Too often on this site someone makes a suggestion for a change, or asks for clarification of a point, and is answered with hostility.
This benefits nobody.
The intention of this thread is to develop a polite response to these questions or suggestions.
If you have any constructive and positive suggestions please contribute.
If you wish to disagree with anyones opinion please do so politely.
If you wish to be rude, impolite, or non constructive, or make personal attacks on someone who has an opinion different to yours, I request that you do not post to this thread.
I request the moderators to delete any posts by anyone not being helpful and constructive.

My attempt:

1) Esperanto is not perfect. No language is. Everyone has different ideas of perfection.

2) The day that Zamenhof, the creator of the language, renounced control, was the day that it could no longer be changed by any individual or group of individuals.

3) The language can still be changed in the same way that any language can be changed. Someone starts using a particular form, others copy that, it becomes mainstream.

4) For people who do not wish to wait for "change by evolution", another constructed international language may be more acceptable, for example Ido.

Bemused:Too often on this site someone makes a suggestion for a change, or asks for clarification of a point, and is answered with hostility.
This benefits nobody.
The intention of this thread is to develop a polite response to these questions or suggestions.
If you have any constructive and positive suggestions please contribute.
If you wish to disagree with anyones opinion please do so politely.
If you wish to be rude, impolite, or non constructive, or make personal attacks on someone who has an opinion different to yours, I request that you do not post to this thread.
I request the moderators to delete any posts by anyone not being helpful and constructive.

My attempt:

1) Esperanto is not perfect. No language is. Everyone has different ideas of perfection.

2) The day that Zamenhof, the creator of the language, renounced control, was the day that it could no longer be changed by any individual or group of individuals.

3) The language can still be changed in the same way that any language can be changed. Someone starts using a particular form, others copy that, it becomes mainstream.

4) For people who do not wish to wait for "change by evolution", another constructed international language may be more acceptable, for example Ido.

Very good points, especially #2 and 3.

That being said, my 53-year-old brain may be short circuiting but I don't ever remember anyone merely asking for clarity (as opposed to "hey, ya'll are doing this wrong; here's the way it should be" or words to that effect) being treated with hostility (well, except maybe for a couple of non-native English speakers.........)

It seemed to me that some people had the impression that by posting here they can promote such changes. Whether they did or not I firmly believe that reform proposals should only be allowed on the Esperanto forums.

(1) Reform discussions in English exclude a part of the community, this should not be acceptable to the international nature of Esperanto.

(2) You cannot realistically look at making changes that affect a large body of speakers and a hundred years of literature without a reasonable degree of understanding of the language and should therefore be able to use it.

I would love to see a sticky that says something like the above and reform discussions kept off the English forums.

There have been discussions in the past, on limiting reform discussions to the Esperanto forums only. It was thought that by posting such a rule it would imply that reforms are somehow a possibility. You can imagine a French forum with a notice "Threads on the topic of reform are permitted only in the French-language forums". It would seem to give beginners reason to believe that this is somehow not a "finished" and complete language, if people are still discussing reforms, to the point where the forum's administrators tell you where to have the discussion.

erinja:... It would seem to give beginners reason to believe that this is somehow not a "finished" and complete language ...

This "policy" obviously failed. Though lernu nowhere outside the forum tells anything about proposed reforms, threads about them keep appearing. IMO it's time to take the bull by the horns and integrate information about the whole subject, maybe in the form the thread-starter proposed.

If someone is really, deadly serious about a reform proposal, why don't they just consult the various authorities and official associations instead of starting threads at a website that doesn't even have the weight to effect any wholesale changes?

It's pretty ludicrous really. I don't believe in authoritative bible-type books that are beyond change, it causes dogmatism. The proposals for Esperanto reform, however, are most often useless and add nothing to what is already there. No improvements, no helpful clarity or simplifications and perhaps also based upon personal preferences and shortcomings.

Why will people not just accept that Esperanto already works and is proven to do so? In natural/national languages people just speak them and accept the structure of the new ones they learn, because they know there's nothing they can do about them. It may come as a shock, but this is also how it is in Esperanto for the large part. Accept it and carry on.

Fenris_kcf:This "policy" obviously failed. Though lernu nowhere outside the forum tells anything about proposed reforms, threads about them keep appearing. IMO it's time to take the bull by the horns and integrate information about the whole subject, maybe in the form the thread-starter proposed.

They come and go. I can also easily imagine people getting upset about that rule... and starting new forum threads about it!

Vestitor: I don't believe in authoritative bible-type books that are beyond change, it causes dogmatism.

How is a book different to the speaking population as a whole? either way one has an authoritative "final say" in what is and is not Esperanto.

orthohawk:

Vestitor: I don't believe in authoritative bible-type books that are beyond change, it causes dogmatism.

How is a book different to the speaking population as a whole? either way one has an authoritative "final say" in what is and is not Esperanto.

Yes, I'd go for the speaking population as a whole as an authority. That's justifiable. Not the sacred, unchangeable book business, it makes for dogmatic nonsense maintained for nebulous reasons.

Vestitor:Yes, I'd go for the speaking population as a whole as an authority. That's justifiable. Not the sacred, unchangeable book business, it makes for dogmatic nonsense maintained for nebulous reasons.

More like a constitution that can't be amended. It's in the founding documents that if you change this document, then what you have is no longer Esperanto, but a new language based on Esperanto. Since it's like a constitution, there's a lot of room for interpretation and for mixing and matching those fundamental elements, but the fundamental elements themselves don't change.