MC Terms of Reference

[Graham John]

Perhaps we should re-write the Methods Committee Terms of Reference in this group and get some one to propose their adoption at the Council Meeting in May? Exactly what *do we believe* the Methods Committee (if that is even the most appropriate name) should be doing.

Graham

[Don Morrison]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 7:37 PM, Graham John <gra...@changeringing.co.uk> wrote:

> Exactly what *do we believe* the Methods Committee (if that is even

> the most appropriate name) should be doing.

I have long thought, though rarely articulated, that it shouldn't exist at all. Rather I believe it, the Compositions Committee and the Peal Records Committee should be combined into a single committee focused on maintaining and publishing such records as benefit ringing.

-- 

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

"Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as

used to it."   -- H L Mencken, _A Little Book in C Major_

[Graham John]

It is perhaps the title committee that makes these roles sound more than they are, and also implies that there has to be a significant number of members of a committee when all it rarely needs is division of tasks and assignment to individuals. There has already been some attempts at reducing the number of committees, as the Peals Analysis Committee and Records Committee were merged into the Peal Records Committee in 2008. Its terms of reference are :-

Peals Records Committee

To maintain:

• a record of the first peal in each method on each number of bells for both tower bells and handbells and subsequent record length peals together with compositions used;
• a record of new methods included in multi-method peals;
• a record of the progressive number of methods rung in peals of different groups of methods.
• To prepare an analysis of and report on all peals published in The Ringing World.

Point two above is presumably just their addition to the method collections, so I wouldn't have thought this committee did anything in that regard.

There are two additional things not mentioned that this committee is responsible for, namely:

• ongoing update of the Felstead Peal data;
• ratification of long length attempts.

The committee currently has 8 members plus Andrew Craddock assisting with the Felstead work. It is hard to understand why it would need that many people to fulfil the above terms of reference as most Associations would just have one person in the role of Peal Recorder or Webmaster.

Personally, I would like to see all the long length records added to Bellboard, as this is not a massive task, and it would facilitate linkage from other records, such as the method and composition first rung links in Composition Library.

Moving on to the terms of reference for the:

Compositions Committee

• to promote the art of composition:
• to maintain a representative collection of peal compositions and prepare for publication such collections as the Council shall direct;
• to select, check and prepare compositions for publication in The Ringing World, and
• to encourage the use of aids to composition.

It's current activities are stated as:

• The most regularly visible part of the Committee's work is proving and reviewing compositions submitted for publication in The Ringing World. 
  
• We also oversee the creation and publication of collections of compositions and in addition maintain an extensive on-line collection.
  

There are five members of this committee. Clearly The Ringing World is not as important as it once was as a means of publishing compositions, but maintaining on-line collections is important and there is probably much that could still be done with regard to promoting the art of composition and encouraging the use of aids to composition.

So what of the Methods Committee TOR:

Methods Committee

• consider and advise on all questions arising from the interpretation of the Council's Decisions relating to methods, calls, and peal ringing.
  

Its 2016 report just listed the meeting at Southwark as part of a review of Decisions, work towards a new book on Doubles methods, and the ongoing maintenance of the method libraries (by Tony Smith) and answering queries on methods, extension and interpretation of decisions.

It currently has 7 members, but much the work still seems to be done by Tony Smith who resigned as a member of the committee in 2015.

So what should the terms of reference be? Here are some suggestions:

• provide and maintain a definitive set of definitions for technical terms associated with change ringing including methods, method classification and extension, calls and performances [not just peal ringing].
  
• provide and maintain definitive libraries of all rung methods, with appropriate classification, references, and a record of historic names/titles where these have changed.
• provide and maintain standards for the electronic interchange of methods, compositions and performances.
• act as arbiter to resolve any conflicts that occur in method naming by different bands, or to request alternative names for methods that may be considered inappropriate or offensive.
  
• answer queries in interpretation of the above.

General Comments

My comments on the above committees are external, based upon the CCCBR website and annual reports, so if I have missed anything, please feel free to correct me. The suggested TORs include some aspects highlighted in red which do not exist today.

In respect of Don's question of why do these need to be separate committees, I think the answer is they don't. What is important is that there are sufficient individuals assigned to cover all of the requirements to a good standard without individuals being overburdened. If having separate committees is the Council's mechanism for ensuring this then I don't particularly have a problem with that. What we do need to get away from is the focus on the CCCBR AGM, that should be an opportunity for the committee to report on what it has done during the year, not to have an ill-considered debate and require a rubber stamp on every change.

Regards,

Graham

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[Don Morrison]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 11:45 AM, Graham John <gra...@changeringing.co.uk> wrote:

> There are five members of this committee. Clearly The Ringing World

> is not as important as it once was as a means of publishing

> compositions, but maintaining on-line collections is important and

> there is probably much that could still be done with regard to

> promoting the art of composition and encouraging the use of aids to

> composition.

I'm reasonably confident that the "maintain on-line collections" part is, and has been for at least a decade, handled by single person, Richard Allton. Bless him: he works very hard on this, on a continuous basis. And this is in addition to what he does on the Peal Records Committee, of which he is also chairman.

And, by the way, Richard was originally sucked into the work of the Compositions Committee in much the same way folks are suggesting Tim be sucked in: if my recollection is correct Richard wasn't originally a member of the Council when he started working on its behalf, and was subsequently made an Honorary Member (which is now called an Additional Member, I believe), and only later became a Representative Member.

> If having separate committees is the Council's mechanism for

> ensuring this then I don't particularly have a problem with that.

Even if there are to be three committees, why does the Methods Committee hold exclusive jurisdiction over all the rule making? If there must be such rules, should not those that deal with, for example, what is or is not a peal, and how it should be reported, be the responsibility of the Peal Records Committee, that is using them to decide what to record? And those about, of example, what kind of calls can be used in a composition and how we define and measure truth should surely be the responsibility of the positions Committee. Why is the Methods Committee given the One Ring To Rule Them All?

-- 

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

"Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have

found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to

complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the

kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."

        -- J. R. R. Tolkein, preface to _The Fellowship of the Ring_

[John Harrison]

In article
<CAHe9+AcaaXJMROho8PsYeYrU...@mail.gmail.com>,

Graham John <gra...@changeringing.co.uk> wrote:

> Perhaps we should re-write the Methods Committee Terms of Reference in
> this group and get some one to propose their adoption at the Council
> Meeting in May?

That is perfectly possible.

Most changes to committee terms of reference are proposed by the committee
itself but I know of at least one case where it was proposed by someone
else and passed despite some members opposing it.

--
John Harrison
Website http://jaharrison.me.uk

[Tim Barnes]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 11:45 AM, Graham John <gra...@changeringing.co.uk> wrote:

Methods Committee 

Here are some suggestions:

• provide and maintain a definitive set of definitions for technical terms associated with change ringing including methods, method classification and extension, calls and performances [not just peal ringing].
  
• provide and maintain definitive libraries of all rung methods, with appropriate classification, references, and a record of historic names/titles where these have changed.
• provide and maintain standards for the electronic interchange of methods, compositions and performances.
• act as arbiter to resolve any conflicts that occur in method naming by different bands, or to request alternative names for methods that may be considered inappropriate or offensive.
  
• answer queries in interpretation of the above.

This looks like a good improvement on today's ToR.  To Don's point, it's a little anomalous (as it is today) that the MC has responsibilities that extend into the compositions and performances areas (rather than the committees for these areas covering them).  Perhaps a name change for the MC would help, although this is probably low priority compared with other things on the plate.  If CRAG leads to a restructuring of the Council, perhaps a future organization would divide responsibilities into four areas:  Methods, Compositions, Performances, and Definitions & Rules.  Points 1 and 5 above would go to Defs & Rules, points 2 and 4 would be with Methods, and point 3 might go to the ICT area.

Compositions Committee

• to promote the art of composition:
• to maintain a representative collection of peal compositions and prepare for publication such collections as the Council shall direct;
• to select, check and prepare compositions for publication in The Ringing World, and
• to encourage the use of aids to composition.

I think a better goal for point 2 would be to maintain a central compositions repository that all ringers can contribute to, and which seeks to record as many known compositions as possible.

Peals Records Committee

• a record of the first peal in each method on each number of bells for both tower bells and handbells and subsequent record length peals together with compositions used;
• a record of new methods included in multi-method peals;
• a record of the progressive number of methods rung in peals of different groups of methods.
• To prepare an analysis of and report on all peals published in The Ringing World.

Point two above is presumably just their addition to the method collections, so I wouldn't have thought this committee did anything in that regard.

It appears so.  And on point 1, the first peal in tower and hand is recorded in the method libraries (at least in RW ref form), so some overlap between committees here as well (though presumably the method libraries will now ref the QP that named a method, if applicable, rather than the first peal, given the recent rule change).

 

Personally, I would like to see all the long length records added to Bellboard, as this is not a massive task, and it would facilitate linkage from other records, such as the method and composition first rung links in Composition Library.

Agreed.  More broadly it would be good to see BellBoard (as part of the Ringing World) become the standard central repository for all performances, current and historic.  Today this data is spread (and duplicated) across multiple databases.  But I'm not under any illusions on how difficult this would be to achieve.  Adding record lengths to BB would be a good start.

Overall, looking at these ToR's, there seems to be a fair amount of opportunity to improve them to remove overlap, better reflect what is being done, and add in roles that we'd like to see covered.  But don't know whether it's best to advocate for changes to ToR's this May, or focus on including this in the bigger reform initiative.

[Richard Smith]

Tim Barnes wrote:

>> Personally, I would like to see all the long length records added to
>> Bellboard, as this is not a massive task, and it would facilitate linkage
>> from other records, such as the method and composition first rung links in
>> Composition Library.
>
> Agreed. More broadly it would be good to see BellBoard (as part of the
> Ringing World) become the standard central repository for all performances,
> current and historic. Today this data is spread (and duplicated) across
> multiple databases. But I'm not under any illusions on how difficult this
> would be to achieve. Adding record lengths to BB would be a good start.

The Ringing World are also aiming for BellBoard to be
definitive record of performances. Campanophile is no more,
which was one of the competing repositories. It is our plan
to merge peals.co.uk into BellBoard over the next few months
and switch it off.

(The decision to close peals.co.uk is largely cost based.
Hosting peals.co.uk is expensive because its based around a
Microsoft Access database which virtually no hosting
providers support. We are also paying someone to clean up
peal reports and enter them into peals.co.uk. In total this
costs us around £5-6k p.a. and The Ringing World has decided
it can no longer justifiy this expense given that BellBoard
now exists.)

I would very much like the Peal Records Committee to decide
to use BellBoard to record record peals or all long lengths.
However at the moment they seem very reluctant to use
BellBoard at all, and indeed are fighting our decision to
turn off peals.co.uk.

Richard

[Don Morrison]

​On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Richard Smith <ric...@ex-parrot.com> wrote:

> It is our plan to merge peals.co.uk into BellBoard over the next few

> months and switch it off.

​​While this makes sense, I think it is also important to try to understand why some folks still use peals.co.uk, and, where such reasons are a reflection of useful functionality peals.co.uk provides that Bellboard does not, add that functionality to the latter.

I use peals.co.uk frequently, for reason only: it is an easy source of canonical names for ringers, including middle initials and the correct spellings of their names. There's a straightforward, alphabetical list as an index in that site. I find this harder to figure out from Bellboard.

-- 

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

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when

his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

                        -- Upton Sinclair, _I, Candidate for Governor_

[Richard Smith]

Don Morrison wrote:

>> It is our plan to merge peals.co.uk into BellBoard over
>> the next few months and switch it off.
>
> ​​While this makes sense, I think it is also important to
> try to understand why some folks still use peals.co.uk,
> and, where such reasons are a reflection of useful
> functionality peals.co.uk provides that Bellboard does
> not, add that functionality to the latter.

We have (I think) a list of all the functionality that
peals.co.uk has that BellBoard does not have. I have
divided the list into three categories: (1) things that need
implementing on BellBoard before we switch off peals.co.uk;
(2) things that need implementing on BellBoard before the CC
do the 2017 peals analysis; and (3) things that we aim to
reimplement on BellBoard, but without a specific timescale,
and with no guarantee that they will be done before
peals.co.uk is switched off.

I don't think any of the functionality in category (2) is
public facing. I'm not sure how well known it is, but the
majority of the work for the peals analysis is actually done
by paid RW staff or is automated on peals.co.uk which
produces a report almost identical to the CC's analysis
(though it also includes a lot of additional statistics).
Category (2) is mostly this. It is our intention to make
these statistics publicly available on BellBoard by early
2018.

The justification for category (3) not being done when
peals.co.uk is swiched off is partly down to cost in that we
can't justify running peals.co.uk until every last feature
is copied over. But also, for somewhat complicated
technical reasons, we need to switch off peals.co.uk at the
same time as switching to a new typesetting mechanism for
peals. This means a lot of changes being made (or at least
activated) simultaneously which, if they break, risk leaving
us unable to produce the weekly paper on time. For this
reason I want that batch of changes to BellBoard to be no
larger than it needs to be. This means that most of the
functionality that cannot easily be implemented and tested
on BellBoard before peals.co.uk is switched off will only be
implemented afterwards.

> I use peals.co.uk frequently, for reason only: it is an
> easy source of canonical names for ringers, including
> middle initials and the correct spellings of their names.
> There's a straightforward, alphabetical list as an index
> in that site. I find this harder to figure out from
> Bellboard.

This is an example of functionality that is currently in
category (3). It may get moved to (1), but only if it
happens to drop out as a consequence of other work in that
category. I don't think of itself it's important enough to
justify being moved to (1).

Richard

[Mark Davies]

I use peals.co.uk as a primary source for the G&B Report. The data is
slightly "cleaner" than Bellboard, primarily because it is entered (I
assume) by RW staff, rather than the general (ringing/conducting) public.

However, one way Bellboard could help with the data quality is by
enforcing a standard for tenor weights and peal speeds, both of which
appear to be free-form fields at the moment. This makes it harder to
analyse or otherwise machine-process the Bellboard peal data.
Peals.co.uk by contrast has a fixed format.

Is that something that could be put onto one of your TO-DO lists
Richard? I don't know whether it would also help with the CC peals analysis.

MBD

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[Richard Smith]

Mark Davies wrote:

> I use peals.co.uk as a primary source for the G&B Report. The data is
> slightly "cleaner" than Bellboard, primarily because it is entered (I assume)
> by RW staff, rather than the general (ringing/conducting) public.

You're right, the data in peals.co.uk is cleaner.

Cleaning up (i) performance titles (generally meaning method
names), (ii) tower names, and (iii) association names are
all on my second priority list: things that must be done
before the end of 2017. Some will drop out rather sooner.

> However, one way Bellboard could help with the data
> quality is by enforcing a standard for tenor weights and
> peal speeds, both of which appear to be free-form fields
> at the moment.

That's more or less correct, and while we had to accept
input from Campanophile, we had little choice but to have
them as free-form fields. But for quite some time, for
performances submitted on BellBoard, durations have been
constrained to be in one of a (quite long) list of known
formats. Of the performances that have a duration
specified, 99.6% are in a format I can parse. I need to do
some work to improve this, as with quarter of a million
performances, a 0.4% failure rate is still more than I want
to fix by hand, but we're not far from being able to store
durations in the database as an integer.

Tenor weights are some way further from this. A few months
ago I took the small step of separating the tenor note from
the weight (or handbell size). But that's as far as I've
got. Nevertheless, it is on the list of bits of data
that need cleaning up.

> I don't know whether it would also help with the CC peals analysis.

It won't. Neither of these pieces of information is
relevant to the CC peals analysis.

RAS