Meta-question about FLEx : blank-slate verses strait-jacket

[Claire Bowern]

Having spent most of my field time in dongas of various states of
termite-infestation, I have to agree, living in an empty flash house is so
much harder - you can't just cook some damper on the coals and boil a billy
when the power goes out.  And it makes the recordings really echoic...


**
>
> I do hope everyone had a chance to read Beth’s reply, which addressed the
> inaccuracies of the original post.  I would be sorry if folks passed on such
> ideas as that FLEx isn't open source (you're confusing it with Toolbox),
>
well, if something goes wrong with toolbox I can do stuff to the text files
in a text editor if need be - the underlying data structures are highly
recoverable.


> that it isn't for non-linguists (confusing with WeSay?), that it's
> impossible to collaborate, or that it’s still large and slow (it was largely
> re-written for speed and size over 2010).  What *is* clearly true is that
> web presence could be improved in order to make the facts more clear.
>

I think web presence is less the issue than user reports, unfortunately. I
don't think I said it was for non-linguists, I implied (and I think your
post confirms this) is that it's designed for someone with minimal
linguistics background. I'm claiming that "making things easier" is actually
just as likely (if not more likely) to lead to misanalyses and confusion. I
have been told by FLEx developers that they see it as an ideal tool for
field methods classes because they see it as good for someone with little
training.

> ****
>
> ** **
>
> But with those misunderstandings cleared up, I hope we can get on to the
> valid concerns and thoughtful questions in Claire's post. There are still
> some things in FLEx which will make it unattractive to many (no Mac version,
> requires clean consistent data on import, pre-Himmelman orientation, limits
> to interoperability, intentionally not a blank-slate like Toolbox).  I’d be
> happy to talk about any of these.  For now, I’d like to write a bit on this
> trade-off —between something which is more of blank slate and something
> which embodies some basic concepts in order to help with automation.****
>
> ****
>
> I’m not sure what Claire meant by saying that FLEx was for “non-linguists”,
> but maybe I agree after all.   Software design best-practice calls for
> identifying a core "persona". Others, below and above that persona can still
> use the program, but they aren't the target the designer holds in mind.  For
> FLEx, the target audience is not PhDs or PhD candidates, who appear to make
> up the bulk of folks on this list. FLEx’s core target persona is required to
> do a broad but often necessarily shallow amount of linguistic description as
> part of his job.
>

oh, so females aren't part of the target audience? Good to know I guess....

We want to give him tools which guide him along, even at the cost of
> flexibility.  He benefits from a more guided system than would a Linguistics
> PhD candidate intensely researching one aspect of a language.  As the
> trailer-park analogies have shown, that researcher will trade a lot of pain
> for the flexibility he/she needs.  Hence the continued popularity of SIL's
> Toolbox among western academics, while so many outside that group have
> eagerly switched to FLEx.  And some western academics too, even on this list
> (they’re too smart to come out of that closet here J ).
>
oh please. My original question was a genuine information question. Clearly
some people like FLEx and are willing to put up with far more than I am in
order to use it. I am interested in that. I am also interested in how FLEx
fits with wider currents in language documentation and linguistic
technology. This is no witch-hunt.

I think comes down to this -- so many of the people on this list (academics
and non-academics - I'm not interested in that distinction here) are making
what may well be the *last and only record* of the languages they are
working with. That's a responsibility, and it's important that we all do the
best we can to make that happen. Now, if better language records are being
produced with FLEx then I'm certainly not going to criticise that. But I
would like to see some evidence that this is happening. Are materials being
produced faster? Are they being shared more widely? Is less data being lost
through computer crashes or disc malfunctions? Are we getting more accurate
analyses? Are we increasing participation of native speakers in documenting
their own languages? Are we archiving more?

Claire
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