Terms are words or phrases that act as labels for formally defined concepts. "MRI" is a medical term; "Habeas corpus" is a legal term; and so on. Any time a group of experts invents, innovates or standardizes, they need a terminology as a tool for themselves, and a corresponding glossary (one of their work products) that helps them communicate about their work. Usually, the group will typically seek to use terms that have already defined in specifications, standards, dictionaries, or glossaries that already exist. However, they will also typically need to define an additional set terms specific to their group. Several TOIP working groups (WGs) and task forces (TFs) have already expressed this need.
One of the objectives of the ToIP Concepts and Terminology Working Group (CTWG) is to provide TOIP ToIP WGs and TFs with:
- A cheap and easy way to define and curate the terms they need as a group, with minimal setup and learning curve.
- The ability to formally release versioned glossaries that show how terms are related, provide attribution to sources, and cross-reference terms to increase comprehension and accessibility of the group's work. Glossaries will include terms that the group needs, both terms defined by the group itself, or elsewhere.
To meet this need, the CTWG is introducing terms wikis. Terms wikis are simple GitHub-based websites that allow collaborative editing in a browser. They meet the "easy and cheap" criteria while allowing some sophisticated features under the hood. Think Google Docs, but with slightly more structure – or Wikipedia, but a whole lot simpler. You can learn how to use them in 5 minutes.
A terms wiki is owned by a community of interest or a community of practice (a terms community) that needs precise alignment about its mental models and the words that describe them (a terminology). In TOIPToIP, a terms community typically corresponds to a Working Group or a Task Force. However our goal is for terms wiki tooling can also to be used usable by groups outside of ToIP that who also wish to join our overall terminology community. Sometimes a single group needs to undertake multiple projects where each requires its own terminologyIn some cases a single terms community might have several subgroups or projects which each need their own terminology and thus their own terms wikis. That's fine too.
Whenever a terminology is internally cohesive and managed by a crisply delineated set of stakeholders, we call the context in which it lives a scope. Every scope needs a glossary that lists the set of terms pertinent to that scope (i.e. its terminology), as well as its own terms wiki that contains the definitions of the terms that are specific to this scope. The following diagram illustrates the relationship between terms wikis and glossaries based on them.
How to use a terms wiki
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