[r-t] Anything Goes vs Peals Mean Something

[Don Morrison]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 6:05 PM, Graham John <graham at changeringing.co.uk> wrote:
> I am happy to exclude things which are not allowed under the current
> definitions which in practice add little value

How do you know that things that add little value in current practice
will not be a source of value in the future?

I suspect that when the MEB wars were going on there were those
arguing that they added little value in practice, a position it would
be hard to justify today.

I suspect that when singles were introduced in surprise there were
some who thought it a useless innovation. And had there been rigid
definitions prohibiting it, would have argued against broadening them
as singles in surprise were of little value in practice. That would be
an impossible position to justify today, I think.

Indeed, when methods were introduced, they could undoubtedly have been
argued to have no value, as you could ring an extent just fine without
them. That's what people had been doing for years, and was the
practice. Fortunately for us our forebears then had no CC Decisions.


-- 
Don Morrison <dfm at ringing.org>
"The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you but yourself."
                                            -- Rita Mae Brown, _Bingo_