General development of hockey rules
Comments about this discussion:
Started
I'm happy to see that the rulebook committee is finally coming together, especially with such a diverse group of international members. It's really great to have all of you on board!
I have a few things I'd like to discuss and potentially suggest some changes to the current rules. Most of these are related to areas where the rules are unclear or don't provide any guidance. In the past, not everyone was in favour of extending the rulebook (which might be the effect of some of my ideas), so I wanted to gauge everyone's opinion and get a general sense of where we think the hockey rules should be heading. It would be nice if we could understand each other's perspectives on this.
Depending on your responses, I'll either focus on the most important topics (at least from my point of view) or also bring up smaller issues that need clarification or better definition.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I'm looking forward to our discussions.
Comment
Thanks for starting this Nicolai.
I am fine for adding detail even if it extends the rule book. I think the rulebook in its current form is relatively short compared to most sports.
Those who take issue with having a longer rulebook are usually the people who won't have read this one.
If the people who take hockey seriously would like more clarification of rules I think it is warranted as the people who just play for fun are unlikely to be reading the rulebook in depth.
Comment
I don't think there would be problems with making the ruleset bigger that couldn't be sovled. I'm also in favour of getting these proposals in earlier so we have more time to discuss the proposals and figure out if it would make sense to restructure some of the rules.
Also, these are the rules for Unicon. People can always pick and choose which rules to use for their own games and tournaments depending on what makes sense with their schedule and rider skill level. If time allows it might make sense to see if the rules should be structured so you have some "short rules" that most people can reference and then a full rulebook with all the rules.
Comment
Thank you for sharing your opinions. Based on that, I will take the initiative to introduce some topics for discussion.
@Magnus: The rulebook currently includes a section called 14A.2 Rider Summary. Personally, I'm not particularly fond of this section, but I don't oppose extending it if you believe it would be beneficial.
Additionally, I took a brief look at the international floorball rules (https://dltaw1vhj9zy5.cloudfront.net/2022/05/Rules-of-the-Game-2022-Final_updated_18.05.2022.pdf) and noticed that they have structured each rule into two parts: a "rule" section, which covers the most important aspects, and an "interpretation" section, providing further guidance on how the rule should be enforced. Perhaps adopting a similar approach could be helpful in creating concise rules.
Comment
@Nicolai, I think the way they do it in floorball makes more sense than our current approach. It will still allow people to read the rules somewhat quickly while allowing the rules to be pretty specific where they need to be. It might also make sense to consider this as it relates to the handsigns as it might otherwise be confusing to know which handsign to use.
Comment
Yes, I agree.
However, restructuring the rules would take a lot of time and effort. I'm not sure if this is worth it and we would need the support from almost all the committee members.
Anyway, I think this should be the last thing we do in this rulebook committee and first discuss other potential changes (I have quite some topics I'd like to discuss).
Comment
That makes sense. Do we have a timeline for when we want proposals to be suggested, discussed and voted on and when the whole thing needs to be wrapped up? Process wise it might make sense to decide already if this is something we want to allow time for or not.
Given that we also want people to have enough time to train with the new rules and we want to make the best rules possible we could also postpone the reorganisation to after the rules are completed and have them be released as a "guide" or similar. That reorg could then be adopted and adjusted during the next rulebook committee after the 2024 unicon – that way we would still have the reorganisation but we wouldn't need to spend committee time on it (and delay publishing new rules for 2024).
Comment
There is a quite ambitions time line on the home page of the rulebook committee: https://iuf-rulebook-2022.committees.unicycling-software.com/
I agree that it would make sense to decide sonn if we want to restructure the rules. However, I think we should also check if and how a formatting of the rules could be applied that supports our idea.
Comment
Okay, now that I see the schedule I think it would be best to table this for later even if we decide on which direction to go with a reorg this Summer
Comment
Hi Nicolai, Steven, Magnus!
I just joined the hockey rulebook committee, thanks for adding me. I myself play in the German unicycle hockey league since 20 years. I am among Ansgar and others part of the "Ligaausschuss" of the German hockey league our executive board of directors you could say.
Over the past year we formed a group within our league to address referee training and rules improvement. In this group we found, that some rules are not precise enough and would like to adjust that together with the international committee here. I would like to bring in our viewpoints and suggestions in this rulebook committee and will also reply to the other discussions.
I see no problem in extending the rulebook to clarify the rules either.
I agree with you 14A.2 "Rider Summary" is not a good section. Rules concerning specific topics should be kept in one place and not be doubled in a summary. I would suggest to delete that sectionand move the contained rules to the according section. For the German hockey league we created a short rules summary of one or two pages as a separeted document.
Thanks for linking the floorball ruleset! That can be an inspiration for us. Although I a do not understand why they called their parts "rules" and "interpretations". To me their "rules" read as introduction/summary/short version and their "interpretation" rather as the concise rules.
Ciao Ole