Guidelines for changing to the vocabulary

[clnsmth]

Currently, there are no guidelines for the community to propose changes, or for maintainers to evaluate the proposals. Additionally, there are no resources to help maintainers modify and deploy new versions of the vocabulary.

These guidelines and procedures could be added to CONTRIBUTING.md

Note, some guidance can be based on http://urbacklink.blogspot.com/2011/12/best-practices-for-adding-science.html.

[jhp7e]

There were guidelines on the old im.lternet.edu web site. Here they are:

9.2 Management of Controlled Vocabulary

The Controlled Vocabulary Working Group is charged with managing the content of the controlled vocabulary. To accomplish this charge the working group may
• Do research to identify terms that should be added based on use in site-specific vocabularies, use in datasets and other sources of information.
• Establish a process to generate, receive and evaluate proposed changes, and make changes to the content and structure of the controlled vocabulary
• From time-to-time, issue new versions of the controlled vocabulary, and a submit a request for endorsement to IMEXEC to have it adopted as the official version
• Make immediate changes in the current official version to correct gross errors

A sample process and criteria for adding new terms might be:
• LTER sites and individual researchers should be able to propose adding new preferred terms to the controlled vocabulary. A proposal for adding terms should include justification, including information on related terms used at other LTER sites, how the term is used in existing datasets and where the term might be placed into the controlled vocabulary.
• Proposals would be evaluated by the Controlled Vocabulary Working Group according to the following criteria:
o The proposed terms should provide clear utility for searching and browsing, and not introduce ambiguity
o The proposed terms should be suitable for inclusion (e.g., not locations or specific taxonomic identifiers)
o Proposed terms should not be redundant with existing term(s) already in the vocabulary
o Terms and their proposed places in taxonomys or thesauri should conform in form with NISO Z39.19 2005 and successor documents (e.g., sections 6.5.1, 8.3)
• Additionally, sites can propose also non-preferred terms to be linked to existing preferred terms. Here criteria are less stringent:
o The proposed terms should be suitable for inclusion (e.g., not locations or specific taxonomic identifiers)
o The proposed terms must be sufficiently close synonyms to the preferred term to which they will be linked
o
A sample process for removing or altering terms might be: Sites or individuals can also propose, with justification, altering or removing a term from the controlled vocabulary. Removals or alterations of terms are expected to be rare, but criteria to be applied by the working group might be:
• Terms will never be altered, but can be deprecated to non-preferred status
• Terms can only be removed if they are not currently in use by datasets or if they are demonstrably ambiguous, thus hindering rather than augmenting search efforts