[r-t] The future of ringing.org

[Don Morrison]

I normally try not to cross post messages here and on change-ringers, but I
think there are enough folks who might not receive this if I posted it on
just one, but who might have valuable opinions, that I’m taking the liberty
of so cross-posting it. My apologies to those who receive essentially the
same message twice. Or, worse, even thrice for those to whom I send a
similar message directly.

The features provided by the ringing.org web site are largely duplicated in
Graham John’s Composition Library (https://complib.org/), albeit often in
different forms. And Composition Library supplies many useful features
unavailable on ringing.org. My impression, not backed up by any hard
numbers, is that over the past several years Composition Library has become
more and more popular, and probably is now used more than ringing.org,
likely by a wide margin.

I’m in the early stages of some maintenance work on ringing.org that will
require a good deal of effort. It occurs to me that if ringing.org is not
providing a service over and beyond what folks are able to get our the
Composition Library, perhaps it might be time for me to wind down
ringing.org. Or not, I don’t really know.

It is worth noting that Graham and I have a good relationship, and as of a
short while after Composition Library launched all the compositions in
ringing.org were also available in Composition Library. I believe a number
of folks contributed a lot of effort to helping Graham make this happen,
though sadly I do not know all their names, I do believe Simon Bond was one
of them. As time has moved on things have diverged and I believe many of
the newer compositions on ringing.org have not yet made it to Composition
Library, though some certainly have. My understanding is that Graham would
like to add in any missing compositions from ringing.org. If it does appear
appropriate to wind down ringing.org, I would certainly try not to do so
until things are properly synchronized.

Anyway, I’m interested in the opinions of folks who actually use ringing.org.
Does having it available in addition to Composition Library still offer
value to you? And if so, in what ways? To gather information on this I’ve
created a very small survey at

https://forms.gle/Rjn8eBRS5F8E5obFA

If you are a user of these resources I’d be very interested in your
thoughts. If you’d prefer not to fill out this survey, or for some reason
find it difficult or impossible to do so, please feel free to simply send
me mail instead. Also, please feel free to forward this message and/or the
link to this survey to anyone else who you think might be interested.


-- 
Don Morrison <dfm at ringing.org>
“Things always change....You can fight it or you accept it. The only
difference is, if you accept it, you get to do other things. If you
fight it, you’re stuck in the same spot forever.”
       — David Wroblewski, /The Story of Edgar Sawtelle/
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