Y'all's bein' trolled.

Agin.

Chainy:Now, this is why I don't get why everyone's being so patient with you. You're not even bothering to properly research the situation before making your grand conclusions!

It really shouldn't be hard to understand. Hundreds of millions of people in the world speak English, a rich and extensible language that's exploded internationally in the past 60 years. Almost anyone can get a job teaching English in Japan, Korea and other countries, people there are hungry to learn English.

The vast majority of native English speakers (especially here in North America) see no need of ever learning a second language and have never given it a thought. These people can do anything they might ever want to without a second language.

I'm far more open-minded about language than most of those people. I've investigated Esperanto and found it to have many great features but one major limitation. Esperanto won't ever become what Zamenhof hoped it would unless it can get someone like me onboard. If it can't do that it has even less than a snowball's chance in hell with most people.

I've expressed clearly that I'm only onboard if I don't have to use all these mal- words. Neologisms are necessary to express the range of things I can express in English, I'm not about to give that up. Even a simple English expression like "I'm not rich but I'm not poor either" requires a neologism to be said well in Esperanto. "Mi ne riĉa sed mi ne estas povra ajne" is far more sensible than "Mi ne riĉa sed mi ne estas malriĉa ajne." The latter just sounds dumb.

Epikuro57:You'll never hear me say malgranda, malalta, malamiko or anything of the sort. The very thought of expressing myself in such a simplistic way is revolting to me.

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP! Troll detected.

erinja:No formal moderators here, only a lernu team member in residence.

The idea of a "complaints" or "reform proposals" forum has been floated before but it has always been rejected because it might give the (erroneous) impression that Esperanto is somehow open to reform. Of course it is not. It seems silly that a forum for learning French would have a special section for complaining about aspects of French that are not to someone's taste, or reform proposals for improving French.

It's not about reforming Esperanto, it's about extending it to make more widely acceptable. If you want the language to be what Zamenhof hoped it would, it needs to be able to express the whole range of thoughts that can be expressed in English, the language that's taken off internationally in the past 60 years.

erinja:No formal moderators here, only a lernu team member in residence.

The idea of a "complaints" or "reform proposals" forum has been floated before but it has always been rejected because it might give the (erroneous) impression that Esperanto is somehow open to reform.

Oh come on, who cares if someone might think it's open to reform? Why be so touchy about it? Give the section a different name if it makes it any more palatable. How about "The growing pains" section or the "Suffering from repulsion?" section. Who cares, make it into a joke, which is what it damn well is.

If we're so ridiculously touchy, then that also gives the wrong impression, too. And anyway, what harm can it be for a bunch of whiners to hang out in the 'revulsion' section? Ok, so perhaps we'd have to tone down that name just a tad, but you know what I mean.

On a site for learning English, I can easily imagine a section dedicated to those feeling a bit stressed about it all, or hating this or that aspect to it. It's healthy to let the steam out a bit, just not smack bang in the middle of all other threads!

Everyone starts getting all involved in stupid arguments here and there. Churning out the same old drivel... again and again.

Bung this negativity into the 'moan box' and then the rest of the site can get on with the positive aspects of Esperanto.

erinja:The best thing to do is not to engage reform-minded users.

You know perfectly well, that this is never going to work. Everyone *always* engages them, incensed by the nonsense that trolls spill out!!

If I was a troll, this place would be a dream.

Chainy:On a site for learning English, I can easily imagine a section dedicated to those feeling a bit stressed about it all, or hating this or that aspect to it. It's healthy to let the steam out a bit, just not smack bang in the middle of all other threads!

Ie'd lûv an Inglish fòrûm with a sèction dèdikaeted to spèling refòrmers. Or sûmwhèr we cud tyep èverything in a fonètic älfabèt

marcuscf:

Chainy:On a site for learning English, I can easily imagine a section dedicated to those feeling a bit stressed about it all, or hating this or that aspect to it. It's healthy to let the steam out a bit, just not smack bang in the middle of all other threads!

Ie'd lûv an Inglish fòrûm with a sèction dèdikaeted to spèling refòrmers. Or sûmwhèr we cud tyep èverything in a fonètic älfabèt

yes, I'm sure you would!

I'm certain there's a good name we could give this 'moan box', so that it still sounds respectable enough. And in a way that wouldn't suggest that we're somehow encouraging reform, which is clearly not the case.

Actually I think it's kind of funny to see what kind of nonsense the trolls will say next. Who knew that every single person in the world gave Esperanto a close look before deciding not to learn it? And furthermore, that a single word, alphabetic diacritic, phoneme, grammatical feature, or affix was responsible for each of those people deciding not to learn it? It's sort of like a fun game to see which feature will get the blame next. It's the letter ĥ! No, it's the N ending! No, it's the verb forms, I tell you! No, it's sexism, Eurocentrism, Orwellian affixes, compound words that can be parsed in multiple ways. What will someone complain about next?

Oh my dear, if only Esperanto didn't include the word "ĉirkaŭaĵoj", it would be the international language for sure!

The users that I find genuinely annoying tend not to be trolls; they are perfectly sincere, just annoying to me. I find it relatively easy just to skip the threads where they're active.

Keep in mind that a hypothetical "Esperanto totally sux dude" forum would be in Esperanto only... and most reformists haven't learnt Esperanto well enough to hold an Esperanto-language conversation about their ideas, so I think they would still end up in the national language forums.

It may be better to simply prohibit discussions of reform proposals in the terms of service, but that sounds a bit unnecessary and draconian to me. Alternately, we could prohibit discussions of reform proposals in national language forums, which would nearly do away with the reform proposals.

Proposals for how to do away with national language forum trolling without putting heavy-handed rules into place are welcome. Feel free to private message me or post to this thread if you have an idea.

erinja:Actually I think it's kind of funny to see what kind of nonsense the trolls will say next. Who knew that every single person in the world gave Esperanto a close look before deciding not to learn it? And furthermore, that a single word, alphabetic diacritic, phoneme, grammatical feature, or affix was responsible for each of those people deciding not to learn it? It's sort of like a fun game to see which feature will get the blame next. It's the letter ĥ! No, it's the N ending! No, it's the verb forms, I tell you! No, it's sexism, Eurocentrism, Orwellian affixes, compound words that can be parsed in multiple ways. What will someone complain about next?[/i]

I don't fully understand how you rather bizarrely get a thrill from this kind of thing.

But, anyway, you could still get the occasional fix for repulsion stories by taking a look in the moan box every so often.

erinja:
Keep in mind that a hypothetical "Esperanto totally sux dude" forum would be in Esperanto only...

Why? The 'moan bin' could be for any language. Enthusiasts could then follow the threads that they understand. No problem with that.

erinja:
It may be better to simply prohibit discussions of reform proposals in the terms of service, but that sounds a bit unnecessary and draconian to me.

Yes, somewhat over the top.

erinja:Alternately, we could prohibit discussions of reform proposals in national language forums, which would nearly do away with the reform proposals.

I think it would still not look good if moaning was banned entirely from the national language forums. That could give the impression that we're all paranoid about all these 'nasty' reformers, which is nonsense!

Let's just have a multilingual moan bin. Maybe the muddle of languages itself will be a useful indicator of the value of Esperanto!

Let's just have a multilingual moan bin. Maybe the muddle of languages itself will be a useful indicator of the value of Esperanto!

That would be ridiculously hilarious.