[r-t] (no subject)

[Don Morrison]

On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 18:35:22 -0000, Robin Woolley <robin at robinw.org.uk> wrote:
>... or will Don allow us to ignore all Decisions and treat them as advisory? 

Actually, my own opinion is that neither of these alternatives is
applicable. As I read this passage, it appears to me that you may be
implying that the Decisions either tell us what we may ring, or
advising us what we may ring. I believe that neither of these is
appropriate.

The Council should not be telling ringers what they may or may not
ring, nor even advising them on such matters. Rather, its role is to
support ringers in whatever it is we choose to do. Historically a
large part of this support has been detailed record keeping of what we
do choose to ring, and harmonizing how we describe it so we can
understand one another. I believe the Decisions should exist to
support this goal, not in any way to prescribe, or even to advise,
what we should ring.

It often happens that as we advance the state of the art of ringing
Decisions that worked well in the past no longer apply universally. In
some cases the best course may well be to ignore the discrepancy and
treat a performance as something special, outside our ability to
describe it in the same terms as past performances.

However, I think it is imperative that in doing so we do not in any
way imply the performance is somehow less worthy than something we
know how to categorise. In fact, in many cases it will be far more
worthy than yet another mediocre performance of some frequently rung,
old-fashioned composition of some frequently rung method.

And when something new-fangled catches on and folks start ringing it
more than once, then I think the Decisions need to be updated to
reflect our new, richer understanding of what it is we, the ringing
community, choose to do.

Regarding the Great Barr peal it does seem to me that if our Decisions
tell us it is not "spliced," something is amiss with the Decisions.
How many methods we may choose to record it as being of seems a
possibly open question, but surely it was spliced, using the word as
ringers in general use it, if not as it is defined in the Decisions.
Given that extending the number of methods rung in a peal is a
challenge folks rise to regularly, it probably it is appropriate now
to revise the Decisions if they do not currently support calling such
performances spliced.

-- 
Don Morrison <dfm at mv.com>