Help:Transcripts
From The Otherkin Community
Transcripts are supplemental material to meeting minutes. They provide detailed documentation of what was said during a meeting. As The Otherkin Community is primarily an online entity, most transcripts may come in the form of chat logs, which is simply a log of everything that was said in a chat room.
All transcripts are available within Category:Minutes/Transcripts.
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[edit] Purpose
Transcripts are provided by the Community in order to provide more information regarding decisions and the topics discussed during the meeting. While meeting minutes do provide a detailed summary of the decisions and topics, certain detail is lost. The creation of transcripts is another effort by the Community to be as open as possible with its members regarding its management and practices.
The transcripts originated from a Board decision to provide meeting transcripts for all Board meetings during the 26 Sep 2009 Board meeting.
[edit] Transcript Modifications
Certain portions of the transcript may be modified before being displayed publicly. This is not done to conceal information, but to protect the integrity of the Community and its members. Any material that is modified will be surrounded by brackets ([]). Material that is entirely removed will not be noted, but may be inferred in certain situations from timestamps, if they are available.
Every effort will be made to do as little modification as possible to meeting transcripts. Material will not be removed simply because the meeting attendees may not wish for their statements to be known. The Otherkin Community wishes to provide accurate insight into how certain matters are handled.
[edit] User and Member Names
In the majority of situations, member names (and names of those who are not directly affiliated with The Otherkin Community) will be removed from transcripts and replaced with [USERNAME REMOVED], [MEMBER NAME REMOVED], or some other phrasing to denote what may have been removed. In situations where it is necessary to distinguish between multiple members during the course of the conversation, the member name may be replaced with text such as [MEMBER A], [MEMBER B], etc.
This is done to help ensure the privacy of others. If the name of an individual is required, or if the name plays a key role in the discussion, it may be retained. The names of Board members will always be retained except in circumstances that may reveal unnecessary personal information.
[edit] Personal Information
Personal information that does not pertain to the discussion or is not needed within the transcript for the sake of understanding the discussion may be removed. This includes addresses, phone numbers, life events, etc. Personal information of a third party (an individual that is not attending the meeting) will always be removed unless it is the topic of discussion.
[edit] Profanity / Questionable Language
In situations where the meeting attendees are comfortable with each other, the language may not be suitable for certain audiences. In these situations, the statement may be censored or, if it does not serve any importance or relevance to the discussion, entirely removed. Censored words will appear as [*****]. The number of asterisks will never denote the number of letters in the word, and may be random.
Certain questionable words that are not considered profanity may be kept to retain the atmosphere and mood of the meeting. Similarly, certain words that may not be considered profanity may be removed if they are believed to be a potential for problems.
[edit] Off-Topic Conversation
In the event that a conversation goes off-topic, the statements may be removed to ensure the transcripts reflect only the topics at hand.
[edit] Adding Transcripts
Meeting transcripts are placed on their own page, separate from the meeting minutes. For additional information, such as how to link transcripts to your meeting minutes, see Template:Minutes.
All transcripts should use Template:Transcript/Meeting.
