This page summarizes intructions for scribing and IRC participation. It is based on other instructions, in particular WS-Addressing minute instructions and WS-Policy scribe instructions. Edited section on Actions from WSC instructions and added information on tracking messages related to actions.
prepare | irc setup | common tasks | scribing (discussion, actions, resolutions) | concluding | follow-up | more information
The advice here is geared towards taking minutes for a distributed meeting using the W3C tools in IRC. However, much is applicable to face-to-face meetings and minutes taken with other tools (e.g., as text).
In the case of XML Security WG the channel is #xmlsec. In the following, replace "[channel]" with #xmlsec.
At the start of the meeting it is necessary to setup the agent that manages minutes (RRSAgent) as well as the voice bridge (Zakim). The easiest way to do this is to use trackbot-ng from within the IRC chat as follows:
trackbot-ng, start telcon
This should include these manual commands (the /invite commands should not be executed using /me):
In addition, it is necessary to enter the following commands manually in IRC:
Note that trackbot-ng may be configured differently by each W3C Working Group. What is documented here corresponds to the current XML Security Group configuration.
Zakim, who is here?
/me [some text]
This can be useful for RRSAgent questions, for example.
/me zakim, ??p9 is me
/me zakim, ??p9 is [handle]
/me zakim, what is the code?
/msg [nickname] [some text]
s/bad text/good text/
q+
or
q+ to remember something
(In this case, upon ack,
"remember something" will be shown. Note that
the to is required here.
TOPIC: [topic name]
It is better to record more topics (e.g. for major and minor agenda items) than not to, so use TOPIC: freely.
Be sure to avoid relying on surrounding discussion and other context, because action items and resolutions are usually read without the rest of the minutes. e.g., don't say "Joe should do this by tomorrow"; say "Joe should make a proposal about the Widget Model by 2004-12-09."
[handle]: [comments] -- e.g., "Joe: I think we should use TLS 2.0"
More than one line can be captured using ... instead of handle:
... [continued comments] -- e.g., "... and not SSL 1.0"
Be sure to capture any important announcements about deadlines, meeting dates, etc.
Minuting action items clearly is critical. An action item is a promise given in front of the group to do a certain task by a certain time. (Which might need to be renegotiated.)
Therefore, an action item has:
If an action item is negotiated, it is at times useful for the chair or the scribe to drop a proposed action wording into IRC before feeding the action item into tracker.
When action item negotiations are finished, the action item is minuted on IRC:
ACTION: somebody to do something [ - due YYYY-MM-DD ]
If no due date is given, the default are 7 days.
somebody is usually the first name or last name; note, however, that tracker might not be able to (uniquely) resolve certain acronyms or names. In that case, you might have an exchange like this one:
<tlr> ACTION: rachna to do nothing
<trackbot> Sorry, amibiguous username (more than one match) - rachna
<trackbot> Try using a different identifier, such as family name or username (eg. rdhamija2, rdhamija)
Note how, in this case, trackbot actually gives you identifiers to work with -- in this particular case, use rdhamija2
.
In general it is best to use the w3c user login, for this reason it may be useful to use this as your IRC handle.
<tlr> ACTION: w3c-login to do something.
The responsibility here is to check that trackbot actually returns an action identifier:
<tlr> ACTION: thomas to update due dates
<trackbot> Created ACTION-207 - Update due dates [on Thomas Roessler - due 2007-05-03]
Note that to conclude an action, you should send an email to the mail list regarding the resolution. You should include the string "ACTION-nnn" in the body of the message, where nnn corresponds to the message number (e.g. ACTION-207). This will cause Tracker to automatically place a link to the message into the record of the action, making it easier to subsequently understand what happened (e.g. why it was closed).
It is essential to capture working group decisions and consensus in the minutes. This enables the working group to move forward without revisiting previous decisions. It also enables an audit trail so it is possible to understand when and how decisions were made. If discussion is captured well this enables understanding of consensus.
Before recording a resolution, enter the draft text into the IRC so the WG can agree on the wording. Once this is agreed upon, the resolution can be formally entered using RRSAgent by typing the following:
RESOLUTION: [precisely worded text] -- e.g., RESOLUTION: The location of the November F2F is agreed to be Cambridge, MA
After every resolution, create a URI that notes the location by asking RRSAgent for the location:
RRSAgent, where am I?
RRSAgent should respond by creating a URI and entering it into the minutes, enabling others to create links to the resolution.
Example:
RESOLUTION: 4477 closed with http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ws-policy/2007Apr/0077.html 17:00:31 [person] rrsagent, where am i? 17:00:31 [RRSAgent] See http://www.w3.org/2007/04/25-ws-policy-irc#T17-00-31
Note that this appears in the IRC Log, not necessarily the finished minutes.
RRSAgent generates minutes, which then may need some minor HTML cleanup.
Note that it is always possible to get a text only version of the minutes by using the URL for the HTML version and adding ",text" at the end, e.g. "http://www.w3.org/2007/04/17-xmlsec-minutes,text".
The scribe should take the HTML minutes produced at the URL produced in response to "RRSagent, generate minutes", clean the HTML up by hand. Please do this in a tool that does not add unnecessary markup, scripting etc. Emacs might be a good choice.
Clean up should include the following:
Please send the revised minutes as an email attachment in a message to the members-only list.
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