Talk:Clerk (Quaker)

Purpose?

It doesn't seem clear to me that a clear purpose for this article has emerged. Does anyone have some thoughts on how we could give clear direction to it. Right now, it looks to me that it reads like "some stuff I think I know about clerking". --Ahc 04:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

My thoughts on the purpose of this are that the primary audience should be someone who does not know about Quakerism and hears people talking about clerks and wants to get a basic understanding of what that role is in various Quaker groups. I'm not saying the article is even close to complete here, but it's a start. I'd recommend seeing what material we can gather from people who've clerked various organizations and use that as a starting point for research. I'm not a good starting point: the last time I clerked I was about 16. Thexalon 15:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest that the article could do with heavy reworking, and possibly sectioning to deal with the role of clerk in the various quaker sub-traditions. For example, it doesn't sound much like a clerk within BYM to me. SamBC 14:21, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

It's been clear for a long time that reworking is needed. The problem I've had is that it is not clear what this article is trying to express. If you have thoughts on a directions by all means provide some. --Ahc 04:06, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Surely part of the problem is only knowing about one's own tradition. I have a reasonable idea of what clerks do in BYM because I'm an LM clerk myself and I've watched lots of Friends clerking meetings in the UK from BYM in session downwards. But I haven't the foggiest idea what it's like to be clerk of a programmed meeting in the US. Maybe, if this is aimed at non-Quakers, it should include a brief section on business method. For example, if you tell a non-Quaker that we never have votes at business meetings, the usual response is complete amazement. Kranf (talk) 21:37, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Can I remind Editors that "BYM" is ambiguously both Britain and Baltimore Yearly Meeting. The article is good as far as it goes but needs some serious work to make it sufficently explanatory for a link from a biographical article saying "He was Clerk of XXX Meeting" to make sense. Vernon White ^{. . . Talk} 16:18, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Quaker decision-making/meeting practice

Dear editors, I recently started a draft on 'Quaker decision-making': User:Douginamug/Draft:Quaker_decision-making and I would like to know if it affects/is affected by this article. My motivation for the draft was the (apparent) absence of an independent article on the topic, given the great importance it has in Quaker organization, and the significant influence it has had in the development of Consensus and Sociocracy. After searching harder, I realize that this article, and Monthly meeting are somewhat overlapping in content. What are your thoughts? Best, DougInAMugtalk 22:03, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

I finished the draft, and moved it to article space: Quaker decision-making DougInAMugtalk 22:16, 20 April 2022 (UTC)