Documenting consensus (RE: making strategic problems concrete)

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On mandag, mars 24, 2003 00:00:25 -0800 Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> 
wrote:

> Harald,
>
> HTA> Is there a real problem in that we don't have any means recognized
> by the HTA> process of documenting the "consensus of the moment" except
> by people's HTA> memories?
>
> good question.
>
> well-run working groups have chairs that are regularly assessing and
> declaring working group.  These actions are recorded in meeting
> minutes or on the mailing list archive.
>
> Do we need a different, formal mechanism?
>
> Perhaps the problem is merely that we do not train chairs to do this
> enough and do not check that they are doing it?
>
> Is this a mechanism problem or a training problem?

There's certainly a training issue here.

But speaking as someone who has all too little ability to actively 
participate in our working groups, and all too much reason to want to dive 
into a working group to find out what's happening at times, I think it's 
also a mechanism problem - in order to find out what good work the chairs 
have been doing in asserting and documenting consensus, I either have to 
scan mailing list archives or figure out where *this* working group keeps 
its non-standard extra web pages (or whatever other mechanism it uses).

the most acute problem is when consensus is found between meetings - 
something we definitely want to encourage.

                      Harald