Hello ID Pros,
I want to get behind the ideas of a taxonomy and a glossary, and propose that they are two views of the same thing – a high quality glossary should explain how terms interrelate, resulting in a taxonomy of relationships. Contrary to Andrew Hughes’s point about glossaries, not all branching structures are ratholes, some of them are ontologies. I agree with him that it can be challenging to come to consensus but not everything worth doing is easy.
Having a jargon is inevitable in any profession, but if we’re trying to be transparent and welcoming, we should document our jargon in some form. Yes, there are existing compilations of terminologies from various industry standards and documents, but they lack coherence of meaning or context, and if they were helpful to newcomers we wouldn’t be having the conversation.
A rough work plan for a project would be for members to contribute their favorite lexicons, glossaries and taxonomies, then aggregate, de-duplicate and fill gaps. Aim for a language with which to express the body of knowledge – hopefully with much of the basic knowledge captured in the relationship between the terms.
My $0.02USD,
Scott
