Ringing Forums

I wonder if there are any AccursedVirus RingingRoom recruits who have become sufficiently hooked to transfer their enthusiasm to learning to handle a bell ?? — PeterScott

We have one who didn't touch a bell until afterwards. She's very keen, and her husband who doesn't (yet) ring was keen enough to go mon a maintenance course.

a chiming frame, if you have one, is certainly a good way to provide the sound of bells if there isn't a band, and methods can be sounded on a chime.
But for one person to chime all the bells is a significant step above ringing one, or even two, and there wouldn't be space for six or more people to operate frames I've seen.
So I'm not sure this is a viable route into change ringing, compared with say handbells.

I assume you mean with a chiming frame, which most towers don't have. I don't think trying to ring methods chiming with the wheels would be at all easy.

I think prior expectation of being able to do thins is important. I remember in my 30s when I tried hang gliding, reality didn't match my vision of effortlessly soaring. Control is achieved by a combination of arm and body movement like it is on a bike, but whereas I was fluent on a bike my reactions were wrong with a hang glider.
I think it's worse for adults because they are used to being able to do things competently, having given up the things that they couldn't do long ago. That could be why children find it easier, as Phil Gay once said, 'children learn things for a living'.

would it be better to teach a learner with a bell that is down...and start to ring it up..to whatever level...maybe just below the balance. I am not sure, and I have n — Andrew G Smith

That's how I was taught, and how I taught everyone in my teens. I was unaware that teaching ringing was difficult. When I went to university I saw people being taught starting with the bell up and thought how dangerous it looked.
In reality there's a lot more to how you teach than where the bell is at the start of lesson one.

one obvious form of lite is handbells, where the handling skill is fairly easy. Entry level could use single bells with natural progression for those who want it to either two in hand or one in tower.

The secretary writing letters had a much easier job. — Elaine Scott

Not sure that's true. Letters couldn't deal with the first point anyway so I assume the comparison is with general information distribution. Then and now the text had to be written anyway, so it's just distribution.
Instead of addressing say 20 Envelopes, putting a copy in each and posting them for tower correspondents to deal with, he/she sends a single copy to the towers mailing list.
Alternatively, to cut out the middleman he/she sends a copy to the members mailing list, or if it's a large document sends it to the webmaster who puts it on the website, and then sends the link to the members list.
I don't think any of those are more work than the piles of envelopes, and most of them get more directly to the members.
What if you don't have towers or members making lists, or a website? Get them!

wonder how many of the 229 registered users have ever posted? — Alan C

That's another good question. The information must be available because it tells me how many posts I've made (which isn't very useful).

obviously it will take a while to grow. It would be interesting to see the growth curve. One would hope that as more people join the rate would increase since more people know about it and can recommend others to join.
At some point the growth rate will reduce as it reaches saturation, following the logistic curve. I wonder what the saturation rate for a forum like this is, I've the number of ringers interested in knowing about and possibly contributing to serious discussion. It won't be all of the 30k or 35k or whatever ringers but it ought to be a significant minority, at least thousands.
The two Facebook groups have ~3k and ~5.5k members. That's not directly comparable since many probably use FB for other reasons and just added a ringing group as an extra. They host quite a bit of discussion, but I suspect that's 'because people are there already' rather than because it's a good discussion platform.
ChangeRingers doesn't afia publish membership numbers but istr it was over 400 around 20 years ago, when there was far less e-communication generally. It's use has reduced in recent years as some discussion has been diverted to other platforms but I don't know whether it's membership has also shrunk. The email lists are a better comparator for the forums because the motive for joining are similar - at a least it is for the serious ones (change ringers, ringing theory, bell historians). I would exclude ringing chat which is probably more askin to FB than the Forums.
ChangeRingers grew naturally as people found out about it because there was nothing else, but to the Forums has to compete on its merits against other platforms. Convincing people it's better shouldn't be too hard but the problem is changing people's habits. It's easier to stay where you are.
229 Forum users must know a lot of non-users, so can they be mobilised to promote them?

we havr the same ringers on here — Elaine Scott

Same as what?

agreed the balance is about right, but it would be useful to know how many subscribers there are, and also how many signed up to the various categories. I wonder if it can be set to show any of those, so the information would be available without having to ask admin to dig it out.

I guess the only answer is to create yet one more channel that will attract/embrace everyone - or is that what th — Peter Sotheran

Yes

We also have a WhatsApp group for "One More Ringer" — Jason Carter

In our branch have two email lists where towers can send requests for support to those who've agreed to receive them. One for wedding volunteers and one or quarter peal volunteers, in each case they only go to people ego are happy to receive such requests.

I think that the big weakness is the ability to get information from the bottom to move going from bottom to top, or up to points in between — A J Barnfield

Supporting infotrmation moving up seems relatively easy, assuming you mean form ringer to ringing master, chairman, secretary or whatever of the relevant tower branch or society (or the CC). All you need is a widely publicised (generic) email address for the relevant officer. We have those in all the bits of the jigsaw I'm involved with.

it's a pity there wasn't more interest in learning the lessons from Ringing In The Millennium. The session I organised during the Liverpool CC weekend was intended to do that but got hijacked down a side track, and I don't recall anything much afterwards.

this discussion is about preserving information that's already in digital form, not digitising paper records, which would be a separate effor — John de Overa

What we are creating now is in digital form, but a lot of the recent (in historical teams) is on paper, and could end in a skip when the person who currently has them dies or downsizes. It took several years of chasing to get the records of one society recovered from the loft of a former secretary, and a lot of the CC Education Committee papers I archived were only on paper.

The new policy is to retain very litte, sadly — Alison Hodge

That policy is misguided imo and I have challenged it. If more do so then it can be changed.

so we need to change expectations before learners become infected with the traditional 'must be free' attitude.

strange that this topic should come up now:
1 I recently raised the question of archiving CC material that is of historical significance but likely to get lost. Currently the only formally retained documents are minutes and reports. They are certainly important but there can be a lot more of substance, as I discovered when I went through all the old Education Committee documents I had.
2 I was recently asked if all the discussion of NRT (Network for Ringing Training for those without long memories). The original Yahoogroups are long gone but it happened that (a) someone used to compile summaries of discussions (weeding out the noise and unscrambling crossed threads) and (b) I still had copies on my hard drive, do after some sorting and conversion I sent him a zip file.
Ideally there would be organisational mechanisms to ensure things are preserved that doesn't rely. On the right person happening to be in the right place at the right time.

What could ringing do with £1 million a year? — John de Overa

That depends on who you talk to. When The Ringing Foundation was set up to raise money and channel it into ringing a lot of ringers said 'it's not needed'.