ELL: please provide verifiable information

Jeff ALLEN jeff at elda.fr
Thu Mar 18 13:05:23 UTC 1999


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						       Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999
						       14:05:23 +0100
						       To:
						       endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au
						       From: Jeff ALLEN
						       <jeff at elda.fr>
						       Subject: ELL: please
						       provide verifiable
						       information
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						       At 12:28 18/03/99
						       +0700, Matthew McDaniel
						       wrote:
						       >SIL sits like a vault
						       of linguistic
						       information while
						       people do not want to
						       >admit what they do and
						       have done around the
						       world.

						       Sorry to say, but this
						       is beginning to sound
						       like a very
						       scratched or broken
						       record.

						       >They refused to work
                                                        with me on a VERY
                                                        successful
							>language protection
                                                        project, both their
                                                        people here
							>and in Portland.  I
                                                        had protested to them
                                                        that the
							>American Baptist
                                                        mission would not make
                                                        Bibles readily
							>available to pastors
                                                        who did not toe their
                                                        theological line.

Given the barrage of injurious and insulting messages that
you have been plastering all over this list and forwarding
to other lists (mind you, without the explicit permission
of the author of the original message), as if this
this the only thing you have time to do all day long,
I wouldn't blame any organization with regard to a
decision to avoid working with you.  Affiliation with
partners is based on confidence, and after having read
all of these insults placed on a public forum, hardly any
respectable organization, certainly an NGO, with an intent
to maintain its reputation, would want anything to do with
your work, or have you represent them in any form or
manner.

At 12:28 18/03/99 +0700, Matthew McDaniel wrote:
>Why has there been so small a voice on ELL to promote the issue of an ethic
>unless a whole lot of people are sleeping with the enemy, a wolf in this
case.
>
>John Newman, the SIL/Wycliffe man in Portland Oregon
>agreed to help me with
>the literacy project and then after contacting the SIL
>people in Chiangmai, withdrew that offer.

Sorry to say, but when I cite peoples names in publicized
e-mail messages, I also cc: them on the message. This
is considered appropriate behavior and at least respectful of
those people who are cited, especially when they are
probably not subscribers to the discussion forum. If you don't
have John Newman's e-mail address, then spend a few minutes
looking for it, rather than ranting and raving and citing non-verifiable
claims.

If you go to http://www.wycliffe.org, you will see that there
is a "Northwest Regional Office (NWRO)".
State your information correctly rather than just
saying the "SIL/Wycliffe guy in Portland". No one
can tell if Mr. Newman happens to be living there or if there
is an Wycliffe or SIL office in Portland. And if
there wasn't an office there, who knows if he
actually lives in Gresham, Oregon City, Beaverton,
Lake Oswego, etc (I just happen to have grown
up in the Portland area and did both of
my undergraduate degrees there) which happen
to be different municipalities of the Greater
Portland metropolitan area.  When using "people
finder" functions on all of the Internet search
engines, one must be specific, so please provide
specific and accurate information when you choose
to disseminate it on lists.
And by the way, the general NWRO office
e-mail address is:  nwro at wycliffe.org
Also, all you need to do is spent a few minutes doing
your research on Altavista to find out that Wycliffe and
SIL aliases are as follows for e-mail addresses:

firstname_lastname at wycliffe.org
firstname_lastname at sil.org

Nearly everything that I have stated in my previous
messages can easily be found at the following web sites:
http://www.sil.org
http://www.sil.org/silesr/masthead.html
http://www.sil.org/silesr/authors.html
http://www.sil.org/anthro/WEBPER1.HTM#ADVISORS
http://www.sil.org/silewp/authors.html
http://www.sil.org/schools/
http://www.sil.org/schools/catalog.html
http://www.oneworld.org/sil_uk/education/education.htm
http://www.wycliffe.org

or can be checked by sending an e-mail to:

106751.325 at compuserve.com
(for the French SIL office)
sil_admissions at sil.org
(for general inqueries regarding SIL schools)

There is no way to verify any stitch of information
on SIL that you have been diffusing over the past
few weeks (and seemingly months and years from
the sounds of it).  In my experience, all non-veriable,
off-hand comments are often discounted in all
scientific circles, and nearly always end up being
rejected in articles that are submitted for conferences
or journals. Please do your own research,
get the facts from the people in question, and then
come back to a list with the answers.  Your hear-say
accounts such as:

"Maybe someone with specific information on this could reply and possible
someone
at upper management at SIL could either substantiate or discredit the
statement
in a book that SIL was organized for this reason and has the same board as
Wycliffe, in which case they are not seperate."

need to be more specific.  You need to provide basic bibliographic
information (author, title, publication date, place, publisher) for
anyone to be able to answer you.  Just take a look at the
SIL web site indicated above and see their long list of publications.
How can anyone answer your question when your question is
so vague?

I hope that this is not an indication of your linguistic research
procedures.

>The SIL man in Chiangmai said he didn't like my tone.

I would probably say the same thing after all the
correspondence I've read from you on this topic on the ELL list
in the past two months.

>I would like to see this matter made a matter of record, because I believe
>that SIL is involved in Thailand in a supporting role to the very missions
who
>are manipulating and controlling the language of the Akha...

The more you spit and defame people and organizations on public
fora, the less they, as well as other organizations and people, will
listen to you and/or would be willing to work with you.

You yourself wrote:

Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 14:47:23 +0700
From: Matthew McDaniel <akha at loxinfo.co.th> wrote:
"[[Some people say, "Matthew, you really get in people's faces"

This kind of attitude, especially on a public forum, is very likely
to turn anyone off.  And you even admit it publicly.

And please get your citations straight.

You wrote:
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 12:28:20 +0700
From: Matthew McDaniel <akha at loxinfo.co.th>
Organization: The Akha Heritage Foundation
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au,
        sovernspeakout <sovernspeakout at egroups.com>,
	        Warriornet <warriornet at lists.speakeasy.org>,
		        "Under_the_Gun at onelist.com"
			<Under_the_Gun at onelist.com>,
			        Indigenous <Indigenous3rdWorld at onelist.com>
				Subject: Re: ELL: clarification about SIL from
				an external point of view

				<long snip>

				What gives?

				Matthew McDaniel


				"Gail M. Coelho" wrote:

				> >
				> >SIL and Wycliffe Bible Translators are not
				> >the same organization.
				> >They are sister, yet quite separate,
				> >organizations. In fact, you
				> >forgot to include the third sister that is
				> >called JAARS.  Their
				> >roles are different and it is quite
				> >important to distinguish between
				> >them because not everyone who is affiliated
				> >with SIL is concerned
				> >with the promotion of translating the Bible
				> >into vernacular languages.
				> >
				> >
				> I disagree with your claim that these are
				> >'quite separate' organizations.
				> They are 'separate' in the work that they
				> >do, but they are not separate in
				> the idealogical or political perspective
				> >from which they do this work, and
				> they are not separate in the ultimate goal
				> >that they are working towards --
				> and that is the *real* issue here. The
				> >*real* issue that Matthew is
				> protesting against.
				>

				This is incorrect.  I wrote the first
				paragraph, subsequently cited by Gail
				Coelho.
				1. You did not cite me as the author; and
				2. You did not ask for my permission to cite
				my authored material to
				    lists that I am not subscribed to; and
				    3. You did not cc: me on the message that
				was sent to these other lists.

So, please do your fact-finding before coming to a public discussion list
with hear-say comments and statements.  Get your the primary
facts straight, do some proper research, lists the web sites,
books (with proper reference info) and come back to the "discussion"
list with something that that is quantiable and verifiable so that we
can check your data and information and participate in a discussion
rather than a monologue.

Now we can maybe get back to something on the topic
of "endangered languages" and their cogeners.

Best,

Jeff


=================================================
Jeff ALLEN - Directeur Technique
European Language Resources Association (ELRA)  &
European Language Resources Distribution Agency (ELDA)
(Agence Europ.enne de Distribution des Ressources Linguistiques)
55, rue Brillat-Savarin
75013   Paris   FRANCE
Tel: (+33) (0) 1.43.13.33.33 - Fax: (+33) (0) 1.43.13.33.30
mailto:jeff at elda.fr
http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html
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