[r-t] Candidate definition #10

[Don Morrison]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Ian Partridge <ian at poncho.org.uk> wrote:
> Here is one reason why I think it's important (I'm not worked up about
> it though :-))
>
> Eventually, these decisions are going to have to be voted on. At that
> meeting, someone will point out that the new decisions will allow a
> band to ring a peal of grandsire triples that is less than 5040
> changes and thus doesn't contain the extent. There will be a lot of
> murmuring and discontent, and the proposal will be defeated.

Curiously similar reasoning is what leads me to think it better to
have these more special-case-y rules outside the basic definition.

If they are part of the basic definition, the Council has to vote on
the whole package, and may want to tweak it on the fly, which is
almost certainly going to be a bad thing; as we've seen this isn't
stuff that can be hammered out correctly in a couple of hours.

But if these special cases are independent units, they can be voted on
separately, and with complete safety, so long as they've been thought
through ahead of time. And future meetings of the Council can with
equal safety reverse their original decisions if tastes have evolved
to prefer more or less stringent requirements.


-- 
Don Morrison <dfm at ringing.org>
"Although an elderly man probably has a lot less future
than a man of twenty, he's far more careful about it."
                     -- Terry Pratchett, _Going Postal_