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We expect to see situations of "language confusion", i.e. in which people use words or phrases, the intension (not: intention) of which differs from the interpretation of some listeners/readers. Sometimes a casual glance at a dictionary or glossary is the solution. In other cases, deeper understanding matters, e.g. in when drafting specifications or contracts. Then we need more than a set of definitions.
Scope
Develop shared concepts and terminology and make them available to all stakeholders in the Trust over IP stack. This includes developing artifacts and tools for discovering, documenting, defining, and (deeply) understanding the concepts and terms used within ToIP. Key deliverables include one or more glossaries together with a corpus of data underlying them. This data will consist of formally modeled concepts, plus their relations and constraints, and will encompass perspectives from technical, governance, business, legal and other realms. Although this Working Group (WG) will maintain these glossaries and this corpus of data via repositories that all ToIP WGs and Task Forces (TFs) can contribute to and inherit from, this does not preclude WGs or TFs from maintaining their own specialized glossaries if they require. Such specialized glossaries, together with other generators of concepts and terminology elsewhere in the industry, are expected to feed back into the glossaries and corpus of data maintained by this WG in a cycle of continuous improvement.
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The aim of this WG is to enable people in the ToIP community to actually understand what someone else means, to the extent and (in-depth) precision that they need, and facilitating this by producing deliverables/results/products that are fit for the purposes that they pursue.We expect such results to include Initially, we expected to see the development of a common glossary, that lists (and summarizes) the basic words we use in the ToIP community and briefly explain/define them, using existing sources such as . It would include terms defined within as well as outside of TOIP (e.g. by NIST, Sovrin, W3C's VC, DID standards, and others. We may be able to leverage the new 'glossary effort' that the W3C CCG has recently initiated. ).
However, the minutes on a IIW meeting topic 'glossary effort' showed that developing a common glossary is quite difficult. This is underlined by a post of Eugene Kim (2006). But even when an effort to establish a 'common glossary' were to be successful, that doesn't imply that the 'commonality' extends beyond the set of its creators. The idea itself of establishing a terminology and subsequently (cautiously, but nevertheless forcefully) imposing it on others, is a highly centralistic way of doing things. And it doesn't work (it never has).
The WG recognizes that different groups use (slightly or quite) different terminologies, and acknowledges their 'sovereignty' in doing this. Thus, such groups will be enabled to define their own terms, yet at the same time facilitated to use terms defined elsewhere. As each group curates its own terminology, they each have the ability to decide to what extent they will adopt the terms of other groups into their own terminology. We trust that the various TOIP WGs and TFs will work together and the need to harmonize terminology will arise as their cooperation takes on more solid forms.
We expect We also expect such results to include additional glossaries, that subgroups of the ToIP community (e.g. WGs, TFs, TIPs) create to to create their own specific terminologies that help them serve their needs as they focus on specific objectives (thus facilitating domain/objective-specific jargon). We currently envisage 'technology stack' and 'governance stack' glossaries that serve the specific needs of the associated WGs. We leverage tThe CTWG will assist them where appropriate, and ensure that (in the midterm|) glossaries can be generated from each such terminology.
Also, we expect such results to include more precise (theoretical?) specifications of underlying concepts, e.g. in terms of conceptual/mental models. Such models help to obtain a more in-depth understanding of ideas that are worth and necessary to be shared within one or more community sub-groups. They may also facilitate the learning process that (new) community members go through as they try to understand what it is we're actually doing. And they may help to 'spread the word' in specifically targeted (e.g. business and legal) audiences. A specific focus of this WG is to establish relations between the concepts of the mental models and the terms defined in the various glossaries.
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