The KLI offers a lot of free services, this mailing list that you used to freely learn the Klingon language is an example. Members of the KLI have freely given their time to you to teach you the language. Do you use the Duolingo course, boQwI' or Hol 'ampaS? They could not exist without the KLI's extensive work with the language. Work that cost time and money. Without the KLI's continued existence, none if this would be happening. For the KLI to continue to exist, it needs members and volunteers. The members who pay money help keep the lights on (and pay for the servers that run this list), while the members who volunteer their time keep the wheels moving, so as a thank-you we give them extras. They put into the system, so they get more out. That sounds very fair to me. Non-paid KLI members can freely suggest 2 words and freely vote on every word (+1 or -1). I don't see how this is a "severe disadvantage" over folks who get more suggestions or an extra vote (+2 to -2). Membership is less than 9 Euros a year. That's a very low barrier, but I understand it's a barrier. So, to go to your two people, the second person has the option to ask, "What can I do to help the KLI? I have no money, but I have these skills ... and I'd like to give back." That's how I got this gig in the first place, I offered to freely share my skills. And, just so you know, grammarians will get more say on the system than regular members, as will those that have passed KLCP levels. The work just takes time, as it is just the two of us doing it in our free time. So, remember, before you say the system is unfair, look at how much you have gotten from it, compared to what you have given to it. qurgh On Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 5:23 AM mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun@gmail.com wrote:

I'm sorry for saying this, but this is unfair.

This is the epitome, this is the monument, of an unfair system for the suggestion of new words.

The more of a premium membership someone has, i.e. the more money he is willing to pay the klingon language institute, the more words he can suggest, and the more votes he's able to cast.

So, lets imagine two people..

The first person, is someone not-so-serious about the language, but he's willing to pay. So, although likely he can't even write "I suggest this word for maltz" in klingon, he's able not only to suggest new words, but also to vote on the words others have suggested.

The second person is someone who worked hard to learn the language, he has made it a part of his life, but for whatever reasons he can't pay. However this second person is at a severe disadvantage..

If the recommendations of some people have to take priority, then it should be the recommendations of those who are members of the tlhIngan Hol jatlhwI'pu' facebook group. People who admittedly can actually use the language.

It is disturbing to see that everything comes down to money.

~ mayqel *I love maltz* qunen'oS _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

qurgh:

The KLI offers a lot of free services, this mailing list that you used to freely learn the Klingon language is an example. Do you use the Duolingo course, boQwI' or Hol 'ampaS? They could not exist without the KLI's extensive work with the language

I'm well aware that kli offers a lot of services. And yes, I'm aware that most of them are free. As to which of the above services I use, I don't know to whom this is important; but since it came up, aside from this list I only used/use boQwI'. An app for which on numerous occasions I expressed my gratitude to De'vID, having acknowledged that boQwI' has been a tremendous help. qurgh:

Non-paid KLI members can freely suggest 2 words and freely vote on every word (+1 or -1). I don't see how this is a "severe disadvantage" over folks who get more suggestions or an extra vote (+2 to -2).

Well, kli members will actually get a lot more: qurgh:

Guests can suggest 2 words, while members can suggest 10, 15, or 20 depending on the length of their membership

Suggesting only 2 words, compared to 15 or 20, is indeed a severe disadvantage. qurgh:

the second person has the option to ask, "What can I do to help the KLI? So, remember, before you say the system is unfair, look at how much you have gotten from it, compared to what you have given to it.

Since I feel that the question "What can I do to help the KLI?", is indirectly written for me, let me remind you that when the HolQeD transcription project begun, I volunteered. It's not my fault the project eventually stopped. I volunteered anyway. The issue here isn't whether *I* am willing or not, to make a premium membership so as to ask for more words. I have come to terms with the fact, that no constructed language can ever have all the words we could ever wish for. The issue here, or my issue if you'd like, is that in my opinion it's an unfair system of choosing "vocabulary-wise" how the language will evolve. We obviously disagree. And that's ok. But please don't keep repeating that "I have freely learned the language". I like to think, that the people who have helped me, and keep helping me, are doing so out of kindness and wilingness to teach. Not in order to shout in my face, at the first opportunity they get, "we teached you and never asked for your money". Because when you're saying it, it's not me you insult/offend; it's *their* kindness, time, and effort you diminish. Anyway, as I said, we disagree and that's ok. After all we're all friends here. ~ mayqel *I love maltz* qunen'oS

On Feb 13, 2019, at 08:26, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

the KLI has always been in the business of parceling out privilege to the lucky few. Usually it has been based on accomplishment, and I've been on the receiving end of that in some ways.

As qurgh said, the plan is to grammarians and those who have passed a KLCP level increased influence on the process, but this hasn’t been implemented yet, in part because the data on who has passed what KLCP level isn’t currently being tracked in a useful way. I personally believe that I can probably pass the first two KLCP levels with ease, if not the third as well, but I simply haven’t yet had the opportunity to attempt the test. I still think it’s fair to grant more power to those who have passed KLCP though, as I suppose that most people with the skill to do so have already taken the KLCP test, but I could be supposing incorrectly. I wasn’t around for the chabal tetlh ghermeH mIw last year, did everybody have an equal quota to submit words? I did participate in the voting though, and IIRC there didn’t seem to be any limits on how much a person could vote, which could be considered unfairly giving advantage to those who have more time to repeatedly cast votes.

If it's meant to drive up KLI membership, what's the point? Okay, you paid for a membership and now you can get your words, and that membership gives you... well, about as much as it did before. Getting your words isn't a perk of membership; it's the point of membership. Which means it's still a pay-for-access scheme.

Maybe we can look at it another way. Perhaps the problem isn’t that paying members get more influence over the chabal tetlh process, but that there aren’t enough other real or perceived benefits to membership, so it looks like a KLI membership is just a way to buy influence. I am a paying member of the KLI primarily because I wanted to support the continuing work of the institute, but also because I found access to the KLI’s online course useful when I decided to finally take studying Klingon seriously last year. Perhaps the online course isn’t useful to somebody who’s been speaking the language for decades, but it does provide real value to those of us who are just getting started. I’d also be willing to pay for things like access to digital copies of HolQeD, etc., that have nothing to do with exerting influence over the future development of the language, but sadly there isn’t much to offer.

On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 9:27 AM SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

Now it's purely about whether you spend money. If it's meant to drive up KLI membership, what's the point? Okay, you paid for a membership and now you can get your words, and that membership gives you... well, about as much as it did before. Getting your words isn't a perk of membership; it's the *point* of membership. Which means it's still a pay-for-access scheme.

Membership also gives access to a complete Klingon language course that has been proven to teach to a level to allow someone to easily pass the KLCP level 1 test. For you that's not a big deal, but for a new student it is very useful. That's what the majority of people join for right now. There's also the free copies of HolQeD and an ebook (with plans for more). Membership also support helps support the qep'a' as well as future translations like the Art of War. To me, the point of membership is to be a member of an organization that works to spread something I love. I want to see the KLI succeed, that's why I donate my time and money to it, even when those things are in very limited supply in my life. In years past, non-KLI/guest members only got to vote in the first round, with KLI Members having the final say. Now guest members (which is the 100% free level) can vote on all the words, and will have a direct say in what words get picked. There's far more input than in previous years. They can't suggest as many, but suggestions were always supposed to be limited to a few per person. You don't have to pay anything to access the system, but you can pay to get access to more. Last year, due to the massive list of suggestions from a very few non-KLI Members we had to quickly come up with a new way to do things, which lead to the comparison voting because the previous way of doing it couldn't handle them all, however this meant that people with more free time had more influence than those that didn't. It also sucked up a ton of volunteer time and it wasn't a sustainable model. This year we are trying something new. As charghwI' offered, I'm also willing to share my suggestions with others (a couple of mine already came from other people), as I don't think I'll come up with enough words. qurgh

Does this process of submitting desired words, apply for the qepHom'a' as well ? ~ mayqel *I love maltz* qunen'oS

Am 14.02.2019 um 17:36 schrieb qurgh lungqIj:

I'm sure Lieven will correct me if I'm wrong,

We answered this simultaneously, and it's all correct what you wrote. :-) -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonisch.de http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/ChrisLipscombe

It’s good to keep in mind Okrand’s motives for creating new words. It’s not a power trip for him. To some degree, it can make him a little uneasy, since some fans can be dangerously fanatical, and it’s not that easy for him to tell the difference. It’s good to remember that Paramount didn’t hire him to create a language. They hired him to make up sounds for actors to make while they presented subtitles in movies. For him to take that commission and use it as an excuse to create a language and sell Paramount’s associated publisher on paying him to write The Klingon Dictionary says a lot about his nerd status. Here’s a guy with a day job that has nothing to do with creating a language. It’s an intellectual exercise that he found interesting, and he put a lot of effort into doing it and put a lot of thought into doing it well. He was probably surprised when the publisher decided to put out the dictionary. He was further surprised when it sold a large fraction of a million copies. It’s like telling a joke on You-Tube and getting over a million hits, when you had no idea this could happen. So, there has always been a balance to be struck between sending him a huge list of every word that anyone can think of to add to the language, or never requesting new words and just waiting for someone at Paramount to pay him to say something that might use new words. He’s not our servant or our employee. We want to keep the language fun and interesting for him so that he keeps the language interesting and fun for us. So, this voting system is somebody’s idea of how to filter the list so that the most interesting and useful new words naturally bubble to the top. It’s not like he would be committed to creating every word we send him. We don’t want words that one person wants in the vocabulary. We want words that would be useful for most of us. When I was granted a one-time privilege of coming up with a word, discussion had pointed out that we didn’t have any words to cover the basic concept of “top” or “bottom”. It seemed important and useful to a lot of us, so I used up my slot to ask for that, and he found it interesting enough to give us a group of useful words. Some words are more interesting for their origins than for the words themselves, like our word for “armpit”. Please trust that keeping it interesting and fun for everyone is the intent of the process. We’re not trying to exclude anybody, or make a power grab over who can and who can’t make up words. We’re just trying to keep it all fun and interesting for us and for him. One awkward, but important conversation that might be good for someone to have with him is on what sort of political mechanism might take over the development of the language if by unpredictable quirks of fate, people still want to use the language after Okrand dies. I can say that because, hey, I’m old and getting older. Okrand should think about this. For now, it’s 100% his language, as it should be. Does the language have to die when he does? If he ever gets around to something like a will, he should consider what should happen to the language when he’s not here to keep it interesting and to stop it from suffering from schisms. Or maybe it should just dissolve into schisms and die out as we do. That’s valid, as well. But it should be a conscious choice and not just Entropy winning out because nobody wants to think about mortality. charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.

On Feb 14, 2019, at 11:07 AM, mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:

Does this process of submitting desired words, apply for the qepHom'a' as well ?

~ mayqel *I love maltz* qunen'oS _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

On Jun 20, 2019, at 17:29, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:

There's less than one month left, so people should vote if they haven't. But also, new suggestions should probably be closed? Anything added to the list now is probably not going to get enough votes to make it to the top.

The new system runs year-round: anything that doesn’t make the cut when the top results are picked to get sent off to Maltz will have a head start to be voted on for next year’s selection.