Record lengths [Was: Re: [r-t] Extensions and calls acting on more than one row]

[Richard Smith]

Philip Saddleton wrote:

> It is the Records Committee who determine what is recorded as a record, and 
> to whom all peals of over 10,000 changes are referred.

But it is the Methods Committee who "advise on all questions 
arising from the interpretation of the Council's Decisions 
relating to ... peal ringing".  Suppose a 24,480 of Spliced 
T.D. Minor is rung in hand without umpires -- is this, 
according to the Decisions, a legal peal?

> "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; and a record of the progressive number of methods rung in 
> peals in different groups of methods."
>
> [This doesn't seem to include record lengths in more than one method, 
> although "groups of methods" still needs to be clarified.]

And it's clarification on what constitutes a "group of 
methods" that I'm after.

> We should encourage the RC to take a broad interpretation of what is a group 
> of methods, so certainly Surprise, Delight and Treble-Dodging are worthy of 
> separate records (though I don't think that e.g. the Treble-Dodging record 
> could not be the same performance as the Surprise record). But there are 
> other groups that are generally accepted, such as the Standard 8, or the 
> "Book" of Minor methods.

I'm all for encouraging the RC to record as many different 
types of records as they think will be of general interest. 
However, that is a slightly different issue.

My reading of the Decisions suggests that if long peal is 
rung unumpired which subsequently turns out to be a record 
length, then that renders the peal illegal.  Surely in this 
case, defining what the meaning of "groups of methods" in 
Decision (D)D is the business of the MC, even if recording 
the record lengths is the job of the RC (or of no-one if the 
omission of record lengths in more than one method from the 
RC's terms of reference)?

Richard