RE: A concept resurrected(?) - WG secretary?

[Margaret.Wasserman@nokia.com]

There has been a fairly negative response to the idea of allowing WG 
chairs to officially name WG secretaries.  I am surprised by this for 
three reasons:

	- There was nothing in this proposal that required
		all WGs to have WG secretaries.
	- This proposal was offered as a constructive way to 
		solve a set of evident, IETF-wide problems.
	- There are few, if any, alternate proposals on the
		to address these problems.

What are the problems?

>From my perspective, a WG secretariat could add much-needed
cycles to help solve the following problems:

	- WG minutes are not submitted, submitted late, incomplete
		and/or of such poor quality as to be completely
		useless
	- WG agendas are not posted, posted late, incomplete and/or
		of such poor quality as to be completely useless
	- WG mailing lists aren't well-managed, and summaries
		aren't sent after lengthy discussions.

Now, I'll admit that there may be some WGs for which all of these
things are being done, and done well on a timely basis...  But, can
you name one?  These problems apply to a large enough majority of
the IETF groups that I think they can be considered IETF-wide 
problems.

Why are minutes, agendas and summaries important?

We assert that it is possible to be a full contributor in the
IETF without attending meetings.  Bad or missing meeting minutes
make that more difficult.

The minutes are the only long-term, archived record of what was
discussed and decided in our meetings.  They can be very important
later, if it is necessary to know what a group decided and why.

Agendas allow people to prepare for meetings and to know which
meetings they should attend. 

And summaries could help to make WG mailing lists productive, 
breaking us out of the make-progress-every-four-months cycle 
that most WGs seem to be locked in.

I am the first to admit that my WGs have not been exemplary at
these things.  Have yours?  If not, do you think a WG secretary
might help?  

The responses on this list have generally been of the form:

	- I prefer to pick scribes at the meetings, because...

or

	- I (the chair) find a tape recording more useful
		than notes from scribes or a secretary...

If these things are working, then why are our minutes so late and
so poorly done?  Why are so many minutes missing altogether?

Margaret