W3C teams have a tendency of scribing everytihng they do, and they're pretty effective at it.
This is not due to individuals being great at scribing: the system is set up such that even new group members will be able to scribe reasonably effectively. It's also set up such that new group members will get that opportunity soon enough.
The main thing is that "anyone can scribe": most teams avoid a designated scribe and instead designate a scribe per meeting and discussion. This works with some of the following additional structure:
- Nobody is expected to scribe and take minutes simultaneously. if the scribe wants to say something, someone else will take over. You pre-agree to who that person will be before the scribe actually says something
- Before the discussion starts, scribe asks for an alternate
- During the discussion, scribe may use chat to say "anyone want to scribe for me when I talk in a bit" and then call out that person before speaking.
- Right before saying their piece, scribe can either ask for an alternate, or just pick someone at random and say "X, please scribe for me". The chair can do this too.
- Scribes can interrupt the meeting at any time to get people to slow down or repeat something or wait for them to catch up. The key thing is that scribes must always feel empowered to do this; a lot of scribing problems arise from this lever not being present
- Different teams have different systems for this but usually scribes rotate. sometimes it's done formally, sometimes it's just a call for volunteers at the beginning of the meeting and someone gets picked. it's important for scribing to be something Anyone Can Do, and if the meeting is such that it ceases to be so, that is considered a problem.
- Groups do have chairs and one of their jobs is keeping meetings running smoothly. so they will pick a scribe if nobody volunteers. they will also pick someone if a scribe wants to speak and nobody has decided to speak up
- Scribes can switch around during a meeting, like if O've volunteered to scribe but also I'm very into Meeting Agenda Item #2 i'll ask for someone else to take over for that agenda item. But it's explicit.
- Scribing needs to be done in a place everyone can append to: hackmd/google docs are fine. W3C uses messages in IRC as the scribe log.
- W3C meetings use a queue rather religiously, and it's mediated in the same venue that the scribing is done (in W3C's case, both happen over IRC, and there's a bot for the queue and a bot that collects the scribing), which means that the scribe has tons of visibility and people notice and fix mistakes.
- The queue also makes sure the scribe has time, it basically works like a normal queue though usually people are allowed to respond to questions and stuff without needing to go on queue again, and it's mediated by the chair
- I don't think the queue is necessary for good scribing but it helps.
In W3C's case the result is a text transcript, not exactly of what was said but mostly the gist. I've had this work for condensed notes too: it's the same principle just a different mindspace of note taking.