memos
TS/Jmemo form
Title. Full date. One paragraph on what happened. One paragraph on what was done. One line on who to contact, which is always the helpdesk. Tags from a fixed list: change, incident, weekly, notice. Signed. A memo is never edited after it is written. A correction is a new memo.
memos
There are no memos yet. The first one will be written when the system is put into production.
the weekly memo
On the last working day of each week, whether or not anything happened, a memo is written with the tag weekly. It states that the batches ran, how many positions were held across the week if any were, whether any rate change is pending, and whether any incident is open. If nothing happened it says that nothing happened. A week with no memo is itself an incident.
the change memo
A memo tagged change precedes any of: a rate change, a program upgrade, a rotation of the operator key, or a change to this site that alters what a page says about the system.1 It names the effective batch or the date. It is written at least one full working day before the change. A change without a memo is a serious incident.
the incident memo
A memo tagged incident is written for any material or serious incident, and for any minor incident that has persisted across more than one batch. It states what the chain shows, what the desk did, and what the counterparty, if any, can do. It does not speculate.
the notice
A memo tagged notice is anything else the desk wants on the record: a correction to this site, a clarification of policy, a statement that a rumour is false. Notices are rare and short.
on not editing memos
A memo is a file in this site's source. It could be edited. It is not. If a memo is wrong, a new memo says so and the old one stays. The site's source history is public, so an edit would be visible in any case, but the rule is not about being caught. It is about the record meaning something.
- 1. The operator key is the single key this desk signs with, and what it may do is fixed by the program, not by the desk.