Conference 7.286::dcu

I think you should have one "No Replies Allowed" topic
which you update regularly such that there is a 
chronological history of meeting minutes located under
one particular note number.  We can then have a 2nd
note for discussion of same.  The idea is not to 
discourage discussion, but rather to keep the minutes
in one place (easy to get at).

Just my $0.02,
./chris

    I too would like to see a single read-only note containing only the 
    BOD meeting minutes in chronological order.  In addition to making the
    minutes easy to locate, it would facilitate following discussions on
    topics which carry over from one meeting to the next.

    Other imporatnt information should probably be posted as individual
    base notes to make it easier for those of us looking for answers to
    find (perhaps with appropriate pointers from related topics).

    FWIW, my $.02,
    --Steve

    
    If I might suggest:
    
    let's say note 575 becomes the minutes note, write-locked, with
    minutes as subsequent replies.
    
    For each minutes reply,
    
      1) create a new note mmm, labeled
    
            "Discussion of minutes, dd-mon-yy (574.n)"
    
      2) label the minutes reply something like
    
            "BoD Minutes, dd-mon-yy (discussion in mmm)
    

I don't agree with 1. or .2.  The proposal in .3 might work ok.  However,
I think it is *far* better to post each meeting summary in a separate note.

I predict that immediately after meeting minutes are posted, there will
be a flurry of messages asking questions about this, getting offended
about that, and wondering why in the world the Board did the other thing.
This flurry will die down in a week or two -- long before the next meeting.

Longer term, some particular issues will continue under discussion.  These
issues, which will probably come up at multiple Board meetins, deserve notes 
of their own.  All of the heavy-duty issues that the non-Board members know
about already *have* notes of their own.  The discussions of these issues 
will be easier to follow if we try to keep them separate, instead of mixing 
up discussions of several of them in a single "minutes reply" topic.  

I don't see any value in reserving a single note for all of the meeting
minutes because I doubt that very many people will do "history dumps" on 
the old meeting minutes.  I expect that most discussion will center on the
most recent Board meeting.  For those few occasions where someone wants to 
look up the old minutes, it suffices to have a "Minutes" keyword.  That 
makes it easy to find old minutes, together with the discussions related to 
those minutes.  And the most recent minutes will always be easy to find near
the end of the file.  That's important when people do not use "next unseen".

Finally, like .3 I propose that the minutes poster make use of cross
references.  The minutes, or the first reply to the minutes, could post
the note # of the preceeding minutes and of notes containing ongoing
discussions of issues raised at the Board meeting.  I'm not suggesting
that the moderators force discussion of those issues to only occur in those
places -- just some encouragement to do so.  Anyone who has tried to look
things up in both the REAL_ESTATE and HOME_WORK files knows that there is
value in trying to segregate discussions to the base topics.

	Enjoy,
	Larry

I'm afraid I have to disagree with .4.  A single write-locked note so that I
have to look in only one place (and not fool around with keywords) is a much
easier information search and retrieval methodology.  The suggestion in .3
sounds quite good to me.

re:  .6

No offense, but it seems like a lot of work for the moderators that
wouldn't need to be done if there were a single, write-locked minutes
(and for that matter, perhaps another one for other official DCU
communications...).

Plowing through meeting minutes for historical purposes is, admitedly,
not a frequent thing.  But, if it's necessary (say around election
time when you want to see what your board has done for you lately), having
them in one place can be a real time saver.

If the moderators *really* want to do the work, then .6 is fine.  But do
you guys really want to spend your time moving notes, copying notes, and
playing net.police?  I say let the computers do the work.

./chris

    Re .all
    
    Executive decision here from the chief moderator.
    
    I've talked to Paul offline. We will be having one write locked note
    for minutes. We will either create or let anybody create topics to
    discuss any individual minutes.
    
    I will be clearing out some of the early notes in the notesfile 2-9
    for announcement type information such as minutes. Existing notes in
    those topics will be put into one other note, probably note 10 or so.
    
    Effectively we'll be doing as suggested in .3.
    
    Dave

Well, it's a tradeoff:  make it easier to see an archive of the minutes,
or make it easier to have live discussions about them.  I think the latter
is more useful -- especially given the limited information present in the 
typical meeting minutes.  Note .5 implicitly assumes that the minutes
will be far more valuable than the discussions about them, but I disagree!
Given the quality and quantity of replies from some Board members, I expect
that the discussions will form an essential part of understanding the
minutes.  Sort of like needing the auditor's notes to understand the 
significance of the DCU financial statements.  When the are separated,
it can be easy to miss all kinds of things!

Anyway, the structure matters less than that they'll be here.  This is
a very positive step.

	Larry

    
    	I also like the suggestion in .3: keep the minutes in one
    easy-to-find spot and have the discussions of each in dedicated notes.
    
    								-craig

Minor temporary kink in posting of info - the minutes will not be available
electronically until next week. Branches may have them on hard copy this
coming Friday or early next week.
However, the information like Bermuda trips I have on disk and will be
posting shortly. 

    	I fully agree with .5, partially agree with -.4, .9, .11 and -.2,
    have my doubts about .2.99 and .-46 and my 2� is now worth 1.7259874�
    .
    				Arnie

    The answer appears to be 42.