Documentation working group

[Majken Connor]

Hi Council,

There are a lot of decisions made by council that have been poorly
documented, even ones that matter a lot, like how long a Rep can be
inactive before being asked to leave the program. I think it would be
important to the program to have a working group that would go through old
meeting notes and mailing lists and try to compile a list of things to
document. I have some ideas on different approaches that could be taken,
including ways to set scope to only capture things that meet a certain
level of "important."

I don't specifically need council's help with this, I'm not suggesting this
be something added to the plate. I just wanted to get feedback before
suggesting this to a wider group.

My first draft proposal would be that:

1. The group makes a framework for listing the types of decisions we're
looking for and how to structure them. This way we'd know if we haven't yet
found all of the past decisions that need to made, and then we could also
suggest to council areas that don't yet have an official policy at the end.
This is also where we can set the threshold for what should be captured.

2. The group then combs through meeting logs, mailing list archives and
email history of the alias. Ideally we would have at least several former
council members to go through the council meeting logs and well as their
email history. Mentors and Reps in general could help without having to
access things that are traditionally council only.

3. Based off of this work the SOPs can be reorganized and updated.

I think this would be a good "pilot" for a group of experienced Reps who
maybe don't have the time to contribute to in person events like they used
to. Hopefully what would come out of the project is a group of people who
see the need to continue helping council with documentation so that we
don't end up with this problem in the future.

I understand this project hinges on finding other people who are willing to
devote time to this, but assuming that I can, does this seem like it's on
the right track?