Miland:
Dear Sir

Thank you for your message suggesting reforms to the Esperanto language.

I should inform you that...

Yours Sincerely

...

I was refering to the overly formal use of 'I should inform you' Sounds like a letter from the tax office. And then 'yours sincerely' at the end?

Ok, I admit it - just little points. Not too important and only subjective.

erinja:
I am trying to think of the best way to handle something like a moan bin. It seems so weird to open a forum thread that is specifically for complaints.

I know what you mean. Would it open a whole can of worms? As you mentioned, the other forums for conlangs are not so popular as the Lernu site. Would a moan bin just mean we'd get influxed by a whole load of conlang enthusiasts that aren't really interested in Esperanto, but just interested in finding a forum where there are actually other people to talk to?!

It would be pretty bizarre if this 'moan bin' became the main meeting place for these non-Esperantist conlang enthusiasts!!

And then in there amongst them there'd be a few reform-minded Esperantists. What a muddle, and in all sorts of different languages!

Chainy:Maybe we could somehow put the idea of 'untouchable' in a slightly different way? Some people might see that word and jump to the conclusion that we're all worshiping some kind religious document!

Not a draft, not a work in progress, final product/finished product, already established, not open to edit.

What's the term wikis use when an article is no longer open to edit or temporarily closed off to edits due to spam etc? Locked?

A wiki page analogy might be a decent way of putting it. "Sorry, too much spam, we've (the EO community not Lernu!) had to lock low-level editing privileges"

Funny that word "untouchable". It sounds so innocuous as "netuŝebla" but it sounds creepily dogmatic in English.

How about:
Esperanto has a kind of Constitution, the Fundamento, which is considered unalterable.

The other use of untouchable could also be replaced with unalterable.

I looked up some words in a thesaurus and I have to admit that most of the alternatives I found had connotations not appropriate for the context.

erinja:I definitely would not support opening a "Reformoj" section. That would add fuel to the fire by implying that Esperanto is open to reform.

OK. To avoid this, we can call it "Reformoj: cxu dezirindaj?".

But I am for freedom of speech. Democracies have it in their constitutions and are well with it. The point is to know if Esperantio is a democracy or is only submitted to dogms. (Of course, Lernu is not Esperantio, yet it is a window on it)

I know that Fundamento is a freely accepted dogm, and in its introduction Zamenhof explains (rationally) why one has to accept this constraint. But a lot of newbies came to esperanto attracted by logical arguments, and don't understand why the attitude of esperantists toward them changes from the time they join the movement.

I think "unalterable" is fine. What I wrote is unedited, off the top of my head.

The point about the possibility of words being "forgotten" wasn't well expressed. I simply meant that the Fundamento allows for the possibility that some words get left behind, replaced by other words. We are not required to use all the words in the original Universala Vortaro forever. That bit should be rewritten.

The more I think about it, the more I think it's a bad idea to open a special sub-forum for complaints and reform discussions. I think it will quickly become what lawyers call an "attractive nuisance."

Altebrilas:OK. To avoid this, we can call it "Reformoj: cxu dezirindaj?".

No, because that still implies that there is some kind of option for reform. That is, that if someone made a sufficiently good argument, people would agree that reforms are a good idea and start to enact them. This is not the case. Esperanto is open for evolution, within the constraints laid down in the Fundamento, but Esperanto isn't open to reforms, period.

The bottom line is that Esperanto is NOT open to reform. It doesn't really matter whether you think it should or shouldn't be open; the point is that if you reform it, it's no longer Esperanto, it's a new language that is based on Esperanto.

I think it would be absurd to expect that a website devoted to teaching English or French would have a forum topic of whether reforms to the language are desirable. There's no prohibition on discussing these topics (and you can definitely discuss them in the Esperanto-language sections) but making a whole forum devoted to that would give learners the false impression that this is a matter still to be discussed and decided upon. You would hardly expect a website teaching you what you need to know to become a US citizen to include a forum topic of "The US Constitution - Should it be changed?"

It's ridiculous to think that someone who isn't even a citizen yet should already be talking about changing the US Constitution. It is ridiculous to think that someone who doesn't even speak English should be discussing methods of improving English. And it's ridiculous for someone who doesn't even speak Esperanto to be talking about reform proposals.

They can talk about those things if they want but in the appropriate forum (only available in Esperanto-language sections of this site, in this case). Or else they have a whole big wide internet to discuss their ideas. They should respect the people who are here to learn Esperanto (the whole point of existence of this website, after all), and not spam discussion threads for Esperanto learners with reform proposals, and not expect lernu to post invitations to come up with proposals that have no chance of going anywhere.

erinja:
It's ridiculous to think that someone who isn't even a citizen yet should already be talking about changing the US Constitution. It is ridiculous to think that someone who doesn't even speak English should be discussing methods of improving English. And it's ridiculous for someone who doesn't even speak Esperanto to be talking about reform proposals.

The difference with US citizenship is that many foreigners want to be citizens, while esperanto community want to have more members.

Is it ridiculous to think that someone who doesn't even speak English should be discussing methods of replacing English with another language (eg for international use)?

Has someone who doesn't understand economics the right to tell what economic system is best for him? Or a citizen of a town the right to make suggestions about its management, even he his not an expert about roads, schools and public transportation?

T0dd:The more I think about it, the more I think it's a bad idea to open a special sub-forum for complaints and reform discussions. I think it will quickly become what lawyers call an "attractive nuisance."

I agree that such a subforum has no place at Lernu.

I thought the text that you put together this morning was great! Sure, a few changes here and there might be made going forward, but it's a very good start.

Another point that we might possibly want to add, which is a bit more Lernu-specific, is that Lernu is dedicated to teaching "textboox" Esperanto - as standardized and vanilla as Esperanto can be. This means that coming up with alternative, "improved" Esperanto is actually directly contrary to the purpose of the site. This is another reason that new proposals are always rejected here - Lernu is about teaching Esperanto as it is now, not as it could/should be.

Just a thought.

"Lernu is an interactive textbook for learning the language, not modifying it"