[anti-abuse-wg] meeting minutes

On 13 Jun 2012, at 23:11, lists at help.org wrote:
> 
> Minutes are not transcripts.  see http://www.robertsrules.com/ for more information.
> 
> The postings are meant to allow the entire Internet community to see and understand what is going on. 

Roberts Rules are a useful resource for organisations setting up their own rules, but they're not authoritative.

Minutes are made in order to help the organisation to have a memory for what has occurred at meetings. They need to record actions that have been decided upon, and they may also need to record reasons for those decisions. They don't need to be comprehensible to anyone but (a) those that attended the meeting, (b) those who have to implement the actions, and (c) anyone to whom that meeting may be responsible (in a legal sense).

It's (c) that is at issue here: the claim seems to be that the AAWG is responsible to the general public. Perhaps it is in a moral sense. If the meeting is responsible to the general public, then clearly plain English is required. And, since the public here is the entire world, translations into every global language. There's a limit to how far you can go here. In general (my experience is with social housing and local government), the task of interpreting minutes of meetings for the general public falls to journalists, and in politics to spin doctors.

I do think that the AAWG might usefully publish some sort of glossary, and perhaps a primer, that makes it easier to understand the AAWG. Perhaps it already does this. And, I also think that when anyone is writing anything, it helps if some effort is put into using simpler language.

-- 
Ian Eiloart
Postmaster, University of Sussex
+44 (0) 1273 87-3148