Salmoneus wrote:And no, our antipathy didn't begin with Sai - in my case at least, it began with the arrogance of the very name. You couldn't even have the humility to settle for an indefinite article? Or some qualification of any kind? No, you saw the prime territory and squatted all over it.
First, just for the record, I've checked, and the officially registered name of the organization is "Language Creation Society". No article, definite or indefinite. In writing, unfortunately, it simply doesn't look right sometimes to just say Language Creation Society (well, except right there). In the future, I will attempt (and encourage others to attempt) to leave the article off which is why I've been using LCS instead of the full name in this particular post.
Salmoneus wrote:Dboozer wrote:
From my perspective, that's the primary role of any organization that represents a larger community (see the stamps, trains, and coin reference above): to listen to the members of its constituent community.
I wholeheartedly agree. Indeed, that's my point:
you do not represent us. You are not an organisation representing a larger community, you're a self-appointed coterie of people representing yourselves. It is important that the essentially vain and self-promoting nature of project be borne in mind. The simulation of listening to us does nothing material, but only reinforces your rhetoric that
we are
your "constituents".
From what I can see, LCS does not and was never meant to and never tried to establish itself as a rival "community" or some kind of governing body of conlanging. My perspective is that it was formed, in part, to try and serve as a bridge between the established conlanging community/communities and everyone else out there. I hope you can grant that the far-flung conlanging community (ZBB, CBB, Conlang-L, conlang-specific communities, etc., etc.) can be a little daunting to someone who is interested in it, let alone anyone who has never even heard of it.
According to its Articles of Incorporation with the State of California, LCS had/has the following primary "specific purposes":
* the promotion and furthering of the art, craft, and science of language creation (conlanging) through conferences, books, journals, outreach activities, or other means
* to run an annual Language Creation Conference, which will discuss and promote academic, artistic, linguistic, sociological, applied, and other perspectives on conlanging; increase the status of the field, and encourage and provide a forum for original research
* to bring together all varieties of conlanging without bias, tie together the conlanging communities (including but not limited to artistic languages, auxiliary languages, engineered languages, interlinguas, etc), and act as a primary resource for people outside the community (e.g. teachers, students, press, novelists, movie writers, etc)
* other charitable, educational, research, and/or literary activities that directly relate to the art, craft, and/or science of conlanging
Salmoneus wrote:The negative effects of this power-grab have already been seen in the whole Dothraki debacle - in which the soi-dissant "LCS" (and your name itself begins with a fraud to set the tone of the endeavour) operated as... well, whether you want to call it a confidence trick or simply a scam will depend on your level of antipathy to the "LCS", but either way, an enterprise geared to extract rent from both parties while promoting its own hierarchs.
On the creation of Dothraki, I'm sorry, but I don't see that as being a debacle. I can see you don't share that assessment, but I would be willing to bet that if LCS wasn't involved in that, a bona fide conlanger would not be the one who created the language. The producers would very likely have simply went to a professor at UC Berkeley or some other university. As it is, subsequent interviews were used not only to answer questions about David himself and Dothraki but also the larger community, for example:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/08/a- ... z0xlaPMw00
http://www.tor.com/component/content/blog/59109
Salmoneus wrote:Given how little prominence the organisation had at that time, I see that as a bad sign of its probable future course if it becomes more prominent over time.
The prominence of LCS at the time was not really the issue. For whatever reason, the producers contacted LCS instead of a generic linguistics department at a random university.
Salmoneus wrote:If I want somebody to speak for me, I'll delegate that somebody myself, thank you.
And therein lies my conundrum in trying to understand the vitriol behind some opinions of LCS. If you want to be involved in LCS, it's there; if you don't, you don't have to. LCS has
absolutely no influence (nor does it want any) over individual conlangers and their individual efforts. Being a member of the organization neither confers any sort of imprimatur nor any special status to those involved. Anyone who agrees with the primary objectives of the organization can be involved. Those who don't are encouraged to happily ignore it, continue to create, and be involved in their favorite respective online community.