Reorganized Rulebook (Closed for comments)

Comments about this discussion:

Started 02 Nov 11:23

This discussion is meant as a place to ask any questions about the reorganized rulebook.

In case you missed it, this is from the welcome email that was just sent out:

Reorganized Rulebook

Over the past year, as decided upon by the IUF Rulebook Committee 2014, Mary and Steve Koehler have reorganized the material in the IUF Rulebook. This reorganized rulebook will be the starting point for all proposals and rule changes. All Rulebook Committee members (that’s you) are required to read the blog post on the IUF website detailing the reorganization process.

The reorganized rulebook can be found here.

All proposals must refer to the section numbers in the reorganized rulebook, and not from IUF Rulebook 2015.

Comment 04 Nov 11:30

Maksym Siegienczuk started a discussion 2 days ago in the Road Committee entitled "Starting post or support". He wrote:

Section 4B.5.2 says: "Riders start mounted, holding onto a starting post or other support" while nothing about this is mentioned in the sections for organizers.

I think he is onto a general problem with the split between Competitor Rules and Judges and Officials Rules. His example is just one of dozens of similar ones, where a rule has been almost arbitrarily assigned to one of the two chapters (or so it seems).

Is the idea that Judges and Officials need only read the Judges and Official Rules, and Competitors should only read Competitor Rules? Then I think we need many more duplications between the two sets of chapters. But this defeats the purpose of the split. The way it is now, both competitors and organisers have to read both chapters to have a complete understanding of the rules that apply to them.

The split may have seemed like a good idea when it was proposed, but seeing how it worked out I'm not so sure. Should we undo the split?

Comment 05 Nov 09:30

Bill,

I would like to address your concerns from a few different angles.

When we did the split, we needed to decide where each rule should go. We did this under the constraint to neither add nor delete any rules. It’s not surprising that some of our decisions seem arbitrary or sometimes strange. Any problems will need to be fixed by moving text to a different section, by rewording to make it appropriate for the section where it is, or by duplicating some things.

Taking the example of the starting posts, the competitor section might state that the competitor will have the use of starting posts. The event organizer section might have an equipment requirement that the host must provide starting posts of some specified height and sturdiness.

Our idea to split the rulebook into areas of interest was not intended to make it completely unnecessary for someone to read the other sections. This could have been made clearer in the blog post pointed to by Scott earlier in this thread.

The intent was so that the average competitor would only need to read the competitor section. A more advanced competitor would probably want to know what is in the judging section, and may have interest in what is in the event host section. We assumed that all judges would need to be familiar with the competitor section, and that the event host would need to be familiar with all sections. Thus, a section about starting posts may need to be in the event host section (equipment need: the event host must supply adequate starting posts), but this requirement could also be conveyed by something in the competitor rules. For each such case, we will need to decide how best to convey the information.

We hoped that by doing the split, we could help the reader to find the sections of interest, and reduce the amount of irrelevant material they have to read. As a first attempt, I would say we are going in the right direction, but the reorganization makes very clear some deficiencies in the existing rules. I think the new organization will be better a base on which to address these deficiencies than the previous organization.

Comment 05 Nov 11:17

Hello,

I think it was a good idea to reorganize the rulebook. However, when I
checked the hockey section, I noticed some additional rules, in contrast
to the original constraints. I would now like to create a new document
highlighting all changes from the original hockey section to the
reorganized version. Unfortunately, I only have access to a pdf file
right now, which is not a very useful format for editing. Could someone
please send me the original document as well as the new files in docx or
(even better) TeX format?

Comment 05 Nov 11:28

Rolf,

The source files can be found here:

https://github.com/iuf/rulebook/tree/2016_reorg/src

More specifically, the hockey parts can be found here:

https://github.com/iuf/rulebook/tree/2016_reorg/src/chapters/14_team_hockey

Comment 05 Nov 11:44

Hello Scott,

Thanks! Ah, it's in the "2016_reorg" branch. I couldn't find it because
I only looked in the master branch. Sorry, my fault...

Comment 05 Nov 15:37

Thanks for addressing my points, Steve. I probably was too quick asking if the split should be undone. But indeed 'we' (whoever that is/are) should look into the issues that have come up as a result of the split. It's quite well possible that just reassigning the locations of some rules will fix most of the problems.

Comment 05 Nov 19:33

[I sent this first as an email response, but it looks like those do not get added to the discussion. Here's a proper post.]

Rolf,

Since you are looking at the LaTeX source, you will notice some tags in the source called "oldrule" that indicate the section number where each paragraph originated in the 2015 rulebook (I believe). If you are wondering where some text came from, that will tell you.

Most likely, any additional rules came from Chapter 1. As explained in the blog entry Scott pointed to, we tried to reduce the number of references to other chapters, either implicit or explicit. If these inherited rules are inappropriate, they should be corrected. Probably most people were unaware that some rules were inherited from Chapter 1, most certainly leading to confusion.

I think it would be a good idea to make available a pdf of the rulebook with the "oldtag" indicators visible, at least during the first rounds of using the reorganized rules. I think that would help people feel comfortable that no rules were lost or unexpectedly added.

Comment 05 Nov 23:33

Again, kudos on the idea, and execution, of splitting up the Rulebook as you did. Now that this has been done, all of us need to study it and look for the holes. In breaking it up this way, it will be impossible to avoid duplication of some information. The goal is to provide a simpler, and more focused reading experience for all users of the document, especially riders. If riders can gather the key information they need without being bogged down by procedure and setup information, they are more likely to actually read and learn more about each event.

Also, the people who put these competitions together are seldom the elite riders. They are less versed in how this stuff works, and why we do things the way we do. They just need to know how to put it together, what materials and manpower they will need, etc.

The same applies to judges and other officials. Again, they are helping out and aren't necessarily knowledgeable about the events for which they have volunteered to help. They just want to do it right. We want to provide them with the information they need, again without having to read through too much unrelated information.

This will work. But all of our help is needed to polish this new version of the IUF Competition Rulebook and fully realize that vision.