[foundation-board] Guidelines for redacting the Board minutes

Wed Mar 16 12:56:20 UTC 2011

Sorry - I originally responded to this off list by mistake:

On 9 March 2011 17:12, Jo Walsh <jo at frot.org> wrote:
>>>  * Redact discussion points where they appear in the full minutes as
>>> they rarely reflect the totality of discussion - record only that a
>>> discussion took place, and the subject of that discussion.
>
> I find this one a bit prescriptive / conservative. This process is in
> the interests of transparency; we could have lengthy conversations on
> whatever issue not connected to an action or resolution and it would
> be in the interest of the wider community to know the board's
> thoughts.

It is really is hard to cover the totality of discussions when
note-taking during meetings - this wasn't just a cop out! I think that
if we were going to try and do it we would have to ask someone who is
not a board member to come into the meetings to take the notes,
otherwise I think we would be effectively excluding the Board member
we asked to take notes from participating in the meeting.

But maybe I'm assuming you want a greater level of detail than you're
actually suggesting? If there were significant disagreement on a
particular topic that might indeed be interesting to record. How about
I change it to:

"Redact discussion points where they appear in the full minutes as
they rarely reflect the totality of discussion - record that a
discussion took place, the subject of that discussion, and any
significant differences of view."

I would, however, stop short of naming the Board members who held the
differing views, in line with my view that we are collectively
accountable and not individually accountable for the organisation.

Does this address your concerns, Jo?