RE: Minutes not usable

I was the minute taker and I was writing exactly what the group conscience
decided upon and what was dictated to me. If I remember correctly, we used
to take long notes, and they were confusing because people felt they had to
sift through too much information to get to the chase.  Perhaps its gone too
far the other way.

I don't have strong feelings one way or the other. I was just as happy when
I was actually writing all the dialogue in the minutes. 

However, in a slight defense of the quick notes, currently there are
hundreds of comments. At the rate 15 comments a week it will be 12 months to
just clear comments alone. 

Any help is welcome.

Cheers
David MacDonald



access empowers people...
        ...barriers disable them...
 
www.eramp.com
-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of oedipus@hicom.net
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2006 1:16 AM
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org; Lisa Seeman
Cc: unagi69@concentric.net
Subject: Re: Minutes not usable


lisa -- as a former minute-taker for PF, AU, EO and other WGs, 
i can tell you that the fact that the minute-poster hasn't 
gone back to expand the numerical references into something 
immediately humanly comprehensible is due to sheer laziness - 
it should be the responsibility of the notetaker to review his 
or her notes and annotate them, with specific names of issues 
and pertinent URIs where available, BEFORE posting them to the 
list.  this can be done easily and expeditiously, thereby making 
it possible for those who cannot attend actual calls to follow 
the minutes as if they were, indeed, on the call, thereby 
endowing those not able to actually attend to follow up on 
whatever issues and items were raised and concluded during the 
course of the call.

furthermore, it is the DUTY (whether or not explicitly stated 
in the protocol documents) of the notetaker slash scribe - not 
to mention the chair of the pertinent working group - to ensure 
that the notetaker's notes are properly and correctly annotated 
and expanded so that they are immediately USABLE by all members 
of the working group...

there is as little excuse for such sloppiness as there is for 
removing validity as a P1 requirement...

gregory.
------------------------------------------------
The optimist thinks that this is the best of all
possible worlds; the pessimist knows it is.
------------------------------------------------
     Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
 Webmaster & Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC
  The Visually Impaired Computer Users' Group
    of the New York City Metropolitan Area
 http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html
------------------------------------------------

Lisa Seeman wrote:
> Folks
> As I can not attend the phone calls (they run until after midnight and I
> just can't do that) I would like to read over the minuets.
> 
> Of course there is nothing for me to gain by reading the minuets because
> text like
> "
> ... refer 532 back to editors
> ... accept 575 as amended
> ... 586 adopted as currently revised "
> 
> is unusable. (I would say for people with learning disabilities who can
not
> remember numbers and acronyms, but in this case I suspect it is just
> unusable to everyone.)
> 
> If the working group is using them just as an official archive then maybe
it
> is not too bad. But if (and according to the charter I think this is true)
> we are meant to read the minuets to keep up with issues if we can not make
> the meetings then this is not OK.
> 
> All the best
> Lisa



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Received on Friday, 30 June 2006 12:36:16 UTC