[Fg-general] Minutes Standardization

[afsmith]

Following up on David's proposal for discussion on the topic of policy
for taking minutes (which was skipped at the general meeting), does
anyone have input on how we could standardize our meeting
minute-taking process?


Here are some ideas:

-I think minutes should always be formatted for- and posted on the
mailing list before anywhere else, in order to ensure proliferation of
readable plaintext copies

-We should encourage scribes to not wait to post their unchecked
minutes if the checker is taking too long, as this seems to encourage
long delays in minute-posting

-Perhaps instead of a minutes checker, we could enlist more than one
person as a scribe where number of participants permits, and/or
advertise minutes-checking as a task open to all  of the meeting
attendees.

-We could standardize minutes posting subject line lingo, as in
"draft" "checked" "final" "addendum", etcetera

-We could standardize minute-writing lingo, as in "proposal"
"discussion" "commit" "postponed" "agreed", and etcetera (and announce
items correspondingly during meetings for clarity to the scribe)

-Have the scribe sit next to or close to the facilitator, to ease
asking for discussion pauses, item summary, etcetera

-We could and possibly summarize outcomes all together at the
beginning/end of the minutes, particularly policy decisions, dates of
meetings and other events, and topics for the meeting to follow
(things that need to be extracted and referred-to outside of the
minutes)

-Should always ensure that meeting date and time, as well as
attendance and all roles, are noted properly

-Would be nice to have consistent formatting for finalized minutes


that's all for now