Plan for 2017-2018

[Don Morrison]

Regarding your long-term plans for a proper revamping of the decisions:

The result of the group effort lead by Tim Barnes is often held up as something the Committee should adopt. I think it is certainly a big improvement on the current decisions. And, more importantly, it shows what can be done, and how a collaborative process can be both efficient and productive in this area.

However, I do not believe it should be adopted as it stands. Doing so would certainly be an improvement, but I believe something even better can still be crafted, albeit using much of the work that went into Tim's product.

In particular, the result of that effort remains, I believe, too prescriptive. It does have the virtue of endeavoring to separate its more descriptive parts from its more prescriptive ones, but it largely aims to be just an improvement on the status quo, without fundamentally changing that status quo. Far better, I think, would be something that is entirely descriptive.

An excellent starting point that I think has been unfortunately neglected is an incomplete set of definitions written by Richard Smith. I think the Committee would do well to obtain a copy of these and attempt some sort of Vulcan mind-meld between them and Tim's handiwork.

Richard's definitions are also not perfect: It is, so far as I know, a still incomplete project. And, I think, they address some things that should not be addressed, such as notation: I think the definitions should deal with things that are fundamental to change ringing, but not worry about things that are just flexible expressions of fashion, such as notation. If someone chooses to use Greek letters instead of Arabic numerals to notate rows, or to use some alternative to place notation, it in no way changes whether or not what they are describing is change ringing.

But the thrust, goals, and tone of those definitions is, I believe, the right one.

I think combining these two approaches, and aiming always for something descriptive, is a far better path than a sometimes descriptive, sometimes prescriptive one. If the Council chooses to prescribe things, presumably to ensure that it is able to record what it is that ringers do, that should be done somewhere else than in the descriptive stuff.

I presume Richard would be happy to send you a copy of his definitions, or they are somewhere in the archives of the ringing-theory mailing list.

-- 

Don Morrison <d...@ringing.org>

"Things always change....You can fight it or you accept it. The only

difference is, if you accept it, you get to do other things. If you

fight it, you're stuck in the same spot forever."

       -- David Wroblewski, _The Story of Edgar Sawtelle_