... to expect that Minutes of a meeting ...

Otherwise those minutes become hours!

You are correct, minutes should be a record of salient points and nothing else. If a particularly long serving person has left then it might be appropriate to write something about thanking them but nothing more.

Minutes are a nightmare! I used to act as Parish Clerk and some of the Parish Councillors wanted an almost verbatim account especially if it was something they'd said. They're frequently say 'minute that' in the meeting.

These were often the same ones who's said they'd 'act' on a point and never bothered. So we introduced a 'Decisions and Actions' column with a name against who had to action something. Not that it did much good.

Whosoever wrote the script for the Vicar of Dibley had obviously attended one of our Parish Council meetings

Anya A bit before the next meeting, a really good chairman would be contacting those who had actions down to them to ask how they were getting on with things. (Some hope!)

Oh heavens yes - when it comes to minutes less is definitely more. It is a waste of time and paper to note virtually every word.

When I was clerk to a school governing body I used to make them somewhat pithy and everyone was very glad to have less to wade through.

A committee I belong to will record thanks to those who have organised and successfully completed a major task. Something like:

The committtee thanked Sarah and her helpers for once again running a very successful Barn Dance

For the rest of us, a sentence in the Chairman's report to members at the AGM, just thanking all committee members for their hardwork, is quite sufficient. Most of us do it because we enjoy the work, the company and the benefits of seeing other people enjoying the results of our hard work. We do not expect to be thanked for every little action.

Just off to organise the catering for next Saturday's Study day, which will not be acknowledged in the minutes.

anya you've hit the nail on the head. I think often people who have nothing better to do who volunteer on local groups like to see their name in print! Every amendment that is sent it from the person who said the thank you and who want to see it in print.

Isn't the human ego a funny old thing.

Quite agree.

One club that I attend reads out minutes of the last meeting including telling everyone what the speaker said. I really don't understand why they do that. If you were there, you already know and if you weren't, well, too bad.

I agree minutes are there to note decisions. However sometimes there are other items which must be included. e.g. in school governors should record who was present, whether there are any declarations of conflicts of interest - and "Minutes of last meeting" as an agenda item.
In a formal situation (such as governors or charity trustees) they are meant to be READ ahead of meeting (not read out in the meeting) and agreed by the next meeting to as a "true and proper record" of what took place. This is important as then nobody can go back and dispute what was agreed. It's the board's opportunity to correct any inaccuracies.
If it is an informal group less is better. I still don't understand why our writers group circulates minutes of monthly meetings when there is a separate committee. Maybe its just to let people know what they have missed. In which case they are notes, really, and not minutes.

Ginny that is a very old fashioned thing to do and dates to the time when minutes were hand written in a minute book, which was the only record of the meeting and was the way the minutes were checked as true and accurate. In the past I have belonged to Societies that did that but the last one stopped doing it about 20 years ago.

My experience seems to be different from other peoples, I am on two committees and neither of them has a problem with people wanting to be thanked or named in the minutes. Possibly because most of us have experience of committees at work and just treat committee meetings as we would any other business meeting.

My ex-boss would start each meeting by reading aloud the minutes of the previous meeting, even though all those present had already received a copy of them! If his PA had been asked to minute that it could have ended up like Groundhog Day!

gknot, if you're the secretary, write them in your own succinct style. So long as anything actually important is recorded they can't complain. Well, they can but they may not

Thanks for comments everyone.

Bags part of the problem is that the previous Secretary used to write essays - so that's what they expect, they need training!

I believe it's a real skill to summarise and extract salient points from waffle important discussions, so they should be pleased to have me .

A friend of mine used to write a newsletter for her gardening group and she would include a note that read "All complaints are taken seriously and complainants are immediately appointed to succeed the Editor". She never got a single one!

My sister tells me of parish council meetings she attends that have me rolling in the aisles, so funny.Oh, the long boring evenings she has to put up with, that are only funny in the re-telling!

Organisations can be trained. I chaired a U3a and was horrified in the first AGM (with about 100 in attendance) in which members seemed to think and AGM was an occasion in which you could leap to your feet and make speeches!
The following year I wrote a fairly stern piece for the newsletter about how I would be running the AGM. They were very well behaved.

Thing to remember; if people are being paid to write minutes then fair enough they ought to be written to a professional standard, but if (as many are) they are being completed by a volunteer then they need to be cut some slack.

You can drive people off committees by adopting a hitleresque attitude.

Far better they waffle on a bit than miss out some salient point. Even the waffle can be a funny and interesting historical record as I found reading through old hand-written Parish Council meetings from over a century ago.

A good chairman can resolve any problem whether its minutes or running a meeting efficiently and well. A poor chairman just causes problems.

Do what the job requires rather than what people are used to and think they want. Minutes are notes of decisions reached and tasks appointed, not essays. They'll get used to it and may even be surprised how they put up with waffle in the past. Efficiency has attractions.

You can make them friendly notes

The problem as I see it, is that there are precious few people who will volunteer for anything, and that includes secretaries of committees. So I think their standard has gone down in recent years.
One that I attend is hopeless, but we are all very grateful that he does it, even though we all have to correct his minutes as they are far from being a correct record of the previous meeting.

it'been ages since I've had minutes but when I di it just said something like thanks given