RiotNrrd:You wanna innovate, you take it outside. If it's any good, it'll find it's way back in.

Most of Lernu is clearly a lernejo. But the forums aren’t so narrowly defined:

Lernu:Questions
A place for your questions about Esperanto as a language: grammar, terminology, help with translation etc.

In English
This is a place for discussing various topics in English.

Nothing in the descriptions there that would tell a newcomer who’s just learned of a bunch of spiffy new affixes (which he may or may not know are unofficial) that he shouldn’t mention them in those forums. And why shouldn’t he? It’s a place for discussing the Esperanto language, after all, and for the newcomer, the rules and usage they don’t yet know very well aren’t so fixed.

There’s nothing I’ve seen here, not in this nor in related threads, to justify the out-of-the-gate suspension of common civility. Being weary of noobs who think they’ve found a linguistic holy grail in this or that forbidden neologism doesn’t give one a free pass to doucheville, and unloading on them just makes the Lernu community look like a bunch of jerks. If one can’t be civil about one’s response, one can always choose not to respond at all, and let the noobs get the neologism thing out of their system on their own.

Ĝentileco. In any language, it really shouldn’t be this hard.

RiotNrrd:a remarkable resistance to nonstandard Esperanto .... It's what keeps the language stable.

All well and good, but there’s a difference between not adopting a neologism and ganking the neologist.

As I mentioned before, Noah Webster made a lot of reforms to American English. Not all of his reforms were adopted, but he was never hounded for the ones people didn’t like. Worst thing that happened is that no one bought many of his dictionaries (and their reforms) during his lifetime. It’d be nice if people could do likewise in this forum.

RiotNrrd:As a lernejo, Lernu is not a place where language "innovation" happens, or is even expected to happen. Lernu is a place where the established language is taught. We're not designing the language here. The language design is considered fully complete, and has been for quite some time. Lernu teaches that particular, established, design.

I completely agree with you, that this might have been the error OP committed: He didn't consider where he was posting his ideas.

And no doubt, lernu, as the name indicates, is a place for learning. A great site with courses, grammar, dictionary, exams, etc. But there is also a community part of this site, namely this selfsame forum.

I did a bit of counting and the results are IMHO quite interesting. From january 2014 until today, 512 different registered users (who have not deleted their account so far) have posted on this forum. This is a very good number for a site about a conlang. However, more than 50% of all posts were written by 14 (fourteen, sic!) users. I.e. it is a very tightly knit community with a stable (even if somewhat small) number of core members. If these fourteen users suddenly stopped posting, lernu would lose half of its participation in the forums. Also the bounce rate is quite high, out of these 512 posters, only 112 have posted 10 messages or more. These numbers obviously do not take into account how many users read the forums, only how many actually write something. (The navigational bounce rate is estimated by alexa to be 47.00%.)

Reading this thread, one might be tempted to think that this very small core community has caused some form of xenophobia.

Also digging a bit in older threads, it is not a first-timer that a new user gets bashed like OP with outright hostility like:

novatago:I think it's easier to you to quit.

Well, OP followed his advice and another (unwanted) member lost (or got rid of). If the community part of this site is designed for these fourteen members, then this behaviour is adequate; if not, I don't understand why anyone would behave like this.

If discussions about possible and above all hypothetical and personal (OP talked about "his own style" and not about wanting others to adopt to his) changes are discouraged, maybe this should be pointed out somewhere in the ToS. Some of the spertuloj also have their pet peeves and the (14 persons) community bears with them, but when a new user talks about changes (which I think is naturally incited by the fact that we are talking about a constructed language) immediately he gets kindly asked to leave.

I am not promoting changes to Esperanto nor to lernu -si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more-, but being polite to new users would actually be quite sexy. And if somebody posts bullshit (for any personal definition of bullshit), why not just ignore him, instead of bashing him. Maybe then more users would stay.

nornen:
And the changes are not limited to orthography as novatago wants us to believe.

• They have stepped up incredibly the American vocabulary (although the "ŝ" sound, which is (almost) absent in European Spanish, is sometimes rendered as "x", sometimes as "s" and sometimes as "ch" ).
  
• The conjugation tables now include two forms for the second person singular and two forms for the second person plural.
  
• The grammar gives detailed information about the use of personal pronouns (la/lo/le) in Spain which is really great for Americans as the so called "leísmo" makes European Spanish speakers hard to understand. (In America you distinguish strictly between dative pronouns (le/les) and accusative pronouns (lo/la/los/las), but in Europe the usage is somewhat haphazard, which causes confusion and misunderstandings.)
  
• The hyphenation rules take into account American consonant clusters: e.g. "a-tle-ta" besides "at-le-ta".

So you are saying, even if you aren't aware, that the academy is checking, explaining and making recommendations. Not making up things. It is actually what I said but in a way you are trying to accuse me of lying or something like that.

Where are the invented changes that aren't in use? I don't get it.

nornen: Nowadays, the national language academies (or at least the RAE) have realized that publishing a prescriptive grammar or lexicon is uncalled-for, bollocks and a vain and idle attempt at murdering a language. They focus on helping us with descriptive publications, trying to cover as many different aspects of the language and its varieties as possible.

Yeah, ok. You don't like the academy, so its work is uncalled and changing the language. Mmmm yeah, of course…

I reread the text from nornen and I realize I missunderstood it. Anyway his explanation wasn't needed to me because I repeat: It's what I was saying.

nornen:As morfran said, if all innovation were trodden down like it is here, we would still be in the middle ages.

What is the problem with that? I mean most of the changes in the languages aren't needed and are made because people don't learn or use the language properly, not because they are experts looking for better ways. What is the problem in taking just only the really needed new things. Really what kind of argument is that? XD

nornen:And it hasn't been the Esperanto Academy that bashed and flamed the new user because he got excited, it was other speakers (and hence learners)...

I recommend you again to read every conversation started by him and try to take the point of view where he was wanting to publicity things, and later ignoring the reaction of almost everybody else. So, he also could ignore my suggestion, but he didn't. I'm not responsible of what people decides to listen, and what not. And anyway, he took the better decision. He came here with a big mess about esperanto in the mind, he didn't want to listen us, and that was because someone else misled him. But for you that kind of people is no problem. They mislead beginners but “hey, no problem they are just passionate”. I'm the worst person ever.

Ĝis, Novatago.

I do agree that there are better ways to handle newbies who have not yet risen to the level of "troll" than to tell them to get lost. I haven't been following all of the guys posts, but from what I saw in this thread, I didn't really think he'd been trolling. He just seemed new.

Novatago, I totally get where you're coming from. You know I do. But you did kind of explode all over that guy, and I'm not sure he really deserved that quite yet[1]. I mean, there's a good chance his planned changes would have just died on the vine as he gained a bit of experience. Telling people to go away isn't as good a strategy for setting them straight as just educating them. I get the frustration, but... the newbies are going to keep coming[2], and they aren't all going to start out with the same desire to preserve the current language, as it is, that we have. They get excited. They want to experiment. It's natural. We just need to redirect that excitement into an understanding of why it's better for us to all try and use the SAME conventions when trying to communicate (i.e., the whole point of Esperanto). Telling them to go find a different language is kind of the opposite of what we should probably be doing.

----------------
[1] Eventually, obstinate refusal to accept some social norms becomes trolling. That's a different matter.

[2] And we should hope they do.

RiotNrrd:Novatago, I totally get where you're coming from. You know I do. But you did kind of explode all over that guy,

Can we review this message?

Mi:I think it's easier to you to quit. Or you understand that esperanto is a language, not your language, or you better quit. Better for you, better for us. I actually don't understand where is the dificult part to understand in “is a language”.

Since it's obvious you don't like Esperanto, here you are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Constructed... Look for one you like and be happy.

I think it's not unpolite, but anyway I'm sure it's not an explosion. You, RiotNrrd, probably have seen me exploding before and you can't tell me this is a bad message from anyone. And later messages weren't worse.

Maybe you talk about my reaction about the gender and transitivity, and yeah there I should be softer, but actually that wasn't against him. It was just exasperation because all the wrong ideas about esperanto being so neutral that it must even ignore nature, and so easy that it lacks even of bored “complicated” linguistic things or something. No need to mention ideas about perfection.

Well, OF COURSE AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY I HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS: I don't expect “perfect” beginners, nor people thinking just like me, nor reformist stopping comming here (although I do wish this last one because although they have the right to express themselves, they are just trolling nonstop, and they are aware of it. And trolling should not be welcome). If I would expect such a thing, I would have quited Lernu years ago.

Ĝis, Novatago.

novatago:
Can we review this message?

Mi:I think it's easier to you to quit. Or you understand that esperanto is a language, not your language, or you better quit. Better for you, better for us. I actually don't understand where is the dificult part to understand in “is a language”.

I think it's not unpolite, but anyway I'm sure it's not an explosion.

Novatago, I say this as a native English speaker, with a good command of the language: what you said there comes across, to us native speakers, as incredibly aggressive. I know you don't mean it that way. But the way you worded that makes me want to take a step backwards. The wording is excessively forceful. Even though I know there isn't any hostility there - I've seen you here at Lernu long enough to know you're a good guy - it really does sound like there is.

That's why you are getting the reaction here that you are.

RiotNrrd:

Novatago:I think it's not unpolite, but anyway I'm sure it's not an explosion.

Novatago, I say this as a native English speaker, with a good command of the language: what you said there comes across, to us native speakers, as incredibly aggressive.

Ok I didn't get what meant in the other message. Now I understand. It's not easy in the own language to be clear in the intention in an informal internet text, and in english for me to be clear in my intention usually is only a labyrinth of overspeaking and fail.

I actually didn't though about that in this case because it really seemed to me kind enough.

Ĝis, Novatago.

novatago:

nornen:As morfran said, if all innovation were trodden down like it is here, we would still be in the middle ages.

What is the problem with that? I mean most of the changes in the languages aren't needed and are made because people don't learn or use the language properly, not because they are experts looking for better ways. What is the problem in taking just only the really needed new things. Really what kind of argument is that? XD

The argument, Novatago, related to someone’s earlier suggestion that while a dead language is subject to tinkering, a living language is inviolable and immutable. My point was that it’s exactly the opposite: living languages are changed all the time by academies convened for that purpose, by self-appointed reformers like Noah Webster, and by the speaking public in general.

Oh, and as for trolls, it’s the aim of a troll to sow dissent and to turn people into spastic rage machines. Exposing the limits of civility in seemingly rational people is what makes it fun for them. If you really believe that ASCarroll was a troll, the best thing to have done was ignore him, not to give him exactly what a troll wants.

morfran:The argument, Novatago, related to someone’s earlier suggestion that while a dead language is subject to tinkering, a living language is inviolable and immutable. My point was that it’s exactly the opposite: living languages are changed all the time by academies convened for that purpose, by self-appointed reformers like Noah Webster, and by the speaking public in general.

Well in part you're right. Every big language has reformists, and they are usually ignored even when they are academics but that not means academies have the right to change a language, or make changes, and I can assure you the Spanish Academy don't, because it's not the target. The interesting thing here is, for example, that english language, as Noah Webster pointed, needs a reform in orthography because one has to be blind to don't see that, but Esperanto has not at all a problem of coherence between sounds and letters. So we have to be conscious about the differences between Esperanto and not designed languages in use, in all levels, and esperanto reformists are missing that point again and again.

Not designed languages for many reasons need the help of an academy to explain widely in use neologisms, to explain incoherences, differences between region dialects and other weirds thing that can exist or appear, and Esperanto (from my point of view) needs the academy to explain the language, neoglogisms widely accepted, avoid and refuse neoligisms that create incompatibilities, incoherences, or damages in the fundament, avoid and refuse things that just fatten uselessly the grammar, to explain why the fundament is important in a functionality point of view, to explain what is Esperanto and what is not, to protect the unity of the language because Esperanto must not to have “official” dialects, it must be just the same language for everyone. And eventually nowadays Esperanto lacks of institutions to help a theoretically needed reform to be adopted, and the big languages usually have a big educational state system and a big mass media system to help that.

Ĝis, Novatago.

Esperanto is certainly not a dead language, it is subject to change. However it cannot be assumed that its evolution must proceed in the same manner as this or that national language.

There can hardly be any other language that has a community of speakers with such strong views about what changes are permissible and what changes should be rejected.

Esperanto is sui generis.