I watched most of Ali Aras' Space Hangout yesterday. At the end the broadcast experienced some technical difficulties so I didn't watch the final 20 minutes. Still, that occurred after CCP Dolan left the conversation so I don't think I missed CCP's side of things. Here are some points I was left with.
The style needs changing. I don't really think the CSM has that much to complain about with the delay. That belief comes from Trebor's statement that the CSM does not want to censor itself so puts as much as possible into the minutes and then lets CCP cut out whatever is necessary. That style means that the CSM takes longer to produce the rough draft of the minutes as well as ensures CCP needs to take longer to review the minutes. I think the date quoted on the stream for when CSM finished the minutes was 4 November. That's right, 66 days after the end of the summit. At that point, publishing the minutes before the release of the expansion was impossible. In my mind, the time sensitivity vanished at that point and the minutes are just a historical document.
But my point isn't just about the length of time the CSM took to produce the minutes. Even if the CSM was perfect about not including NDA'd material, CCP can't trust that. They need to thoroughly check themselves. I have to wait until I actually read the minutes, but CCP Dolan's proposal of having a summary of what CCP presented followed by the positions taken by each of the CSM attendees (if differences existed) sounded like a needed improvement.
CCP Dolan is not superman. I think the new guy bit off more than he could chew. Actually, since CCP Dolan is new, I don't think he wanted to show weakness by saying he needed help when he took on the job. The help he needed was in the form of a backup in case he got sick, which happened. Also, stuff happened (Terms of Service, SOMERblink, etc) in which CCP Dolan wound up as CCP's point person. I don't know if a backup would have gotten the minutes approved by the various teams any faster, but a reminder or two sent out couldn't have hurt.
Unclarity of purpose. Perhaps I just misunderstood, but I think that CCP and the CSM have slightly different thoughts on the purpose of the minutes. Then again, CCP Dolan desire that the dev blogs published before expansions should contain more information so that players don't need to reference the minutes is a good one. Of course, if players don't need to reference the minutes, I doubt very many people will really take the time to read them. But if the style of the minutes is changed so we don't see 100+ pages, perhaps more people will read them anyway.
