few conlang organization ideas for a long time, and I'd like
to float them for general reactions. Volunteers for labor on any of these
parts are definitely solicited.

One is perhaps to provide webspace to conlangers. As that will probably
involve using at least bandwidth, and perhaps disk space from my employers,
this may be a problem.

I want to put our own archives of the mailing list up, searchable in toto.
That takes work, of course, and I may not get much time in the near future.

We could host a conlang webring (perhaps the new scattered toungues)?

I've wanted to do dead-tree publications of some Conlang-related material,
Matt's grammar (and maybe others), Rick Morneau's book on verbs, and so
forth. I'd love to have a series of nicely produced conlang reference
grammars. This project requires money, both for startup, as well as a
market for the books themselves.

We could have book recommendations on the conlang.org website. This could
address the money problem by having conlang.org be an Amazon associate. I
would like this to be a web-based database, so that we could all
collaborate to keep interesting books on the site.

The LISTSERV information should definitely be on the site.

I am willing to provide domain names for conlangs themselves, so that, e.g.
tokana.conlang.org, or draseleq.conlang.org (to pick two at random) would
take one to the appropriate site. We could also have a referral service for
outside hosts. This can be hacked to look pretty transparent, if the target
browsers support frames.

I'd like to have another database that lists "official" conlang pages, for
conlangs on the web. If we once aggregate the information in the many
bookmark lists we've all published, we could make keeping them up to date
much easier, as the site owners could change the URLs when necessary.

We could of course properly incorporate as a nonprofit, but that's too much
work for me. I could open a separate bank account, or just keep the books
on whatever money comes in (if we go for those kinds of project).

We could even have an election, dues, and a president, but I'd hope that
that would not be me. It seems like overkill at the moment.

What do you think about this? [in my dialect, "you" is still indefinite as
to number]

  -- David
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David Durand              dgd@cs.bu.edu  \  david@dynamicDiagrams.com
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